"How to stop a Soviet Tank/Mechanized force" Topic

Just in case you ever wanted to know:
YouTube link

Team Yankee: Checkpoint Charlie is coming out later this year and might just cover this, or at least get really close. It's pretty cool to see M60s (These are A1s, right), M113s, TOWs, Cobra TOW gunships, and Dragons in action against 'Soviet' forces. It's cool that they had the T62 which they guessed to be the main foe in 1976. No BMPs or BTRs though.I do wonder why the M113 TOW varient was left out. Didn't they have the M150 with a single TOW launcher around then?

Anyway, I can't wait to see this new version of Team Yankee!

Tgunner, that is really quite excellent!

Wish I had this to send to my local group, before running my recent 4mm Cold War games. Just the bit on smoke tactics – pre-thermal Soviet sights, would have been useful (as it was, I had to coach a player-team during one of the games, to remind them of these concealment tactics).

Much of the closing to battle [then & now] depends on proper recon work – and although in image format only, I found this Cold War-era, US Armored Cavalry manual excellent (and potentially for scenario generation/basis)-

link

You deploy anti-tank mines in plain view on the road with a Russian flag on them. Rig a trip fuse with a lanyard detonator, so that, if withdrawn, the mine will detonate.

Tie a plastic fake finger to the lanyard with a sign on it saying. "Pull my finger."

If the Soviet commander is good and follows Soviet tactics manual, they cannot be stopped.
Back in 1980, I was asked by the designers of a major game company to explain why the play testers could not win as Soviets. I explained the tactics taught by the OPFOR in my command. I got a free copy of the new game and a letter of thanks by the company. The lay testers had not lost since the lecture.
Lol

Thanks for the link, it raises some interesting dilemmas as well as adding interesting facts.

It notes the teams usually move 100 to 500m in a bound. It implies in a vehicle. 100mm seems a very short bound in a vehicle. 500m is not that far. does this seem reasonable, possibly if the next cover is 250m + away so beyond RPG 7 effective range. Interestingly this sets wargames table sizes depending on how many bounds you anticipate the FEB you are representing. Great stuff!

It talks about suppression of ATGM's this is interesting. Studies note suppression takes place if a round comes closer to a man than about 3 ft. Now a Sagger, prevalent at this time, is a two missile unit with the control upto 50m from the missile. So even if you see a missile launch you have an uncertainty of 200 yds. It could be the left or right missile so the second missile could be 100m either side of the launched missile. Now that gives an unrealistic minimum of 200 rounds, if the range was perfect, even if we optermisticaly assume we get it roughly right we proably need to spray 1m in font and 1m behind the assumed range. that's now 600 rounds of 7.62mm or 12.5mm if it's a browning. That's 2 cases for a browning and probably closer to 1000 rounds for the 7.62. That looks close to impractical. Now if the opposition are idiots they may have deployed in an area that is bounded by terrain so it's distribution is forced in a smaller area, but assumptions of stupidity by the enemy is itself somewhat stupid. So can sombody tell me what the faults are in my logic?

@UshCha

I don't see anything. When I was in, late '80's and early '90's, we were taught to drop into a Sagger Dance which meant speeding up and doing random sharp turns to throw off the gunner's aim. The gunner and TC were to look for the smoke from the Sagger and star spraying their sectors- .50 in one direction and coax in the other. We never really bothered with the loader's machine gun because we didn't want him thrown around because of violent maneuvering. With luck the Sagger dance and the MG fire would throw off the Sagger gunner's aim and let us avoid the missile. Hopefully by then the gunner could identify the gunner through the thermals and then cut down the Sagger's gunner.

We would also advance after the 4.2" mortars and artillery did their thing too with suppressive fires and smoke. At least that was the theory, anyway. The Opfor at the NTC was use to that stuff and were sneaky with ATGMs in places along the flank you wouldn't think of, and they were always ready to launch a counterattack on the fly against us. I'm not sure if that was standard Soviet tactics (I spent my time studying the standard attack waves like in the video!).

Anyway, this video brought back a lot of memories to me dispite the times changing when I was in (M1A1 and Brad vs. M60 and M113). There are British Army of the Rhine videos from this same source to check out too! If you play Team Yankee and don't know a lot about the BOAR, these videos really bring the Chieftain book to life!

Tgunner Trying to suppress 200m of terrain with an unstabilised weapon, especially when its doing a Sagger dance seems a trifle over optimistic to say the least, moral building maybe but effective maybe less so.

There was a post a while back about a US Army TC in Germany doing maneuvers with TOWs. He said if they maneuvered, the TOW gunners had less than a 10% chance of hitting.

Maneuvering puts you inside the Sagger gunner's OODA Loop because the tank can make quicker course and speed changes than the gunner can because there is a lag in the command and the Sagger executing it. The Sagger gunner follows a flare on the rear of the Sagger. At long ranges, the flare can almost block out the view of the target.

In the desert, the mirage image to the gunner was about 5 feet above the actual target. Gunners put several ATGM rounds through the mirage image for a miss, leaving the command wire draped over the tank.

The Sagger has an 8x periscopic sight about 1.5 feet high. This can put the Gunner in a defile position, almost immune to direct small arms fire.

The Sagger ATGM (AT-3 Sagger or 9M14 Malyutka) has a notable flight time due to its relatively slow speed compared to more modern anti-tank missiles.
Here's a breakdown of its flight time:

To 1,500 meters: The missile takes 12.5 seconds.
To 3,000 meters (maximum range): The missile takes 25 to 26 seconds.

This long flight time is a key characteristic of the Sagger, and it allows for evasive action by targets, especially at longer ranges. A vehicle moving at 25kph can travel about 100m in 15 seconds, so it could get out of LOS before the missile arrives.

Popping smoke and firing WP in the launcher's direction will also help.

Wolfhag

There must be something about this in the literature covering the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. After initial tactical errors in the Sinai, the IDF apparently learned how to suppress the Egyptian AT defenses, including machine guns mounted on their Mech Infantry APCs.

As hinds TMP notes, the IDF was hastily practicing Sagger Suppression tactics late in the Yom Kippur War.