Tank-Infantry Teams in ARMA2: Real Life Hazards and Annoyances We Don''t Have to Worry About

Continuing with tank-infantry teams, I will briefly mention some of the hazards and struggles real life US Marine rifle men have to cope with while working with tanks.

• Communications. As a real life USMC platoon/squad leader, if you get a tank platoon or section assigned to you, it means these armored behemoths are your subordinates now. Commanding them is not easy. Most of the times the tanks and the infantry will be in different radio communication networks. If you are lucky the tank will be equipped with infantry intercoms (a small telephone in the back of the tank, pretty much like the ones used during WWII). 
• Sitting around the feet of giants. The tank crews' situational awareness of the environment immediately close to their buttoned up tank is extremely low. Real life Marines are taught to always assume that tank crews can't see them:
• Stay at a safe distance, close to things the tank will avoid (like a building)
• Never stay between two tanks
• Watch out for moving turrets
• Watch out for the extreme heat coming out from the exhaust grid in the back of the tank
• Never walk in front of a tank without permission
• Never go prone near a tank
• Tanks' main guns are dangerous even when they are not aiming at you. Tank commanders will always signal the Marines on foot that they are about to fire the main gun (actually even the coaxial gun). This signal can be by radio or a hand signal.
• The main gun of a tank generates a lot of overpressure. The infantry commander is responsible of keeping his Marines out of the blast radius. Watch out for broken glass and debris caused by the overpressure.
• Separated SABOTs from the armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot munition can kill infantry located in front of the tank. Never fire main gun rounds over the heads of infantry.

In ARMA 2 we get it easy. In ARMA 2, your communications with the tank team are instantaneous and 100% reliable. AI tankers in ARMA 2 do a more than decent job in moving around infantry (though accidents will happen sometimes in the virtual battlefield, so be careful). And you can sit right by a virtual M1 tank in ARMA 2 while it fires its main gun, with the only consequence being a small ringing in your virtual ears. That beats spitting out your lungs in pieces ...

The Marine in the middle of the road is risking getting struck if the tank reverses suddenly. 

Never walk in front of a tank without permission. 

Cheers,

"Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising" Got Patched This Week

I didn't even bother to patch the previous time, so I thought this time it was worth to take a second look at this thing.

The new patch takes the game to version 1.02. The list of changes and new content is quite good.

As far as changes, I was interested in one thing: the odd flanking maneuver an AI fireteam under my command would make when ordered to lay suppressive fire onto something.

After this patch, it looks like it's improved, though I need more time to test this.

I ordered this fireteam to provide suppressive fire while I advanced. A couple of minutes later they are still in position, which is good.

AI Marines taking cover behind trees. This is a great AI feature in OFPDR.

Cheers,

Close Combat First to Fight: USMC Drills for Close Urban Combat

I was working on the second entry about the use of USMC tank-infantry teams in ARMA 2, slowly moving through an urban area with my virtual Marines (AKA herding cats, it's not easy to control AI teams in ARMA 2) when I remembered how easy was to control a fire team in this other shooter ...

Tank-Infantry Teams in ARMA2: Basic Concepts

"We have gotten into the fashion of talking of cavalry tactics, artillery tactics, and infantry tactics. This distinction is nothing but a mere abstraction. There is but one art, and that is the tactics of the combined arms."
Major Gerald Gilbert, The Evolution of Tactics (London, 1907)

Every combat arm has strengths and weaknesses. Since ancient times, commanders have used different combat arms in concert to maximize the survival and combat effectiveness of the others. In the modern battlefield, some form of combined arms is required even for survival.

The strengths of tanks are well known: great firepower, great mobility and great armor protection. One of the weaknesses of the buttoned up tank is a limited field of view. This weakness becomes serious  in terrain where the field of view is obstructed by closely located vegetation or buildings. In these cases, tanks can rely on infantry teams to see and hear what the tank crew can't. In turn, infantry gets the benefit of increased firepower.

This blog entry series is centered around USMC infantry and how it feels to cooperate with tanks in ARMA 2. This is not about tank tactics (ARMA 2 is not an armor simulation) but rather what infantry does in cooperation with tanks.

On the use of tank-infantry teams in the USMC, it is kinda curious that doctrine manuals suggest that tanks are never integrated with infantry units smaller than a company. However:

1. If the situation demands, a tank platoon (or a tank section) can be assigned to an infantry company. This is called tanks in direct support (DS).
2. Tanks in DS of an infantry company are now subordinated to the company commander, who in turn may assign the tanks to an individual infantry platoon. The reinforced infantry platoon commander may make some interesting combinations (more of that in a future post)
3. The minimum amount of tanks assigned to a platoon is a section of two tanks. This minimum is respected religiously. Tankers will refuse to fight without a wingman. :)
4.  About bullet point #1, if the situation demands, generally a combination of close terrain and a serious  AT threat. See the screenshots below.

This is tank country. Leave the tanks alone to do what they do best.

Now we are talking. These Marines are pulling all around security for the tank. The Marine in the foreground is covering the dead space above the tank.

These woods offer the enemy lots of options for an AT ambush.

Peeking around corners, something tanks can't do very well.

Cheers,

Faulty observation plans work best when combined with faulty direct fire plans

My topographic map reading skills suck ...

The game: Battle Group Commander: Episode One (ProSim)
The mission: counter-recon, do not let enemy reconnaissance units to reach FOB Jack. I will not go into the OPORD included in the scenario (not too much space to post), but my guess is that this is basically a "guard" mission.

Just so you understand how I am fighting this battle, my plan follows ...

Steel Beasts: I Would Love to Stay and Fight You, But I'm in a Rush!

This scenario by Gary Owen is an exercise to practice platoon movement techniques. I'm in command of a platoon of M1 tanks and I have to take an objective some 10+ km northwest of my position.

Time allowed is 90 minutes and the terrain ahead is ...

Photobombed!

In this picture from the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor, infantry jumps out from an open-topped M39 armored utility vehicle. This vehicle is a spin-off of the M18 Hellcat and maybe the first all-tracked APC after WWII (?). The photo is obviously staged, but note how everybody is trying hard to convey the drama of the situation. Everybody but the guy on the right (red circle).

Photobombed!

Cheers,

Book Review: “The Clausewitz Delusion”, by Stephen Melton

"If the wits are right in dubbing Proust the world's most quoted and least read novelist, Clausewitz must be his non-fiction counterpart". That's what Richard Simpkin said about the popular understanding of On War, AKA “the” theory of war by Clausewitz. A lot of "the" theory of war is no longer relevant, Melton says, at least not the parts that the US Army has chosen to incorporate into its doctrine. The Clausewitz Delusion is a soul-searching tour de force on how and why the US Army came to its current struggle to achieve decisive victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the author the US Army, in its decades-long infatuation with Clausewitz’s On War, has forgotten what it once knew and now lacks “a sufficient understanding of the nature of warfare at the strategic, operational and tactical levels”.  “What the US Army once knew” is one of the masterfully delivered, extensively documented key concepts in this book and the chosen point of departure for the discussion of future doctrine. Melton calls for a return to the good old and successful American way of war and to stop enshrining the old writings of the famed Prussian. Clausewitz "could learn more from us than we could ever learn from him".

More "Red Pill" Screenshots

The team developing "Red Pill" has released two more screenshots and more details about this air/naval  war game.

From Warfaresims.com:

Here we see how a single A. Burke-class destroyer positioned in the Arabian Sea is able to threaten a wide range of Iranian targets with its Tomahawk cruise missiles (dark red range ring). The map view is deliberately zoomed out to display the globe.

"The Hurt Locker" DVD, released in the US

Bought it and watched it last night.

Fantastic movie ... highly recommended.



Official website here.


Cheers,

"Command Ops Battles from the Bulge": New Feature Helps to Coordinate Your Attacks

Time, the primary dimension of warfare ...

L3 Link's Advanced Helmet Mounted Display

Simulation technology advances at an astonishing pace.

A short time ago L3-Link nailed a contract with the USAF to provide their "Advanced Helmet Mounted Display" gadget so it can be used to train F-16 pilots.

In a nutshell, this is an integrated helmet-mounted projector/transparent display that tracks the trainee's head position and projects the corresponding simulated environment image into a couple of specially designed semi-transparent glasses. Each of these display glasses can display at resolutions of 1280-by-1024 pixels, providing a continuous field of view of 100 degrees (horizontal) by 50 degrees (vertical). Combine that with head-motion sensing and you get 360 degrees coverage without using a single flat-panel display!

Please check out more details at L3-Link Simulation and Training.

Image is a courtesy of "L-3 Link Simulation & Training". Reproduced here with their permission.

Cheers,

Wargaming the Urban Fight

I was watching "The Fight for Fallujah" (Military Channel stuff included in this DVD) and after seeing the real footage of the combat during Operation Phantom Fury (screenshot at the left) I am once again floored at the complexity of the urban terrain. Not that I didn't know it was complex, ...

Awesome F-16 3D cockpit

Since the old Falcon 4 days, I've always wondered how the real F-16 would fly. Falcon 4, despite all its accurate avionics and weapon systems delivery always felt like I was flying "on rails". Browsing other stuff at a store yesterday I stomped into "F-16 Fighting Falcon", an add-on for Flight Simulator X made by Aerosoft. The box claimed "Accurate Fly-by-Wire flight model", so I couldn't resist.

I was really surprised by the quality of this add-on. The 3D cockpit is just fantastic and I made the video above to show it to you. Even the multi-function displays (MFDs) work! Off course the stuff shown in these is not exactly what you can see in Falcon 4, but these guys made an effort to model even some sort of radar capability in there. Very nice ...

Gah! I'm becoming an eye candy guy ...

I'll explore the flight model at a later time. :)

Cheers,

A US Marines "Infantry" Squad, Part 2

This entry is a continuation from a previous one.

As you may remember, I wanted to find out what all the buzz about "infantry" squads was about by experimenting with ArmA 2.

So, I assembled a US Marine "infantry" squad as described by Capt. Sprincin in the Marine Corps Gazette article and lined them up under my command ...

"Red Pill", First Screenshots!

"Red Pill" is a naval-air war game currently in development by a team of very talented enthusiasts. The details of the game are scarce but think "Harpoon on steroids". Today they made public the first screenshots of the game. Read the full story and see all the screenshots at Warfaresims.com.  Looking good!
Cheers,
EDIT: Image above courtesy of Warfaresims.com.

Book and Game: "Command Ops: Battles from the Bulge" and "Kampfgruppe Peiper at the Battle of the Bulge"

If you are seeing this post through dial-up, I apologize beforehand for the sheer size of the images in this entry (yet I encourage you to click them for a better view). I just wanted to show  you the quality of the work you will enjoy when this war game comes out (very soon!). The screenshot is from the "Peiper's Race to the Meuse" scenario ...

Now watching: "Dogfights", the complete series on DVD

Got this DVD collection from the wife for Christmas. Great show. I just saw "MIG Alley", the first episode. I linked you to the first part of this episode in Youtube. If you go there, you will find the whole episode.

Cheers,

A US Marines "Infantry" Squad, Part 1

 "Every Marine a rifleman", they say. However the lack of organic crew served weapons at the platoon and squad levels has not escaped many savvy Marines who are pushing for adding more organic firepower into the US Marines Squads and Platoons.

In this entry, a US Marine "infantry" squad as seen through ArmA 2 ...

Do You Have What It Takes to Command a Whole Corps?

Although I never declared myself a fan of this simulation, I keep coming back to it at least twice a month.So many things to learn from it ...