Sunday, September 2, 2012

Combat Mission Shock Force NATO - Canadian LAVIIIs in a Presence Patrol

Light armored vehicles ... How much controversy around their use in battle! I don't see the Canadian Army shying away from it in the foreseeable future, though.


This custom-made scenario starts with a platoon of Canadian Army soldiers on their way to a presence patrol in an insurgency theater of operations. It is very well known that the civilian population sometimes doesn't appreciate or are less cooperative when armored vehicles are marauding in their streets. So in this case the platoon has dismounted and left their LAVIIIs in a so-called satellite patrol, hundreds of meters behind them.


A panoramic view of the scenario. The dismounts are in the open in front of the village and the LAVIIIs are overwatching them from a ridge line.
The LAVIIs, with their powerful optics and main guns are counted for providing early warning and for supporting the dismounts upon contact.

The 3rd Section comes under sniper fire, but the enemy can't be spotted by neither the dismounts nor the LAVIIIs back in the ridge.

The 1st Section, who was rushed up front near an orchard ridge couldn't spot the sniper but got pinned down by an insurgent MG team on their right flank. Here, the section is in an irrigation ditch and at least they are going to suppress the enemy team. But what's really missing is the long range fire from an LAVIII.
Even with the 1st Section with a solid target identification (as shown in the screenshot above), the LAVIIIs can't engage because the enemy team is hidden by a patch of woods.

The satellite patrol thing didn't work well in this case. No early warning, no target identification or suppression (sniper team) was provided for the 3rd Section. In the case of the 1st Section, the LAVIIIs are not to be blamed because they don't have LOS on the enemy MG team. Overwatching requires a 100% shared battlespace between the support and maneuver groups.

I started this scenario very small and it somehow grew a bit over its original intent, so I may post a full-blown AAR or release it in the future.

Cheers,
at

8 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 3, 2012 at 2:07 AM

    For some reason the third image reminds me of a scene from the film "Armadillo".
    And please do post the full AAR as i do not care much for all these ARMA 2 and flight simulators

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  2. AnonymousSeptember 3, 2012 at 1:04 PM

    I'd love to play this if you get time to upload it somewhere!

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  3. RangerX3XSeptember 4, 2012 at 5:57 AM

    Is it because the LAV's are out of target range and won't engage automatically? I would think in that situation that area saturation would be the call.

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  4. UnknownSeptember 4, 2012 at 7:14 AM

    I'd figure those LAVs would be able to engage fairly effectively out to those ranges. The enemy just has a ton of concealment. Wouldn't feel right going in there without some indirect fire, myself.

    Coordinating between dismounted infantry and mechanized support is tricky--neither one can ever fully understand the other's situational awareness.

    I'd like to see the AAR, if you're on the fence.

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  5. JCSeptember 4, 2012 at 11:37 AM

    Armadillo! Off course! I knew I got that from somewhere. Thanks for pointing that out.

    The scenario will go up in Battlefront's repository by the end of this week.

    Hi Ranger. I think that the LAVs are well within range (<1km). I am a bit surprised that the IR sensors of the LAV could not pick the sniper out. Maybe a target arc would be best? Area suppression would be great, but although there is nothing score-wise stopping me from doing that, I am just thinkking in the civilians in the village. At least in this stage of the engagement.

    Hi Desdinova. Ditto on the combined arms thing. I'm going to try this in ArmA, just for kicks.

    Cheers,

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  6. UnknownSeptember 4, 2012 at 6:59 PM

    Good luck, JC. Let us know how that goes. Dog Company recently lost a Bradley in Feruz Abad's northern neighborhood when the infantry section got bogged down. Though it seems foolish to send an IFV into an urban area the way we did, you can quickly forget that the mechanized support can't be too close, either.

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  7. ChrisSeptember 5, 2012 at 5:49 AM

    I think the identification of hostile vs civilian is "abstracted" to some extent in CMSF (there aren't iirc civilian units), so the IR sensors may well pick up lots of human activity in the village but the total sum of knowledge isn't enough to know which specifically is a sniper.

    Nothing stopping targetting a likely area, but not going to help the "hearts and minds" of course,

    bw
    Chris

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  8. JCSeptember 10, 2012 at 10:07 AM

    Thanks for your comments, gents.

    Desdinova: are you guys posting AARs or videos somewhere? There is a lot to be learnt from your group's battles.

    @ Chris: I checked the scenario and the civilian presence is zero. As you may have seen from the AAR, I applied plenty of firepower after we went in contact.

    Cheers,

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