New "Red Pill" Screenshots

Ladies and gentlemen, this naval/air war game will kick some serious ass. A new batch of screenshots has been posted this weekend at Warfaresims.com.

The stunning screenshots are the first batch from an scenario named "Cans Only".

This is a simple ASuW-centered scenario addressing a hypothetical surface engagement exercise in the western Pacific in the summer of 2010. Two USN surface action groups, one of them including the amphibious ship USS Essex, must reach the Tokyo-Yukosuka area. Two JMSDF taskgroups act as OPFOR and must prevent them from doing so. There is no land-based air support or submarines; both sides must make do with their surface ships and what they can carry onboard. The Japanese have an advantage in numbers, but the US has more Aegis ships and lots more helicopters. The setup is 2-on-2 groups so there are plenty of decisions to make!

More details and screenshots here.

Cheers,

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.