ArmA 2 Operation Arrowhead Private Military Company - Breaking Contact

Contrary to popular imagination, we are not gun-toting cowboys. We have the our guns and we will use them. But we are never at war, just always in the crossfire ...

Our firm is trying to move the family of our client out of the war-torn countryside of Takistan. We have them in a safe house at a small town within the shrinking territories under control of the Takistani Army. We bribed the hell out of the Takistani officers and they will let this family go. They don't know whose family is this one and that's good because this is one of the traitors who brought to them the coalition invasion. Our money can buy us a very short span of time and we are conducting what in the private military contractor lingo is called  "short notice movement". Courtesy of the US Army, we are prohibited to use our helicopter. The excuse today is indirect fire deconfliction. How close the US Army is anyway?

Planning a route for moving a client through a war zone is an affair of intuition. They call it risk management but in the end is all second guessing after the motorcade is either safe or a bonfire outlasting an ambush. We barely had time to plan this one and I am afraid all the time of the world wouldn't have helped anyway. As the coalition forces push the Takistani Army towards the north, fanatical insurgents are claiming ownership of any inch square of terrain that is left in the path of withdrawal. Risk areas shift by the hour. All we could do is a map exercise assuming the worse: choose our movement routes, possible safe heavens for if it gets hairy, evacuation routes to those safe heavens and (what gives) helicopter landing zones for an extraction in case we feel extra brave to challenge the US Army's aerial curfew. Choke points, just one! , my boss told me with that annoying facial tick he pulls every time there is bad news.

They were technically two choke points, just very close to each other. A couple of bridges over two dried out canals channel all vehicular traffic coming out of the area we are trying to get out from.

My team of four men was assigned the security advance patrol (SAP) role. In areas as volatile as this one, SAPs are the eyes of the whole operation providing real time intelligence to the coordinator. We are to asses the trafficability of the bridges before the main body commits to this movement route. We traveled ninety minutes, delighted to cross paths with just the occasional small group of refugees. We are driving a civilian car, as much  inconspicuous as un-armored, to avoid bringing attention or bullets to us.

We can shoot the hell and more without dismounting from our SUVs. Even when their armor is good for just a couple of minutes of sustained hostile fire, we have always managed to transform "sustained hostile fire" into "scattered hostile fire" by using our firepower. We kind of developed muscle memory on how to shoot in any direction from them. This small blue sedan is a different story. Hell, we couldn't even figure out how to put up the extra kevlar blankets we brought along. We all agreed that our chances of speeding our way out from contact at the bridge would be very dim if we don't shoot back. Thus we decided to dismount and unveil any hostile position at the bridges not sitting on wheels but rather standing on our feet and holding our guns. We pull out of the road some kilometer before the bridges and leave our ride hidden between the rolling hills.

We keep our movement slow and on the left side of the road. There is plenty of bushes to conceal us and the rolling hills can be used to cover our withdrawal in case we get into contact.

Concealment is a two way avenue. The thick bushes get all my fields of view blocked as we approach the first bridge.

What a relief is to get to your target area and find it free of armed opposition.

Our motorcade operations can only thrive at high speeds. We ram the hell out of anything that denies us the edge of speed. Today it looks like somebody forgot to clean up this checkpoint before abandoning it. Ah, hell ... is it actually abandoned?

To be continued ...

Another Awesome Gift From a Blog's Follower!

This time from Pergite, an autographed Afghan flag along with two uniform patches. I thank you friend for your service and for this incredible gift!

I took a picture before taking everything to the frame shop. The shop owner asked me today what these flags are all about. How do I explain my luck of getting these cool gifts from you guys?

Cheers,

Combat Action in Wanat, Afghanistan (2008)

This story brought to you by GrogNews' Guardian. This superb blog is a must read, fellows.

July 2008, Combat Outpost Kahler, near the village of Wanat, Waygal valley, Afghanistan. 49 US Army and 24 ANA are attacked by numerically superior Taliban forces. This is one combat action for which we now have a great tactical analysis from the Combat Studies Institute Press.

Grab it here (opens a pdf).

Thanks to GrogNews for the heads up.
Cheers,

Gary Grigsby's War in the East - AAR(eview) - To the Western Dvina!

This is an AAR of an scenario of the game Gary Grigsby's War in the East. I have included some comments and screenshots as a supplement of a review that will be published by the end of this week.



Continuing from the previous entry, welcome back to the line of departure of Army Group North. A short refresher of the plan of operations follows.

Please click the image for a more detailed view.

The most pivotal event in the next one or two weeks (truly hoping one week!), will be the 4th Panzer Group (4th PzGrp) securing a railroad crossing over the Western Dvina river in order to establish a future railroad supply line that will reach Pskov. Upon crossing the Western Dvina river, a detachment of 4th PzGrp will pivot northwest to encircle Russian forces south of the river. 18th Army is to push northeast in the direction of Riga and destroy Russian forces trapped south of the Western Dvina River. 16th Army is to advance in the general direction of Velikie Luki through the fortified city of Kaunas.


The next screenshot offers a close up of the area of operations just beyond the line of departure of the Army Group North. The yellow arrows were added with an image processing software.

To truly enjoy this game, I suggest you keep your order of battle in mind. Depending on which side you are playing and the time period of the scenario, your operational "atom" formation (smallest formation to be tasked with a mission within the operational realm) is the Corps (German side) or the Army (Russian side). Keep these formations together and task them with missions that are coherent with the ones of Armies, Fronts or Army Groups. Careless "counter pushing" will most likely lead you to failure. Just a reminder, in the game, units belonging to the same army have the same color. Purple for the 9th Army, fucsia for the 4th PzGrp and pink for the 16th Army. In the image above, the yellow arrows represent the planned axis of advance for every army. Note how the 4th PzGrp axis of advance coincides with a railroad line that runs west-east towards the Western Dvina river (AKA Daugava river). Railroads play a crucial role in this game as they transport the bulk of supplies, ammo and fuel needed for your operations. So, you better have railroads thought of when you make plans.

The hour of battle has come, let's wake the Juggernaut!


In the game, attacking is a simple matter of selecting the attacking unit(s) and left clicking in an adjacent enemy unit. There are two types of attack: hasty and deliberate (you have to hold the shift key besides the right mouse click to activate it). Your unit(s) in a hasty attack will use only a fraction of its/their assets, but its/their mobility after the attack will be bigger than after a deliberate attack in which all the unit(s) assets will be used. In the image below, all infantry divisions in the I Corps/16th Army (12th, 32nd and 121st Inf Div.) are conducting a hasty attack on a hapless Russian infantry division. The decision of conducting a hasty or deliberate attack is upon your shoulders and you should consider the defending forces, their fortification levels and the terrain. More or less, the borders battles are a cakewalk and the Russian defenders retreat, rout or surrender in mass. So all my attacks on the border were hasty. And successful. 

I Corps, 16th Army hasty attack. Note the circular icon over the defending unit.

The tactical battle results are shown in an overlay that automatically appears on the screen. In the image below, units from the 4th PzGrp have started their hasty attacks.

4th PzGrp units start rolling. The black and red lines indicate air support. The green line represents the route of enemy airplanes arriving to the battlefield. Click the image for an expanded view.

Note the details in the battle report. At this moment, the battle is still unfolding (Ju-88s are bombing the Russian 5th Rifle Division).  In the left panel of the battle report there is a list of the friendly forces engaged. Besides the aircraft (dude! do we really need 100+ Bf109 fighters?) there is one land unit that came from the Corps HQ to support the attack (846th Howitzer Bn). This automatic assignment of combat support units from HQ units is tunable (your can adjust the level of support a HQ unit gives away) and can be turned off if you want to manually assign combat support units to specific combat units. This lack of counters for combat support units is really convenient as it takes away from the player the tedious task of moving additional counters and (as seen in other games) the shock of seeing an enemy division overrun that artillery battalion somebody forgot to move out of harms way. But, keep in mind that HQ units will provide combat support units only in proximity of the subordinate combat units (within a distance of 5 hexes). That's why, I insist, you need to watch for your forces' deployment carefully.


And before we continue rolling up the frontier defenses one more word about air support and the air war in general. The air warfare aspect of the game is handled almost automatically. There is a an "air doctrine" page in the game in which you can specify how much of your assets will be devoted to ground combat support, enemy airbases and cities bombing, interdiction escorting, and air superiority.

The air campaign is for the most part in the hands of the computer.

Air bases and air fleets have their own counters, which you should move up close to the front line as your land forces advance because your airplanes eventually will not be able to reach their targets (this is a big country!). Individual, user-driven by "click on target" aerial operations are also available: air recon (F5 key), bomb a specific unit (F6 key), bomb a specific airfield (F7 key), bomb a specific city (F7 key), aerial resupply of a friendly unit (F8 key) and transfer of air groups between air units (F9 key). Be advised that in the middle of your ground combat operations is very easy to loose track of how many aircraft you have ready (they may have used up all their available miles per turn) at a certain point. I myself cringed in frustration when I found out there were no more aircraft available to bomb a specific Russian division entrenched in a swamp. I'm sure there has to be a screen with that information consolidated, but I just couldn't find it.


By a series of front-wide hasty attacks with units from all my armies, the front is ruptured and the flood gates are open for my troops. Time to move on those boots, wheels and tracks! 


This is a turn based (IGOYOUGO) game with turns that simulate one week of operations. It also uses hexes that represent 10 miles of terrain.

Military geography. Click the image for an expanded view.

In a pretty much standard way, every unit in the game has a movement points allowance per turn.
These movement points are specified in the right side number at each unit counter.

This is the counter of a German infantry division. It has a total of 16 movement points. The number in the left is the total combat power of the unit.

For comparison purposes, this is the counter of a German panzer division. It has a total of 50 movement points. The number in the left is the total combat power of the unit.

The previous counter images are intended to give an idea about the mobility and firepower these two types of combat units have. Each unit will loose movement points as they move through different types of terrain or hexes that are enemy-controlled. All of these mechanics and design are pretty much standard in turn/hexagon based war games. The question is: how it works for a theater of war like Barbarossa?

In the screenshot below, the 6th Panzer Division (XLI Corps, 4th PzGrp) is attacking a Russian infantry division. Through a combination of combat (combat uses movement points) and movement (of course movement uses movement points, meh!), the 6th Panzer Division has advanced some 70 miles from the line of departure and still has 31 movement points (out of 50) left. Lots of punch left in this unit and in my opinion this kind of in-game mobility simulates the real life one pretty well.

Click the image for a better view. The 6th Panzer Division (highlighted yellow) is halfway towards its objective. Note the advance of 18th Army (purple counters) and how the 16th Army is knocking the door of Kaunas.

At the end of the week the 4th PzGrp has succeeded in brushing aside any opposition found on its route but failed in securing a crossing over the Western Dvina river (Daugava river). The railroad crossing appears to be defended by an airborne brigade. 16th Army has advanced some 40 miles after the initial break-through attacks and now has to conduct a cross-river assault into the fortified city of Kaunas. 19th Army has eliminated or routed all units it faced in the border and now is slowing its pace despite the clear terrain ahead: note the Russian armored division on its right flank.

End of first week of operations.

To be continued. Stay tuned. 

Gary Grigsby's War in the East - AAR(eview) - Setting the Stage

This is an AAR of an scenario of the game Gary Grigsby's War in the East. I have included some comments and screenshots as a supplement of a review that will be published next week.

This is an hex and turn-based wargame with complex inner workings that becomes surprisingly approachable thanks to a well-thought and intuitive interface. There is no way around to the massiveness of it though, and it is recommended elsewhere that you cut your teeth on scenarios smaller than the "big one" that covers the whole war. I followed that advice and I can speak of cutting teeth but also of breaking molars while trying to chew Russian Armies in vast expanses of territory. Emphasis on fighting the Russians and not the game, which is good news.

You may need to click the image to read the text. The scenario I chose is "Road to Leningrad"

Army Group North was the least powerful formation of Operation Barbarossa. With two infantry armies and one so-called "Panzer Group" (by this time emotions ran high in the Wehrmacht against dignifying tank formations, no matter how big, with the "Army" name), this formation had so many valuable strategic targets within its area of operations that the original Hitler's plan (Directive No.21,  18 December 1940) specifically instructed that, after dealing with Russian forces in Belarus, Army Group Center would pivot north leaving Moscow un-touched and support Army Group North until Leningrad is captured. This north-bound pivot of Army Group Center was later slashed in a new directive, but Army Group North was still left with strategic objectives including the Russian Baltic Fleet bases, a sizeable amount of Russian Air Force bases and the Bolshevic-boss-city Leningrad.

All the above objectives would be worth if I would be playing the big scenario covering the whole war. However, this is a small subset of the start of the war and the scenario designer has made his picks. In the screen below, the scenario objectives are labeled with flags. In the game the map can be zoomed in or out with the mouse wheel.

The game features four zoom levels that can switched with the mouse wheel. The level of detail and area covered by each zoom level is more than adequate to plan an operation. Note the grey-shaded hexagons: they mark areas not reachable for the current scenario. 

 This is a game that simulates the biggest military campaign in history. Being put at the helm of it may be shocking to the beginner and one of my concerns was how accessible would be to grasp your own order of battle. First thing I liked: color-coding by armies (every unit of the same army has a unique color in its icon), as this helps to visualize your troops deployment. Once you click a unit icon, a side bar appears (it will include also other units located in the same terrain hexagon) showing more details about that unit. The icons in the side bar can be right-clicked to deliver even more information about the unit. In the image below, I clicked on the 6th Panzer Division on the map, then on the side bar and once I saw the info screen for the division I clicked on a specific type of equipment. Bam! Information about any type of individual equipment. I told you, the level of detail of this game is deep.

Although not unique to this game, clickeable informational panels and windows are a great asset. In this animation, I went from visualizing a whole army group deployment through the armor details of a single type of tank in just three clicks. 

But don't panic, the deep level of detail of this game doesn't mean that you will have to think or manually address issues like the correct size of sprockets for the threads of your tanks. More on this later when we deal with supplies.

Coming back to the order of battle, the game also features a traditional informational window that allows you to see your armies in a single page. The text on these windows is also clickeable.

You may need to click this image to read the text. von Leeb's forces, ready for action.

I'm a very visual type of fellow, and I prefer to grasp the organization of my forces on the map. This game features a color-coded highlighting system that may take some time to get acquainted with. In the image below I clicked on the 11th Infantry Division (highlighted  purple in the map) and immediately all command-chain-wise related units were also highlighted. The 11th Infantry Division's boss is I Corps, which was highlighted orange. The 11th Infantry Division's sister formations (also under the command of I Corps) were highlighted yellow. Very convenient, but I have to admit this highlighting system took me some time to assimilate.

Who is your boss, schutzen?

Almost ready to move onto the Baltic States? Not so fast, commander! What's the enemy intel?

This is an area where the game surprised me good and bad. Fog of war is affected by the so-called "detection levels" of every specific unit. The higher the "detection level" the easier the unit will be detected. The "detection level" of a unit is computed by its distance to the enemy and covering terrain. Although it is not stated in the manual, I have the suspicion that the composition of the unit also affects its "detection level" because I usually can see more armored units than infantry units behind the fence of  the forward line of troops. Units with high "detection levels" are more likely to be plotted in the map compared with units with lower ones. I'm not so thrilled about the AI not being held to the same fog of war restrictions than me: according to the manual, the AI "knows" every hexagon in the map as having enemy troops or not with the only restriction being not knowing the enemy unit's arm or strength unless the enemy unit has a "detection level" that warrants such knowledge. This computer opponent design will surely raise some eyebrows and I'm anxious to see how it works overall.

Let's do some operational reconnaissance with our luxurious air assets. F5 is the key to switch your cursor into the aerial reconnaissance mode. Once the air reconnaissance mode is activated, one has to right click on the location/hexagon of interest. The game engine handles the specific aircrafts and squadrons from which your pilots will fly the mission and the enemy units spotted will be plotted in the map according to their "detection levels". In general, the beauty of the intel gathered lies in the eye of the officer as you will have to deduce what the AI is up to. In my experience, every time I spot an enemy headquarters unit by aerial reconnaissance makes me want a sound mod that says "bingo!" because the AI tends to keep its ducks in a row (i.e. a properly echeloned formation).

Click the image for an expanded view. The blue, white and red icon in the center of the screen represents an aerial recon mission. Note the Russian HQ units (brown icons): the farther they are from the front line, the more likely they are higher in rank.

Armed with dubious information it is time now to think of a plan that brings certain victory to our forces. Such is the life of the S2 and S3 officers, ain't it?

Let's talk a bit about operational art. For an army that had not a single paragraph in its military doctrine about operational art (as we know it today), it is somewhat ironic that the Wehrmacht cleaned up western Europe during 1939 and 1940 with sharp, clean and decisive ... Ummmm ... Master pieces of operational art (?!). At the onset of WWII, the German Army believed in one thing and one thing only: the battle of annihilation. Not that they didn't believe in it before, this belief comes from times as far as the times of Frederick the Great. Kurz und vives (short and lively), the warrior king used to say about his preferred way of waging wars. Germany could never afford to wage long wars and thus the need to destroy the enemy in a short and decisive battle. To achieve a battle of annihilation, Moltke was very influential with his belief in encirclement by troops moving fast towards the enemy's rear, supplemented with forward pressure by front line troops. The enemy would then be forced to fight a battle with a reversed front. To keep my game in tune with the historical counterpart, playing as the Germans I will try to keep a strong focus in the destruction of the enemy.

Invading Russia is like entering a funnel through its narrow extreme. At the line of departure you are squeezing your forces to enter the fight and some 80 miles later you are diluting your troop density beyond recognition. It is hard to encircle anything with one regiment every other 20 miles or so. But in this particular scenario I have the benefit of a closed flank (the Baltic Sea) and only one encircling pincer arm is needed. Based on the intel I could gather so far, south of the Dvina River-Riga line I am facing at least two Soviet Armies and I will try to destroy them before moving to where most of the Soviet forces are likely to be: defending Leningrad.

Click the image for an expanded view. Plan for the initial operations in Army Group North's sector.

It will be impossible to sustain an offensive at Leningrad without controlling the forests and establishing a good supply chain near Pskov. Gaining control of the city of Pskov will mark the first phase of the operation. I will spearhead with the 4th PzGrp moving in the general direction of Pskov. One of the two corps of 4th PzGrp will be pivoting northwest as to cut off the Soviets retreat from the regions south of the Dvina river-Riga line. 18th Army will keep pressing the Russians in the general direction of Riga and 16th Army will cover the 4th PzGrp's right flank Only God knows what the situation will be after we establish a foothold a Pskov, and only after that I am willing to formulate a plan for the follow up operations.

In the next installment, the start of the offensive.

Cheers,

Squad Battles Modern War Released, Me Wanting a Day Off

Monday, 0800. I've just installed Squad Battles Modern War. Want to stay, but gotta go to work. Is there a suckiest time of the day (early morning of a weekday) and day of the week (Monday) to release a great game? :)

Completely blown away by this game. Plenty of interesting scenarios. There is one scenario about the assault on Dahaneh. I've looked for any type of tactical narrative about that battle almost everywhere and now I'm wargaming it. It doesn't get any better.

Please click the image for a better view.

Gotta go, fellows. Looking forward for the evening. :)

Cheers,

Restrepo - A Documentary by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington

I saw this one during the weekend and definitively is one of the best documentaries about the war in Afghanistan. The firefight scenes are almost surreal. Highly recommended movie.

Cheers,

Harpoon 3 ANW - Fighting the Wrong Battle with the Wrong Warships - Part 3

This is a continuation from a previous entry and the battle narrative with the most anticlimactic end I ever told ... And not because of my lousy writing or command skills!

This is where we left previously: I detached a total of four warships from TF02 and TF01 and ordered them west to intercept the Argentine carrier Veiniticinco de Mayo and its escorts. The new task force (TF08) is composed of HMS Amazon, HMS Battleaxe, HMS Argyll (all purpose frigates) and HMS Glasgow (area air defense destroyer).

The modest task force (westmost blue concentric circles icon in the middle of the screen) is sailing west to meet the Argentine carrier group (yellow squarish icons in the west). The selected unit ( blue concentric inverted semicircle) is a flight of 3 Harriers investigating and air contact. Their CAP waypoints are the green "X"s. The area inside the orange lines is a "threat to aircraft" I placed to avoid my own aircraft flying too close to the Argentine ships.

Time is 0105 now. TF08 is sailing at flank speed towards the Argentine carrier. It will be at least two hours until TF08 gets withing weapons range. The Sea Harriers CAP mission downed at least 7 Argentine aircrafts. Things are looking good so far.

Task force formation for scared admirals: because of the high threat of Argentine aircraft and warships, TF08 sails in a tight formation where almost every single weapon system from every warship can support each other. The green outer circle represents a range of 10 nm. Warships of TF08 are represented by blue circular icons.

Time is now 0223. TF08 is getting close to the Argentine carrier. On the left panel, TF08's tight formation makes it very difficult to pinpoint the exact location of the Argentine warships. Sensors need to be more widely spread to pinpoint surface contacts effectively, but I am more concerned about mutual support right now. On the right panel, a hiatus in the CAP missions has left TF08 exposed to Argentine aircraft. The inverted yellow half-square in the right panel turned out to be a 2-aircraft flight of A-4s which was shot down at close range.

Time is now 0245. TF08 receives the first timid missile strike from the Argentines. In the bottom right panel, an Argentine anti-ship missile (red M icon) is about to be intercepted by one of ours. In the top right panel, note how I messed up the CAP missions and ended up with single aircrafts flying west. Thankfully, the Argentines have suffered tremendous air losses in the past two hours and the single Sea Harrier was brought back to safety.

After some maneuvering complications TF08 (blue concentric circular icons) fires its first anti-ship missile. Time is 0354. TF08 has issues tracking the Argentine warships, now located at an estimated range of less than 30 nm. Three single anti-surface missiles fail to guide. We need to close even more.

0439, ARA Hercules (Type 42 Destroyer, labeled as contact D044) fires a barrage of missiles. Although it was a  nerve-wrecking experience, TF08 manages to shoot down all of them. The Argentine carrier Veinticinco de Mayo is the northmost surface contact (yellow square). TF08 continues to fire salvos of 2-4 missiles onto the carrier, but no hits are confirmed.

0503. The Argentine escorts (two yellow squares plus the red romboid icons sailing southeast) leave the Veinticinco de Mayo (yellow square icon near the TF08) behind. The Veinticinco de Mayo is evidently damaged and immobile as we approach for the final kill.

0510. The Veinticinco de Mayo (red romboid icon near TF08) is within sight of TF08 and on fire. TF08 engages the carrier  with its good ole Bofors naval guns. 

And then Harpoon 3 crashed to desktop! No warning, not even a "this program has encountered a problem and needs to close" message. Just the sound of my voice calling expletives. Sudden death ...

The most interesting part of the battle was to come. I had my doubts about how much damage TF08 could do to the Argentine Navy, but I underestimated these four warships. I wonder how the rest of the battle would have unfolded. Was it a good idea to detach warships from the main body of the British force?

Lessons learned:
-Save, save and then save some more. It is my first crash in Harpoon 3, but it is better to be safe than sorry
-A close formation is good for mutual support (we defeated a lot of Argentine missile salvos and air attacks), but terrible for tracking enemy warships
-Air cover:  have a solid plan to avoid gaps in the patrols
-Once you know that an enemy warship is no longer combat-capable, move towards other threats. I focused too much on the Veinticinco de Mayo and I should have started to move onto the escorts as soon as I saw the Argentine carrier lagging behind them


Cheers,

Merry Christmas!

Hoping you have a wonderful Christmas, fellows!

Cheers,

Squad Battles Modern War Out Monday, Combat Mission Battle for Normandy Aiming for February 2011

Gee, I take a short trip and look what happens.

John Tiller's Squad Battles Modern War will be available next Monday. When Tiller said "aggressive publication schedule", he meant it. Credit card ready, bring it on!

Squad Battles Modern War

Battlefront has a name for it's next Combat Mission iteration: Combat Mission Battle for Normandy. Looking great. I've seen screenshots showing rivers ... and bridges. Yeah! Hoping for an early release of this one.

Family picture.

Cheers,