Modern Warfare. A matter of Scale?

[Jim Webster]

This is just an attempt to produce a scenario which helps get a feel for how modern warfare appears to be fought at the moment.  And at the same time to put it in its place in comparison with WW2 and other conflicts.

Modern Warfare. A matter of Scale

I have written it to fit the rules you use and it is pretty scale agnostic, indeed using a handful of figures in 6mm could give a better feel for it that 28mm on a smaller table.

 

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[kyoteblue]

The attacking player needs to be drunk to play like a Redacted country.

[Jim Webster]

For solo games the defender is the obvious one for the solo player to play 🙂
But, actually, life isn’t a bed of roses for the defending player either, because you are spread awfully thin, and you are going to struggle to eject attackers that do make a lodgement.

 

On the other hand one lucky roll with the artillery or glide bombs could leave a big gap in the defence (or alternatively get rid of the attackers who have made a lodgement for you)

But yes, I don’t think you’re far wrong

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[kyoteblue]

It’s just so crazy to take those kinds of casualties for 50 meters or so.

[Rod Robertson]

KB:

Verdun, the Somme, R’zhev, Smolensk, Stalingrad. How soon we forget.

Cheers and be well John.

Rod.

[Jim Webster]

It is crazy and generals seem happy to order it.
If more had to ride in the front rank on a white horse it might be less common

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Guy Farrish]

I’m fascinated to see a sober, objective analysis of what has happened since 24 Feb 2022. I’m not holding my breath.

I expect the war to continue, on the ground and in ‘non-Euclidian space’ for some considerable time and afterwards the propaganda will continue apace in the public sphere.

So: end of the tank? Rise of the all conquering drone? End of the offensive? Probably not, but all will be touted.

Wargames: very interesting way of testing various ideas about what might be going on, what tactics may be derived from the conflict, but they will of course only be as good as the data being plugged in. So a good first cut, but don’t bet the house on the outcomes.

As for Generals:

18% of those of General rank in the British Army in WW1 died in the conflict.

17.6% of the British Army during WW1 were casualties: that is killed, missing or wounded.

Remembering the Great War’s fallen Generals

 

 

[Jim Webster]

Like you I do find the discussion about tanks and the future interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsK6tbvTAc  has some video of latest anti-drone systems.
The problem with tanks is that the latest stuff does get somewhat pricey. It may be that they fade for budgetary reasons?
But could some of the tech be integrated into a cheaper vehicle? I do confess to being intrigued

 

With testing things with wargames, yes, there are pros and cons. I read an interesting article in Slingshot discussing ancient naval battles using triremes and similar galleys. The point made there was we tend to look back through the lens of the Napoleonic ships of the line where they took horrendous casualties and fought to the bitter end.
Apparently galley crews were less keen on being sacrificed like that.
I mention it, not because the article was right or wrong, but because it points out that as wargamers we had extrapolated a known result back.  When perhaps we shouldn’t. As you say, only as good as the data.

I suppose I owe generals an apology 🙂

From memory was it lieutenants who suffered the highest casualties?

 

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

So: end of the tank? Rise of the all conquering drone? End of the offensive? Probably not, but all will be touted.

Wargames: very interesting way of testing various ideas about what might be going on, what tactics may be derived from the conflict, but they will of course only be as good as the data being plugged in. So a good first cut, but don’t bet the house on the outcomes.

 

why a weapon or tactic remains on the battlefield is not always based on its battlefield merit.  Tanks will disappear against modern technologies based on extreme costs to procure vs the minimal costs of weapons that easily defeat them. 12 million for a single MBT compared to a couple of thousand for a ATGM. Crew costs are going to be the real issue.  Tanks as we know them will disappear to become disposable RPV/drone tankettes mounting guns or missiles for direct infantry support, as the inventory gets used up.

 

Tanks will remain much like PzIIs and T26s remained on the WW2 battle.  even a weak tank was still useful if the enemy lacked the means to defeat it, so they were regulated to where those means did not exist. Training or police use if nothing else, but no one throws old equipment away. If all else is useless, they become static pill boxes.

 

Modern combat is all about weapon range, concealment and observation.  If you can see them, they can be killed if there is a weapon in range.  This makes mass less valuable as a military principle The attacker, by the nature of the mission is usually the first to expose themselves from concealment, so surprise is not there either.

 

There has been a paradigm shift but the inventories will take awhile to get used up to reflect it, but i just don’t see 12-15 million dollar manned MBTs being bought in the future anymore than we desire to build battleships today (or even super carriers for that matter)

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Jim Webster]

The problem we see in the Ukraine is that nobody has mass any more. The Russian army is at least one order of magnitude less than the Soviet one and they cannot do mass the way their grandfathers did.
Also as pointed out, Mass is tricky to deploy, if they can see you they can kill you. But perhaps mass will reappear when it becomes ‘expendable’. Apparently the Ukrainians are already developing AI to allow one drone to control drone swarms. Also the use of AI in target acquisition and lock means that after a certain point, jamming the signal between drone and pilot is ineffective. Perhaps we will see mass reappear in drone swarms, perhaps countered by other drone swarms?

What has intrigued me is that we have had twenty years of ethical debate over whether we would allow AI to kill people. Lethal autonomous weapons
And suddenly when your people are dying, ethics looks different and they’re perhaps already here.

But then training them could be tricky, somebody sent me this

 

 

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Guy Farrish]

It’s fair to say that tanks have not fared well on either side in leading breakthrough operations.

Why is one of the reasons I am intrigued.

Many (most?) western analysts expected a Soviet style Operational Manoeuvre Group advance, with Kiev/Kyiv falling within a week, probably a few days. All quite promising to start with – airborne coup de main on an airfield, huge numbers of Russian vehicles ready to debouch in the rear of the Ukrainian defences. And Phhht. Damp squib. Head of the column bogged down open to snarl up and attack. Airfield recaptured.

Drones- well yes, but there were hardly any drones being used then.

I remember YouTube vids showing Javelin style missiles destroying isolated Russian tanks. (Not in the convoy from Belarus, but in the Donbas) and the story being it was all about hand held anti-tank missiles. But where were the infantry, on foot or in vehicles, sorting out the a/t teams which appeared to be operating at will at quite close range? Didn’t look like a combined ops attack.

Then it was artillery shooting up concentrated tanks waiting to cross a river by bridging train. So tube artillery was the answer. Russia presumably thought so as she is supposed to be firing 10,000 shells per day (with peak stonks of around 70,000!). They still haven’t broken a serviceable hole in the Ukrainian defences. People I know who supposedly know about this stuff told me that rate of fire would wear out the tubes in a few weeks and then Russia would be defenceless. Hasn’t happened so far – over a year later.

Bring on the Drones. We went from big expensive fixed wing to cheap quadcopters formerly thought of as tactical recce vehicles being used to drop small munitions on vulnerable tank decks. Possibly.

And the Russians weren’t static either. No major counterattack successes from Ukraine, with or without Western tanks. Ukraine was losing 10,000 drones a month and Russian EW rapidly caught up with its Soviet predecessors in scale and quality. (And see the artillery above).

So it’s all a bit static.

Does that mean tanks are obsolete?

Drone manufacturers probably want you to think so.

A/I companies are presumably hedging their bets. Is the problem the vehicle or the crew? Or the concept and the tactics? Or is a tank as suggested just too big a target? I don’t know, which is why I’m fascinated to know what really happened, and is happening, with the hype stripped away.

How much is poorly led, poorly trained, and indifferently equipped armies bludgeoning each other and how much is professional units encountering a battlefield problem they haven’t developed an answer for, yet? Have they even correctly identified the problem?

[hammurabi70]

Jim Webster wrote:

 From memory was it lieutenants who suffered the highest casualties?

Battalion commanders.

www.olivercromwell.org; www.battlefieldstrust.com
6mm wargames group: [email protected]; 2mm wargames group: [email protected]

[Jim Webster]

If barrel life is supposed to be 1500 to 2500 rounds, allow the Russians to worry about it once they’re past 5000 rounds. I wonder if a lot of the artillery that has disappeared from store has had the barrels robbed off them.

There again, I remember reading a comment by an officer who commanded the ack ack over London in WW2 who had served in the ack ack during WW1 and his comment was that in the WW1 they fired the guns until the barrels were oval. Accuracy suffered but you weren’t particularly aiming 🙂

Cannot vouch for this

“This is from “Soviet Field Artillery in World War II” by Michael Foedrowitz.

“One of the most successful Soviet guns (Serial No. 2464) was a 122-mm (Model 1938) gun, which fired a total of 6,541 shells while covering a distance of 4,605 kilometers from Moscow to the Baltic coast. During a subsequent examination in the factory where it was built, it was determined that the barrel had not lost its ballistic qualities and was ready for further use!”

“And in the final battle in Berlin in April-May 1945 a 152-mm ML-20 howitzer of the 142nd Cannon-Artillery Brigade fired the last of a total of 4,900 shells.”

I generally don’t trust Russian propaganda stories, but the data may be useful for setting the scale.

Perhaps more useful is the calculation by the author that since the Russians produced an average of 42,500 artillery barrels per year and and an average of 71,000,000 shells, there were something like 1,670 rounds available to be fired by each barrel. The high losses in the first year of the war skew the calculation, but again these are some other data points.”

https://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8758

So who knows. Is peace time health and safety set at a level guaranteed to prevent accidents, or to artillery manufacturers want the new barrel trade 🙂

But yes the debacle that was the Russian invasion will provide years of work. The fact that Rosgvardiya units were sent into Ukraine in the early waves of the invasion, with shields and riot gear, do seem to indicate that somebody wasn’t really planning for a war.
A lot of the issue does seem to be fuel which due to corruption wasn’t there.

Indeed the whole corruption thing needs looking at, is it actually an excuse for incompetence?

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Jim Webster]

hammurabi70 wrote:

Jim Webster wrote:

From memory was it lieutenants who suffered the highest casualties?

Battalion commanders.

 

Makes sense

They probably had to travel about within the unit to keep an eye on stuff

 

 

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I haven’t really paid attention to hype from manufacturers, just looking at vehicle casualties vs tactical gains.  Clearly early war Russians were not using armor with adequate infantry support but i am not sure that it would have made really any difference in taking territory. billy mitchell has sunk the battleship…

Artillery has now gained pinpoint accuracy even from extremely long ranges , with terminally guided munitions and laser designators; excellent target acquisition capability via drones, and tactical flexibility with DP ICM and artillery laid mines.  Infantry now have extremely effective, easily concealed, very cheap, man portable ATGM/suicide drones and very cheap drones for recon. What novel thing  have tanks brought to the table?  No breakthroughs, but i can see them still valuable in the pursuit role once a breakthrough is achieved.

Would an NATO armoured force army do better in the face of these doctrinal/technological advances in artillery and infantry? I have my doubts.  combat trains troops pretty quickly, Russians and Ukrainians have both learned what works and what has failed with the tools they have.  Currently the shift is to the defense much as it happened with the advent of the mg against infantry/horse cav armies.  Arms sellers will hype  what they have to sell until the buyers have learned which is hype and what is a battlefield reality.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[kyoteblue]

Neither side has achieved air superiority which you need for combined arms. Drones do and don’t make up for that ( limited bomb load) but do the scouting very well.

I’m also looking at the turtle tanks that redacted is using that is a battlefield modification that will die out or do tanks need much heavier armored turrets.

[Jim Webster]

Aethelflaeda was framed wrote:

I haven’t really paid attention to hype from manufacturers, just looking at vehicle casualties vs tactical gains. Clearly early war Russians were not using armor with adequate infantry support but i am not sure that it would have made really any difference in taking territory. billy mitchell has sunk the battleship… Artillery has now gained pinpoint accuracy even from extremely long ranges , with terminally guided munitions and laser designators; excellent target acquisition capability via drones, and tactical flexibility with DP ICM and artillery laid mines. Infantry now have extremely effective, easily concealed, very cheap, man portable ATGM/suicide drones and very cheap drones for recon. What novel thing have tanks brought to the table? No breakthroughs, but i can see them still valuable in the pursuit role once a breakthrough is achieved. Would an NATO armoured force army do better in the face of these doctrinal/technological advances in artillery and infantry? I have my doubts. combat trains troops pretty quickly, Russians and Ukrainians have both learned what works and what has failed with the tools they have. Currently the shift is to the defense much as it happened with the advent of the mg against infantry/horse cav armies. Arms sellers will hype what they have to sell until the buyers have learned which is hype and what is a battlefield reality.

 

One thing I tried to bring out in the game was how few infantry both sides have per mile of front, compared to WW2.
When you see a lone IFV drive forward and mount a ‘raid’ on an enemy held position and shoot up a trench line or tree line, then drop its infantry off to take and hold it, you are dealing with a very empty battlefield. In many cases retribution comes from above, not from the infantry defenders.

Indeed it seems that in some parts of the front, areas are held by drones. Massive artillery has destroyed the buildings (and unlike at Monte Cassino we discover that artillery can render a place indefensible, not merely move the terrain about a bit) so attackers can be hunted through that area by drones. The operators are protected by a screen of their infantry in positions not yet destroyed by infantry or glide bombs

Tanks, (but also MRAPS and other vehicles) did prove their worth in the Ukrainian offensive which relieved Kkarkiv and drove the enemy back to the current front line. But in the collapse the invaders abandoned so many tanks and other vehicles as to become the largest single supplier of tanks to the Ukrainian army. So mobile warfare is possible after a collapse. But the problem with the current state of the war is that both sides are dug in, with plenty of mines, and deep breakthroughs at speed don’t seem to be possible.
We are seeing WW1 levels of advance where the fighting for a hitherto irrelevant village makes headlines

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Jim Webster]

kyoteblue wrote:

Neither side has achieved air superiority which you need for combined arms. Drones do and don’t make up for that ( limited bomb load) but do the scouting very well. I’m also looking at the turtle tanks that redacted is using that is a battlefield modification that will die out or do tanks need much heavier armored turrets.

 

I wonder if turtle tanks had their moment when you combine ubiquitous drones with inadequate artillery ammunition?

Indeed is the turtle tank a tank or an APC? In that in the cases I’ve seen the tank has it’s turret welded to the frame so cannot traverse and has no ammunition?

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[kyoteblue]

Drones will be just as much of a tank killing weapon as it does now.  

[Jim Webster]

I suspect we’ll see an arms race. Consider anti-tank fire up until now.
The first tanks could be tackled (barely adequately if that) with reversed bullets, which were factory loaded with more propellent and the bullet put in so it hit the tank with the blunt end. Not a wonderful solution but comparatively cheap.
Tanks got heavier armour, guns got more powerful (which inevitably means bigger and more powerful) but you eventually get to a stage where the gun weighs over a ton and you are looking at making it self propelled. And of course both gun and tank have become more expensive in the process.

Then anti tank missiles came along, and these have got more powerful, more sophisticated and whilst they have got eye wateringly expensive, they have forced tanks to evolve and grow heavier and more expensive, adding extra systems etc to survive and function.

I suspect that with drones you’ll see a typical evolution, the days of knocking out a main battle tank with a £300 drone will become few and far between but tanks will be vulnerable to more sophisticated, powerful, and expensive drones, but of course they will have forced tanks to become more expensive as well.

 

It did strike me that you could model anti-tank weapons by merely giving the tank an armour value of 5. To knock the tank out you have to roll more than 5 on the dice.

Your basic anti tank weapon would roll a d6

Your improved weapon (perhaps an order of magnitude increase in cost) would roll a d10.

Your latest generation weapon (perhaps an order of magnitude more expensive that the improved,) would roll a d20.

You could improve you tank systems

So you could increase it’s value to 9, but increase cost by an order of magnitude, or to 18 by a further order of magnitude cost increase
But just to spoil your day, if the anti tank weapon rolled a natural 6 on a d6, or 10 on a d10, it destroyed the tank no matter what the armour.
(Yes it means at the most sophisticated armour you’ve more chance knocking it out with the simple weapons, which might be a glitch, or might be a result of the ability to fire a lot more cheap stuff at the same target 🙂  )

Somebody pointed out to me that in the case of some anti-tank weapons, the cost of a round reaches the point where if you offered the money in cash to the crew, they’d just give you the tank 🙂

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[kyoteblue]

Paying grunts for tanks APC’s trucks…yes you’re right it would be cheaper.

[Jim Webster]

Well a javelin missile is apparently about £50,000 (launcher is more expensive) whilst an M982 Excalibur is about £77,000
The latter figure is ‘support cost’ which  I suppose is a reminder that there is a lot more tied up in some ammunition than merely the round and the weapon that fires it

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[Brian Handley]

I read the scenario and considered that basic premise was unique and of great interest.   However if I may add some things.

Set, up while I appreciate it’s not rules based (which is an excellent idea) even at this level it really would not be possible to recreate it without some additional basic input from the creator,  on ground scale, especially as it’s a unique and very clever approach so hard to second guess the creator.

1)  It is not usefull in my opinion to be scale agnostic,  how far from the table edge is critical in meters.  For example is it HMG range (1500m) or RPG  range (250m) This is a none trivial issue.

2)  Clearly you have thought about this scenario, so stuff off board, how much? and how far.   For instance if just off board, with a board say 800m wide I could cover some approaches with fixed line fire off board (after all the Ukraines even have the old Vicars SFMG).   Again key to understanding the force density you are attempting to replicate.

3) How many ATGW’s are off table, my opinion is not more than 1 a side but at what ramge full board width?

4)  The mine bit looks a trifle unrealistic, the roller vehicle will likely kill 3 or 4 mines before the rollers become ineffective.  How far from the table edge is critical too how many make it to the combat area (see item 1).

5) The defenders tank firing down the road I assume it must be possible to engage it or else it would make the game pointlees, or you restrict it’s view.  It  may be an issue if it has FLIR as it would see though conventional smoke which  all the Rusians have in my understanding.

6) The rolling for losses before arriving on the table edge looks a bit long winded. However with more thought I am not sure I can offer anything better so well done.

7) the random defender generation looks too wide a spread.  However that may be my personal bias, some random is a good idea.  This one is definiely just feedback, I refrain from a concrete recommendationas it’s more about personal preference and its VERY easy to ajust that to tase within your extreems.

So overall, an excellent idea for a scenario, its one I would never have thought of  so 200% for that genius!    Rules agnostic brilliant.   If this post seems a bit piccky please forgive me.  Its SOO GOOD I want to run it but feel it would be better to have a clearer idea of what you envisaged.

However scale agnostic not good, it would take a lot of time to get it set up for our rules, especially as we use real ranges and 1/144 scale models at a groundscale of 1mm represnts 1om.   That would make my table 1800m by 1800m, pointless.  I supect I would have to reduce it to say 600m possibly 600m square,  without the creators help it’s difficult to see what you wanted.    Depending where off table, the off table defender support was, would depend whetjher the attackers were under gasrzing fire, a key issue in defence.   Again for artillety it would help to understand how much was incomming a battery, 2 batteries?

While russian artillery is all pre-game, how much and how long beteen call and reception or is it all pre-timed,  both would be an acceptable solution.  What at least as the creator is your opinion?

Glide bombs, well that is a challenge its outside our rules.   MRLS can cover a 1km square but that looks overoptermistic for a glide bomb.   If you could relate it to the equivalent number of batteries of say 152 guns it would help no end.  Or again give areas to be struck in meteres vs the table size at real scale.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim Webster]

Glad you liked them
Working through stuff

Remember ranges depend as much on terrain as anything, even open fields will have humps and hollows. So if you’ve got 6mm your HMG might be able to hit further, but still no where near to maximum range. Also in 6mm you’re covering more front but you’ll probably use fewer men from artillery etc. If you’re fighting with 28mm figures you have effectively just got terrain with very limited visibility (no further than the board edge.)

 

With the ATGM remember that there are probably quite a few out there, but they aren’t solely dedicated to your bit of the front. Also different ones might hit the enemy in different areas of the approach march. So really they’re not your problem, senior people are worrying about that, you just hold your bit of table. You cannot communicate directly with the ATGM either.

 

With mines and mine rollers, remember the vehicle could have already taken out several mines on the approach, it’s not virgin kit. Rather than worry about details I decided to just have the first mine take it out. You could roll a dice giving it a one in three or four chance of the mine getting it, but then you’re giving the attacker an advantage and might have to boost the defenders. It’s just a mechanism. So it’s OK to tinker with it, but remember to keep the balance.

 

With the defender’s tank, it can fire at anything on the table it can see. It may well be able to see a distance off table as well, but there could be a tree line, ruins, or the road could be a lane lower than the surroundings. That’s why I don’t bother with the table edge.

 

The reason I chose that system for rolling is that it gives the attackers a choice. Gather a lot of troops and then face more turns of fire. Also the more dice you roll the more the luck evens out. I could have concocted a table, but you would be more at risk from a freak die roll which meant that very few troops were hit off table and the defenders were swamped in minutes. It’s purely a mechanism which forces the attacker to make decisions even before he starts the approach march, and of course you have the die rolling phase where one side or the other gets to cheer a run of good/bad dice 🙂

The wide range of defender strengths has two purposes. In a solo game it can put the pressure on the defender to desperately try to survive. If you have an attacking opponent it can mean the defender bluffing desperately. Remember if the defender strength is too well know it helps the attacker planning. As the game stands the fact that you aren’t taking fire from an area doesn’t allow you to work out there is nobody there. It might just be a cluster of defenders positioned to tempt you into advancing in that direction and then taking you apart.

 

 

 

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[Brian Handley]

To be honest Jim your reply was really short of facts or even a clear idea what you are representing,   This is a shame as the germ of the idea is still good I will give you that.

However I got suspicious about how much thought had gone into actual scenario design.  So I did some homework.  To be honest bits look like pure fantasy not credible representations of the actual war.  However I am more than happy to take constructive criticism of my analysis.

TWW Meatwave assult scenario Design assessment for credibility.

Glide Bomb effect – assume 100kg charge (seen this quoted but not the largest), equate to weight of charge of 155 mm shell.

From Wikipeadia

The M795 is a 155 mm high-fragmentation, steel (HF1)-body projectile, filled with 10.8 kilograms (23.8 lb) of TNT. It weighs approximately 47 kilograms (103 lb).

So we can say equivalent to about 10 155mm artillery shells.  Our own rules are loosely based on real world Public data indicates the in trenches this would adversely impact an area VERY approximately 270 m side.   This is approximate and at best I would say no better than ±30% of nominal.   Better data would help.

 

From wiki  –

Grad B1 Designed to deliver its munitions over an area rather than a point target, the Grad is not a precision weapon; at a range of 20 km, when a full salvo of 40 rockets is fired, the lethal area extends up to 600 m x 600 m (Jelic et al., 2013)

HE warhead

The TGAF–5 HE warhead has a 5.4 kg explosive charge, a bursting height of 1–30 m, and a lethal range of 30 m. It can also pierce a 20 mm steel sheet at a distance of 7 m.

So as a cross check 40 grad rockets (1 launchers worth) at about 5.4 kg = 216 kg  so area effectiveness = 1,667 sq m per kg.  Note these are sub munitions not basic single charge so will be more effective than a std 155mm shell.   That would at 100kg (a glide bomb) effect an an equivalent area of 408 m side square so that is probably a bit on the high side for a single charge bomb.  My 1/155 figure at +30% could be as high as 358m a side depending how you scale it.   So my approximation may not be that bad, anybody got any better?

Destructive Effect

122 mm BM-21 Multi Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL)

from this it’s not that destructive.

Size of plausible battlefield for this scenario

Size of plausible battlefield.   I cold war platoon in defence has a VERY approximate frontage of 500m.  That is about 200m frontage and 150m either side protected by fire.

So we might envisage a table at 1” to 10m as being between 480m and 720m wide.

 

No this scenario postulates very low levels of troops.  So a frontage of 500m with an average of about 9 figures (6+D6) figures is about 9 may not be unreasonable and we have to assume Jim did some if limited research.   So the frontage represented is a bit over rifle range to help with some rules.

No watching some videos of the war massive FPF from outside the action is not very apparent.   At 600m between defensive positions FDF grazing fire from units under attack would be so significant as to almost immediately reduce the Russian assault, typically the  ground is quite flat.  So that say the off table action should be typically outside the Grazing Fire range of 600m.  So off table MG’s should be at least 600m from the edge of the table.   This probably means that only a limited field of fire is available (Based on what I remember of Brassies intravisibility data say 50% of the table area.   Obviously LOS blockage by any table terrain.

Now the scenario states:-

“Assuming a wargames table about six to eight feet wide, the defenders should have 6+d6 figures available on the table. They can be split into small fire teams of three or four men. All men will have assault rifles, and each fire team will have a machine gun and one law. If it does not have a machine gun it can have an RPG with no real shortage of ammunition.”

 

Now we have a problem.  The artillery bit and areas bit don’t line up.   I did ask for a reason explanation as to the size of the battlefield he was modelling but what I got was a clear impression he had not thought of this in any detail and had not done even basic research on the weapons he had proposed.   bThat does bring in question the credibility of the proposed force sizes except to be fair I have seen offensive attacks in this range.  The numbers of defensive troops is more conjectural but I will admit that the defender numbers could be that low based on my ROM assessment.

So to be honest the Idea is sort of good, but some sections seem woefully lacking in a bit of study.    I have done this work as as an idea it has some merit but its implementation lacks any credible basis.

Why have I spent the last 2 hours on this.  Well I like the idea, but to make it even vaguely credible needs a lot of work.   This gives be a bit of a start as to where and how to actually make an vague idea which in reality is all that this “scenario” is” into a playable credible genuine scenario.

Jim feel free to critique my calculations or provide a more concrete analysis contradicting the estimates presented,  preferably with reference although I appreciate that is not always possible.

[Jim Webster]

The reason I didn’t go into too much detail is because there is too much detail. So if the attackers used FAB-500 gliding bombs that is 210kg of HE. They have the FAB-1500 and FAB-3000 but the argument used when discussing these by Russian Milbloggers is that the Sukhoi can carry three of the 1500s but only one 3000, and allows for greater saturation.

The other thing is that unit frontages might be specified but the number of men in the units is far lower that the official organisation. So a platoon might defend a normal frontage but there might only be a handful of men in the platoon.

This is why I set this as generically as I did to provide guidelines for people who would like to tackle it in different scales.

 

 

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[kyoteblue]

The more I think of it the more I believe Drones should be, squad level command for both observation and ordnance .

[Jim Webster]

It has struck me that, for wargames, drones at squad level might just give the squad ‘the wargamer’s eye view’ of their surrounds.
As ordnance it wouldn’t be unworkable. The squad has what is potentially a very accurate light mortar and/or anti-tank weapon.

In a squad level game the ECM jamming is going to be very important but I’m not sure that is going to be a squad level exercise, as you need coordination and the jamming will probably extend beyond the squad area.

So your drone might not work because the squad next to you have screwed up the jamming. It’s this side of it I wonder more about

 

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Brian Handley]

jim-webster – Clearly we have massively diffrent ideas about what is required for a credible scenario that reflects the real world.

[Brian Handley]

Reagding drones – typically cheap drones on which small FPV drones are based have a run time of approximately 30min if the wheather is not too cold.  Assuming they are not using expensive special to product batteries, which is most likely, they take about 1  hr to charge.  more expensive battries can charge much quicker but cost is not a none issue.   How many battries are you expecting a Squad to have and how big a battery will they have to charge from?

Observation time may be quite short in some cases depending where the opperator is with repect to the enemy defences.   HMG range is close to 1 mile away so travel time may be an issue as well, especially if the drone is not disposable which may not be practical at squad level again due to pack weight.

The implications of this is that the coverage will be intermittent even without ECM.

How much training do you need to fly a dreone, basicaly none but to do it effectively proably a significant amount.   Some squads clearly do have drone oppraters but how many drones do they have.

To carry munitions requires large additiuonal batteruies,  certainly early in the Ukraine war you could see large batteries strapped to the upper side of the drone.   This would put a large weight penalty on troops having to man pack such battries and the ammunition to use them.   Where you see drones observing a close combat it may be that there is a specialist drone opertaing and providing data to the squad leader.  Humans need to be lead effectively by somebody actually in the battle, not a great distance away peering through a drone.

Credible simplification to a table top game may be difficult.   In our game perhaps a first pass would be 4 actions.  That comaparing our engagements to similar real world engagements (we do not account directly for all delays) would be about 20 minutes.  A game typicaly reflects about 100 min of real time.   So what is the aim of a squad level drone?  It could do recconnisance over a day or more and thus may locate a large part of the defences on say a 500 to 1000m frontage depending on the terrain type and level of camoflage disapline.

Assumeing the defnder is not terminally stupid, then this information will not tell a squad in attack where the defenders are real time.  At some point the drone may be able to say where the enemy is in real time for a shor period, as I described, or a better drone could be allocated specifically for the attack.

One of the limitations in small actions, even to our level of company, is what resources are attached down from battalion or higher, artillery, drones, mine clerance equipment, ECM enviroment  etc.   In defining the scenario these will need to be carefully defined so as not to make it both not credible and certainly not a interesting game.

I would suggest folk buy an FPV drone to research this.  Me, I did have a very early non FPV drone and can confirm actually flying one is no issue, they are stabilised in all axes so its like driving a scalextric car in 3 dimentions.  But using one effectievly may be far harder when you only have a limited view from the camera and cannot see the drone by eye.

[Jim Webster]

This is inevitable. You can create realism with immense attention to detail, but it can make for a long game and a lot of people don’t like that sort of game.
You can also go for realism using a more impressionistic technique which works better for some people and not at all for others

Neither is right or wrong, they are just techniques

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

I don’t think drones would be routinely or rigidly allocated by squad.  I am sure like MGs and AT weapons the platoon leader will organize his available assets on an adhoc basis as the tactical situation deigns. Nor do squads ever really operate independently for long periods, even outposts and ambush/patrols are more likely to involve platoons.  If your game has an OOB ibased on a single squad of 8-10 men fighting another squad, it’s not going to be like a frostgrave skirmish battle.  Off board resources and support will always be a possibility.

 

Motorized transport and defensive positions mitigate a lot of problems about battery life and other logistical issues.  TOF for an artillery observation drone is not always an issue.  Accurate spotting/detection may well be achievable from a simple drone pop-up up to 3-4 km away over its own lines.  All really anyone needs to know is that targets are in a 50m circular space, not exact positions and they can deliver attacks.

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Not Connard Sage]

Brian Handley wrote:

jim-webster – Clearly we have massively diffrent ideas about what is required for a credible scenario that reflects the real world.

Until you’ve been in combat you can’t have any idea about the reality, only opinions Brian.

What branch of service were you in?

 

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[Brian Handley]

Jim, Not that old one really?   In the UK the combat of U boats was perfected by the Back Boom Boys (siencntist and engineers) doing operational research, not by the pilots.  The guys at the front did there bit but so did the backroom boys.  Your knowlage denial (see your denial of the effectivenessw of Russion anti tank pryamids despite VIDIO eveidence means that as far as I am concerned your Bona Fides  make the comment of little.

aethelflaeda-was-framed – I suspect as you say most drones are held above squad level.  My point was that although you COULD have a limited amount of drone capability at squad level it would not be the full range of drone capability.  I have seen early Ukraine videio’s of squad level using the cheap ovservational drones used by Backpackers.  While very effective they have some limitations. like range and endurance compared to specialist operators and their drones.

 

 

 

[Jim Webster]

Brian Handley wrote:

Jim, Not that old one really?

 

you may be replying to the wrong person

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Brian Handley]

Jin,  sorry. right thread wrong name.  Addressing Not Connrad no you; my profuse applogies.   Foul up on my side I had to re type and lost the plot.

[Jim Webster]

No worries, easily done

https://jimssfnovelsandwargamerules.wordpress.com/

[Not Connard Sage]

Brian Handley wrote:

Jin, sorry. right thread wrong name. Addressing Not Connrad no you; my profuse applogies. Foul up on my side I had to re type and lost the plot.

 

i shall wear being called wrong by you as a badge of honour, you semi-literate twerp.

Obvious contrarian and passive aggressive old prat, who is taken far too seriously by some and not seriously enough by others.

[kyoteblue]

Will drones become a specialty branch like aircraft ?

[Aethelflaeda was framed]

In the US Airforce they already are.

 

The key thing in these discussions is that there are many types of drones, some are more akin to a man portable ATGM or HE delivery systems , others for artillery observation and recon, etc.  We need  to make it clear about which sort and which mission they are being used for.  Predators are  not the same as a commercial ad hoc modified grenade dropper.

 

 

Mick Hayman
Margate and New Orleans

[Author]

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