SACQ 9/4: Tank Development II, HEAT edition

Time to vote blindly because my tactical knowledge doth not extend beyond plens


[X] Motorized
[X] Infantry
[X] Go through the town, and use the road to bypass the teeth of their defensive positions to hit their flank
 
[X] Mechanized
[X] Infantry
[X] Go through the town, and use the road to bypass the teeth of their defensive positions to hit their flank
 
[X] Mechanized
[X] Infantry
[X] Go through the town, and use the road to bypass the teeth of their defensive positions to hit their flank
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by 7734 on Aug 1, 2019 at 7:30 PM, finished with 12 posts and 9 votes.
 
Task I Field Testing II
After deciding to go through town, you got to work quickly. The rump battery would be set up on the hills over town to provide overwatch, while the motorcycle section would be in charge of running field telephone wire on and over the road network with a backup line to the artillery battery that would cross the river on a small footbridge the men spotted.

Things went pretty easily until you hit the town, at which point you discovered the enemy had a listening post there. Thankfully you discovered this with dismounts from B Company, who cut the enemy's telephone wire and quickly got to work digging them out. While expensive in terms of grenades, it turned out that they only had a section on duty there that was mostly holed up in a bar. The other side of the bridge was defended by a machine-gun team, though, which cost you a truck before the anti-air section sprayed the building down. With that position silenced, you got everyone packed up and moving without too much trouble. The next major speedbump was getting the column of battle sorted out so that A Company could be in position for their semifrontal attack while B, C, and D companies got themselves ready. C and D would be leading the charge, so to speak, while B company would take the flank to make sure their lack of assault vehicles didn't hurt them too much.

The actual assault was a shitshow. C company ended up leading off nearly twenty minutes too early, and as a result took concentrated fire from the entire enemy line for a not insignificant amount of time before B and D companies started attacking. A company, your entire armor force, ended up half-stalled on the side of the hill because the few enemy heavy machine guns were able to keep the W-8 drivers suppressed, thus forcing the SkW-1 to hang back or it would get flanked by mobile anti-tank teams. Despite this, several of the W-8s were taken out by anti-tank rifles and Molotovs, while the SkW-1 was stuck on the side of the hill. Once B and D companies finally started getting the advance evened out so C wasn't taking piles of enfilade fire, though, fate bit you right in the ass and C company started drawing artillery fire. Rocket artillery fire.

Fortunately, C company understood the best way to deal with this problem was to madly blitz forward until they started crashing into defensive earthworks before ejecting their soldiers in angry swarms of submachinegun blizzards. D company followed suit shortly after, while B company pulled an end-run around the hill to reach the woods and take out aid rocket artillery, only loosing two trucks to bad driving on the hill and unplanned rollovers as a consequence. With the earthworks secured, surrenders started happening en masse, and more importantly you could reliably move your headquarters up to the church in Faloise. About the time you got set up, word came in from Divisional Headquarters.

The word was ugly. The Heavy Armored Car Infantry battalion had been repulsed by a unit of foot infantry that had been pretty well dug-in at Jumel with hollow charge rocket propelled weapons. In worse news, the mountain artillery batteries had both been fairly badly beaten, with the enemy's heavy howitzers remaining nearly untouched and the wheeled artillery being mutually driven from the field. You were the only unit that managed to cross the river, and as such it was being decided to swing the battle south and try to utilize your breakthrough. With the Armored Car Motorized battalion bringing up your rear, you were ordered to attempt to push towards Essentaux while the heavier-armed unit held Jumel. Supply units would, theoretically, be coming in on your tail to offer resupply, but practically all you needed was fuel as the men had been looting the bodies of the enemy faster than you could countermand it.

The resulting battlefield autopsy of the unit was rather grim. You'd been fighting rank militia if evidence showed, with a number of old single-shot trapdoor rifles and five-round rotary guns showed, along with a mismatch of ammunitions being passed around. You still captured fifteen machine guns, though, and one barely-operational five-tube 14cm rocket launcher. Ammunition supply for the captured weapons was terrible, however, with barely thirty rounds per gun and three thousand for each machine gun.

No matter what the division wanted you to do, you needed a short breather to compose your unit. C company had been the worst for constructive losses, loosing six out of their nine assault vehicles, two armored cars, and 45 of 110 men as casualties. A company wasn't much better, with all of their W-5 tanks being disabled, leaving them with the SkW-1, two Np-2s, and four W-7s. B company had only lost three trucks and 26 casualties, mostly from the two rollovers with few fatalities. D company was the best off for both personal loss and vehicle loss, loosing two assault vehicles and 18 men. Casualties among the support units were thankfully low, with the worst damages being a Kettenkrad lost to a rocket that flew long. Thanks to your backup supplies, you manage to get all the remaining units mounted, even if C company has been mostly reduced to being crammed in ex-supply trucks. While you were bringing the artillery up, airborne scouting brought you a useful message packet: and by useful you meant completely useless.


According to the air scouting, forces were in motion on the main highway, mostly unarmored trucks, and the heavy armored assets were already in Fleurs-sur-Nove. The enemy wheeled artillery had broken and headed for the valley by Chaussoy as well. Your wireless sets also let you know that the armored battalion was going to try pushing through Reincourt themselves, with the leg infantry as a supporting element. You needed a plan, though, because the excrement was about to hit the rotary wind impeller really damn fast if you weren't careful. You had options, though. First and foremost, there was forting up on the hill. You had some artillery and a decent number of heavy weapons, but your individual fighting soldiers would be crippled for effectiveness until they tried to storm your position, and worse it would make you look like a chicken. You could also try and divide and conquer, since it seemed like the enemy was a close copy of your own organization except with more trucks and tanks and less assault carriers. If you judged right, you could run up, set ambushes, and murder them. If you guessed wrong, though, you'd be open for a defeat in detail. Finally, you could choose to attack one force or the other, and absolutely crush it with the risk that the other would catch you or the follow-up units behind you in the back. War was risky buisness, but if you could break them now and keep this hole open, the battle was likely to be won.

VOTES
[] Fort up here, and use the hill to break them as they come. You've got the machine guns and AT gear to pull it off, you think.
[] Divide and conquer: you've got most of your dudes, and assault carriers can topple their trucks any day of the week. More importantly, ambush positions level the field.
[] Take your whole force and crush them entirely.
-[] Go after armor
-[] Go after infantry.
[] Write-in (Detail which units go where)
 
[X] Fort up here, and use the hill to break them as they come. You've got the machine guns and AT gear to pull it off, you think
 
[X] Fort up here, and use the hill to break them as they come. You've got the machine guns and AT gear to pull it off, you think
 
[X] Divide and conquer: you've got most of your dudes, and assault carriers can topple their trucks any day of the week. More importantly, ambush positions level the field.
Strike this; following Stryp's plan 'cos he's actually competent

[X] Take your whole force and crush them entirely.
-[X] Go after infantry.

Who dares, wins
 
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[X] Divide and conquer: you've got most of your dudes, and assault carriers can topple their trucks any day of the week. More importantly, ambush positions level the field.

We barely got any AT or machine gun ammo, so this seems like the safer bet than trying to sit in one place and get pounded by their arty.
 
[X] Divide and conquer: you've got most of your dudes, and assault carriers can topple their trucks any day of the week. More importantly, ambush positions level the field.
 
We barely got any AT or machine gun ammo, so this seems like the safer bet than trying to sit in one place and get pounded by their arty.

You've got two off-TOE AT rifles per company, with C company having less since they're about 1/3 innefective and with more in B company since they've got space in the trucks. A company and the support units do not have AT rifles, because they're armor and have better crew served weapons to handle tanks respectively. At least you've hit the point where people understand that AA also makes decent scratch AT.
 
Since the map may be confusing to some people, I'm going to ask the local expert @Strypgia to do a quick and dirty explanation for the class. Don't worry, it won't be bad.
Agh, sorry. I was off SV almost entirely for the last 2 weeks, trying to finish up pre-deployment stuff. Had to do a threat assessment for a base in Iraq, etc. (Pro-tip: Iran-backed Shi'a Militia Groups are dicks.)
Ok, so, to read the map is literally one of the first things they cover in Army Basic. Here's a snap guide:

It covers most of what we see. The black dot with 3 white circles above 'us' on the map indicates a wheeled SPARTY, wheeled self-propelled artillery Battalion. That's bad news to anyone in range of their guns. To our west on the road is a Motorized (the vertical bar) Infantry Compay, and a company of Armor with Heavy Weapons. That's not good news either, but if we can break through those two companies, the highway they're guarding is open and we'd be behind the enemy front line. They'd be fucked.

The topmost two icons on the map are both Motor Infantry BNs. Lots of guys, pretty mobile. In the middle there's an Artillery BN and a Motor Infantry BN with Heavy Weapons and Rockets. They're opposing the friendly Armor BN that's supposed to be helping us.

Forting up while those infantry and tanks come at us doesn't look good. We should punch through them while we have the initiative and get loose on that highway. We can hit their force blocking our Armor BN from behind and break that whole sector open.


....yes, I've been doing this a while.

[X] Take your whole force and crush them entirely.
-[X] Go after infantry.

Then we go after the armor.
 
Going to trust the subject matter expert.

[X] Take your whole force and crush them entirely.
-[X] Go after infantry.
 
T H U N D E R R U N


[X] Take your whole force and crush them entirely.
-[X] Go after infantry.
 
Task 1 Completion/ Dowwntime Selection
It didn't take long to make up your mind. Trying to split your damaged troops would be a mistake in the making, and the motorized infantry would be relatively easy for the armored car and motorized battalion to handle. They had autocannons and machine guns; you didn't. The armor was more dangerous, and you had what were nominally anti-armor assets. All you needed was a good ambush site and you'd be sitting on a pile of dead tanks. Considering an urban environment had cracked open your tank battalion, you made the decision to head for Lawadre.

About ¾ of the way there, you quickly discovered two unpleasant realities. Reality one, your recon section was really bad at being sneaky, considering they had barely managed to get word that they were engaged pretty thickly with the enemy motorized recon elements. Moving quickly, you got C company moved to intercept and back up the recon, while the rest of your column double-timed it into the town and the anti-tank and anti-air groups started setting up to cover the central paths into and out of the town.

Current army doctrine suggested that anti-air units could be used as ghetto anti-tank guns (Mostly by seeing Jewish mercenaries do it first) but you came up with a clever extension of that in that there were a lot of things lighter than tanks you'd be having to fight, and that you had an actual dedicated anti-armor section to boot. It wasn't long that you ordered C company to pull back in good order, and even though they'd lost the rest of their armored cars they didn't really care about how things were going. This was entirely because you'd managed to get B and D companies very well dug in, and the anti-tank weapons had all been emplaced in a special second anti-tank section you'd whipped up on the fly to cover the tank approach.

Rather intelligently, the enemy motorized infantry tried to come into the town first, and used suppressing fire from their own anti-air assets to beat the skyline as your troops kept their heads down in interior rooms. This invited counter-battery fire by your own artillery, which quickly forced the enemy into a storm when you figured out their artillery was with the tanks and they had nothing larger than a trench mortar to reply with. That was exactly what your men were waiting for, though, and submachine gunfire poured out of the buildings with a disciplined air.

The armor, meanwhile, was doing even worse. A company still had the resources to make them bleed, and they were using their remaining tanks as an edge guard to make the town look more inviting until the AT guns opened up. The one tank company of heavier units that could take the abuse was too slow to reliably engage the men of A company, though, and while losses in the remainder were severe you still managed to decisively break the enemy armored unit.

Fighting continued for you for about an hour and a half, before orders came in to reconnect with the main body of the force, which had paid in blood to reach Oresmaux. Even with the might of mechanization, entrenched infantry were devilishly hard to dig out of their holes, and casualties had been bad after the river crossing. You had aquitted yourself well, though, and had earned the commendation of the Cardinal-General Connor de Sevilla.

Once you got home after your secondment, mostly because your battalion was pretty damn spend for men and material, you got down to work on the reorganizations. With the captured material you had and the standard manpower influx, your options were one of three: rebuild the line companies with actual integrated support arms like anti-tank rifles and riflemen, develop one of your Support sections into a full company of support elements, or recognize that you needed more strategic flexibility and tighten the belts on the line companies in order to get an E company of motor rifles or reorganize things to make B company an armor company.

It was about a month later once you finished your recruiting drives and gotten the new recruits mildly acclimated that the news came in: there was going to be an Inspection of the Military by various foreign powers to assure that Gaelecia was following all the numerous treaties it was subject to in terms of arms control. Strictly speaking, the nation was limited to ninety thousand men under arms on land and twenty battalions and no general staff. Naturally, the General Staff had been working night and day to get around this, and it had gone very wrong when they'd been called on it. Now there was a general inspection and, well, your unit didn't exist. Legally. Therefore, you needed to hide your entire unit. This was going to be a hassle, but you had plans, and possibly even favors to call on.

The first option was to hide out with the Order of Santiago, who'd you'd just been campaigning with. It would be fairly simple, and the Cardinal-General would be very happy to have you and work with you in another campaign. The problem is, you'd get pretty beat up with the campaigning it would entail, and worse would be behind a weapons program than your hated rival.

Option two was joining the Sanatation Corps. You'd get to keep your comfy base, work on another project vehicle, and there was only a one in four chance you'd all get dragged out with flame projectors and thermobaric weapons to beat back a plague or enforce another Cordon Sainitere somewhere else. If that happened, you'd be out weeks and weeks of work, dozens of people, and most if not all the war materiel you took with you would be sacrificed on a pyre of cleasliness- and not a figurative one either.

Option three was joining the Cossacks, becoming mercenaries, and moving to Thile for a season. Plus side, money, recruitment, and women a-plenty, which in turn meant developing more vehicles faster. Minus side, there'd probably be a lot of government angst and disappointment over your actions. Either way, you had to decide, and quickly. The inspectors were going to be here in a week!

////

Votes (No plan votes please)

Battalion Organization
[] Fill out line companies with support elements
[] Develop a support section to a higher formation
[] Add a fifth line company

Hiding from Inspection
[] With the Knights of Santiago (Timeskip option)
[] With the Sanitation Corps (Normal mode with rolls to determine the ammount of disruption)
[] As a mercenary in Thile (More battles and close up inspection of peer enemy equipment)

GM note: I added explinations in case anyone might be confused with the long term affects of this vote.
 
[X] Fill out line companies with support elements
[X] As a mercenary in Thile (More battles and close up inspection of peer enemy equipment)
 
[X] Fill out line companies with support elements
[X] With the Sanitation Corps (Normal mode with rolls to determine the ammount of disruption)

We should probably try and keep going with our weapons development as best we can and see what lessons we learned from this engagement.
 
[x] Develop a support section to a higher formation

[x] As a mercenary in Thile (More battles and close up inspection of peer enemy equipment)
 
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[x] Develop a support section to a higher formation
[x] As a mercenary in Thile (More battles and close up inspection of peer enemy equipment)

Motor Rifle Regiment when
 
Infantry Doctrine Musings I
Motor Rifle Regiment when

The current opinion of the Motorized Rifle Battalion is pretty low since in most of the (rather hilly) country of Galaecia the cost-benifit ratio of their additional maneuverability doesn't stack up very well because field fortifications are dirt common and without some special sauce they're not going to really cut through them in a cost-effective way. The non-existant we swear General Staff has already made a lot of doctrinal leaps and bounds to deal with this and the crippling post-war treaties (One of which is against production of long rifles with magazines as an example, and another against machine pistols) which are why your forces have a lot of comprimises made on the Infantry part of your battalion. The fact your men are carrying Jackal SMGs (Based on the S11 Stirling, spoiler below) and a shitload of grenades is mostly how the issue is expected to be handled, but the fact is on the open terrain of the hills it doesn't work so well.

Doctinally, the Assault Carrier was supposed to bypass this issue by packaging the infantry up into an angry, machine-gun proof ball, and being heavy enough to mount their own self defense gun sort of work with the infantry as they advanced to trench-storming ranges. Practically speaking, your recent battle shows that the idea... well, In Character, you're happy. Out of character, I won't influence the audience planning for later.



remember that the Jackal chambers a much more energetic round than the S11: 10x22 versus 9x19
 
[X] Fill out line companies with support elements
[X] With the Sanitation Corps (Normal mode with rolls to determine the ammount of disruption)
 
[X] Fill out line companies with support elements
[X] With the Sanitation Corps (Normal mode with rolls to determine the ammount of disruption)

Best to have tactical support pieces like AT-Rifles and HMGs as close to the line as you can, in a war like this where just transporting stuff is hard enough.
 
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