I can't exactly match AKuz... like, at all...
But I too can write an AAR. From our side, this time.
Report on the Battle of Detroit and the Military Implications Thereof
Preface
In this report, authored in the immediate aftermath of the Commonwealth's full and overwhelming victory of the Battle of Detroit, I shall briefly and comprehensively break down the individual points of clash between the Victorian and Commonwealth forces that allowed us to attain victory despite an overwhelming disadvantage in most material aspects, and how this may be changed in a potential, likely inevitable, second conflict. While the strategic effects of Victoria's aura of invincibility being at last shattered for all to see are very significant and worthy of consideration, I believe that it is outside the scope of this fundamentally military paper, and hope that a separate report that is fully focused on the matter may be made at some point in the near future.
The primary thrust of this report is explaining the Commonwealth's points of advantage and how we successfully exploited them, as well as Victoria's own advantages and how they were mitigated by their own doctrinal flaws. As those who are most likely to read this document are either military officers or former paramilitary troops, and have also already received continuous reports of our progress, I shall not go into detail on the basics of the battle.
Section 1: Commonwealth Advantages
1.1: Defensive Posture
Perhaps our most significant advantage was the fact that the enemy had to come to us. Strictly speaking, several of the advantages I shall list below only came into effect due to this fact, but it also deserves mentioning in and of itself. A well-executed defense in depth allowed us to substitute land for bodies, and fortifications were crucial to maximising our combat effectiveness. Of particular note were the southern rivers. I think it might be fair to say that the Raisin and Huron were more important to our success than any other point on this list. The ability to force a river crossing, not once but twice, was huge. While it may not be particularly comforting to realise that we owe victory as much to the placement of bodies of water as any other factor, the facts are the facts.
Unfortunately, while I remain confident in our ability to continue conducting defensive operations, I am far less confident about the prospect of launching a long distance attack. I trust our leadership to understand the inherent problems in such an idea, since it extends beyond the mere logistical, but we may have to be careful in precisely how we sell the message to the public, lest they get too deep a taste for Victorian blood. Still, I doubt we're going to see the opportunity for such in the immediate future if we see successful diplomacy with our neighbours, and I hope we do, so it's more of a long term concern. But a concern nevertheless.
1.2: The Commonwealth Navy
The Navy has always been a powerful, reliable force, unmatched on the Great Lakes. They showed up in full strength, decisively showing the Victorian "Navy" for the sham it was and proving vital to the decisive defeat of the Leamington army. It also served as artillery support against the primary attack, but I would say that here it served in a distinctly secondary role. It was when the navy was free to function against other ships instead of as fire support for the army that it proved itself to be worth the investment. By cutting off the eastern force's access to their heavy equipment and supplies, it made them even more vulnerable to our defence in depth strategy than the southern force despite the lack of convenient rivers. A starving force with few of their trucks and mortars were of comparatively little threat to us. If they had been allowed to land fully, they would have tied up much more of our resources, making the Toledo thrust all the more dangerous. Luckily, we derailed their plan. If we could somehow more fully mitigate the Victorian Air Force and fully cut loose our Navy, we could prevent any repeats of the Leamington landing entirely. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done.
An honourable mention goes to the Commonwealth Marines, who gained us much in the way of free shipping and supplies, although we must also be sure to thank Victorian High Command for this windfall. However, I feel confident in saying that their impact on this particular battle was fairly limited, and the outcome is the same with or without them absent other altered factors.
1.3: The Devil Brigade
The Devil Brigade was an enormous asset in the battle. They sped up the total elimination of the eastern pocket by several times, and perhaps more critically eliminated the entirety of the elite CMC mechanised division. I do not have to explain the capability of these soldiers, but I equally do not have to explain that much of this success came not from the enormous skill and experience of the Brigade but rather their irreplaceable equipment. Of all the battle's advantages, the Brigade will be the one that we will not only lose in future battles, but
must lose. Although they still have some fight left in them, with over half their pre-battle stock of parts and ammunition remaining, and they will no doubt continue to serve with distinction as regular troops after their Old World vehicles become inoperable, their utility will see a sharp decline over time.
If an exact repeat of the Battle of Detroit were to occur without their armour, then I strongly suspect we would have won only at great cost and while fighting within the city streets of Detroit proper, although I do believe we would still have won in the end. This is another part of why I support a further expansion of and improvements to the military despite our success. We cannot rely on relics forever.
1.4: Actual Logistics
General Burns would crucify me if I did not mention the contributions of the Commonwealth Logistics Corp. They kept our soldiers fed and armed. Meanwhile, the Victorian attempts at logistics were either shelled or sunk, and their constant supply issues hampered their efforts dearly. However, while there are definitely severe underlying issues with Victorian logistics, much of this advantage was not inherent but gained through careful planning. We cannot count on the issues presented to the enemy always being as severe as they were here.
1.5: Consistent Motorisation
A subset of the above, but I believe that our superiority in motorised assets deserves independent mention. The trucks of the eastern force were sent to the bottom of the Lakes, the trucks of the southern force were destroyed by attrition thanks to their lack of standardisation or a proper maintenance corp, and the IFVs of the CMC were dealt with via 120mm cannon shells. After this, we had technicals that allowed us to shuttle our forces around at a relatively blistering pace while the Victorians had their legs and not much else. This was vital in our tactical retreats on the eastern front, and especially in our probing attacks and skirmishes with the Victorians dug in at the Raisin Line. We were able to outmanoeuvre the Victorians, and in doing so beat them at their own game, so to speak. Although I suspect that the heavy artillery will take the bulk of the credit for our success on the offensive, our ability to be where the enemy weren't faster than they could respond was key to victory.
1.6: Luck
A short point of order before we finalise this section, it is becoming increasingly clear that
Victorian tactical blunders and Commonwealth tactical successes on the southern front may have helped us attain a good margin of success in our victory. As I hope to show in the rest of this paper, "luck" has very little to do with our overall victory, and I do not wish to disparage the members of our armed forces by implying that it did. However, the fact is that no large scale combat can be perfectly predicted by human analysis, and I think it's fair to say that against the greater half of the foe these unpredictable elements fell decisively in our favour.
1.7: Tube Artillery
Last but certainly not least, it is undeniable that our edge in howitzers and field guns was a significant advantage against the Victorian Army. While their mortar-only doctrine proved to be the match of our guns when they were not deprived of their heavy equipment, this was only due to their advantage in the amount of overall guns they could bring to bear, this brought about due to the superior Victorian army size and industry. Additionally, at several key points, the range advantage of larger artillery pieces proved particularly useful, most notably when we bombarded the advancing column of Victorian troops using pre-sighted gunnery, doing not only attrition and morale damage but also notably worsening their supply situation. I believe we should look into procuring more artillery so this advantage may be magnified in future, although such decisions ultimately lie with procurement and not me.
To finish off this section on an unfortunately sour note, our artillery is one of the few advantages we have that will continue to apply universally and consistently. You may very well have noticed a distinct pattern in the above advantages. Specifically, that they will not last, or only apply situationally. Our victory here was the product of many factors that we will simply not necessarily be able to replicate in future battles with Victoria, or if we are unfortunate other opponents. Artillery is a constant companion, but it is also perhaps the easiest to replicate of our advantages, both situational and otherwise. I continue to advise against resting on our laurels.
Section 2: Victorian Advantages
2.1: Numbers
The Victorians outnumbered us by no less than three to one in terms of divisions that saw combat, and almost as much in terms of manpower seeing as only one was armour. I don't have to explain why having additional soldiers is an upside to a war effort. However, the Victorian reliance on foraging meant that moving enormous troop columns was difficult on the local landscape, and in the end unsustainable. While I would not go so far as to say that they would have done outright better if they brought along fewer infantry divisions, they may very well have been able to achieve equal results with fewer troops simply due to being able to bring more ammunition and less food on their persons. Of course, the optimal thing would have been actual logistics, but I speak within Victorian doctrine here.
2.2: Training
Although a scant few American remnants maintain training parity with Victoria, such as Toledo, and individual formations are more skilled, such as the Devil Brigade, no warlord or successor state can claim to have a better trained army than Victoria at this time. We cannot even claim to have parity like Toledo can. Unlike the other points of Section 2, I cannot truly identify any way in which their training hindered them or was not fully utilised. Their overall doctrine was of course flawed, but this manifested itself in operational and strategic decisions, not in the soldiers on the ground. They were simply more capable troops with more discipline and in many cases more ability to act under fire. However, our own troops are hardly untrained, and I think it is fair to say that the advantage this afforded them was not overwhelming in the grand scheme of things. What it was, however, was both noticeable and very consistent, which perhaps matters more.
While I am aware of General Burns' plans to improve our troop quality, making this one of the easiest advantages of theirs to match, I will also note they can improve theirs to keep the gap open, as I will explain in Section 3.
2.3: Fanaticism
It might be hard to call the Victorian insanity an advantage, but after reading enough reports on their willingness to throw themselves at machine gun nests just to penetrate our lines I think we both know that it is. Similarly to their numerical superiority, this one is quite obvious. Their morale held for far longer than it would have for most other armies, and it enabled a fair portion of their success. Although it broke eventually, the fact that they were doomed once it had arguably proves how vital it was to their advance. However, while their fanaticism was a tactical boon, what I said in 2.2 applies here. Their doctrine was flawed, and the fanaticism not of the troops but of the overall society has something to do with that. Their dogmatic belief in the teachings of Rumford and Kraft, their unwillingness to challenge existing authority and wisdom, all this brought about the state of their army that allowed us to attain victory. The Victorian loss here was cemented in the lifetime of those two. All we did was slam shut the coffin door and nail it down.
2.4: Air Supremacy
Due to treaty restrictions on the NCR, the Victorian Air Force is the strongest air force on the continent. Or it was, at least. I'm unsure how the situation is now, after they managed to lose most of their planes.
As I said above, the war was lost before it began not only due to Commonwealth preparation but also due to Kraftford-era doctrinal failures, and this definitely shines through most clearly in the VAF. Their mission was first and foremost to clear our air force from the skies, and I must admit that they did. They were so successful in this that we never launched another sortie after the decisive battle. Although they did this at terrible cost to their own force, trading one to one against for the most part markedly inferior planes, they did it nonetheless.
However, I think it is fair to say that even with the force remaining after that engagement, they could have drastically changed the outcome of the war. If they had more training in and weaponry for ground attack, they might have been able to attack key sections of the line with heavy air-delivered ordnance, allowing the much beleaguered infantry a chance to conduct more effective breakthrough operations. Successful operations in that vein could have dramatically changed the course of the battle, and is one of the few things I feel could have turned this victory into a defeat. If things had gone slightly differently, they might even have been able to sink a few of our gunboats and allow more of the Leamington force's supplies and equipment to land even without additional air-to-ground munitions and training.
All this is practically rendered moot by their insistence on making themselves the most perfect SAM targets imaginable, of course. Of all the things to keep from the Kraftford administration, they kept that "inspired" idea? We may never know what, exactly, they were thinking at the time. Or if they were thinking at all.
2.5: Armour and Mechanisation
It may seem odd to extol Victoria's tanks and IFVs as a virtue when the Devil Brigade's own vehicles proved decisively superior, but while the T-34 is not precisely still a fearsome weapon even against us the Cold War transports potentially were. While we successfully rendered them irrelevant this time, as I have said and as we all know the Devil Brigade cannot conjure new parts from thin air, nor do we have any supply line to a state willing and able to provide us with replacement Old World gear. Meanwhile, the Victorians are fully capable of building more tanks of their own, although I doubt it would be a great idea, and more concerningly are fully capable of purchasing new mechanisation from their benefactors. And worse, they may very well also be capable of purchasing tanks that are less than a century and a quarter old from that same source. If, or dare I say when, we have to face Victorian mechanised infantry and a superior form of Victorian armour without the shield of the Arbams we may find ourselves in dire straits. Hopefully we will have developed countermeasures by then.
You will note that while most of our own advantages were situational or temporary, all of the Victorian advantages will likely continue to be advantages going into the future, being more obvious and general purpose. I was somewhat alarmed as I came to this conclusion, but I believe if we are content to expand no further east than Detroit or Toledo, we may very well be able to replicate a few of the points in Section 1 regardless. Still, it concerns me greatly.
Section 3: Victorian Lessons Learned
I shall keep this section in one piece, primarily because the Victorians have countless options open to them and I cannot go into reasonable detail on them all without killing an entire tree for every copy of this report printed.
It seems almost certain that the Victorian Armed Forces will undergo some form of major shift before we meet again on the field of battle. They can and will effectively lie to the general population, but the leadership knows what happens. Especially since, if the intelligence reports are accurate, one General Gideon Blackwell was successfully airlifted back to Victoria before the Warlord of Toledo flipped allegiances. Not only do they have a front-line general who can relay his battle experiences, they have one who was by all accounts both very efficient and a high level true believer. I can't comment on either of these, as I'm not sure I've ever had the pleasure of crossing swords with his unit, but if this is true then we are forced to assume Victoria will learn the right lessons from this debacle, and not the wrong ones. While there's a chance he'll be scapegoated as one of the few surviving leaders of the operation, I wouldn't count on it. You don't get to be a general in any army without playing the political game, and that goes double for regimes like Victoria. He'll likely be able to hoist most of the blame off to those who are no longer alive or otherwise able to argue back.
The problem from our perspective is that we have no clue what the right lessons are. Or rather, we do, but we don't know which of them the Victorians will implement. They're ideologically blinkered, not stupid, and that makes this calculation all the more unpredictable. What they'll call an evolution and enhancement of their doctrine, an acceptable sacrifice to their doctrine, and unacceptable Cultural Marxism may as well be random. We should be able to make educated guesses, but not with much reliability.
There's also the issue that the Victorians probably can't make all the alterations they want to. Their army still has a budget and limited resources, and the generosity of their patron isn't going to last forever either. As a result, the new model Victorian military could be any one of several dozen possibilities, and we basically have no idea which one it's going to be.
If I were a smart Vic, and if the stories are true Blackwell is, I'd note that probably the biggest issue we had was breakthrough of fortified defences. It may have come in various forms, and the attempts been hampered by various factors, but a lack of breakthrough was the key issue. The obvious solution was pioneered almost a hundred and sixty years ago when the British put guns on a metal box and realised they could send it in before the infantry charge and not after. Indeed, the Victorians did so at their final charge, most likely almost accidentally, and were hampered there primarily by a lack of support and their usage of a tank that predates the entire concept of sticking to a single type of tank for everything. As I also said, more proactive usage of their air force could have helped accomplish something, as would usage of full scale artillery. I'm sure there are other solutions to the issue, and the Victorians could pick any combination of the above. I would definitely expect to see at least one, however.
The second point of interest occurred to me while I was pondering their 'Cult of Initiative', as I suppose you could call it. A long time ago, during the Cold War and earlier parts of the 21st century, NATO forces had a similar focus on initiative, albeit not to the same extent as Victorian doctrine demands. NATO developed their own doctrine based around the opponent they'd be fighting. The Vics don't exactly like the air-based result of that idea, but they may still utilise the process itself. What exactly a Victorian-made doctrine aimed specifically at dealing with Commonwealth tactics, equipment, and geography will look like, I can't tell you. But the idea that they may change the way they fight specifically to deal with us and our tricks is something to keep in mind. Unfortunately, until we see it in action I'm not really sure we can do much about it but try to mitigate the possibility by applying our own learned lessons.
As for the method of improving their troop quality I mentioned in Section 2.2, that would be bringing in foreign advisers, most likely Russian, to train the new Victorian army. I'm unsure if Russia is willing to expend that much time and manpower on their attack dog, and I'm even less sure if the Victorians have the cash and foreign standing to recruit advisers from anywhere else, but seeing as we lack detailed information of the inner workings of the two states we cannot say for sure it won't happen. An example showing that Russian support can be more than just equipment slipped under the table.
Section 4: Commonwealth Improvements
It seems beyond my authority to recommend improvements to the military by myself, but I trust that our leadership, both military and civilian, have plenty of ideas cooking up in their heads as we speak. Improved training, repairing and using the captured F-16Vs, unit-level AA, more artillery, further equipment standardisation, more ships, and above all additional divisions.
Still, I would like to make two points of my own.
First of all, the idea about making a doctrine tailored to your main opponents applies to us as much as Victoria. Practically every remnant state other than them is too weak, too far, too friendly, or some combination of the above to be worth considering when it comes to crafting doctrine. The problem with this idea is that we're highly limited in how we can expand our armed forces due to the limitations of our industry and economy. The Commonwealth Armed Forces is a beast born of practicality and compromise. We make due with what we have, and I'd like to think we do so well, but it can potentially limit our ability to do things like adapt to specific foes. Even so, specifically planning around the foibles of Victoria that are likely to remain, as well as their known advantages that shall continue into the future, seems both doable and potentially highly useful now that we've gotten to grips with them and know their current strengths and weaknesses.
Second of all, let us step away from NATO for a moment. The Vics call us communists, quite a lot I believe. Let us then take some "communist" ideas. And although I'm sure the Farmer-Labourers and Revolutionaries would like it if we implemented their policies, what I actually mean is how the Warsaw Pact defined initiative and trained their troops.
Until the library gets indexed or I request information from Burns enough I can't claim to have a particularly in-depth knowledge of USSR military planning, but the specifics are unnecessary here. From what I understand, instead of having individual units exercise initiative by exploiting opportunities as they saw them arise, the Soviets preferred to define initiative as doing your part to successfully enact the overall plan instead of getting distracted by the possibilities before them. They did this by making up for a potential lack of training by giving specific drills to their soldiers and operating under norms about what a force of a certain size could accomplish, with leadership enacting plans based around these drills and norms that troops could carry out reliably without necessarily being trained to the highest standards. Even with a superior training scheme, we can expect our forces to be inferior to the front line troops of the Old World on average, but we have a veteran core of highly skilled officers including an Old World leader who can effectively direct our forces. Perhaps this situation would be best exploited by Soviet-style instead of American-style troop training and usage.
Section 5: The Strategic Situation
To conclude this report, I shall briefly talk of the strategic situation. As I said in the preface, the full impact of the Battle of Detroit on the strategic situation deserves to be a full report in and of itself, but I feel it would be remiss of me if I did not at least try and partially account for the topic.
The Victorians will be forced to sit back and recuperate for some time, potentially even as long as a few years. I suspect it will be only one or two, but that is still time for us to expand our influence. I have spoken of military issues and taking inspiration from the Soviet Union, but one thing I do not wish to copy is their collapse in large part due to overspending on the military. Despite our accomplishments, the fundamental economical, industrial, and population comparisons between us and Victoria remain broadly unchanged. Unchanged and unfavourable. As it stands, Victoria can sustain a larger war effort for longer, and we are not able to end them with a decisive blow in the near future. We must plan for the longer run. That means civilian development, and it means diplomatic outreach. We need more ability to assemble equipment if we wish to operate an enlarged army, and integrating some territory would help us man such an army. A lack of outreach hurt us once with the embargo, and we should endeavour not to suffer a repeat performance. Now that we have proven that Victoria is not invincible, that we can and will protect you from them, and that formerly working for them is not unforgivable in our eyes, it would seem to be an ideal time to perform large scale diplomacy and try and reverse the damage to our reputation that has been done.
Naturally, the specifics of all this, and if it will happen at all, rests ultimately with the civilian government.
On the subject of Toledo, I will note that similarly the elected government will decide the details of our new relation with them. The military stands ready to defend them or not from future Victorian assault at the representatives' command. On a purely military note, I will say that although they sped along the end of the battle by turning, it was far from needed. The end had come by that point. This also makes it less clear how honest they were being about having made an analytical mistake instead of it being an entirely pragmatic calculation of survival on their part.
To summarise this report, we won the battle due to our geographical position and ruthless exploitation of both the operational situation and Victoria's weaknesses. We can expect to see Victoria adapt to this loss in some manner, although we cannot be sure of the precise shape such adaptation will take. We must ourselves adapt and expand in the time the battle has brought us if we hope to pull off a repeat performance. However, I believe that we are capable of doing so successfully, if we carefully use the available opportunities. Also attached are a few thoughts on the future of our potential doctrine and training program. Hopefully those who read this brief report will find it useful, and if we are truly lucky then perhaps it shall be read by the people of a kinder, better world a long time from now.
Postface
I have already talked about the VAF and their failure to do much more than ground our own planes, but from what I understand missiles were fired at our gunboats, even though none were sank. Additionally, our trading evenly seems strange, despite ambushing them while they were armed with the wrong loadouts. I would never doubt the courage or skill of General Franks' pilots, and we did possess our own jets, but many of our planes were turboprops, and even most of our jets were F-4s rather than F-16s. Something seems off that's more than just the lack of proper Vic training or expectation of resistance. It's not my place, of course, but I hope that Daria checks the Victorian planes and munitions carefully if we want to use them or their parts in the future. Something just seems off. It's probably nothing major, of course, and if it is then it should be uncovered by simple engineering checks in time.
-Authored by Colonel Sharp, CO of 3rd Brigade, 2nd Division ("Springfield"), Southern Deployment
