Modern Blog (6-May-2013 Story)

[MajorTalon]

The beginning of a planned jump into Ultra-modern wargaming. I have FoF, and plan on buying miniatures soon. Here's a story.

The convoy rolled along the highway as a storm pelted the surrounding area with small-sized hail. The soldiers inside the vehicles were quite content, though the gunners mounted on top of the vehicles were miserable, as they were subject to Mother Nature’s rules while manning the .50’s and Mk. 19’s. Some had the luxury of sun shades attached to the cupolas on the command and support vehicles, though the vast majority of the convoy was in Humvees, as opposed to the MRAPs of the HQ platoon. The woes of the soldiers in reserve components. The reserve status seemed to put them at the bottom of the military totem pole, and therefore the supply chain, leading to shortage of ammo in a combat unit, on the way to a FOB in a war-torn country.

Such was life in the National Guard. The men and women of this particular unit were quite alike. They were nearly all between the ages of 17 and 30, with a few of the older breed taking NCO positions, under officers whom had just recently graduated from ROTC in college. They were all mostly single, because what soldier wanted to have a family, only to be deployed and possibly get killed, leaving a grieving widow and kids?

The equipment they carry is a decade old, with oldest piece of equipment, an M4A1, being dated to 2005, manufactured by Colt Defense’s Factory in Hartford. They wear multicam fatigues, with plate carriers and MICH helmets in ACU camouflage, owing to the National Guard’s supply shortage.

They are soldiers; fighting a new war on foreign shores, though the NCOs’ and some officers have seen war rear it’s ugly head before, in Iraq and Afghanistan. They know of the terror and thrills experienced in a firefight by the lone grunt; the adrenaline rush that one gets from bullets flying at them, avoiding death, and looking at it’s toll.

This is only part 1 of the story.

Also, it takes place in an Eastern European Imagi-nation.

[Arlequín]

Interesting idea and I look forwards to seeing it develop. 

[commissarmoody]

So are we looking at a fictional war about 5-10 years into the future? 

[MajorTalon]

@Arlequin: Thank you!

@Commissarmoody: Yup. And the story's from the point of view of a National Guard unit, as opposed to the usual "tacticool sf boyz" ® or regular army or marines.

[Arrigo]

@Arlequin: Thank you!

@Commissarmoody: Yup. And the story's from the point of view of a National Guard unit, as opposed to the usual "tacticool sf boyz" ® or regular army or marines.

well I am not the only one who writes this kind of background for his gaming. Anyway... glad to not see silly SF guys; well I do not like SF too much nowadays even if I had a SOCOM officer (not SF, but assigned to SOCOM) in one of the class I was teaching assistant and the year before a girl from a special intervention unit of the Brazilian Customs (I remember a surreal discussion with her about the merit of carbines opposed to full battle rifles in jungle environment with other people a bit surprised... ok much worse the discussion about what kind of weapons is better to shoot zombies involving several students, me, two chaplains and the assistant chaplain in the college chapel... no I am not joking...  )  . Well I had once also a Naval Intelligence Analyst in one of the class, pretty and got a crush for her... there was aleacehrous IDF former officer drooling on her too I realized that she was not interested for several reasons and on both of us... still we we were a bit friends so not that bad). <off topic ends>

Like the National Guard I am planning to have a 6mm NG formation (and probably a 3mm one too) and always had fun when the NG units shown up in Battle for Germany. My15mm WW2 Us forces is from the 29th ID that is a NG unit.

[commissarmoody]

Yeah 29th "Blues and the Greys". I have a soft spot for my old regiment in the 82nd and play them for my American force in WW2 games.
 
But for near future I try to play a Striker/CAV or Mech unit. that way I can get more of the combined arms action in. And usually have the Guard units doing convoy's, and reconstruction ops.  So to me the idea of using them as the main element seems pretty novel. Meaning I am looking forward to seeing how you develop this project.

[Arrigo]

Well the Guard is part of the total force structure and it fields a lot of interesting units (including heavy forces). The Guard fought in WW1, WW2 and Korea, some company sized units also in Vietnam. No point of keeping them out of our tables...

Strykers... well i have them in 6mm and plan in 15mm and maybe one in 28mm. But usually they are the sacrificial lambs. I am quite negative about them. My experience with them in Combat Mission shock force has been bad and my recent research (including the information that the Army kept them out of fallujah because they feared enemy AT while the M2 and M1 got in...) points to them that they are the most awesome looking piece of crap in the world of armored vehicles. I am an HBCT guy  .

[Arlequín]

I think you're being a bit unfair to the Stryker... they are a definite step-up from the Jeeps and trucks that their passengers would have been carried in 30 years ago, just as the Bradley is a step-up from the M113.

HBCTs are all well and good, given weeks of preparation to place them in a location, but if you need troops in a hurry, a Stryker unit is the only game in town with any form of protection or support for them on the ground.

Of course they are expensive and may very well be a piece of crap, but I would rather be inside one than in a truck. 

[Arrigo]

This is the problem...

The Stryker is lovely, but is well a glorified truck. The development process was a bit twisted being Shinseki pet project and something that had been pushed forward at 'all costs'. More importantly the Stryker had gathered a life of its own. It is labeled as an Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Still if the top brass ordered them to no go into Fallujia the idea of them being 'fighting' is a misnomer. Definitely the Stryker have a place but not as they are used now (and in the same vein similar vehicles are being used in Europe). The Stryker is becoming the XXI century equivalent of Task Force Smith. You can deploy it quickly but lack the firepower and armor to duke it out. also its strategic mobility is suspicious. I have been told by people involved in the program that the beast cannot fit in a C-130 (one of its great plus according to the converted) without removing the additional armor packages. I do not know, having a couple of light division equipped with them could have been a great idea. Butting them everywhere uhmmm... the weakest point is Korea and the 2nd ID and 25th ID. My take is that the KPA will eat them alive. Well my take is that the current correlation of force is favoring a limited KPA offensive with limited goals and I got the hunch that this is what the CFC and the ROKA also think thus the lack of replied to DPRK initiatives. Again we have created a theoretically highly mobile army that then cannot perform its combat mission because it is too light. Problem of expeditionary forces, i had a sort of similar debate with Major General Julian Thompson about the importance of Armor (real armor) for expeditionary operations. Move from "we are RM we do not need armor" to "well it is not a bad idea"  .  It wuld be interesting if they can attach a combined arms battalion to each Striker Brigade or a full pure tank battalion to each division to be used as assets for the brigades.

[Arlequín]

Quite true and I also understand that the C-130 can't carry a modified Stryker, but that isn't the be all and end all of the US air transport capability. The units that have been turned into Stryker formations are the ones which were formerly 'light' formations and carried in Hummers, so definitely an improvement in capability for them.

As for the choice to deploy heavier units instead of the Stryker, it's a sensible one if you have them available. What do you do when local infrastructure will only support traffic of less than 20 tons though?

Korea is not tank country, it's very hilly, so the value of heavy units is suspect except in certain areas. In the last war, the U.S. didn't deploy many armoured formations and certainly no armoured infantry, for this very reason. While the road system is somewhat improved from the 1950s, being tied to it and the few flat areas, by virtue of the terrain, invites being outflanked and cut off.

An invasion by the DPRK is hardly likely to be announced and will not wait for further heavy units to be deployed to bolster the existing USFK units, however 96 hours into the conflict, the first Stryker battalions will be in theatre.

I'll concede that it's essentially an armoured truck, over-priced, not-as-effective-as-some-other-types, whatever, but in lieu of anything else, it is better than nothing and sometimes nothing is all you have.   

General Thompson should have mentioned that tanks and APCs were of no use to the RM in the Falklands, or indeed Afghanistan. I doubt they will be that much use in a future Korean conflict.

[Arrigo]

Well if if you read my article on Tanks and amphibious warfare published by the Phoenix Think Tank you will see quotes from Julian about the light tanks in the Falklands. IT was quite clear with me that he blame himself to not have attached scorpions to the 2nd Para at goose Green. Also in the same article I was quoting from an interview with General Nick Vaux on his experiences to drive through Port Said with Centurions in support. In Afghanistan my own interviews point out to the fact that the Tanks are important and sadly they are too few and not properly supported.

Well... in Korea part 1 the T-34 carried the KPA south. US tanks were critical in a lot of tasks. They deployed 6 tank battalions by September 50 (old WW2 To&E thus quite large). Tanks were also critical in the action of the 29 Brigade along the Imjin river. The KPA as tanks and they are not shy to use them and it looks they have developed a good doctrine for combined operation in rugged terrain. I am not advocating blitzkrieg, but tanks are quite useful in restricted terrain. Often they spell the difference between victory and defeat. The Stryker is an hybrid, to heavy for a truck, to light for an IFV and the MGS is not as effective as touted (and ammo storage is quite low). I am not so sure the Stryker will arrive in 96 hours. Also until you have at least a full brigade deployed they will just be dead meat. The problem with the air transport capabilty was that the idea was to allow the Stryker to be carried by C-130 opposed to heavier transport. They cannot be now. If we are moving the Stryker with C-17 or C-5... well the same planes could carry M1 and M2. As far korea is concerned the road mobility is excellent and also cross country.

I will disagree on the idea that the Stryker had only replaced light units. both ACR have been converted to Stryker (bad idea), the 2nd ID lost one forward deployed heavy brigade for a US deployed Stryker one (and also an airmobile brigade). The 25th ID moved from light infantry to Stryker. The 1st ID (formally heavy mech) now has replaced 2 heavy brigade with 2 infantry (leg + truck) ones. The 1s AD has two heavy, one Stryker and one light BCT. The stryker are more or less a ploy to cut on heavy forces forward deployed. There is also an additional problem in the organizations. all the heavy direct fire stuff (MGS, Stryker TOW) is stryker mounted. Using it means going into line with a big target with little armor.

I agree that stryker is better than nothing, but there is a group of officers that are touting the stryker as the only good answer to everything. it is one of those universal wargaming rules that got used everywhere notwithstanding being appropriate or not.

Still it is a great looking vehicle!

[Arlequín]

Agreed there were a lot of tanks used in Korea, but the infantry support role, as you say, it's not 'armoured warfare'. The DPRK did use their T34s effectively, but zipping down the road system against an enemy, who initially had nothing to shoot at them with, is hardly likely to be repeated next time... attempted perhaps, but not repeated.

I do agree that the few Scimitars and Scorpions deployed in the Falklands might have been better employed and even their numbers could have been enhanced. Accepted your point about Suez too! To be honest, I doubt the DPRK's anti-tank capability is much to shout about, given that they will be up against the M1 and claims of effectiveness aren't always borne out by hard reality.

When I said the Stryker had replaced light units, I meant on an individual unit basis. The subsequent re-jigging of divisions to include those same units, where there were none before, may prove to be regrettable though. I'm not up to speed on current deployments, but isn't 25th ID still 2x Stryker BCT, 1x Airborne BCT and 1x Infantry BCT still? I have to admit that 2nd ID being reduced to a single HBCT, backed by three of Strykers, doesn't inspire me with confidence though.

Without a doubt the Stryker has been billed as an all singing and dancing vehicle, which may, or may not, turn out to be an inspired choice, given that recent conflicts haven't been the 'armoured steamroller' everyone had been expecting. Having said that, going too far the other way is a bit of a gamble, as we rarely get to fight the kind of wars we expect. 

 

[Arrigo]

Well,

I agree on everything except that we do not know exactly what the KPA antitank capability really are due to the wild estimates people do, but I have starte to decided it is better to credit them with competence. Certainly they have an uncanny ability to set honeytraps for ROK and US officers and about 'armoured warfare'. Well tankers do not alway play Rommel. Actually infantry support (and counter-infantry support) are as important as blitzing and steamrolling.

Other than that... well hopefully we will not see if the Stryker gamble paid off... except in wargaming quite an interesting approach to be hones,t much better than relying on factory brochures! One thing that puzzled me is that the move to the Stryker is more a reaction to limit forward deployments (and entanglements) with the card of 'air transportability' rather than a reaction to lack of tank steamrolling. Well we got into Baghdad with a big tank drive after all and without the tanks the battles of Larry, curly and Moe would have been different. It is interesting to see the Canadian approach, they were on the verge to get rid of tanks for MGS and they reverse the decision. I think that the weakest link of the Striker family is the MGS (the most cool looking!  ).

We will see...

[Arlequín]

As you say hopefully we won't see. 

As an aside, I do often wonder if the turnover of new equipment in many armies has more to do with profitability for the people supplying them... but that is a whole can of worms I don't really want to open.



I expect you are right about the DPRK equipment list and capabilities too, I'm sure they have a surprise or two in waiting. Certainly competent though, whatever they have in hand.

[MajorTalon]

To get back on topic, :

Anyone know how to make REALISTIC female soldiers? As in, not GW female.