Script for: Company Challenge 21- US Mech Infantry (Patreon)

This is a pretty chunky script- coming up on 6000 words. Probably a bit bigger than usual because I'm handling the intro to the next round of tests and tackling a lot of generic mechanised stuff in the analysis.

Obviously, it's also a Thursday afternoon and I've got to record and cut the audio before getting all the footage, making all the maps etc... a Saturday release might be a bit more realistic than Friday release for this one, but we'll see!

Also, for reference:

CC21 US Mechanised Infantry Company

Welcome back to Combat Mission Cold War where we’re going to kick off the second round of the Company Challenge. This is going to be a comparatively open round- the initial plan is to tackle the US Mechanised Infantry and then a Soviet Motor Rifle company, organically and practically. Which is to say that both companies will have nothing that’s outside of their Table of Organisation and Equipment, and that I’m going to play them as I think is best, rather than consciously trying to implement any kind of doctrine.

Once we’ve got those two down, we can compare, contrast and expand the round in whatever direction we think is most interesting.

The Scenario

The Scenario this time round is a bit bigger. The map is a chunk of the Schweben master map, from the US Campaign, focused on a large farm complex. This has been split into three objectives- Alpha, Bravo and Charlie- and occupied by a dismounted, reinforced Soviet Motor Rifle Platoon.

That adds up to 3 motor rifle squads, 2 machinegun teams, 2 ATGMs and an FO- they have a 120mm mortar section on call- they’re all randomly distributed throughout the farm. At some point, an armoured reconnaissance patrol will appear on the far map, consisting of a recon platoon in a BRM-1 recon vehicle and two BMP-1s, backed up by a T72. These will either go straight to the farm or hook around one of the flanks.

The attacking company starts off in some dead ground behind a large wood, there’s 500m of open ground between the wood and the farm complex. So we have 3 clear tasks here: cross that open ground, clear the farm, repel a counterattack.

The Force

So, we’re kicking off with the US Mechanised Infantry company, this follows the line of the US Rifle company from 1944 in having a pretty standard triangular arrangement of rifle platoons backed up some organic supporting assets. Where there are options available in Combat Mission, like heavy, medium and light rifle squads for example, I’ve picked the best ones.

That means that the individual rifle squads are the heavy type: nine men in total: 5 armed with M16A1s, two with M16A1s and M203 40mm underbarrel grenade launchers and two M60 GPMGs. One of the riflemen is an antitank specialist carrying an M47 Dragon and three missiles. By default each squad also carries a single M72 Light Antitank Weapon, which is a 66mm one-shot disposable, but there are three more of those in each squad’s vehicle.

There are three rifle squads per platoon, led by a 3 man HQ team with an organic two man Forward Observer team. There are four M113A2s per Platoon- one for each squad and one for the HQ and FO. These have a crew of two: a driver and a gunner who has to open up to operate the M113’s M2 .50 calibre machinegun.

The M113s are lightly armoured- only really protected against small arms fire- but they do have smoke launchers.

There are three of these platoons in the company, making for nine rifle squads, 3 FO teams and 12 M113s. They’re supported by a weapons platoon.

This is made up by an antitank section with two M901 Improved TOW vehicles and a Medium mortar section with three M125 Mortar Carriers, backed up by Fire Direction Team in an M577 command vehicle and led by a HQ team in an M151A2 Mule. The whole weapons platoon is commanded by the Platoon HQ team, also in a Mule.

The company as a whole is led by a two man company HQ riding another M113A2, supported by yet another FO team in a second M113.

This is a company level organisation with a lot going for it: it’s got a lot of anti-infantry firepower, organic antitank firepower that extends well beyond a ‘don’t tread on me’ capability, organic mortar support, a total of four forward observer teams for bringing in artillery support and the ability to move almost the entire company under armour.

The downside is that that armour is not going to offer much protection against anything except small arms fire. Enemy armour, enemy antitank weapons and even enemy heavy machineguns are going to be able to rip through these M113s without too much of a problem.

Plan

Planning-wise, the mix of assets does make things relatively straightforward. I want to start by moving one platoon into the wood to get eyes on the farm and start spotting targets, call in a smoke barrage from the mortars to cover off the right flank where there’s some dead ground, then punch another platoon up there to storm the Alpha objective and start clearing. That leaves me one rifle platoon and the M901s in reserve to exploit or go firm as necessary.

Simple.

Kick Off

Starting things off, 1st Platoon moves into the wood, dismounting a good way from the edge so as to not risk their M113s. In theory, they’re there to spot targets but the range to the farm is 500m and only the squad leaders have any kind of optics, so realistically they’re not going to see any enemies concealed in the buildings.

But with an M47 Dragon on either side of the wood, I’ve got a kilometre of somewhat effective antitank bubble on either side to guard against surprises, and the rifle teams can provide security for both the platoon and company Forward Observers to get into positions where they can direct the mortars.

2nd Platoon, stacked up in my deployment zone, will be able to advance up the right flank to close with Objective Alpha by using a shallow valley, but to get there they’ve got to cross 150m of open ground.

They might be a challenging target for an ATGM operator if they dash across- the operator not only has a limited window to spot his targets, aim and launch but the missile itself will have flight time. It’s entirely possible that 2nd Platoon’s M113s will be out of sight- and safe- before any launched missiles can reach out to them.

I’ve already set up a smoke mission to cover off that angle, but by the time it’s just about to come in I’ve figured 2nd Platoon can make it safely.

They do, surging out from behind the wood, across the fields and down into the dead ground without any problems, but the enemy did get a missile off.

I initially mistook it for a spotting round from the 81s, but this seemingly random explosion was in fact an AT7 taking a nose dive. I don’t think it would have had time to get to the M113s, so they were probably safe, and 1st Platoon was able to identify the missile team. They’re set up on the top floor of Building B1, in the Bravo Objective.

The Right Hook

I can’t really do anything about him yet- the range is really too long for 1st Platoon’s dismounts to be effective, short of trying to fly a dragon into them, and while the .50s on the M113s could potentially do the job I don’t think trying is worth the risk.

For now, 2nd Platoon is in their little valley and they’re able to advance with an eye to taking Alpha in the flank. As I start thinking about how to pull off such an attack though, I quickly realise that I really need more firepower.

First, I really don’t want to make a dismounted attack. It’s still 3-400m from 2nd Platoon’s jumping off point to Alpha- that’s a long, long way to go on two feet when people are shooting at you and it’ll take plenty of time. Time the enemy has to react and time I need to provide ammunition intensive suppressive fire.

Speaking of, not only do I have a lot of potentially occupied buildings to cover, but I’m going to be advancing over a slope so I’ll be exposed to the upper floors first. Trying to fire and manoeuvre my way up with a single platoon of four vehicles means that I’ll have to make compromises somewhere: either I’m not going to be able to suppress every position, or I’ll be switching my fire between buildings so any suppressive effect will be greatly diluted.

1st Platoon is in no position to help and it’s definitely not a job for the M901s, so it’s down to 3rd Platoon. By the time I’ve reached this decision the smoke from 81s has bloomed and effectively blocked off the AT7’s view of the danger area, so it’s simple enough to throw the platoon across and follow in 2nd’s tracks.

The AT7 doesn’t react, but that’s mostly because it’s somehow managed to spot 1/2’s M113 deep in the centre of the woods. Even more impressive, they manage to nail it with a missile and knock it out.

That’s a little annoying. The only thing I can really do to compensate is pull the remaining M113s deeper and concentrate on attacking Alpha.

Storming Alpha

2nd Platoon kicks things off by rolling into hulldown positions in the wheat and opening up on the top floors of the Alpha buildings. They quickly spot an enemy PK team, set up in Alpha 8, who are suppressed in short order.

Without dropping the fire, I bring 3rd Platoon up alongside and dash squads 3/1 and 3/3 forward to Buildings A1 and A2. They’ve got extra supporting fire from the other two 3rd Platoon vehicles and make sure to shoot up the as yet untouched ground floors on the way in.

I picked A1 and A2 to try and establish a foothold because they’ve got a hedgeline outside. Granted, it’s not much, but it gives me a kind of intermediate position between hanging around in the open next to the tracks and immediately having to storm a building which may not only be occupied but supported from as yet unsuppressed positions in depth across the Alpha yard.

Luckily, 3/1 and 3/3 get away with it. And I do mean lucky: although they’re getting a bit suppressed by friendly .50cal fire going over head, 3/1 quickly spot an enemy team on the ground floor of A1. They’re able to take two of them out before they can open up- including one with an RPG-7- and the two survivors surrender.

Neutralising A1 puts one of the forward M113s in position to enfilade A8, with the enemy MG team inside, and with sending 3rd Platoon’s HQ vehicle up to the foothold on the corner making it worryingly crowded, I send 3/2 over to tackle the right. They get up with no problems and although the somehow still alive final PK team member gives them a burst, they take him out.

With A1, A2 and A8 secure without encountering enemy fire from the other side of Alpha, it looks like I’ve got my break-in. I spend the next five minutes consolidating: spreading 3rd Platoon across the yard and bringing 2nd Platoon up to get them out of the open.

Keeping Going

From here I have a decision to make: do I want to go left and tackle Bravo next, or go right and take on Charlie? Heading for either objective means risking exposure to the other, the triangular arrangement here means they’re in mutually supporting defilade.

It doesn’t take me long to decide on Bravo. That’s where that AT7 team is, and although 3/1 looks to have taken them out with some potshots from A2 I want to confirm they’re neutralised so I can gain more freedom of manoeuvre and potentially bring 1st Platoon up directly. I’ve got eyes on that whole area courtesy of 1st Platoon and the FOs in the woods and I’m able to bring the mortars in again to suppress the enemy while I prepare to go.

I pretty much want to do to Bravo what I did to Alpha. With the mortars keeping the enemy’s heads down and supported by fire from 3rd Platoon, 2nd Platoon will rush across to the hedgeline facing the woods.

2/3 will turn up the track into the farm alongside B1, pop smoke, dismount and storm the building. 2/2 will pull up to hedge directly in front of that building to support and engage an enemy contact marker in B2. The Pl HQ and FO will slot in on their left, while the final rifle squad 2/1 will swing in a bit further left, pop smoke and dismount to grab B3. That should give me a solid base to work from if Bravo is more heavily occupied than it looks.

The Bravo Disaster

The lead vehicle, with 2/2 inside shoots up B2 on the way in, but B2 isn’t going to be a problem. As they cross the track, they start to take fire from Charlie. C9 and C11 are occupied by enemy teams. These are totally unsuppressed, because they’re in defilade from my base of fire in Alpha, and they’re neatly keyholed onto either side of B1. On top of that, the hurriedly dismounting men of 2/2 get engaged by enemy troops on the ground floor of B1, which I had assumed was clear.

Two of them get hit while they’re still clumped up at the back of their track, then the bubble bursts and everything goes wrong.

The PL HQ vehicle has popped smoke, but its gunner is forced to duck down by small arms fire and then an RPG streaks out from C9 and annihilates the vehicle. All the crew, the entire HQ team and the FO are killed instantly.

Next to them, 2/2 are already two men down and between an errant mortar bomb landing right on top of them- which somehow does no damage- and the sudden destruction of their HQ, they lose their nerve and run back the way they came, towards Alpha.

That takes them past 2/3, who are dismounting into all this chaos, come under fire at point blank range from B1 and, along with their vehicle, break and join 2/2’s rush to safety.

That leaves 2/1 at the far left of the attack- they manage to dismount without any problems and even put some fire into the enemy in B1 as they do so, but then another 81 drops in behind them, wiping out half the squad. They also break and run away from the buildings into the open.

Clearly, that could have gone better. There were a lot of intersecting problems there, but as usual it boils down to movement without fire. If I had just been dealing with Bravo, this wouldn’t have presented anywhere near as much as a problem, despite the fact that B1 was still occupied.

But I while I was tunnel-visioned on that objective, worrying about what we could call the short depth of the enemy position there, I failed to properly account for the longer depth offered by potential enemies in Charlie. I did take some steps to account for that possibility, mostly popping smoke the M113s, but I didn’t have any way to suppress Charlie with direct fire and I assumed that I didn’t have line of sight for a fire mission.

And now I’m stuck with the situation. At least the edge of Bravo I was aiming at appears clear. 2nd Platoon gets its act back together quickly, with 2/1 piling into B3 and 2/2 and 2/3 occupying a small triangular copse between Alpha and Bravo, supported by their M113s.

Recovery

Things might not look good, but they stabilise over the next few turns. The triangular copse isn’t really tenable- the troops there coming under fire the enemy in C9 and C11 and one of the supporting vehicles has its gunner shot out before being RPG’d- but I’m able to either pull them back to Alpha or push them round through the blooming smoke deployed on Bravo to reinsert themselves where they were dropped off.

The enemy in B1 gives up, another enemy team spotted in B4 is neutralised by 3rd Platoon from Alpha and after a few more turns I’m able to gather up 1st Platoon and punch them across the open ground directly to Bravo.

They reinforce 2/1 on the left at the 30 minute mark- about 6 minutes after 2nd Platoon’s disaster.

From there, things start to tilt back in my favour. 1st and 3rd Platoons are still intact on the left and right of the farm respectively and I’m able to begin edging round to roll up Bravo and start encroaching on Charlie. A few more enemy teams are revealed in the process, but thanks to a more measured, infantry-led approach, I’m able to mop up infantry in B7 and a second AT7 team in B13 without much trouble.

At the same time, elements from 3rd and 2nd platoons occupy C1, where they get into a firefight with the enemy in C9 and C11. By now, those enemy fire teams have been under fire for a good ten minutes and this combined with the redirected 81s and their apparent isolation encourages them to give up earlier than I was expecting.

My main problem in this phase of the battle is actually navigating all the buildings. There are no interior doorways anywhere, meaning entering some requires either a dangerously circuitous route or is just straight up impossible without breaching charges. That’s something for me to fix before the next run.

The Counterattack

By the 42nd minute I’ve secured Alpha and Bravo, what enemy I can see in Charlie is trying to surrender and although there must be more teams in there somewhere I’m confident they’ll crumble when I apply pressure.

My attention starts to switch from clearing the farm complex to dealing with the enemy counterattack.

This appears on the right, about 600m out from Alpha. The enemy’s following the edge of the low ground I used to get my initial attack forward, but unlike me they have to deal with an ATGM looking down it.

When 1st Platoon left the wood to reinforce Bravo they obviously took their Dragons and that km wide antitank bubble with them. To compensate I positioned the M901s to cover the flanks… and that put one of them in the edge of the woods aimed into precisely the path of the incoming counterattack.

That M901 takes out the leading BRM-1 with a direct hit, then follows up by destroying one of the BMPs.

Meanwhile, the enemy counterattack is flank on to Alpha, which is still occupied by most of 3rd Platoon. I’d not only left them there to maintain control of the objective and provide what supporting fires they could to 1st and 2nd Platoons, but because they’ve got their own anti-tank bubble courtesy of Dragon.

So while my M113s exposed to the right flank scurry for cover, M47 gunners in the upper floors take aim.

They’ve spotted the enemy tank- a T72- but their first missile falls just short. That attracts a 125mm HE shell in return as some of the more optimistic pixeltruppen start trying to shoot out the tank commander with their M16s.

There’s another Dragon miss before the M901 manages to score a hit, but this fails to penetrate the turret armour.

Three missiles from the same position is a bit much for me- even if there’s no indication the enemy have spotted the M901 it’s nowhere near as hull down as I would like and with the second AT vehicle coming across to reinforce, I decide to pull it back to reload.

In the meantime, the Dragon teams finally manage to connect, putting a couple of missiles into the tank. Neither penetrate, and return fire kills two men in A1, but the T72 is immobilised.

The second M901 spots and destroys the final BMP when it gets into position, but neither vehicle can quite spot the T72.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. The losses have tipped the AI over the edge and it surrenders.

Endex

Obviously that makes it a total victory, as so often happens, that’s effectively just a jump to the end of the current trajectory.

Overall, the US Mechanised Infantry took 23 casualties- 9 of them in that single disastrous turn at Bravo- and lost 3 M113s.

The Soviet defenders have six men left: 3 hanging out in C15 at the back of Charlie and 3 crewing the T72. That means they’ve lost 51 men to go along with the 2 BMPs and the BRM… the T72 was blind and immobilised flank on to the M901s, so it wasn’t exactly long for this world.

So, let’s break things down and take a look at our three tasks: the Approach or Break-in, Clearing the Objective, and repelling the Armour Counterattack.

Approach/Break-In

I think there were a couple of key elements to the initial attack on the Alpha Objective.

The first is that I originally planned to conduct the break-in with a single platoon, but soon had to commit another and attack with two. That’s easy enough when you’ve got an entirely mechanised force, but the fact I felt like I had to do it says a lot about platoon level firepower.

At least in Combat Mission terms, while the platoon is mounted it can only engage with the .50calibre M2s on the M113s. Obviously in reality, the infantry can open the top hatch do the whole mobile foxhole thing, but even so the number of weapons the dismounts can use from inside the vehicle is limited.

It’s not like 4 heavy machineguns can’t put out a lot of effective fire and they certainly have range and armour penetration advantages over the dismounts, but there are still only four of them. That reduces the number of positions you can engage at once. And if you’re moving forward the effectiveness of that fire is likely to drop off: the M113’s weapon mount isn’t stabilised, so there’s a natural reduction in accuracy, and while it wasn’t a problem here, in other situations there’s also the issue of fragmentary line of sight or a need to exploit cover that can take weapons out of the firing line.

There are three solutions to this. Most obviously- and probably most effectively: get someone else to suppress the objective while the platoon advances. This is a job for tanks or artillery, preferably both. If I had had an attached tank platoon, whether it was acting as a base of fire in the woods or accompanied the infantry in the attack, I would have been less reliant on the rifle platoon’s organic firepower.

Second, dismount and add the rifle squad’s firepower to the attack. If the range is close enough and the terrain is suitable, this will add 6 M60s, 6 M203 grenade launchers and a big pile of M16s to the party, a pretty significant boost.

The downside to that is that... well, now the platoon is dismounted. So any advance is going to involve either moving at the speed of the dismounts- meaning they spend longer exposed in the open- or it’s going to involve getting back into the M113s, at which point the suppressive fire needed to enable the advance is going to drop off.

In this particular case there wasn’t really anywhere for them to go either. 2nd Platoon was in a field, so the rifle squads would just be lying in the open waiting to shot and, thanks to the gentle slope ahead of them, might not have actually been able to see the targets and contribute fire from the prone position.

That leaves solution number three: use more forces. Bring up another platoon.

The obvious problem is that when you have three platoons, you can’t do that everywhere.

I guess we could add a fourth option to upgrade the firepower on the transport and make the step up from APC to IFV, but then we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves.

So we have an interesting firepower dynamic going on here between mounted and dismounted states, between APC and infantry alone or together.

This leads into the second thing I think is interesting about the Break-In task which that once I’d established a base of fire, I rushed up two squads to establish a foothold. These drove directly at the spot I thought would give them the most cover while they were dismounting- with A1 between them and enemy MG team spotted in A8.

This worked, but there was an enemy team actually in A1. As it happened, the dismounts got their hits in first, caused some casualties and provoked the survivors to surrender. Going back to the turn and running it again, there’s no certainty that that’s how things pan out, so I got lucky. It’s certainly not impossible that that Soviet team could have RPG-d one of M113s on the way in, decimated the dismounting infantry with hand grenades, or otherwise ruined my day.

Where and when to dismount as a mechanised infantry force isn’t always obvious and there are always tradeoffs. My take in this situation was that an earlier dismount, further down the slope, was the riskier option because it would sacrifice speed and expose the infantry. If there was more suitable terrain I could have used to bound forward or advance on foot, I may well have made different decisions.

Regardless, I got lucky. And I also got lucky in that there were only two enemy positions in Alpha, that those two positions were on the outside edge that I attacked and were effectively neutralised by the break-in and that there were supporting positions in depth that I had to deal with. Enemy positions are randomised for this scenario, so again, there’s some luck involved.

A lot of all this is generic to mechanised infantry though. With regards to the TOE of our US Mechanised here, being able to deposit a nine-man squad with assault rifles, 2 GPMGs, 2 grenade launchers, four light antitank weapons and a shoulder-launched ATGM pretty much directly onto the objective is nothing to sniff at.

Obviously things can go wrong for them, but if they can get set up and oriented, if they have some cover and concealment to exploit once they’ve dismounted, then they’ve got a lot of firepower they can bring to bear.

Clearing the Objective

Moving on to actually clearing the objective, the obvious place to start is the initial push onto Bravo. This went disastrously wrong, though it could have been a lot worse.

Here we get a lot of what we just talked about regarding the question of when and where to dismount, but the fact that this is relevant at all is due to the fact that I essentially chose to stage a second break-in.

I made the decision to rush across to Bravo instead of taking my time and expanding outwards from Alpha in a more measured way- something that was much more successful and much less casualty intensive when I did it later on.

That was a tactical mistake. What we’ve got to decide in this context is whether that was an unforced error on my part, or whether my decision was influenced by the TOE at my disposal. After all, if your only tool is a hammer, all your problems start looking like nails.

I think the most influential element was the footprint of my break-in at Alpha. Immediately after 3rd Platoon took the Alpha Objective, I had to do something with 2nd Platoon. They were still in position downslope on the avenue of attack where they had been acting as the base of fire with their .50s. They were hull down to Alpha and out of sight to the rest of the farm complex, but seriously exposed on the right to the rest of the map- including an axis for the enemy counterattack.

So I wanted to get 2nd Platoon out of that position and the logical direction to go was forward. But I didn’t want to cram two platoons into the confined space of the Alpha yard where they would lose their freedom to manoeuvre, be tightly packed for enemy mortars or artillery, and have restricted exit points.

That is, to some extent a TOE issue. US Mechanised Infantry Platoons are quite large platoons: broken down, we’re talking about 4 vehicles and 8 infantry teams. Spread out into buildings or otherwise dispersed, they can take up a lot of room.

Without going into Alpha then, 2nd Platoon could go right, around the farm complex towards Charlie and expose itself to that flank and the potential arrival of the counterattack, or it could go left towards Bravo with the friendly-occupied wood on its flank.

I don’t think the logic was fundamentally flawed there- though it may well have been a lot smarter to advance 3rd Platoon out of Alpha and feed 2nd in to replace them, rather than opening up an entirely new avenue of attack and getting a harsh reminder about mutual supporting positions in depth.

There’s no doubt that having the M113s available made a rapid leapfrog and a secondary break-in attempt possible. If I was forced to attack dismounted things would obviously have slowed down a lot more and my ability to suddenly rush into a compromising position would have been mitigated.

But yet again… that’s a mechanised problem, not an M113 problem. Different vehicles and different TOE might have enabled it better- trying to do the same thing with tanks and artillery in support, or with something like an ERA-covered Bradley may well have been more forgiving, but I think it’s fundamentally me picking an available option rather than being pushed in a certain direction by the formation itself.

We could even argue that the mechanised capability that got me into the mess also helped to mitigate it. The smoke popped by the M113s allowed both the vehicles and dismounts to get off the ‘x’, as it were, even if it took longer to build up than I would have liked.

Added to that, the fundamental loss was 2nd Platoon’s HQ vehicle with the Platoon leader and FO team inside. That’s obviously bad for 2nd Platoon, but they were still able to carry on. Losing the FO team was also not as bad as it might be for other TOEs. They are specialists, but the company has four of them, so being a team down means the company loses flexibility rather than capability.

Overall then, I would lean on the Bravo disaster being on me, rather than something forced onto me by the TOE. I didn’t have to try another break-in, it was by no means the only or best option available to me. There was some pressure to move quickly because I had two platoons clustered in Alpha and I felt a need to spread out, but there were other ways I could have dealt with that.

Follow-up attacks went fine- I had enough firepower between the dismounts and the M113s to shut down enemy positions, thanks to the extra supply in the tracks I didn’t have to worry about using up all my small arms ammunition, I could just let rip to good effect.

The Counterattack

Finally, we’ve got the counterattack. I think it’s fair to say that this got mulched pretty effectively. The only survivor was the T72 and that was heavily damaged, immobilised and had the two M901s in position to finish it off.

The enemy essentially ran into an L-shaped ambush, with the TOWs aimed down the long axis and flanking fire from 2nd Platoon’s Dragons set up in Alpha. That was a conscious decision and if the enemy had popped up on the left flank I had a similar arrangement with some of 1st Platoon’s dismounts on the edge of Bravo. The M901s being mobile, I had one covering each flank and was able to swap the unengaged vehicle to the engaged flank as necessary.

Obviously that was really effective, this company TOE has a really good organic antitank capability. Granted in this case, the M901s did most of the work while half the Dragons missed and the other half failed to penetrate the T72’s armour, but they make for a solid combination.

If we think about engagement envelopes, the company can reach out to almost 4km with TOW, to 1km with Dragon and then has the sub-200m ‘don’t-tread-on-me’ bubble of the M72 LAWs. So the US Mech Infantry has depth to its antitank capability. That can help the company remain well dispersed and reduce the threat of enemy artillery, but it can also create situations like we saw here where different assets work together to make anti-armour killzones.

The two M901s in particular give the company a really good, long-ranged organic antitank capability. Add to that the Dragon at squad level- meaning nine more ATGMs- and more M72s you can shake a stick at and… yeah. It’s almost like the Americans thought they’d be up against a lot of Soviet tanks or something.

Other Elements

That’s the three tasks covered, the only thing I haven’t really talked about yet is the mortars. These accounted for 1 enemy casualty, meaning that they killed several times more friendlies than enemies, but we can put that down to user error.

Certainly in this situation when the enemy is well spread out and in cover, I don’t think you can really expect 81mm mortars to do that much damage, but they absolutely have a role suppressing the enemy, which they did towards the end, and in obscuration with smoke.

It’s hard to quantify how effective they were in either of those tasks, but I would certainly rather have them than not. They’ve got loads of ammunition- 98 HE and 16 smoke bombs each, I probably should have used them a lot more.

Combined with the number of FOs the mortars are also pretty reactive. The main problem I had with them was that due to the way Combat Mission handles multiple fire missions, they were basically firing as three separate entities rather than a unified section… that’s just CM though. Less of a problem in reality.

Conclusion

So, that’s the US Mechanised Infantry company through the Company Challenge. Coming out the other side, I think that’s given us a good baseline for the US side of things. We can dial things up by swapping M113s for Bradleys or swapping one of the rifle platoons for a tank platoon.

But I think what’s going to contextualise this the most is the equivalent formation on the other side of the Inter-German Border. A BTR Motor Rifle Company is a very different kind of formation, on paper it’s got a lot less going for it in this kind of situation and it definitely doesn’t have the same organic assets: that’s what we’re going to look at next.

Hope you all enjoyed this video and found it interesting. If you’d like to watch these videos early and support the channel you can do so via Patreon and Youtube memberships. Whether you do or not, thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one.