No big surprises from the Marines. Which is obviously good news for them.

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Platoon Patrol 8: USMC in AAVs

Welcome back to Combat Mission Shock Force 2 for the 8th instalment of the Platoon Patrol. This time we’re taking the US Marines out in their AAVs. We covered the AAVs earlier this week, so it’s probably worth giving the actual infantry a TLDR.

Marine rifle squads are organised like US rifle squads, but with an extra fireteam for a total of 13 men, these are backed up by two M240 machinegun teams and two 2 man SMAWs, and led by a 2 man platoon HQ for a total of 52 bodies.

Their objective is to find and destroy a reinforced squad of US Marines playing Redfor who are set up in one of five locations on our map. That location is selected at random by the game- it is random, but it’s also selected objective Delta 5 out of 7 times so far. That can be a natural consequence of randomness and when I’ve tested it out the other objectives are well represented… if we get Delta again this time I’m probably just going to go for a restart.

Our Marines start from a random position as well. This time we rolled up a 4, so they’re starting on the south map edge on the wrong side of the river.

Last time we were here we had the Uncons and we crossed the river in between Delta and Echo. Now, I really want to go and check Delta first and get that out of the way. So I send the AAVs left, crossing a couple of streams to get to a ford and crossing over to the field south of Delta where the Syrian Airborne staged their attack.

Getting some infantry up onto the berm reveals no contacts at Delta- we’re close enough that that means it’s probably clear. To really be sure I send one of the AAVs straight at the compound.

This is, obviously, a terrible, terrible idea and I’m only doing it to find out if Delta is occupied and see if I need to start again. The AAV makes it, so Delta is clear. And there was much rejoicing.

As the first AAV is rushing forward though, the Marines on the berm come under fire from Echo. There’s an enemy fire team in the ruins of Building E8 taking potshots with an M249. They’re a long way away- about 550m- but that’ll be no consolation if they get lucky.

Contact Echo

At the point of contact, I’ve got AAV B with 2nd squad and the Platoon HQ just entering Delta, while the rest of the platoon is back on the berm.

From here, I’ve got a couple of options. If I wanted to attack Echo from the right and follow the avenue of approach the Uncons took, I could set up a base of fire in Delta and then swing right with AAVs A and C. I could potentially take advantage of the berms to close the distance without getting SMAW’d, but all my weapons teams would be in the assault element and the base of fire in Delta would really be one AAV and a Marine squad that’s too far away to put down effective fire.

It makes more sense to consolidate everyone on Delta, set up a proper support by fire position and see how the situation develops from there. It’s probably also a good idea to avoid manoeuvring any closer with the AAVs. 500m is well within SMAW range, the AAVs are big targets and there’s not a lot of cover and concealment around that I trust to hide them.

So I start to consolidate the platoon on Delta. This takes a few minutes, so I dismount 2nd squad and get them into some of the buildings to start spotting. It’s not exactly safe.

There’s an enemy SMAW team on top of Building E9 which gets some rockets off. One hits 2nd squad’s A team, which I didn’t realise was out on a balcony, taking out two Marines and disabling the M240 setting up on the roof above them. Another one hits their C team as, causing another 2 casualties.

The AAVs return fire while the weapons teams are sorting themselves out, lobbing a hail of 40mm grenades. It’s hard to tell how effective these are even after they get vaguely on target. The .50s get better results- AAV B nailing the E9 SMAW gunner- but the vehicles default to their Mk19s for area fire.

After a couple of turns, with plenty of outgoing and some good hits from my own SMAW teams, it looks like I’ve got some measure of fire superiority. I’ve only identified two contacts and it figures that that’s probably all the enemy teams that can cover this angle, given how much attention I’ve drawn to myself.

So where to go from here? The centre of Echo is screened off from Delta by a thick chunk of wood, in front of that there’s the highway embankment and the rest of the distance to Delta is made up of low-lying fields. These probably constitute a safe avenue of approach. They’re in dead ground from most of the objective compound and my support by fire position is high enough to safely fire directly overhead if necessary.

The alternatives on either flank are considerably less appealing. Slogging through the ditch on the right is not something I want to do again- time after time those ditches have proven to be both slow and exhausting- plus, that particular ditch is one long-straight opportunity for enemy enfilade fire.

Going out left means going across the same open fields to get to the highway where there’s either another ditch to advance down with all the same problems or the option to cross over into exposed fields covered by the left edge of Echo that my base of fire can’t cover as well.

So the obvious decision is to go straight up the middle.

Straight Up the Middle

2nd Squad is busy dealing with it casualties and maintaining the spotting, so I lead off with 1st- going left around the back of Delta- and 3rd, going around the right. They’ve got a good 400m to cover, so it takes some time to get across the fields.

They spot the other enemy SMAW as they advance. That’s set up on the roof of building E2 on the far side of the objective compound. It’s an annoying position to target from Delta. Between the highway embankment and the intervening buildings, the AAVs and weapons teams are unable to directly target the rooftop.

Luckily, the enemy don’t seem to be able to target the approaching Marine squads either, but this changes when they reach the highway. Crossing the ditch and cresting the embankment, 3rd squad’s C team finds itself at the wrong end of a keyhole the enemy SMAW team fires a rocket down.

They send an M72 back, but it’s intercepted by a tree. Somehow the SMAW failed to cause any casualties, though they are all lightly wounded.

Off to the right, things are going better. The enemy platoon HQ opens fire from the woods next to building E9 but find the rest of 3rd squad on hand to put them down.

That reduces my problem set back down to the E2 SMAW. It’s still a pain to target from my supports back in Delta, though the AAVs pelt a neighbouring building with 40mm grenades in the hope that their CM-modelled inaccuracy will work in my favour.

It doesn’t, but my own SMAWs get some hits in that look like they’ve done some damage. I keep 3C in the keyhole to try and get some more accurate fire back- they’re only about 130m away, which feels like a reasonable shot for those M16s with ACOGs- but instead of getting anything done they catch another SMAW and lose a man. I decide to pull them out and close in on E2 from the flank- they take another casualty as they pull back into the ditch.

Meanwhile, the rest of 3rd has crossed the highway and muscled in on E9. That building’s clear- the first enemy SMAW team is presumably out of action- and I start to probe closer to the buildings on the left side of the compound with an eye to dealing with the SMAW.

3A, going through the woods, comes under fire though. They lose a couple of men and go to ground. They don’t have a spot, but it looks like the fire is coming from the far side of the track just up ahead.

3B confirms this: they’ve occupied E9 and soon get eyes on the offending enemy fire team. They’ve got a very nice little position: tucked into the edge of some undergrowth but on the other side of a slight dip that runs down from the compound to an adjacent field. There’s no way my Delta support by fire position can hit that without closing in and I don’t want to risk bringing the AAVs too close to the remaining SMAW.

Out on my left though, 1st Squad has been providing some overwatch from the near side of the highway. They can cover the buildings from there, but not the E2 roof with the SMAW and they can’t see into the dip to target the new contact.

So I push them forward across the highway and start to edge round to the left via a streambed. They soon spot the enemy and get stuck in, giving 2nd Squad some breathing space. They soon recover and edge forwards again to the edge of the wood where they start shooting up the enemy team and pelting them with grenades. Now that they’re suppressed, it doesn’t take long before the enemy are snuffed out.

3rd clearly needs a break though. They go firm while I pass 2nd through them. I’ve brought them up with the platoon HQ as my reserve and consolidated them into two large fire teams after their casualties.

2B crosses the track into E11 to tackle the E2 SMAW while 2A pushes past to occupy E1 and storm E2 from there. In the end, they don’t have to. 2B manage to take the enemy out.

That’s all the existing contacts dealt with- 3rd can see that the original contact in the ruins of E8 are out of action- but I’m still one enemy team short. They must be out there somewhere, probably on the far side of the compound.

So I send 2A up to the roof of E2 to get a better view. That gets two of them shot almost immediately- the last enemy team is in some bushes near the road, just outside the compound wall. But the Marines go straight into fire and manoeuvre. The two parts of 2nd are now the base of fire- firing down the wall- while 3rd crosses the compound to close in from the flank.

Simple stuff, but that doesn’t make it easy. The last enemy refuses to go down without a fight. They’re on an ever so slight reverse slope and manage to shoot one of 3rd’s Marines as they close in, then chuck a grenade that takes down another. 3rd decide they’ve had enough and run off, while 2B shower the enemy with hand grenades. This takes a few of them out, but they persist until 3rd recovers and- finding themselves on the other side of the road- run round to get onto their flank.

The enemy are now under fire at close range from several sides and eventually go down.

After another turn to be sure, I hit the ceasefire button.

Endex

All the enemy all indeed out of action, that nets the Marines 1000 points. That’s come at the price of 12 casualties though, reducing the score down to 886. That’s still pretty respectable. The Marines slot into our scoreboard in between the Stryker Infantry and the Dutch Light Infantry, which is absolutely in the expected ballpark.

As always, these scores are entirely arbitrary and in some respects, I think the Marines had a hard time. They might have only lost 114 points due to casualties, but that still amounts to 12 men or 23% of their dismounts, which is quite a lot.

Casualties

4 of them were taken out of action by early SMAW hits, before the E9 SMAW was neutralised and fire superiority established. They’re also probably my fault. The first two were due to me not realising a fire team was hanging on a balcony in full view of the enemy, the other two were due to me sending a fire team forward into the Delta orchard. Both of those teams did their jobs- contributing to the firefight by drawing fire and making it easier for other teams to spot, suppress and ultimately destroy the enemy- but the actually losses there were probably unnecessary.

The other 8 casualties were all taken during the actual assault on the Echo compound- 2 to the other SMAW team firing through that keyhole, then 2 from the leftmost enemy fire team and 4 in the last stand.

These losses are much closer to being the price of doing business. We’ve seen before how going forward and making contact with the enemy at short ranges in dense terrain or getting into keyholed fields of fire are equal parts bad for your health and unavoidable.

Infantry

At the same time, the Marines sucked up those casualties and kept going. Even with 12 men down, they’ve still got 40 dismounts and that’s not only more than most other platoons but in some cases substantially more or even about double.

To some extent, we can argue that these casualties are a result of the avenue of attack. The fire support at Delta pretty much faded out of the fight when the rifle squads reached the highway and got stuck into clearing the compound. They just couldn’t see through the facing edge of Echo and the highway embankment simultaneously put friendly forces in the direct line of fire and created dead ground beyond that blocked line of sight and made targeting difficult.

There’s obviously a strong argument for moving the base of fire when this happens. I had all the AAVs and could easily have packed up and shifted to a better position. I didn’t do that firstly because I didn’t want to risk the AAVs while the enemy AT threat was still in the fight- and that persisted until almost the end- but also because it’s not clear where a better position would have been. Shifting left, they would have ended up firing over the top of 1st squad as they manoeuvred on that flank and been unable to fire into the compound proper, just target the edge. Going right, the angles of fire onto the problematic side of Echo would have actually gotten worse.

Shifting the base of fire is important, but simple geometry means that it might have to go a long way to find a better secondary position, which is full of its own potential problems, but mostly… there is almost always a point at which the assault element is so close to the enemy that it’s just down to them.

And once they got stuck in they did a good job. These NATO or Western style fire teams with a good mix of weapons and plenty of firepower are really solid. Like I mentioned earlier, casualties on contact are pretty much just a feature of modern warfare. The Marines were able to tank those hits before fixing, flanking and destroying the enemy.

AAVs

As for the AAVs… it’s easy to expect more of them. They suppressed the enemy in the opening stages of the battle and while the infantry was advancing. They were able to resupply the SMAW teams when they ran low.

I did consider bringing them forward to get the Mk19s into action at close range once the rifle squads were engaging from the highway and the base of fire became less relevant, but ultimately held them back for the reasons I just discussed.

The AAVs were mostly there to transport the Marines to within a safe distance of the fight, then let them dismount and do infantry things. And that’s exactly what they did. We might have seen more manoeuvre in different circumstances- if we were attacking a different objective or from a different direction- but we didn’t so that aspect of their performance is a little muted.

Conclusion

Overall though, a solid performance from the Marines. They were always going to be interesting, mostly due to their unique, infantry-overmatch focused TOE. They’re also interesting in the context of the Platoon Patrol because the Opfor for this scenario is other Marines. So unlike everyone else, they’re fighting an enemy who is equipped in exactly the same way but with a considerable advantage in experience and motivation.

Up next we are back round to Group 4. This is the high-end group with all the fun toys, for some reason it’s being slowly taken over by the Dutch. We have two flavours of Dutch mechanised infantry- one platoon in CV90s and one platoon in YPRs- plus US Mech in everyone’s favourite unbalanced murder machine: the Bradley.

We will get through them all eventually, but I’m looking forward to which one you guys pick to go next. I’ll leave a link to the poll for that down below.

In the meantime, if you’d like to see 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 video.