Script for Platoon Patrol 12: Canadian Mechanised Rifles (Patreon)

Not a bad show from the Canadians. I think there's a strong argument that once you get above 900 points or so the big difference is how many mistakes I make and the TOE makes less of a difference.***

Platoon Patrol 12: Canadian Mechanised

Welcome back to Combat Mission Shock Force 2, where it’s finally time for some Canadians to take on the Platoon Patrol. Specifically, we’re taking Canadian Mechanised Rifles out in their LAVs, links to the quick guide for them and their dismounts down below.

As always, our platoon is starting from a randomly determined entry point and looking for a reinforced squad of US Marines in one of, originally 5 but now 4 locations on our map- because everybody is sick of attacking Delta. This time round, I rolled up a 2 so the Canadians are starting up on the eastern map edge.

Kick Off

After going to check out the Bravo hilltop, I sent the platoon down towards Charlie and Echo to get eyes on those two objectives and one of the dismounted infantry teams came under fire from Alpha.

That’s some very, very optimistic fire from the Marines: they’ve got the elevation to see because they’re up near the top of the Alpha forward slope, but it’s still over 700m away. Regardless, they actually manage to score a lucky hit and inflict a casualty on 3rd section.

This is an interesting change of pace: I don’t think we’ve made contact at this kind of distance before. It’s not too much of a problem for the 25mm Bushmasters on the LAVs- they can get stuck in while I figure out what to do.

Finding the enemy from this central position, I basically have three options for attacking Alpha. I can do what I did with the CV90 platoon and take a direct approach: crossing at Charlie and moving up the orchards.

I can disengage here, go down the highway and around Delta to come up on the far left and attack over the open ground on that flank. Or, I could go right and roll up the Alpha from that side.

I’m not quite sure which option to pick, but start by getting a base of fire set up in between the Charlie woods and the stream. I have a bit of a fire corridor here that I can take advantage of. This is of course a two-way range and the Marines quickly start to ping rounds off the opened up LAVs.

Again, this is the enemy demonstrating why you should hold fire until you’re in effective range because all I need to do is button up my vehicles and start blasting away at the new contact icons I’ve got.

The SMAWs

There’s definitely one infantry team in the far corner of the Alpha orchard and as the Platoon HQ vehicle settles into a hull-down position near the stream on my right it starts attracting antitank rockets. One of the Marine SMAW teams is on the roof of building A4.

The LAVs engage it automatically, but that flat trajectory contact fused HE from the Bushmasters isn’t super effective here and the Marines get more SMAWs off than I’m happy about before I can intervene.

I get the Platoon HQ LAV to pop smoke at the start of the next turn and roll back to turret down next to the stream before kicking out the Platoon leader and the weapons squad. I want to get that 60mm mortar dropping HE on the Marine infested rooftops as soon as possible.

It’s been a few minutes since we got contact and I still haven’t decided which way to go. For now I’m intent on exploiting this field of fire. I have targets, return fire is ineffective thus far and while my own fire doesn’t look like it’s doing a lot I have something I can work with. I still need to close though, both to find more targets and to advance to a point where my own fire is effective.

2nd Section and their LAV don’t have good line of sight where they are, so I send them up onto the highway where they can dismount, cross the highway ditch and get into the Charlie orchard. From there, they should be screened from the objective compound itself and get eyes onto the right side of the Alpha slope.

They don’t see much, but a few minutes later the second SMAW team gets spotted on top of building A5. That makes a direct approach even less attractive than usual.

At least my firepower is beginning to tell. The mortar seems sadly inaccurate and it never manages to hit the rooftops, but the 25mm cannons eventually start to collapse the A4 and A5 roofs through sheer persistence. That’s fine: the LAVs carry plenty of ammunition.

I’m not sure if the SMAWs have been neutralised or just fallen back to the ground floor, so I still want to avoid their field of fire. 2nd Section hasn’t spotted anything in the right side of the Alpha slope, so I decide to pull 1st and 3rd out of the firing line, swing out wide on the right and hit that flank. With the two other LAVs providing some oblique fire support, I should be able to roll up Alpha from the right.

The Right Hook

It takes a few minutes to bring 1st and 3rd round. They dismount and cross the highway ditch to get to the edge of the orchard, a move which fails to draw any fire and encourages me to bring their LAVs up for close support. It’s been pretty quiet since the SMAW rooftops got smacked around… I’m not sure if that’s because I’ve dealt with all the contacts in view or because I’ve removed targets for them to engage.

2nd Section is quietly moving through the fields and farmhouses beneath the orchard to try and spot targets, while the HQ team and Weapons Squad lurk in their support by fire position. The mortar is out of ammunition now: it used up all the HE targeting the SMAWs and I splurged the 4 smoke rounds to cover 1st and 3rd’s LAVs as they crossed the bridge on the right.

1st is carefully advancing across the middle of the Alpha slope, paralleled by 3rd moving along the road. They’re the ones who regain contact: the Marines in the far corner of the orchard pop up again.

3rd’s A team engage, but behind them their LAV has spotted a new contact just to the right of the Alpha compound. The LAV engages, hitting the trees above 3a and taking the section leader out with friendly fire.

That at least seems to neutralise the further contact and I can get on with manoeuvring onto the one in the corner. 1st section is going to be the assault element here so they start to move right, trailed by their LAV, but I want 3rd’s B team in position to support. As they dash across a path in the orchard they take a near miss from a 40mm grenade: there’s another team of Marines hidden in the undergrowth at the bottom of the slope.

Even as one of them is firing grenades at 3B, the rest of those Marines engage 2nd section, which has gone up onto one of the farm roofs to get a better view. They quickly take out 3 of the Canadians and force them back downstairs.

At least 2nd’s LAV looks like it’s snuffed out the enemy in the corner of the orchard, which frees me up to deal with the awkward team at the bottom of the slope.

1st and 3rd pivot to dealing with them, bringing their LAVs into action, and soon the Marine position is drowned in 25mm HE shells and a few Carl Gustaf rounds from 1st. After a couple of turns, I cease fire and nothing comes back.

It takes a few minutes to edge in and check, but by now all the Marines are done. After confirming all three rifle teams and the HQ are out of the fight in the orchard, I send 3A into the compound, touching the objective and getting eyes on both dead SMAW teams.

Endex

That makes it time to ceasefire. The Canadian Mech sustained 5 casualties in total, giving them a total score of 946. As always, that’s an arbitrary metric, but I think their position below the Panzergrenadiers and above the Stryker infantry makes sense.

Two Stage Battle

That said, they didn’t have a fantastic approach. We had a kind of two stage battle here. First, the LAVs engaged from the base of fire near Charlie and shut down what contacts they could spot: a couple of Marine rifle teams up on the slope and the two SMAW teams on the Alpha rooftops.

After servicing those targets for a while, the incoming pot-shots stopped and the contacts disappeared. Whether that was because everything visible had been neutralised or the Marines stopped giving their positions away by shooting is hard to tell. I was definitely starting to manoeuvre the rifle sections- 2nd going left and 1st and 3rd going right- and had by then buttoned up and removed things for the enemy to engage. On the other hand, the SMAW teams were definitely knocked out around this time, so I guess it could be a mix.

In the second phase of the battle, the infantry were closing in on the Alpha orchard. But because the Canadians had lost contact, they had to make it again: this time at much shorter range with exposed dismounts.

Casualties

That explains most of the casualties. Of the five, 2nd section suffered 3 of them popping up onto the roof of one of the farms and getting shot to pieces by the Marines at the base of the slope. This is just a characteristic of clearing out enemy teams in dense terrain. They might not last long once they’ve been revealed, but they can usually do some damage before they’re shut down.

I’m undecided as to whether it was a good idea to get up on those roofs. 2nd couldn’t see much from ground level and I was hoping to get their fire going at right angles to the attack through the orchard to supplement the LAVs. Maybe 2nd having moved up to that point without any sign of resistance lulled me into a false sense of security.

The other 2 casualties were pretty much incidental. The first was also from 2nd section, when they got engaged at 700m at the very start of the contact. The other was 1st Section’s leader who got caught by a treeburst courtesy of the LAV behind them. Obviously that kind of thing is always a possibility when you’ve got your dismounts out ahead of your vehicles… I didn’t think the LAV would be able to see and engage through the trees.

LAVS vs Bradleys vs CV90s?

Speaking of LAVs, I think we have a really interesting potential point of comparison here. The LAVs are armed with the same 25mm Bushmaster cannon as the Bradleys, so I think this is the first time we have two Platoon Patrol runs where the vehicles are armed with the same main weapon.

This Canadian run was obviously not as smooth as the American Mech run, but I’m not sure it’s fair to compare them. The Bradleys were super effective, but they also opened their engagement at much longer range and took out the SMAWs very quickly using their TOW missiles which, combined with the terrain, immediately gave them a lot of space to manoeuvre.

The LAVs, on the other hand, opened proceedings from about twice as far, engaged the Marine antitank teams much less decisively and as a result, it wasn’t clear until the very end whether the SMAW teams were still in the fight. That meant I had to be much more cautious with the Canadians: one of the reasons for choosing to attack Alpha from the right was that the orchard would mask my advance from the SMAWs.

On the other hand, the enemy rifle teams and platoon HQ were set up on the forward slope of Alpha, which meant that the LAVs could engage them pretty easily. I think it’s very telling that the only Marine rifle team that gave me problems was at the bottom of the slope, hidden in some undergrowth behind a wall where my base of fire couldn’t draw line of sight. That meant the infantry had to close in to finish the job and that raises the possibility of casualties.

Would the Bradleys have performed much better? Hard to say, though with their TOWs and explosive reactive armour package I might have been more confident attacking from the left and exploiting the open ground- and thus open fields of fire- over there. I would expect them to spot better as well- the Bradley has an independent thermal imager for the commander, which is not only a step above the fixed thermals on the LAV, but can be exploited by a set two man turret crew. The commander seat in the LAV is taken up by the dismounts. Once they’re out and about, they lose the spotting advantage of the commander’s seat.

It’s also interesting to compare the LAVs to the CV90s, who are the only platoon to attack Alpha thus far. The CV90s obviously did a fantastic job, but a lot of that was down to their airbursting 40mm rounds and they had used most of those up by the end. The LAVs’ 25mm cannon is less impressive and because it’s smaller there’s less space in the warhead to put fancy fuses and things, but you can carry an awful lot ammunition of it. None of the LAVs were even close to running out of 25mm HE-I.

There’s definitely some tension there between more effective, lower capacity ammo and less effective, higher capacity ammo. Given how fast things can go sideways on the modern battlefield and how important it is to minimise exposure, I suspect the 40mm cannon on the CV90 is a better choice. It’s just let down in Combat Mission by the way the TacAI fires very long bursts.

Conclusion

Anyway, we’re getting ahead of ourselves there. This was a solid run by the Canadian Mech, no major surprises, though the mortar was a little disappointing.

Now that we’ve seen some Canadians, every nation in Shock Force 2 has now been represented in the Platoon Patrol. We’ve still got five platoons left though, next up is one of the three remaining in Group 6: Syrian Reserve infantry in BTR-60PBs, more Canadians- this time in Nyala MRAPs- and Dutch Mechanised in YPR-765s. I fear for the Syrians and the Canadians, I think they’ll both have a hard time. The Dutch in YPRs should do fine.

As always we will get round to everyone, but it’ll be fun to see who you guys pick next. I’ll leave a link to the poll down below when that goes live.

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 one.