Finally, a good showing for the Syrians! While the BMP-1Ps probably really do deserve their position at the bottom of the pile, this at least gives some credence to the idea that the Airborne in BMP-3s had a rough time.

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Platoon Patrol 14: Syrian Republican Guard in BMP2s

Welcome back to Combat Mission Shock Force 2 for the 14th instalment of the Platoon Patrol series and the Syrian Republican Guard’s shot at the scenario. They cruise around in BMP-2s, which have their own unit guide linked down below. A bit like the Syrian Reserve Infantry, the Republican Guard dismounts are not different enough for basic Syrian Mechanised to warrant an in depth description. They’re exactly the same, except the 1st squad has one less rifleman.

As usual, the Republican Guard’s mission is to locate and destroy a reinforced squad of US Marines somewhere on our map. The Marines could be in objectives A,B, C or E and our platoon is starting from a randomly determined entry point, in this case: Entry Point 1 on the northern map edge.

After checking Objective Bravo, I sent the platoon down into the centre in the hope that they’d make contact with either Charlie to their front or Alpha on their right. This is always a bit tricky with Soviet style platoons because actually finding the enemy is usually the riskiest part of the whole process and you really can’t afford to lose any vehicles when you’ve got only got three.

Contact

As it turns out, the Marines are at Charlie this time. A SMAW team on top of building C1 starts taking potshots at 3rd Squad’s dismounts.

3rd Squad is basically up front to draw fire, which is why I’ve kicked the infantry out. I really don’t want them to get cooked in their BMP. They return fire with their PKM, while 1st and 2nd’s BMPs engage C1 from their overwatch positions.

This is definitely destructive, rather than suppressive fire. I’m pretty sure I don’t want to stage an attack from this position seeing as though the BMP-1s got absolutely rinsed when they gave it a go. I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to concentrate fire on one of the enemy antitank teams and reduce the threat.

At the same time, because we’re playing Combat Mission, I’m somewhat trying to manipulate my own TacAI. The overwatching BMP2s are 500m out, area-firing a building and the TacAI is favouring their AT5A ATGMs over the 30mm cannon. That’s not a bad choice per se, but the option to use the ATGMs could prove risky later on when I want the TacAI to use its cannon to, for example, suppress the enemy while I move. So I’m happy to spam missiles at C1 and run down the ATGM ammo, so the AT5 option doesn’t bite me later.

It’s not much consolation for 3rd, who lose a man to some accurate M16 fire and then get heavily suppressed by multiple near misses from the SMAW, but eventually it looks like repeated hits neutralise the C1 antitank team.

Circling Round

That’s a good start, but like I said, I really don’t want to attack Charlie from this direction. I finally have a Syrian unit with a decent amount of firepower. I want to exploit that, not pile into a load of dense terrain that will limit it.

So I decide to disengage, cross the highway ditch next to Alpha and go out wide on the right to attack Charlie via the field with the water tower. That will give me couple of hundred metres of open ground to get some good use out of the BMP-2’s 30mm cannons. As usual, I want to take the Marine’s SMAWs out first before mopping the infantry up. Coming in from the other side will make that easier.

It’s also pretty much the same avenue of attack that the Bradleys had in their run, so it’ll be interesting to see how the BMPs fare.

It takes a few turns to shift right. 3rd Squad keeps going to get up onto the higher ground overlooking the objective, while 2nd’s dismounts set up an OP in the unnamed compound and 1st squad lurks out of sight.

3rd’s BMP was turret down during the first contact, meaning it never fired off any AT5s so I start hitting the Charlie compound again. This doesn’t appear to do much, but 2nd’s BMP attracts a rocket of some description as it repositions.

A turn later, 2nd’s dismounts spot a SMAW gunner on the roof of building C3. The Marine is tucked behind the bulk of C1’s upper storey, meaning he’s a pain to target. 3rd’s BMP can just about see C3 from its position on the right and unloads on it, collapsing the roof. If the Marines have survived, they’ll be on the ground floor where their line of sight in my direction is limited to a single window.

The field of view from that window is blocked by C1 and the compound wall, effectively neutralising the last SMAW team providing I don’t go too far out to my left. So I decide to move 2nd up to the Charlie ditch and use that to advance up to the compound so I can clear it.

Things don’t exactly go to plan: 2nd get into position at the end of the ditch, but more covering fire from 3rd’s BMP knocks down both C1 and C2, opening up the SMAW’s field of fire. The only sensible thing to do is to pour it on. 2nd’s RPG gunner manages to collapse C3 and, with no return fire from the ruins, it looks like both SMAWs are out of action.

The Ditch

That means that it’s an awful safer to bring the BMP2s to bear. I send 1st and 3rd across the low orchard to line the ditch between 2nd and the water tower. They’ll form the base of fire supporting 2nd as they push up the Charlie ditch.

It’s not 2nd that make the next contact though. 1st squad has ended up next to the water tower, so I decide to take advantage and send 1A up there to get a better view. They don’t have a radio though, so I concertina 1B up as well to maintain the C2 to 1st’s BMP, which does have a radio.

1B attracts some fire as it shuffles up. I should have used the ditch: the squad RPG gunner catches some 556.

But I’ve gotten have a contact out of it. There’s a Marine fire team down the Charlie ditch at the right end of the footbridge. BMPs 1 and 3 open up, getting stuck in with their 30mm cannons. I’m a little concerned about their flat-trajectory fire skimming overhead though, so I send BMP 2 out to the left. From there, BMP2’s missed rounds will impact the side of the ditch the Marines are using as cover instead of flying off into the distance.

This converging fire seems effective- the Marines disappear. 2nd Squad continues to edge down the ditch to either regain contact or confirm the enemy are out of action.

2B, going down the right side, takes a casualty from the Marine HQ, which is set up at the left side of the footbridge. That’s great: I’ve got another target to drown in 30mm HE.

1A, up in the water-tower, spots the remaining two Marine targets as the BMPs get stuck in again. One is further down the Charlie ditch while the other is in the woods across the highway. 1A takes a little fire for its trouble and loses its marksman, but that’s an acceptable tradeoff for finding the enemy.

The Marines in the ditch are rapidly chewed up by the BMPs. By the time 2nd’s dismounts reach what’s left of the footbridge, they’re all out of action.

Crossing the Highway

That leaves the final contact beyond the objective compound. I’ve given them plenty of cannon too, but I’m reluctant to send 2nd to check without bringing 1st and 3rd forward to set up a closer base of fire.

That means crossing the open field. Marine rifle teams have their own ‘don’t tread on me’ antitank bubble that extends into the field, especially now that I’ve opened up their firing arcs by destroying the buildings. Even their M203’s HEDP grenades will ruin a BMP’s day- so I don’t want to just rush across.

Instead, I’ve got an excuse to use the BMP’s aggressive smoke launchers. 1st and 3rd make the crossing under cover of smoke and set up on the right of what’s left of the compound. The Marines are actually out of action by this point, but it takes me another few turns to get a team across the ditch and the highway to confirm it.

Endex

With that though, the enemy are all out of action and the objective secured, so it’s time to ceasefire.

In total, the Republican Guard sustained 4 casualties and wiped out the Marines, giving them a total score of 939. That’s considerably better than the other Syrian platoons and some of the NATO ones.

Again, the points score is arbitrary, but there’s definitely a good case for arguing that this Syrian platoon is punching at its weight instead of underneath.

CM-isms

There are really two sides to this. Firstly, the BMP-2 is less affected by Combat Mission’s TacAI behaviour than the BMP-1P and the BMP-3. One of the reasons the BMP-1Ps struggled was that they kept using their roof-mounted AT4s, which meant the gunners kept sticking their heads out and getting shot. The BMP-3s, on the other hand, favoured the 100m gun over the 30mm cannon. That’s not as bad, but it certainly felt less effective and that probably contributed to me manoeuvring them more than I should have done and getting one knocked out, which really torpedoed their score.

Secondly, attacking Charlie from the water tower side is probably the best way to attack it. The BMP-1Ps came in from the other side and had a really hard time. The BMP3 attack on Delta from the south was also probably suboptimal.

This time though, the BMP2s were able to get the best use out of their armament and had a really good avenue of attack. So they didn’t have to struggle as much against the TacAI and the terrain and maybe that allowed them a better shot at reaching their maximum potential than the other BMP platoons had.

Vs Bradleys

I think it’s also worth comparing this run to the Bradley run. In a lot ways, they were very similar. Both platoons neutralised the SMAWs first, then identified the Marine infantry teams and destroyed them with automatic cannon fire.

The big difference is that the Bradleys were much faster. BMP-2s don’t have the benefit of thermals, when they were providing fire support the dismounts had gotten out so they didn’t have the commander’s seat filled, and the 2A42 cannon is a lot less accurate than the 25mm Bushmaster.

On other hand, the BMP-2 run was slightly more involved. This time the Marines were concentrated in the Charlie ditch, near the footbridge: there were 2 of the three rifle teams and the platoon HQ in there, compared to the more dispersed layout the Bradleys had to deal with.

The Bradley platoon had the sensor capability, numbers and accuracy to deal with multiple contacts simultaneously. With the BMPs I was relying more heavily on saturation area fire directed against one contact at once.

That was really effective. Going up the ditch with BMPs on either flank allowed me to concentrate that converging fire and make the ditch a very dangerous place. I did have to uncover the enemy in there a team at a time as I probed forward with 2nd squad, but once I’d found them taking them out was pretty straightforward.

And this shows in the stats. The Syrians took 4 casualties and each one was inflicted by a different enemy team. Meanwhile, the BMP-2s inflicted 18 of the 19 Marine casualties. So we’ve definitely got a similar situation to the one we’ve had with the higher end platoons in the series. There’s a risk of casualties when making contact- primarily because we’re always attacking here and the enemy are likely to get the first shot off. But once enemy teams have been uncovered, cannon-armed vehicles can neutralise them with relative ease.

Conclusion

And again, like a lot of the other successful runs, there’s not that much to talk about here. Even what I covered has been mostly in relation to other platoons. I think the big takeaway is that this proves the Syrian platoons can compete with the NATO ones, providing they don’t get a bad hand.

Meanwhile, we’ve only got three platoons left: Canadians in Nyala MRAPs, British Mechanised in FV432 Bulldogs and Dutch Mechanised in YPR-765s. I guess the acid test for them is whether they end up above or below the BMP2s on the scoreboard. I’ll leave a link to the poll to decide which goes next down below.

That’s it for this video though. If you’d like to see these 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.