Commonwealth Airmobile Infantry Battalion

[aramis]

the published stats for nam were that 1 in 10 fired for effect, 3 in 10 fired in any given engagement, and 1 in 10 never fired at all. (US Army TraDoc, 1987)

Published stats for Gulf War I were much better...
1 in 20 never fired at all, and about 10 in 20 fired in any given engagement, but only 3 in 20 fired for effect. (Reported on NBC news in about 1996, IIRC)

TraDoc's "Fire for effect" meant aimed shots with hits on the enemy.


The change in training methods seem to have really improved the number of guys actually returning fire; also important, tho, is that both these wars had mostly short localized firefights, and a few large traditional battles; stats for the traditional battles are far worse at fire for effect and far higher rates of firing.

Essentially, most soldiers simply fire "in the enemy's direction" rather than at enemy troops.

 

[Peter Schutze]

Its also a matter of doctrine

a) I recall one interview with a small recon team .... an elite unit
the soldier replied that he hadnt fired at all because the enemy never came into his arc and he threw his spare magazines to those engaged

b) area fire vs marksmanship training .... Australian training focussed far more on hitting the target or 'scaring him'* as my seargent used to say than armies equipped with assault rifles eg AK's do. Area fire was something you only did on command as it rarely acheived much except emptying your magazines

c) that one in 10 never fired at all is a surprise because of the american practice of clearing fire ..... the mad minute where everyone sprays the area.

* if your section is being fired at and you can't see the origin or where your mates are hitting, put a couple of rounds into the most likely hiding areas

 

[aramis]

That 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 is simply individuals subject to panic.

Keep in mind, the figure for "never fired" is never expended ammunition during the course of a 1 year deployment in Vietnam in a combat arms unit. During The Vietnam War, draftees were part of the mix.

The current 1 in 20 statistic isn't well defined in the source I drew from; I suspect it to be during the 3 month deployment, tho' it's quite likely that it may have been for a longer deployment.

The never fired data definitely does not account for training activities while deployed, such as a unit at-the-range day while rotated to a base.

 

[sabredog]

tbeard1999:

Back to the really interesting stuff - how are you designing your vehicles for these formations? Striker, FF&S, or just Referee Fiat? Personally I've used Striker since it's inception and am always curious what others do.

 

[tbeard1999]

tbeard1999:

Back to the really interesting stuff - how are you designing your vehicles for these formations? Striker, FF&S, or just Referee Fiat? Personally I've used Striker since it's inception and am always curious what others do.

I used to use Striker, but its tech assumptions are increasingly dubious. In particular, it fails to keep up with modern hypervelocity penetrators (a modern 120mm APFSDS round has penetration comparable to a TL19 round in Striker).

FF&S is just too much work, although it yields better weapons tech.

I'm working on my own system that uses a simplified version of Striker and is (IIRC) similar to Megatraveller. Pick a hull volume (in cubic meters), add components. Maybe someday it will be ready for primetime. I've also strongly considered a revision of Striker (with new guns and armor charts).

In the interim, I base my vehicles and weapons on existing Real World vehicles. I try to quantify what the effect of higher TLs will be. So my light tiltrotor is really just a tiltrotor version of the UH60. It has fusion power, so it's a little better armored and has far greater range. Significant weight is saved from not having to carry hydrocarbon fuel, but I assume that this is consumed by the tiltrotor gear. Beyond that, I assume no huge increases in performance. Rather, I assume that the Commonwealth focuses on better reliabilty and ruggedness. As is appropriate for a tiltrotor, my transport is much faster than the UH-60.

I have sketched out what I think materials tech (and other weapons tech) will do at each tech level (not unlike the last part of LBB4). Then I take existing systems and scale them accordingly.

The armor chart looks like this:

TL	Armor		KE Eff	HEAP Eff
5	RHA		1	1
6	Laminate	1.5	2.0
7	Early Composite	2	2.5
8	Composite	3	3.5
9	Adv Composite	4	4
10	Exotic Comp	5	5
11	Unob-A		6	6
12	Unob-B		7	7
13	Unob-C		8	8
14	Unob-D		9	9
15	Unob-E		10	10

"KE Eff" is the relative effectiveness (vs. kinetic energy rounds) compared with rolled homogenous steel armor.

"HEAP Eff" is the relative effectiveness (vs. high explosive armor piercing rounds) compared with rolled homogenous steel armor.

So TL11 Bonded offers 6 times the protection of a comparable mass of rolled homogenous steel armor. I need some cool names for TL11+ armor. ("Unob" is unobtanium, of course.)

If I want a TL11 main battle tank, I start with the M1A2 Abrams. Its TL8 Composite Armor array has a frontal armor protection of about 60cm RHA. TL11 Bonded is twice as good as TL8 Composite, so the TL11 MBT has about 120cm RHA armor protection against KE rounds. The TL11 MBT frees up about 3 cubic meters of space and 3 tons of weight by using a fusion plant (this is mostly fuel). I assume that this will be allocated to better crew habitability and better crew survivability (as well as systems to let it function on a vacuum world), plus a point defense system. While the fusion plant produces more horsepower per ton than the TL8 gas turbine engine, I assume this additional power is used to provide power to the gauss main armament.

At the end of the day, the TL11 MBT is about the same size as an M1A2, but its capabilities are much greater.

I have similar charts for guns (range, penetration, rate of fire, etc.) and other tech.

The M1A2's main gun has an effective range of about 2.5 km. A TL11 MBT gun will have an effective range of about twice that, or 5km. It will have non-line of sight brilliant ammo capable of hitting targets at 15 km. However, penetration suffers and only direct fire weapons are typically effective against other MBTs. The gauss tank gun will have 4 times the ammo and twice the rate of fire of the TL8 12cm gun on the M1A2.

Etc., etc.

A lot of the design work is "dual-purpose". I'm completing my miniature wargame rules "A Fistful of TOWs 3" and the first supplement will be a sci-fi/near future rules set. I also have access to the armor database we compiled for A Fistful of TOWs 3, so I know to a fairly detailed degree what the protection levels of most modern military vehicles are and what the penetration and performance of modern tank guns, autocannon, missiles, etc. are.

 

[sabredog]

It looks good – clean, no worries about sloping, spaced armor, reactive and all that. I tried FF&S myself – too much work, even the spreadsheets I’ve downloaded or made are just too much for my tastes; one of the reasons I stick with CT is the clean rules approach for maximum imaginative effect (and I think the nostalgia for simpler times is causing it too). I also used to have more time on my hands back in the day to sit and spend hours designing vehicles and equipment by the hundreds that probably never would be seen by anyone but me, so I can’t do that anymore.

I had been out of the refereeing RPG-ing period) for about 13 years now and getting back into Traveller brought up all those old nagging concerns about materials/weapons/electronics/etc. advancement vs. the Trav rules. I decided to not worry about those details so much anymore and just limit myself to what I could do with the rules as they are except for a few modifications to the way starship and personal combat works to freshen things up a bit. I used to drive myself (and my fellow players) insane trying to constantly update GDW’s TacForce rules in the early 80’s just to account for the rapid updates of technology on the battlefield, let alone the chaos it caused in my CT campaigns. The players would cringe everytime I’d come running in waving the latest copy of Jane’s Defense Monthly saying, “Oh God, Scott’s going change all the rules again – let’s just go back to regular Traveller, please!!”

For my vehicles I use Striker and had set up a modular design for a light armored vehicle with a design spec for a plug in turret that allows the same chassis to use different weapons depending on the mission. It was more like the LAV’s, but heavier in armor and weapons, and pre-dated the Stryker by 20 years, so now I’m updating that to be more like a Stryker system. You gotta love that new modular design! The newer Rooikat 105 is what I’m updating the fast-wheeled tank hunter to be more like now that forms the assault arm of the colonial forces. It used to be more like that old 80’s RDF light armored tank without the manned turret…around 27 tons, 105mm firing APFSDS rounds. It had a Sheridan chassis I think, but I can’t remember the name for it – if it ever actually got past the test ranges what with things changing so fast back then.

So I’m keeping the clunky feel and lower tech stuff this time around. Since most places the players are going to be hanging around will be TL 10-11, and outside the Terran Empire it’ll make things more manageable for them. They used to so hate it when they’d get mixed up with fusion guns and battlesuits.

I'd probably get more into it if I had always had more wargamers in my CT groups than role-players. Ahh, those were the good old days.

 

[tbeard1999]

It looks good – clean, no worries about sloping, spaced armor, reactive and all that. ...

I decided to not worry about those details so much anymore and just limit myself to what I could do with the rules as they are except for a few modifications to the way starship and personal combat works to freshen things up a bit. I used to drive myself (and my fellow players) insane trying to constantly update GDW’s TacForce rules in the early 80’s just to account for the rapid updates of technology on the battlefield, let alone the chaos it caused in my CT campaigns. The players would cringe everytime I’d come running in waving the latest copy of Jane’s Defense Monthly saying, “Oh God, Scott’s going change all the rules again – let’s just go back to regular Traveller, please!!”

Yeah, been there and done that. One of the unexpected benefits of writing my own modern armored combat miniature rules was that I could use it without much change in RPGs. The Fistful of TOWs armored combat system is extremely fast and simple, so even non-wargamers could handle it.

For my vehicles I use Striker and had set up a modular design for a light armored vehicle with a design spec for a plug in turret that allows the same chassis to use different weapons depending on the mission. It was more like the LAV’s, but heavier in armor and weapons, and pre-dated the Stryker by 20 years, so now I’m updating that to be more like a Stryker system. You gotta love that new modular design! The newer Rooikat 105 is what I’m updating the fast-wheeled tank hunter to be more like now that forms the assault arm of the colonial forces. It used to be more like that old 80’s RDF light armored tank without the manned turret…around 27 tons, 105mm firing APFSDS rounds. It had a Sheridan chassis I think, but I can’t remember the name for it – if it ever actually got past the test ranges what with things changing so fast back then.

So I’m keeping the clunky feel and lower tech stuff this time around. Since most places the players are going to be hanging around will be TL 10-11, and outside the Terran Empire it’ll make things more manageable for them. They used to so hate it when they’d get mixed up with fusion guns and battlesuits.

Sounds fun. I guess we grognards are all the same...

I'd probably get more into it if I had always had more wargamers in my CT groups than role-players. Ahh, those were the good old days.

Indeed. I also made extensive use of Squad Leader mapboards (kept them all these years) and counters for larger scale actions.

If I can get the kinks worked out of my design system, I'll post it here. I'm aiming for a Car Wars level of design simplicity. And since the outputs are in real world units, they should be eaily convertible to Striker.

 

[sabredog]

Definitely post it...I heard about Fist Full of TOWs a while back, was that your's? I remember it was pretty slick, but again, a lack of reliable opponents defeated my wargaming addiction. If it wasn't for the internet and play by email I'd never get to play wargames at all, let alone against the sort of people I've had the fortune to play against in tournaments all over the world.

Squad Leader! I still have all my old SPI and AH games - including the monsters of them all: Squad Leader, Advanced Squad Leader, and Air War (incl the AW '80 update). Only Case White and Narvik remain of my Herculean effort to play GDW's monster game. We had to pin those to the walls here at the local wargame club and use magnetic counters in order to set up the entire game series at once.

 

[tbeard1999]

Definitely post it...I heard about Fist Full of TOWs a while back, was that your's? I remember it was pretty slick, but again, a lack of reliable opponents defeated my wargaming addiction.

Yup, that's me. There's a free version out there and a commercial version (FFT2) and a free version of the commercial version. We're humping it right now to get FFT3 out (eta June [crosses fingers]). There will be a sci-fi version soon thereafter.

Squad Leader! I still have all my old SPI and AH games - including the monsters of them all: Squad Leader, Advanced Squad Leader, and Air War (incl the AW '80 update). Only Case White and Narvik remain of my Herculean effort to play GDW's monster game. We had to pin those to the walls here at the local wargame club and use magnetic counters in order to set up the entire game series at once.

I never used magnetic counters; are they worth the trouble?