Force Multipliers in Infantry Combat

[Thunderbolt]

Having seen some YouTube videos talking about how modern troops, particularly with their modern gizmos, can bring far more firepower to bear than ever before, I'm interested in people views about the kind of force multipliers we can expect to see, particularly with Battle Dress and CT and MGT weapons.

I guess the scenario I'm thinking of is the hypothetical stand off between some insurgents of the kind we hear about daily with RPGs, grenades and so forth, and fully equipped TL14 / 15 troops.

Are we talking a ten to one ratio here? What would be the minimum size of a full on high tech unit, after all, you still want some one to cover you.

Does the tech level discrepancy afford invulnerability, or do the greater numbers of enemy still represent a threat? Does the chaos of actual combat make the outcome not as certain as you might think?

Perhaps somebody has already role-played this kind of turkey shoot?

What sort of innovations might a lower tech force employ, after all, the insurgents in Iraq have come up with all sorts of "asymmetric" forms of warfare.

 

[sfchbryan]

I've always viewed Infantry in Battle Dress as the equivalent of a MBT in todays army.

When I taught at OCS & we did our staff ride at first it was hard to get the candidates to correlate firepower from the Civil War into today's weapon systems..

I just told them to view a cannon as a SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon - replacement for machine gun) and companies as platoons. Once they made the mental conversions, it was much easier for the candidates to understand the ebb and flow of a battle.

In Asymmetric warfare, you will see the same type of stuff whether it is TL15 or TL1. The weapon systems will change, but the fundamental principles will not.

It won't be a turkey shoot by any means. At higher TLs, booby-traps will be made of TDX and other high tech equivalents. It may kill fewer soldiers, but the effect (and that is what is most important) will be the same.

In an occupation scenario, the TL15 soldiers will be limited by their ROE (Rules of Engagement), whereas the bad guys will not. They will use everything within their power to drive off the occupying force.

For example, look what happens when a FMPG-15 is fired. If you don't hit the target, you might hit the local orphanage, a wedding party, or whatever. This doesn't win hearts & minds.

 

[The Oz]

Considering that a trooper in battledress is basically wearing armor equal to a TL7 tank (in STRIKER terms), insurgents will need to use the kinds of weapons that are being used in Iraq against American vehicles: RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades), improvised explosive devices (IEDs), land mines, those sorts of things.

Insurgents would also try to hit the troopers when they =aren't= wearing the armor, or (as is also happening in Iraq) attack the locals who support the troopers. Biological or chemical attacks against the troopers (out of armor) would also be possible but risky (might provoke Imperial intervention, but if it's the Imperials you're fighting against, what have you got to lose?). Perhaps there's some tiny local insect that just =loves= to nest inside nice warm electronics cabinets, or a microbe that digests some Imperial plastics.

Insurgents fight up more than about 1 or 2 tech levels will have to be very creative. One thing would be to remember that they are fighting =people=, not machines. Something that would affect the enemy's thinking is much more important that something that just kills him.

 

[whartung]

There's a couple of issues, actually.

1) Simple numbers. How many are you fighting? When you run out of ammo/power/fuel, the Zulu's win.

2) KISS applies weapons too. Consider that most of the troopers are using optical, and even electronic, sighting systems today. Clearly the reliablity has moved up to the point where these are reliable in combat, at least in a well supported urban setting. But every one of them is trained to not rely on it. Who wants to lose a gun fight because of a dead battery. As TL improves, weapon reliability improves, and costs come down.

Consider Civil War muskets even though we clearly had lever action, repeating arms. They just weren't cheap enough to deploy widely. Then, later, the ubiquitous bolt action that served well in WWI, but then the crazy Americans bring a full power semi-auto to WWII while the others are still using the slower bolt actions. But no doubt someone, somewhere, was worried about the complex action of the Garand, and its reliability compared to bolt equipped '06.

Then, of course, came the rise of the assault rifle, and the early issues with the M16. One aspect of the AK-47 that makes it so popular is its reliability in bad environments.

Slugthrowers are very efficient at cheaply, and reliably, delivering energy to a target.

3) Leveraging doctrine. The reason the enemy are fighting from "restricted" targets is simply because they're restricted. The full weight of high Tech firepower doesn't do a whole lot when it can't be employed.

4) lower tech may mean lower maintenance and less parts to go foul. A FGMP does no good if some diode is broken and it won't fire.

Weber and Ringo's "March..." series covers the adventures of a TL-N company of troops up against a nasty world and TL-0 natives.

 

[tbeard1999]

Having seen some YouTube videos talking about how modern troops, particularly with their modern gizmos, can bring far more firepower to bear than ever before, I'm interested in people views about the kind of force multipliers we can expect to see, particularly with Battle Dress and CT and MGT weapons.

In my opinion, the general trend is for insurgencies to be less effective as technology -- particularly reconnaissance tech -- improves. Insurgents are seldom able to stand toe to toe with regular troops without suffering grossly disproportionate casualties. These days, Islamist savages in Iraq and Afghanistan invariably get hammered when they tangle with professional US/UK/Allied troops. The same was true of the Viet Cong in 1967.

Despite overwhelming conventional superiority, a major challenge for the regular force is to find the insurgents and hit them. A related challenge is to detect and avoid insurgent ambushes.

Both of these challenges are addressed by better reconnaissance capabilities. And the trend over the last 50 years is clear--reconnaissance capabilities are advancing to a remarkable degree. This inevitably favors the regular forces.

On the battlefield, training can have a far greater impact on the combat performance of regulars vs insurgents than equipment can IMHO. Consider the casualties in the 1993 battle of Mogadishu--the most reliable estimates are that the Americans (elite rangers and professional soldiers) lost 18 and the Somali irregulars lost 700...a fantastic disparity. Yet one that would be very familiar to Islamist savages in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003-2007. I doubt that battledress will make much of a difference (especially since CT battledress can be fairly easily defeated by gauss rifles, which are the common infantry rifles of that TL). As armies get more technologically advanced, I think that they will tend to become more professional. In addition, advanced technology allows armies to hone their fighting skills through the use of highly realistic simulation tech. This will generally favor the regulars.

And things like armed RPVs are highly effective against insurgents, but would be nearly useless against regular troops (who have far more elaborate jamming and antiaircraft assets).

Of course, I doubt that technology alone will end insurgent warfare. But I think that technology disproportionately favors the regular troops over the insurgents.

 

[atpollard]

Of course, I doubt that technology alone will end insurgent warfare. But I think that technology disproportionately favors the regal troops over the insurgents.

The only caviat that I see to your analysis is based on a feud I once had the unfortunate experience to participate in in the rural Southeastern US. The lesson that I took home was that the person with the more expensive infrastructure has a harder time defending against economically disproportionate losses. The Imperium could find itself loosing a lot of commercial starships to 'terrorist commerce raiding' and replacing a lot of expensive starports. Imagine a tanker full of unrefined fuel arrives at the highport to be refined - only it explodes while docked instead.

A local crackdown will lead to a Vietnam-like deterioration of popular support, swelling the rebel movement. If the local assets are too well guarded, then the insurgents will blow-up ships at the next starport, instead. Even if the rebels have no chance of military victory, such a conflict could quickly become expensive and disruptive to trade throughout the region.

 

[Vargas]

Islamist savages in Iraq and Afghanistan

Never heard that term used before. And now I've read it twice in the same post . . .

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Well...

It might come from the age old need to de-humanize one's opponents so as to make the killing and maiming of the easier on your troops.

If they aren't human and thus just like you you don't get those nasty post traumatic problems with a culture that says killing other humans is wrong and violating that ethic in battle.

War being such fun and all...(that is in fact sarcasm, know a few peeps in the services).

 

[atpollard]

Please let the Real World debate slide and focus on the game applications.
I like this Topic but will not follow it into "the pit".

 

[Eamon]

Remember Hi-Tech means High Cost. The cost of an Imperial Battle Dress Regiment is high but the upkeep is even higher. The yearly upkeep could easily be in the billions.
Even the Imperium could not a planetary occupation force in existence for very long.
The Rebels could simply stop fighting wait a couple years. When the Imperium moves their High-Tech forces to the next hot spot the Rebels resume the war against the lower tech replacements.
Besides not all resistance to Imperial occupation has to be violent.
Gandhi with his nonviolent resistance.
The Velvet Revolution.
The Boycotts of the Irish.
Worker Strikes or slowdowns.
The list goes on.

 

[Icosahedron]

Maybe a lot depends on the Rules of Engagement as suggested earlier. The affairs in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are all examples in which the high-tech force is hampered by it being a 'low key' conflict, media-consciousness, unpopularity back home, etc, etc.

Consider instead the German occupation of Europe. Those guys weren't worried about TV cameras or the 'hearts and minds' of the locals.

They did a pretty good job of maintaining control even though there wasn't a great TL disparity between themselves and the Resistance. Every time a soldier got killed by an 'insurgent', ten townsfolk were lined up against the wall. Seemed to work for the Nazis.

If the guy with the battledress has both hands tied behind his back with red tape, of course he'll have a hard time controlling the natives. Occupation policy and rules of engagement are paramount IMO.

 

[atpollard]

Would every 'enemy' killed, result in 10 new sympathizers?
Especially an obviously unjust system like selecting people at random to be punished.

What about the allied occupation of Germany after WW2 (or US occupation of Japan)?
Those two seem to have been sucessful.
The countries are prosperous. The military is within it's borders.
Neither country has a significant minority of the population cheering on acts of terrorism.
I would assume that a 1000 year old Imperium would have a fair idea about what works and what doesn't.

 

[pendragonman]

What about the allied occupation of Germany after WW2 (or US occupation of Japan)?
Those two seem to have been sucessful.
The countries are prosperous. The military is within it's borders.
Neither country has a significant minority of the population cheering on acts of terrorism.
I would assume that a 1000 year old Imperium would have a fair idea about what works and what doesn't.

Yes, the allied occupation of Germany 63 years later can be viewed as a success. It started out with 1.6 MILLION (just American, not including British, Soviet, French and all other allied contingents) troops initially deployed in an area of about 138 square miles and pared down by 1948 to 38000 American troops to cover 27000 square miles. So for the bulk of three years there was almost a 1:20 ratio of occupier to civilian. It is very hard to make much trouble when there is one heavily armed cop for every 20 people. That's not 20 MEN but 20 people--men, women and children. By the end of those three years, the new government was firmly in control which is why the occupation became a constabulary in Bavaria. Remember, there was an attempt at an insurgency in Germany post WWII, it just didn't take.

The truth of the matter is that a technological edge does not mean that you need fewer boots on the street for an occupation. Just look at the American experience in Iraq or Vietnam, or the Soviet experience in Afghanistan as an example. When you try to run an occupation "on the cheap" i.e. with too few troops, insurgencies flourish as they can have several locations to gather in groups of more than a couple of people. And it is in these group sessions that major insurgency recruiting happens among the disaffected.

 

[tbeard1999]

It might come from the age old need to de-humanize one's opponents so as to make the killing and maiming of the easier on your troops.

When did the term "dehumanize" come to mean "accurately describing someone"?

Seems to me that the term "Islamist" is factually accurate. As is the term "savage". By any rational norm of conduct, the Islamists are barbaric, depraved savages. Of course, barbaric acts occur in any large conflict on all sides. But these are usually accidents, aberrations, or unavoidable consequences of otherwise legitimate tactics. What distinguishes the Islamist savages is that depraved barbarism is their core tactic.

And I just don't have a problem accurately describing them as savages.

Now, as to the subject of this thread, I think that the historical evidence is that savagery is not a partcularly effective tactic most of the time, especially when used against democracies. Nazi and Japanese savagery during WWII didn't scare the Allies into surrendering. Soviet savagery didn't prevent the formation of NATO and the stationing of significant forces in Western Europe to defend against Soviet aggression. And the Islamists are just the latest in a long lind of gibbering, delusional morons who are finding out the Hard Way that the soft Western democracies have teeth. It's one thing to luridly gibber on about blood, slaughtering infidels, etc. It's quite another when a grim-faced professional citizen-soldier comes for your scalp.

I think that most folks are angered by barbarism and are not generally inclined to appease the savages. The exception seems to be among certain classes of elected leaders. From Neville Chamberlain to most Democrats in the US, appeasement seems to have a certain attraction. There is little evidence IMHO to indicate that this is a widely shared view among the voters. The fact that appeasment minded politicians go to great lengths to conceal their intentions supports my position.

I don't expect this to change in the future.

For that matter, I don't even expect to be an issue except when the savages are fighting opponents with consensual governance. Neither Germany nor Russia was intimidated by the remarkable savagery of the other during WWII, for instance. An autocratic state like the Imperium would react similarly, I think.

Of course, the population of democracies -- which the Imperium isn't -- may require their leaders to make a more pointed cost-benefit analysis than the populations of autocracies. But at the end of the day, savagery as a policy will not generally produce a net benefit for the insurgents IMHO.

 

[mike wightman]

What if it'd TL15 occupation troops and TL12 insurgents?

The asymetric warfare of a TL12 savage is going to be of a higher order than the real world gives us examples of.

 

[tbeard1999]

Maybe a lot depends on the Rules of Engagement as suggested earlier. The affairs in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq are all examples in which the high-tech force is hampered by it being a 'low key' conflict, media-consciousness, unpopularity back home, etc, etc.

Consider instead the German occupation of Europe. Those guys weren't worried about TV cameras or the 'hearts and minds' of the locals.

They did a pretty good job of maintaining control even though there wasn't a great TL disparity between themselves and the Resistance. Every time a soldier got killed by an 'insurgent', ten townsfolk were lined up against the wall. Seemed to work for the Nazis.

If the guy with the battledress has both hands tied behind his back with red tape, of course he'll have a hard time controlling the natives. Occupation policy and rules of engagement are paramount IMO.

I think that it's important not to overstate the "lessons" of Vietnam. Vietnam was actually a very unusual insurgency. And query whether "victory" is an accurate term for a conflict in which the "victors" admit to losing 20 dead for every enemy killed.

Anyhow, the US failed in Vietnam (IMHO) due to a perfect storm of circumstances that are unlikely to appear regularly in the future--especially in the Imperium. In order of importance, here's my list:

1. The insurgents were supplied by the Chinese and Soviets. Their source of supply was immune from US attack. As far as I know, few insurgencies have failed when this was the case. See the Soviet failure in Afghanistan for supporting evidence and the British success in Malaysia (where the insurgents were effectively isolated from their sources of supply). The Imperium has the ability to completely isolate systems from resupply by unfriendly governments, so they won't typically face this situation.

2. President Johnson made a cynical and unprecedented decision not to deploy the force necessary to win, and then decided not to withdraw. This guaranteed a strategic stalemate. Johnson's subsequent humiliation serves as an effective warning for future politicians. And in any case, Johnson's calculations were motivated by the desire to convince the voters that his social welfare policies were more important than some distant war. An autocratic regime like the Imperium would not need to make such calculations.

3. Predictably, the US people tired of that stalemate and questioned whether the cost was worth the purported benefit. This will, IMHO, inevitably happen in a democracy, so #2 should be avoided at all costs. Citizens of autocracies will have far less ability to influence policy like this.

4. The US media managed to convert the Tet Offensive -- a decisive Viet Cong defeat (even they thought so) -- into a US defeat. They were unable to repeat this feat with Iraq, which leads me to conclude that this was a one-time occurence (though I predict they'll keep trying). I think that the degree of media culpability in the US defeat has been overstated (although I think it's highly probative of the systemic anti-US bias in the US media). However, the media has been highly effective in pushing the false "Vietnam was doomed to fail" meme. The war, like most wars, was winnable. The US simply failed to do what was necessary to do so. The influence of the media is likely to be far less in the Imperium for the simple reason that communication is limited to the speed of travel.

So I'd caution Traveller referees from using Vietnam -- especially the ridiculous media version of Vietnam in movies like Platoon, Apolcalypse Now, etc., as a model for future insurgencies. Malaysia, Iraq and Afghanistan are far more relevant to what insurgencies would like in the Imperium. And in particular, don't overrate the ability of the media to lose insurgencies. They've really only done it once (and had lots of help).

 

[tbeard1999]

What if it'd TL15 occupation troops and TL12 insurgents?

The asymetric warfare of a TL12 savage is going to be of a higher order than the real world gives us examples of.

I really think that all this talk of "asymetric warfare" misses a key point. The limited evidence we have of asymetric warfare actually working involves democracies. The Imperium is *not* a democracy. Popular opinion -- which is what most asymetric threats are aimed at -- is simply nowhere near as important in an autocracy.

Now, I would agree that weapons of mass destruction (particularly nukes) give insurgents a theoretical capability to inflict carnage WAY out of proportion to their numbers. But in my mind, this simple means that any successful future state will have to become ferocious in their intolerance for insurgents and far more proactive than they are today. Governments that provide the necessary aid and support for insurgents will (IMHO) be punished far more directly and brutally than they have been in the last 30 years.

To illustrate this, consider this question. If a terrorist nuke goes off on the Arc D'Triomph, does anyone imagine that the French will continue their normal policy of appeasing terrorists?

A TL12 insurgency must have access to TL12 gear. Every significant insurgency of the last century has involved insurgents who got their critical materiel from external sources. And they've been successful if the supply source was invulnerable to attack. The implications of this fact should be obvious. No nation can afford to allow other nations to provide significant material to insurgents. And in the Traveller universe, it will be far easier to interdict insurgents than it is today.

 

[Renaissance Man]

Getting away from the politics of language debate or the democracy vs. tyranny debate...

TL disparity and the general disparity in the size and cost of the opposing war machines, are important but not the only determinant in asymmetrical warfare. Here's my two cents, building on what has already been said:

1) ROE have been mentioned and are perhaps the most important.

In a total war scenario, he who controls orbit "wins"... but what they win is a smoldering wasteland. ROE are the operational manifestation of the political goals of the mission -- they define what "winning" means. Also note that ROE can and do exist for both sides of an asymmetrical conflict... though it may not always be apparent. Enforcement of and compliance with ROE differ from force to force and are largely a function of the discipline of the army.

A fractured sectarian militia of poorly-trained, poorly-fed young men will have difficulty fighting under a central set of ROE even if they want to. Hence Moqtada al-Sadr had to publicly threaten restive elements of his own militia with ex-communication in order to get compliance on a ceasefire... something that is neither good for morale nor the enemy's perception of your level of organization and discipline. Throughout history, even "conventional" armies with a strong command structure and harsh punishments for non-compliance have had difficulty maintaining ROE in-theatre.

It's also important to note that ROE can be creatively interpreted by those in command, or selectively relaxed at the behest of political bodies in order to achieve military goals. Certain units (special forces, psychological ops) may be exempt. Auxiliary forces (mercenaries, locally hired irregulars) may be exempt. This allows the occupying force to fight irregulars on their own terms, while masking the inevitable moral equivalence this produces behind the veil of plausible deniability. Those with armed forces experience who have bridled under the contradictions between the political and military goals of a mission may recognize the temptation to do this. Paramilitary forces also deal with this temptation... I call it the Dirty Harry Syndrome.

2) Soft Vs. Hard Targets.

This is related to ROE insofar as we assume the invading/occupying army has political goals that take the conflict outside the realm of total war. Even if the army itself presents a hard target that cannot be directly attacked without considerable losses, logistics and infrastructure may be more vulnerable. Thus an irregular force at lower TL can focus on political rather than military targets (like "collaborators", local police recruits, members of puppet governments.) Strictly speaking, an occupying army provides a target rich environment for native forces.

3) Intelligence and Local Support

A resistance force, if it can maintain local support, has a very large HUMINT network available to report enemy troop movements, force concentration, etc. They will also have the benefit of hiding spots, logistic support and counterintelligence from the local population, in addition to a pool of potential replacement soldiers. They will also have knowledge of other strategic and tactical resources (such as terrain, weapon depots) that an invading army will miss. This can have a decisive impact on the outcome of the conflict.

4) Tactics

Sometimes, there is very simply a tactical mismatch due to poor judgment that can completely erase any advantage found from TL. I know that this is probably taken as a given, but cultural, ideological or historical factors can lead a numerically or technologically superior force into disaster because of a failure to change tactics. Either side can completely fail or brilliantly succeed based on the intelligence and sophistication of their leaders and tactics.

***

In other words, the "force multiplier" from TL really depends on a host of conditions within the theatre of war, and cannot be reliably considered outside of this context.

 

[Renaissance Man]

P.S... sorry about the wanky, professorial language in my last post.

 

[tbeard1999]

Getting away from the politics of language debate or the democracy vs. tyranny debate...

TL disparity and the general disparity in the size and cost of the opposing war machines, are important but not the only determinant in asymmetrical warfare. Here's my two cents, building on what has already been said:

1) ROE have been mentioned and are perhaps the most important.

I flatly disagree. Rules of Engagement (edit--in an insurgency) are relevant only to governments that actually care about things like collateral damage. Historically, ROEs that benefit insurgents have only been seriously used by democratic nations (and of course, only a minority of them).

The Third Imperium is not a Western Democracy.

Therefore, many of things that influence wars against Democracies--especially things that turn on public opinion--are far less relevant to the Third Imperium.

And of all the major factors that result in insurgencies winning against democracies, I think that overly restrictive rules of engagement are pretty low on the list.