Imperial Marines and "Small Wars"

[Uncle Bob]

How did this thread get away from me?

In the 1960s-80s the infantry of most nations rode around in infantry combat vehicles (BMP to Braadly), essentially light tanks with extra seats. They fought from inside the ICV, because they were expecting an NBC war. Dismounting and running arouund was suicide.

Armored Personel carriers (M113 and BTR60) carried more men but fewer weapons because the infantry were expeccted to dismount to fight. This is often called a "battle taxi."

US Marines go beyond the battle-taxi. Amphibbious Assault vehicles carry 16 men ea, the neww AAAV maybe 20. These vehicles aren't even orgnic to a maarine baattalion, but are in sepeerate companies. My imperial maarines depend on assault boat squadronsss to get them anywhere theeeyy can't walk to.

If you want to go swanning around in grav vehicles, call the armmy.

 

[kaladorn]

Of course, a vehicle with more weight on the same bearing surface has a higher pressure/weight ratio and therefore higher ground pressure. At some point, that introduces issues in certain terrain types.

And the maintenance tasks associated with the upkeep of the vehicle had better decline at the same rate, and fewer of them require multiple-men simultaneously to complete, or you're in real trouble. This is one of the main duties of some mechanized infantry or cavalry folks.

 

[Badbru]

Originally posted by kaladorn:
[QB] Of course, a vehicle with more weight on the same bearing surface has a higher pressure/weight ratio and therefore higher ground pressure. At some point, that introduces issues in certain terrain types.

I think vehicle designers would take this into account. IIRC the British Scimitar light tank/recon vehicle has excellent crosscountry/wet ground performance due to quite wide tracks.So my guess is they'd widen the surface area of tracks or wheels.

Also having not served I'm not the best at decifering military, or even Traveller accronyms. Could you please explain your earlier use of MOUT and OOTW???

I run games in a TNE setting circa 1200 so my use of Marines is very much on an ad hoc basis.
Their deployment depends on availability and size which refers both to the availability of any marines at all, and that of what transport they'll use, and "how many" (size)marines or transports are available. TO&E's are only administrative as the field changes everything.

 

[Uncle Bob]

MOUT: Military Operations in Urban Terrain
OOTW: Operations Other Than War (i.e., peacekeeping)

The Scimitar has excellent cross-country performance, but its armor is so thin it can barely keep out rifle fire.

You can increase the boyancy of the suspension, but it will be big and heavy. Then you have to increase the engine, then you have to expand the armor to cover the big engine. That calls for a stouter suspension, and pretty soon you get a tank.

The current buzzword is "HAPC", or "Heavy Armored Personel Carrier". The Israeli's have them (based on captured T55s and old Centurians), as do the Russians and the Jordanians. They are as well protected as tanks, but they burn just as much gas and tear up the roads like tanks, too.

 

[kaladorn]

Originally posted by Uncle Bob:
MOUT: Military Operations in Urban Terrain
OOTW: Operations Other Than War (i.e., peacekeeping)

Also OBUA (operations in built-up areas) and FIBUA (Fighting in built up areas).

And OotW also includes things people mistakenly call peacekeeping (the balkans) but are really small wars or peace-making. There is no peace to keep. And they also cover cadre missions to train indiginous forces and things like stabilization operations to help governments that are 'a wee bit tippy' get the lid back on. And some counter-insurgencies.

The Scimitar has excellent cross-country performance, but its armor is so thin it can barely keep out rifle fire.

And A-10 pilots can't identify them as friendly.

You can increase the boyancy of the suspension, but it will be big and heavy. Then you have to increase the engine, then you have to expand the armor to cover the big engine. That calls for a stouter suspension, and pretty soon you get a tank.

Yes, though the trend towards self-deployability is noteworthy. This is what is driving the LAV and other wheeled vehicles - the ability to 'drive' on wheels to the battle area.

One of the major problems is strategic airlift sizes and weights. The LAV with the 105mm on it can't be loaded in with much ammo or fuel and it can't have its applique attached in a Herc, so consequently it isn't really a RO-RO (roll on, roll off) operation. It'll still need fueled, loaded out, and the applique bolted on when it arrives. And even then, it can't take on a tank, the 105mm is really just a good way to deter old enemy tanks and to hammer bunkers and such.

But a tank is hard to get around (requires a ship or a C5 Galazy). It eats gas, destroys roads, and doesn't have as good of self-deployability as wheeled vehicles, nor any decent airliftability.

The current buzzword is "HAPC", or "Heavy Armored Personel Carrier". The Israeli's have them (based on captured T55s and old Centurians), as do the Russians and the Jordanians. They are as well protected as tanks, but they burn just as much gas and tear up the roads like tanks, too.

This is known by another name - "Recycling".

It does work reasonably well - low silhouette, good armour, reasonable mobility, low cost to build. But cramped internal conditions, limited anti-armour weaponry or support weaponry, and a hull that can be killed by most (any?) modern LAW is gonna really still not make you survivable against another developed opponent - good against asymetric threats and the 'far behind', which is a lot of what the Israelis have to deal with.

 

[The Oz]

I agree with Uncle Bob: Imperial Marines use APCs only for long-range movements. Tactical movement is done individually (IMTU the Marine battledress has an integral grav belt).

The APCs IMTU are for supporting the Marines with nuclear dampers, battlefield meson screens, point defense fire, and ortillery/drone missile fire control centers.

 

[Uncle Bob]

http://arms.ashst.com/apc/btrt.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/israel/achzarit.htm
The Israel HAPC (like the Achzarit) have proved proof against light AT rockets like the RPG-7 and possibly the SAGGER ATGM. They don't let anything lighter go into Palestinian towns.

Of course, in Iraq the lightly amored Bradley and the AAV/LVTP-7 with applique armor were almost invulnerable to RPGs.

And my marines use Book 5 designed landing boats to go anywhere their legs or grav belts can't reach. More butch than grav APCs.

 

[kaladorn]

I believe if you get the right modern RPG warhead, it'll still punch through. Also, most modern LAWs will make mincemeat of these vehicles - they are designed (or else they are useless) to engage modern armour. There is always the armour-maker/armour-destroyer race and it flips back and forth, but a modern LAW that can't engage a modern tank with some chance of success isn't worth carrying. Now, fortunately (depending on your PoV - I'm speaking strictly from the Israeli infantryman perspective) this isn't the kind of threat presented to these older converted tanks.

Applique armour is great, as is the Bradley, but very heavy. You can't (IIRC) deploy a Bradley in a Herc. Applique increases the size of the 8x8s quite a bit too (enough to matter, at any rate).

Grav belts are reasonable as mobility for indivdual troopers. However, are they tactical mobility? And what do we even mean by that? Given the TL, tactical mobility to me means "anything within 500 km". Do you ride your grav belt that far?

And what do these marines do for support if they confront armour or the like, if they only have APCs? I'd think they'd want some Trepida Grav Tanks there to take out enemy heavy combatants. Especially if the enemy is a high tech/powerful enemy force.

IMTU/IYTU of course.

 

[The Oz]

I agree that at TL-15 "Tactical mobility" does mean several hundred kilometers, and since a man in battledress with a grav belt could travel at 100km/hour a movement of 500 km can be a "tactical" movement.

As for hostile armor, there's (in order, IMTU):
1)individual marines with anti-armor missiles.
2)anti-armor drone missiles/ortillery fire.
3)the Marines own armor (IMTU a battalion asset) armed with battlefield meson guns.

 

[kaladorn]

I don't think (may depend on ruleset) you'll kill enemy heavy armour (think armour value 70+ in MT) with a TAC missile. Though I could be wrong on that. I think 79G armour is tough to get through.

Ortillery is (depending on your TU) kind of indiscriminate. If you have targetable ortillery with guided submunitions, etc, then you might argue for it. At any rate, it would be *slow* - it takes quite a while for any launched ordinance to travel down from even LEO. Now, lightspeed weaps is another point, of course.

So you do have armour at B'N level.... okay, that makes good sense. Can you really fit a meson gun on a vehicle? (Other than a ship)

 

[mike wightman]

Can you really fit a meson gun on a vehicle? (Other than a ship)
Yes, in CT, TNE, T4(if you build them using FF&S2), GT, and T20

. The TL15 battlefield meson gun is missing from my copy of MT. Anyone know if it's in a supplement?

 

[Uncle Bob]

If my Marines need operational mbility they climb back into the landing boats (which are as well armored as a TL8 MBT) and hop 100-10,000 km. I think in terms of the old USMC "vertical envelopment".

For support my marines usually have fighters attached. A starship-class laser or FG will toast most grav vehicles with one shot. Tactically they act more as gunships than fighters. Much lighter than tanks, more flexible, but more expensive.

Since ortillery includes laser batteries and meson guns, it is not to be sneered at.

BTW, heavier AT weapons like the AT4 and RPG-18 (which can be considered LAWs if you squint) can likely defeat the armor on HAPC but may not get a catastrophic kill. Besides, such weapons are rare outside of NATO/former Warsaw Pact countries.

 

[The Oz]

Using STRIKER or FFS it is quite possible to create a (battledress-wearing-man-portable) tac missile that can defeat any realistic armored vehicle (grav or otherwise). My Marines have two missiles that can penetrate an MT rating of 79G. One can penetrate a rating of 95G.

 

[Rupert Boleyn]

Originally posted by The Oz:
Using STRIKER or FFS it is quite possible to create a (battledress-wearing-man-portable) tac missile that can defeat any realistic armored vehicle (grav or otherwise). My Marines have two missiles that can penetrate an MT rating of 79G. One can penetrate a rating of 95G.

However, using FF&S it's possible to build some pretty effective point defence systems. that leaves Tac missiles as something that you use on lower TL opponents, rear areas troops, BD equipped marines and in emergencies you fire large salvos at modern grav tanks in the hope they'll saturate the point defences and land a few hits.

 

[kaladorn]

How heavy/large is one shot of these heavy portable TAC missiles? How many can our BD marine actually carry?

Rupert makes a good point, and that doesn't count any zone defence weapons systems, which by TL-15 should be pretty ugly (Laser ZADS), nor advanced reactive armours (though PD may tacitly include this).

And don't you need to more than just slightly penetrate the average MT vehicle to get much chance of heavy damage? I don't do much vehicle combat, but the pen/att model for small arms always required a pen about double the armour to offer good chances of gutting the target. It might, I concede, be different for vehicles.

And to Uncle Bob:

If my ground forces have COACC equivalent, with SDBs and atmosphere-optimized fighters, the Imperial space fighters are gonna have a fight on their hands. Now, admittedly, this scenario involves a contested landing on a high pop world with good defenses.

Meson guns work both ways, as do lasers, and the latter are impacted by atmosphere.

Ortillery is nice, but it probably isn't a substitute for organic tube artillery support.

 

[jwcarroll60]

How about multiple tube rocket launchers that are remotely controlled once placed? They can be dropped during the early phases of the landing and provide fire support. Their loss to counter battery fire would not incur any direct casualties and would represent the loss of what are essentially disposable devices. I now it sounds low tech but with appropriate sensors and warhead loads they would be viable. They would also not require pick-up if you have to bug-out.

 

[The Oz]

To explain how Imperial Marines work IMTU:

They make opposed landings in high-survivability drop capsules. Mixed in with the troopers are lots of decoy capsules, and drop capsules containing remote-controlled multiple tube missile launchers containing 25 drone missiles each. This way the Marines arrive with lots of on-planet fire support.

On the ground, the remote launchers can be controlled by any Marine wearing leader or missileer battledress (that's 24 out of 50 Marines in a platoon), or by the FDCs in the Marine's support vehicles. The drone missiles in the remote launchers are the same as the ones fired from the missileer's personal launcher, so the remote missile launchers serve as additional ammo for the missileers.

I have a number of different drone missiles, including hyper-velocity kinetic-kill missiles (very hard for point defense or electrostatic armor to stop), electronic warfare missiles for jamming or decoy missiles that can look like other types of missiles to draw enemy point defense fire, or that can look like Marines in battledress or Marine vehicles, remote sensor drones, remote communications repeater drones, HE, HEAP, SEFOP, flechette, incendiary, etc, etc, etc. The mix of drone missiles dropped in the launchers depends on the expected resistance and targets.

Each trooper (except missileers) also wears a micro-missile launcher backpack that has a similar mix of missiles, smaller but still quite capable. This way each trooper can manage both direct and indirect fire all on his own. Leaders and scouts tend to have their backpack launchers loaded with electronic warfare and commo missiles, while troopers tend to have more attack missiles.

 

[Pagan priest]

SEFOP ???

 

[The Oz]

Self-Forging Penetrator, a type of top/bottom attack warhead.

 

[Straybow]

SEFOP ???

I'd always heard it called Explosively Forged Projectiles

The Scimitar has excellent cross-country performance, but its armor is so thin it can barely keep out rifle fire.

And A-10 pilots can't identify them as friendly.

And their aluminum armor has an annoying tendency to ignite like a gigantic flare when they get hit by anything larger than a rifle.