Military tactics for battle dress

[Baroun Tardis]

I've been reading "Out of the Mountains" by Kilcullen. It's a non-fiction about urbanized irregular warfare. There's a section talking about the Somali 'military', where they have squads that are mounted on a technical. Their whole tactical system is rule based:
"technicals advance line abreast at the very edge of visibility between them"
"On sighting the enemy, stop and dismount troops while firing with the mounted weapon"
"Troops advance slowly, if pinned down the then the technical's MG pounds them"
"Always move toward the sound of gunfire, if your neighboring technical is shooting, advance and flank/encircle". The point of the extended line is that your front is wide enough you wrap around the enemy when you find them. ...
These guys swarm like a wasps. No waiting for orders, very limited EM signature since very little radio use. ...

And the thought crossed my mind: Imperial Marines in battledress and GCarriers. They're going to move really fast, have sensors that make even a small unit have a really wide front for envelopment, and individually are going to be armed heavily enough to squish just about anything.

 

[Spinward Flow]

They're going to move really fast, have sensors that make even a small unit have a really wide front for envelopment

3D movement ... not just 2D.

Can you say "vertical envelopment" ...?

 

[Dragoner]

An advantage of powered armor is that they would not necessarily be tied to a vehicle for resupply as much, thus a 50 Cr AT weapon, isn't taking out a Multi-megacredit vehicle. Carriers also have a psychological impact, such as if in being knocked out, it can break the morale of the squad it is attached to. I also have thought that if you give BD troops a bicycle, and you have in fact a motorcycle. Bicycle troops are effective, esp in rough terrain. There is a Finnish war movie Ambush, which shows the effectiveness of bicycle troops.

Ambush (1999 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Spinward Flow]

An advantage of powered armor is that they would not necessarily be tied to a vehicle for resupply as much

Whut?

isn't taking out a Multi-megacredit vehicle.

Combat Armor has a price of Cr20,000 each @ TL 11, or Cr25,000 @ TL 12 (LBB4, p41 / LBB1.81, p41-42).
Battle Dress has a price of Cr200,000 each @ TL 13 (LBB1.81, p42).
GCarriers have a price of Cr1,000,000 each @ TL 8 (LBB3.81, p23).

40-50x Combat Armor = 1x GCarrier APC
5x Battle Dress = 1x GCarrier APC

Powered armor (battle dress) is expensive equipment to issue to infantry grunts.
You get what you pay for (don't get me wrong!) ... but it's still expensive.

 

[Baroun Tardis]

3D movement ... not just 2D.

Can you say "vertical envelopment" ...?

I figured they'd stay more nap-of-planet most of the time, so they're not standing out as a target... although :

Battle Dress has a price of Cr200,000 each @ TL 13 (LBB1.81, p42).

Powered armor (battle dress) is expensive equipment to issue to infantry grunts.
You get what you pay for (don't get me wrong!) ... but it's still expensive.

The thought crosses my mind that Battle Dress with a grav belt and high energy weapon is a fair match for a helicopter gunship and underMcr1
An AH-64 Apache is $82M, and even with the 5:1 dollars-to-credits ratio, that's still a really good deal. I guess the question is would battle dress be used in groups like infantry, or really small groups like helicopters?

 

[Spinward Flow]

The thought crosses my mind that Battle Dress with a grav belt and high energy weapon is a fair match for a helicopter gunship and underMcr1
An AH-64 Apache is $82M, and even with the 5:1 dollars-to-credits ratio, that's still a really good deal. I guess the question is would battle dress be used in groups like infantry, or really small groups like helicopters?

Depends on what you want to use a battle dress equipped troop for (@ TL13+).
PGMP/FGMP are the obvious weapons to equip battle dress troops with, but those weapons have automatic signature detection, so hard to be sneaky with them (then again, hard to be sneaky with battle dress). Against most troops, PGMP/FGMP will often be perfectly adequate, but might not necessarily be sufficient against armored vehicles (think Grav Tanks). If you need heavier weapons than a PGMP/FGMP you're back to looking for vehicle mounted weaponry rather than relying on infantry weapons to get the job done. For anything involving indirect fire )in a gravity well), you're looking towards RAM Grenade Launchers and rockets, possibly mortars as well. Energy weapons such as lasers and plasma/fusion guns tend to not work out quite so well in the indirect fire role (for some reason... ).

 

[whulorigan]

Energy weapons such as lasers and plasma/fusion guns tend to not work out quite so well in the indirect fire role (for some reason... ).

Well, you just need to fire a round from the under-barrel RAM-launcher with a mega-gravity projector warhead . . .

 

[Commander Truestar]

OK, first, "what is Battledress"?

Now, I believe I'm one of the few GM's who allows my PC's to have Battledress and then forces them to face situations where they:
1) Can't use it
2) have to decide if they should risk expensive gear
3) the list goes on.

That means I had to do a LOT or research to determine what Battledress is, and how it can be augmented?

So, I found in a DPG product that LSP Battledress includes: (NOTE: Ship's Trooper package)
Integral power-packs last up to 48 hours.
A "chameleon" surface, allowing color changes on command (with a kit of shipboard and space patterns)
Zero-friction bearings and sound-suppression equipment built into the suit make it eerily quiet.
A built in IR-masking system-bleeding heat to match background radiation, making it nearly invisible to IR sensors.
(In colder fields, it stores heat until it risks operator safety, then warns user to find safe cover to dump heat)
The suit's sensors give the HUD targeting, IR, LI, telescopic visor, micro/macro viewing, and remote televiewing from other data sources.
Combat package includes team comms, and a Tac-Battle computer (managing targets, giving current situation displays and handling
communications via a coordinating tactical computer)
EVA maneuver suite, Wearer-controlled magnetic boot soles.

In general, from my research, the "main weapon" depends on the duty with a Gauss Rifle in general use, but a FGMP-15 in heavy combat.

That said, the rifle or FGMP is just the "main weapon" and still makes for a formidable Man-on-Man combat platform.

But, it is configurable. Assault models of the Battledress come with a back-mounted missile launcher, among other things.

One PC in my game has the following weapons load out:
Main Weapon: Selective choice: Gauss Rifle or Laser Rifle
Secondary Weapon: (User is ambidextrous) Selective choice: Gauss Rifle or Laser Rifle (or second of the original: IE: 2 Gauss Rifles)
Installed Add on: Laser Pistol Mounted in Right arm blister above the elbow
Installed Add on: Grenade Launcher in Left shoulder blister w/5 rnd ammo bin.

Added to that, she has had a grav-harness system added

So, she can "fly", and has two main weapons (with a negative for attempts to aim at two targets)
She can also use her in-armor combat computer to designate targets for the laser pistol and grenade launcher.

She is, effectively, a single-person fire team.
Add her sensors and other instrumentation and she could single handedly give an enemy Squad a lot of trouble.

Put her into an Imperial fire team deployed in combat and that lone fire team should be able to engage an entire company of enemy
forces who are less well equipped

How this compares with modern world forces on earth?
I was formerly an Airborne Pathfinder, and our fire team was once deployed against a battalion
While the combat was all simulated (Miles gear, etc), it took us 45 minutes to bring the unit to submission after 24 hours of pre-planning.

With the toys Battledress provides, I can very definitely see much more capability regarding options on the battlefield.

 

[Commander Truestar]

With the toys Battledress provides, I can very definitely see much more capability regarding options on the battlefield.

Not to mention, my PC's don't have PGMP/FGMP toys...
Add that, along with a grav suit, and you can certainly see this fire team able to take on a platoon of tanks too...

 

[Grav_Moped]

Whut?

Combat Armor has a price of Cr20,000 each @ TL 11, or Cr25,000 @ TL 12 (LBB4, p41 / LBB1.81, p41-42).
Battle Dress has a price of Cr200,000 each @ TL 13 (LBB1.81, p42).
GCarriers have a price of Cr1,000,000 each @ TL 8 (LBB3.81, p23).

40-50x Combat Armor = 1x GCarrier APC
5x Battle Dress = 1x GCarrier APC

Powered armor (battle dress) is expensive equipment to issue to infantry grunts.
You get what you pay for (don't get me wrong!) ... but it's still expensive.

Different point: troops in battle dress, particularly with grav belts, are armored vehicles in and of themselves to some extent.

The APCs might be useful for deployment or evac, but the troops on their own are pretty formidable -- which is kind of the point.

Or what @Commander Truestar said.

 

[Spinward Flow]

How this compares with modern world forces on earth?

Two options:

1. Machinegunner vs Bolt Action Long Guns
2. "Bows and arrows against the lightning. They haven't seen the heat ray yet."

 

[Commander Truestar]

Two options:

1. Machinegunner vs Bolt Action Long Guns
2. "Bows and arrows against the lightning. They haven't seen the heat ray yet."

I love Jeff's "War of the Worlds"

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Battledress is no panacea, it's just light armour.

It can be killed by mid-tech anti-matriel rifles or low-tech bazookas, much less hi-tech weapons.

The poor bloody infantry will still mostly be seeking cover.


Neither grav tanks nor BD will be flying around in plain sight.

 

[Condottiere]

The Sword Worlders have experience dealing with them.

If the battery pack only lasts an hour, then they are shocks troops.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Battledress is no panacea, it's just light armour.
It can be killed by mid-tech anti-matriel rifles or low-tech bazookas, much less hi-tech weapons.

The poor bloody infantry will still mostly be seeking cover.

Neither grav tanks nor BD will be flying around in plain sight.

Agreed,
And, if you do a study of Traveller weapons, the "Gauss" class of needle throwers penetrate Battledress well.

That aside, it is the reaction and response to BD-equipped forces which make them devastating,
As I said, each BD-Equipped trooper becomes a monstrous attack unit on it's own.

This is why the title "Military tactics for battle dress" drew me in
Where the suits can be shot down easily using the proper tactics, they also allow a commander to deploy highly maneuverable heavily armed units to a battlefield with devastating effects.

While you can deploy a huge line of BD-troopers to kill en masse, (while also taking Omaha Beach scale losses), you have the maneuverability to use "sudden strike" or "strike and fade" measures along with remote-strike capabilities all tied together thanks to the on-board battle computers.

And, where you link or daisy chain these, you also provide everyone in your command circuit a reduction in "Fog of War". That's because the combined processing of the linked battle computers can take everything from what is processed from the bleeding edge to the sensor feeds of the remote supporting heavy weapons units.

So, ignoring the lethality of weapons in direct confrontation, it is the other ways BD can change the battlefield, and command and control, that matters.

Ex:
Today, I set up an ambush by lining up my units to create a sealed kill box and "hope" I read the enemy movement correctly so they enter the box. I then hope my teams do not blow the ambush by firing early, because of fog of war

Battledress: My troopers are in a web-configuration, deployed so their grav harnesses will let them create kill boxes in a random number of locations within the web. When an enemy unit, perhaps even numbering 3 to 5 times the numbers I command, enter a zone, I electronically designate where each trooper should "land" and what part of the target unit they should strike.
Moving in silently thanks to the grav harness, each trooper can designate direct and indirect fire from their armor-mounted weapons while either using the weapons in their hands to fire or even picking up an enemy trooper and throw them in a direction the HUD-designator says will have that flying body encounter the most enemy figures.
then, after throwing the first target into a mass of confused and surprised enemy, the BD-trooper can grab hand weapons and add their controlled fire into the designated fire from your armor-mounted weapons.
each BD-trooper is a fire team, and continues fire until the enemy unit is devastated or until a command recall is done.

Then, the BD-troopers hit their grav harness controls and rocket out leaving the surviving enemy dazed, confused and possibly even unable to track their retreating attackers..

 

[McPerth]

My take about tactics on BD is more or less what is told in Starship Troopers. Dispersion and keeping on ground, jockeying for cover (despite the armor) with short, point jumps to maneuver.

According MTJ issues 1 and 2, BD uses to have integral grav belt, and so they are quite mobile, but in the environment they are likely to be used, weapons are too accurate to remain on sight, and so both BD troops and grav vehicles would try to stay covered as much as they can. The comparison with current attack helicopters seem right to me.

I don’t believe they are regularly armed with PG/FG, as they are too destructive. If you want such level of destruction you bomb the zone, you don’t send the infantry. Infantry is for more selective targets or occupation, and occupying a radiated zone is worth close to nothing 8and better achieved with nukes or ship grade PG/FG. Lasers are a good choice if you might have supply problems, as any power plant becomes an ammo source.

Again according to MT (the only version I know where penetration/armor is separate from damage, so giving a good comparative), PG/FG may damage most tanks with pinpoint fire at close range, but they are nearly useless against modern ones at longer distances. Nonetheless their main role would be support.

And of course, all of this would depend on the environ and the enemy they expect to face (mostly its TL)

But I'm only an armchair tactician, and YMMV...

 

[Spinward Flow]

So, ignoring the lethality of weapons in direct confrontation, it is the other ways BD can change the battlefield, and command and control, that matters.

John Scalzi had a wonderful example of this differential in tactics demonstrated in his book Old Man's War.

Without spoiling anything character or plot related in the story ... everyone who signs up with the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) gets made into supersoldiers. One of the side effects/benefits of this is that everyone gets issued with what is called a Brain Pal, basically a personal AI that can communicate with the Brain Pals of other CDF soldiers (think private comms network if it helps).

Some of the new recruits are former marines and army troops, who think they know how wars are supposed to be fought, because they have experience at fighting in wars (on Earth) before.

During basic training, the Drill Sergeant breaks the recruits up into different units (4 if I'm remembering correctly) and pits them against each other out in the field to find out which unit can use their tools and training they've received the best (and to help determine leadership potential, etc.). The former military people fall back on their old habits, doing what they remember from their former military careers, thinking that such tactics will give them an edge.

Main character John Perry convinces his unit to do something RADICALLY different.
Instead of sweep through terrain to engage hostiles with massed fire (like the former military people), he has his unit disperse and just do recon ONLY using their Brain Pals to coordinate their unit. When a hostile is sighted, the spotter DOES NOT ENGAGE ... instead they remain hidden and mark the target, so someone else on the team can maneuver into position to take the shot. It's a VERY co-op strategy, made possible by their Brain Pals and secure communications networks. Essentially, the entire unit turns into an ad hoc collection of Spotter/Snipers who can forward observe their opponents while camouflaged and choose the best times and locations to coordinate fires. Because the unit disperses out they're able to "area deny by observation" a huge swath of the map, with everyone in John Perry's unit operating on a defensive recon basis until spotting a hostile. They basically become "ghosts of the battlefield" because none of them cluster together and they're pooling their battlefield intel for improved situational awareness.

John Perry's unit starts picking off members of the other units from what amounts to relative safety ... because, SURPRISE! ... and by the time the other units figure out what's going on, it's simply too late (too much attrition in other units). John Perry's unit "wins" the competition ... and the Drill Sergeant gives John Perry a really long hard look, because what his unit did was NOT what usually happens during this particular training exercise with other recruits.



Point being that good recon, command, control, communications, computer, intelligence (RC⁴I) can make a TREMENDOUS difference in the deployment options for an infantry unit. Spoiler alert: battle dress brings integrated RC⁴I capabilities all the way down to the fire team and even individual infantryman level.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

And that's before including the fact that battle dress gives you "super strength" and functionally "unlimited endurance" due to power assisted movement, plus battle computer, environmental protection, camouflage, sensor package, armor, communications ... the whole kit 'n' caboodle.

 

[Commander Truestar]

I don’t believe they are regularly armed with PG/FG, as they are too destructive. If you want such level of destruction you bomb the zone, you don’t send the infantry. Infantry is for more selective targets or occupation, and occupying a radiated zone is worth close to nothing 8and better achieved with nukes or ship grade PG/FG. Lasers are a good choice if you might have supply problems, as any power plant becomes an ammo source.

I agree with that 100%
Most of any conventional fire team(5 or 4 men depending on the unit and nationality) in current western military units have mostly riflemen helping carry components to support the one or two man-portable "heavier weapons" in a team.

So, scaling that forward, that means one PGMP/FGMP armed trooper per team where such weapons are deployed.

The only place I see this differently used would be in the Traveller universe where the GM allows for Imperial Psionic Jump Troopers. There, I would foresee (no pun intended) that every IPJT would have an FGMP so they could do the most possible damage once aboard an enemy ship.

 

[Commander Truestar]

John Perry's unit starts picking off members of the other units from what amounts to relative safety ... because, SURPRISE! ... and by the time the other units figure out what's going on, it's simply too late (too much attrition in other units). John Perry's unit "wins" the competition ... and the Drill Sergeant gives John Perry a really long hard look, because what his unit did was NOT what usually happens during this particular training exercise with other recruits.

This is essentially, the basis of my web-based ambush strategy from my earlier comments, except in my case, the ambush is direct and an masse instead of "by sniper".

Still, two slices off the same pie.

 

[Spinward Flow]

except in my case, the ambush is direct and an masse instead of "by sniper".

It's a difference between massed fire into a kill zone versus a "shoot 'n' scoot" to avoid detection (and thus, retaliation). Depending on where people are (and what's going on) you aren't always going to be able to coordinate a massed fire onto an objective ... and sometimes if you try, you run the risk of giving away your position (too many cooks syndrome).

Still, two slices off the same pie.

Very much so.
Which option is better (massed fire vs spotting for snipers) is largely a function of Who Is Where (friendly AND enemy) and a question of risks and timing.

I was formerly an Airborne Pathfinder

Then I should probably stop "preaching to the choir" about this topic and let the REAL professionals showcase their skills!