Combat-Writing Thread

There were a number of factors; most of them were uniquely Soviet.

First, this was an entire society that was based around the idea of central control; a command economy, the omnipresent influence of the state in day-to-day life. The fact they wanted to practice it in a military setting as well was probably inevitable.

Second, the Soviet Army, at least in its Cold War form, was very much an all-conscript force in its non-commissioned ranks or as near as makes no difference. It was not uncommon for squad sergeants to be conscripts, and far more common than most of us would think sane for platoon sergeants to be conscripts; enlisted career soldiers only start appearing with regularity in company NCO positions. Similarly, many company officers were effectively university ROTC doing their mandatory military service rather than volunteers. (The nickname pidzhaki, literally "jackets", has survived into the modern era for these people; a lament of the common soldier that there's not much inside the officer's uniform they take orders from.) This had a rather deleterious effect on small-unit function and maneuvering. At the platoon, company, and even battalion levels there could be considerable blundering about. The Soviets therefore distrusted and avoided small units maneuvering on their own; the smallest unit a Soviet staff officer would even want to give an order to was a regiment.

Third, it had worked for them before; the Soviets had used their mastery of operational and strategic combat to defeat the Wehrmacht, which at the tactical level was superior. They were at that time really the only force in the world who appreciated that there was an intermediate level between the strategic and the tactical levels of warfare, and they exploited it to the fullest. This did not stay true during the Cold War, obviously, but it was probably true for the early parts, until sometime in the '60s at least. That was long enough to get them set in their ways.

It was an attempt to come up with a set of tactics that could defeat a better trained and coordinated opposition. They could never have hoped to match NATO in terms of it's professionalism, so they went the other way.

Recommended reading is...oh, just about every article by LTC Lester Grau. Here is one I've brought up several times in the Military Thread: Medical Support in a Counter-guerrilla War: Epidemiologic Lessons Learned in the Soviet-Afghan War.

(Tongue-in-cheek obligatory trigger warning: if you've ever been in a Boy Scout or Girl Guide troop and got yelled at/had someone yell at you for not washing your hands before cooking, or for improperly digging a latrine, or for drinking unfiltered water on the basis of "that stream looks clean", well, you will cringe. Because those were kids, and this is a professional army, and chances are very good you did better than they did...)

About 620,000 Soviet men served in Afghanistan in the 40th Army and with MVD, KGB, or other attachments. Of those, 2.33% died in combat or of wounds, accidents, and disease—14,453 recorded deaths. This isn't too bad. On the other hand...

Needless to say, this is not supposed to be normal for a modern army. How came this to happen? The answer lies in the fact that Afghanistan was very much a war of lower-level commanders and squad NCOs. Or, taken from the conclusion,

The other key part of the puzzle was the tenuous Soviet logistical line, which relied on airlifts into Bagram Airport and a single mountain highway that was the target of every guerrilla group within range. Hence, even if the Soviets had a proper NCO corps, they were seriously overstretched running in things like bottled water, proper sleeping bags, rations, warm clothing, and all the other things needed to sustain an adequate standard of living. These weren't an issue in Europe, with its modern infrastructure, lavish ground supply routes, and generally familiar diseases; Soviet units tended to be "teeth" heavy and "tail" light—hitting extremely hard for their size, but lacking in logistical sustainment. This might well have been an advantage in a fast-moving Red Storm scenario; it was a serious disadvantage in a grinding, attritional guerrilla war.

Jesus Christ. That's worse than the hospitalization rate for people who served on Guadalcanal.

Grau also did a follow-up study from Chechnya 1995-1996, here. (Warning, DTIC link: it may or may not load on the first try.)

To nobody's surprise given the state of the Russian Army in the Chechen War, it's bad. Even worse, filtering drinking water was not enough: "Patients who had been careful to drink only boiled water were infected by dishes and serving utensils which had been washed in contaminated tap water."

That might be something to consider when writing about any kind of armed force, especially once you go further into history or lower down on the professionalism scale: get a bunch of men into prolonged strenuous physical activity in unsanitary conditions and with insufficient sleep and food? You will start seeing losses to disease. This problem pretty much peaked in WWI and receded somewhat thereafter, but any time supply arrangements break down, you risk attrition.

I can also recommend Victor Suvorov's Inside the Soviet Army

Ehhh. I'd recommend it more as a work of historiography rather than history. It's a great starting point in the sense of "this is conventional view that used to be widely accepted and still permeates popular culture, but it's not the modern, more nuanced view".

Inside the Soviet Army does provide a lot of fascinating glimpses into the everyday life; however, many of Suvorov's conclusions are either dead wrong or massively oversimplified. Unfortunately, it was the view that informed NATO thinking well into the 1980s; actual Soviet doctrine and strategy were much more advanced than the simplistic dicta Suvorov presents, and viewed tactical initiative with a much more favorable eye. Officers were expected to modify "the book" as needed, instead of mindlessly following Stavka's orders.

For instance, Suvorov offers up the following tactical problem: you have three divisions on the attack; one has run into heavy resistance and is reeling back, one has been stopped cold but is holding, and one is slowly advancing but taking heavy losses. You have three additional divisions in reserve, ready to be thrown into the battle. Where should you—as a Soviet officer—commit them?

Suvorov's answer was to commit all every single reserve unit to reinforce the company that is advancing, since Soviet doctrine is to reinforce success, not failure. He further averred that every properly-trained Soviet officer would make the same choice.

However...a NATO officer who had the chance to interview a lot of his former adversaries in the 1990s reported that they were uniformly unhappy with the solution presented, since it meant wasting forces in a slow, grinding attack (and Soviet officers viewed "gnawing" through a defense, instead of trying to outflank it, as the worst way to do things). They were more inclined to shore up the unit that was collapsing instead of trying to continue on with a slow, wasteful attack.

(Incidentally, Suvorov is infamous in historians' circles for presenting the by-now-thoroughly-discredited theory that Stalin was gearing up to sucker-punch Germany in 1941, and was only caught offguard by Barbarossa. David Glantz does a thorough job of tearing apart those claims.)

edited 27th Apr '15 2:51:36 PM by SabresEdge

I'm not so concerned with his views of WWII (although I will say that the view that Suvorov presents is almost certainly the one that Hitler believed, whether it was an accurate representation of what Stalin was really thinking or not). Regardless, I remember the example you are citing. He meant it as a training exercise, something to help newbies better understand doctrine. In the field, of course, you were expected to improvise, a point Suvorov himself pointed out.

Hey guys, another question here. This one's a bit unrealistic, but I'd still like some answers.

Say two countries, Country A and Country B, are embroiled in a war against one another. Country A has has more men, more resources, etc. Country B, however, has a handful of "Hero Units" that can clear battlefields and destroy cities.

These hero units are almost invulnerable to harm, to the point where actually trying to kill them would require so much effort, resources, lives, and collateral damage that unconditional surrender would be preferable.

But assuming surrender is the last resort, how would Country A effectively deal with Country B?

Nuke some shit.

Alternatively destroy their economy, agriculture, human resources.

If you can't go for counterforce, go for countervalue.

People gotta eat, sleep, etc. Widen the war. Keep tabs on the high-value stuff and make your main effort where it isn't. As for the high-value sorts themselves, attack their logistics train so they get poor supply if at all and harass them so they break; use small groups of people to attack and fade so they don't get the chance to sleep, interrupt them while they're eating, snipe their commanders while they try to get orders, etc. Use artillery on them in the middle of a conversation just to prevent them talking to people properly over the sound of it. Do everything possible to cut them off from food, sleep, orders, and even friendly contact with other humans.

Winning a war requires breaking your enemy's ability or will to fight. It's suboptimal to attack their will, but it can be done.

edited 28th May '15 6:03:31 PM by Night

Thirding all that. Those hero units have to be expensive to build and maintain- if they can undermine the economic foundation of their enemy, how badass their special forces are may not matter much.

Single hero units are also terrible at missions which inherently require large numbers of units instead of small numbers of skilled units. Counterinsurgency and policing, for one; convoy protection duty, combat service support, et cetera. Attrition starts to set in quickly if you're not careful.

For instance, if you need to escort a high-value asset like a supply run or someone of political value, dedicating a hero unit for that job is taking them away from a spearhead role, where they may actually be needed.

(Case study: "we'll be in and out of Iraq! We don't need all those military police battalions!" Oooooops.)

edited 28th May '15 7:25:51 PM by SabresEdge

Well, since I've been beaten to thirding the above suggestion, I guess I'll just have to put forth my own, inferior, response.

I would say that Country A needs to re-evaluate on what they actually want, prioritizing if necessary, deciding exactly how much in blood, time, money, and any other applicable resources they are willing to spend to acquire it, and focus on those objectives.

As the closest thing to a real life example of what you are describing, look at the Winter War between the USSR and Finland. The USSR had a massive advantage in manpower, aircraft, and tanks. The Finns had the home field advantage, and Simo Hayha, as an example of a real life "Hero Unit", or as close as you're going to get.

Despite their massive advantage, the Soviets ended the war not conquring all of Finland, just the southern peninsula that they wanted as a buffer to secure Lenningrad, which was right across to border, and even gave Finland twice the amount of land that they took, in order to make the deal more palatable to the Finns.

It's all about priorities. (Mine at the moment are stating that I am by no means a military scholar, so please forgive me if I missed something massive in my analysis)

Alright, I think I've gotten everything down. But in order to get a better answer, I'd like to provide a very specific "scenario". A simulation, if you will.

Can I post that here, or is that a no-go?

Don't see why not. Not like this thread has anything better to do.

Yeah, go ahead.

Alright, thank you. One thing to keep in mind is that the setting is Schizo Tech, which means that the technological timeline is all over the place. They have weaponized satillites but they don't even have telephones.

Also, unless otherwise stated, the time, effort, and manpower needed to kill even one of these Hero Units make it completely impractical to do so. Trying to do so may as well end up a Pyrrhic Victory, as Country A would be so drained of manpower and resources afterwards that it'd be almost impossible to continue fighting.

Country A has, for the purpose of this simulation, three-hundred-million combat-capable soldiers. These units are as varied as any other real life force. I know three hundred million is a ridiculous number for an army, but bear with me please. Also, assume they have enough resources (food, weapons, ammo, etc) to sustain this army. Imagine basically if the Earth as a whole, minus things like telephones and internet (a.k.a instant communication) got together and made a combined army. However, rest assured, Country A is not Earth.

Country A's goal is complete conquest of Country B and enslavement of all who live there.

Country B has a much, much weaker force of only around 1 million or so. However, there are 9 hero units, each with their own abilities.

Hero 1 is capable of being anywhere at any time. Not just "anywhere on the battlefield" but "he's at home base in the heart of Country B and twelve seconds later he can assassinate a political leader and slaughter a military base in the heart of Country A".

However, he's not omnipotent. If a battle is going badly somewhere else, he won't know until someone brings him news of it. Similarly, he can't assassinate someone if he doesn't know where they are.

Even worse, he's mostly on the front lines, and relies on personal couriers in the supply train to carry letters of important news (no email/instant communication).

Hero 2 has no weaknesses to speak of, both in direct combat and in terms of trying to "outsmart" him. He's the tactician and brains behind Country B's war effort. However, due to this, he is always in the heart of Country B, protecting most of the politically-significant figures from assassination attempts.

Hero 3 is also seen on the front-lines. She's basically a walking WMD, able to cause massive destruction and is almost immune to guerrilla tactics due to her tendency to just destroy whatever the enemies are hiding in. Case in point: when in a mountain forest with enemies hiding and tactically retreating, she opted to just burn the entire forest until the mountain was a smoldering black wasteland.

However, due to the destructive nature of this one, Country B has decided to keep her out of any environmentally-important areas (a.k.a wildlife reserves, cities they'd like to capture, etc.)

Hero 4 is specialized in landscape reformation. He has destructive capabilities similar to Hero 3, but Country B has decided to use him to neutralize unfavorable terrain. For example: if an enemy has captured and is holding a high-ground, he is usually ordered to demolish the high ground until it is, well, no longer high ground. Unlike Hero 3 above, however, he does not have to be personally present in order to do this. He has a network of kill sats which can strike with anything from large explosives to city-destroying plasma lasers.

However, he is mostly seen on the defense instead of offense. He also suffers from most of the same restrictions as Hero 3. In addition, the more powerful toys of his such as the satellites mentioned above are restricted from use unless the situation becomes that desperate.

Hero 5 is mostly placed in the logistic train (carries supplies and messages). He's completely invulnerable even by the standard and very, very large in terms of physical size. Literally a nuke could go off in his face and he'd shrug it off. He can decimate any number of enemies within seconds in a very wide radius. However, due to this, he's not very good at moving on his own, and needs vehicle support to do so, hence his placement on the trains.

Hero 6 never sees direct combat unless it's literally the last stand. However, he's also a one-man R&D sector, able to invent and mass-produce astonishing new technologies very quickly. These involve anything from superior weapons to armor to even cyborgs to fight as soldiers.

Hero 7 can heal any wounded soldier even from the brink of death within a day at most, and if seen in battle can also manipulate a metal-like substance to do anything from create a massive shield immune to most ordinance to a hail of spears. However, he's usually only seen on the supply train with Hero 5 where his main task is to heal others.

Hero 8 is unreliable, and only participates in battle occasionally at best. However, when he does, he has the ability to essentially make any enemy unit (whether it be soldier, vehicle or even battleship) disappear. He can only do this to about 1 unit at a time.

Hero 9 is the only hero that can actually be killed in direct combat. However, due to this vulnerability he can only be located in the heart of Country B. If Country A tries any diplomatic negotiations, Hero 9 will be the one to handle them. Any negotiation will go overwhelmingly in Hero 9's, and by extension, Country B's favor.

Moreover, Hero 9 is also in charge of and running a very, very detailed espionage/counter-espionage agency. Any spies are usually caught very quickly. Even if they aren't, the intel they send back in limited at best and intentionally fed to them at worst. However, if Country A is not careful, every single facet of their war effort could leak to Country B.

edited 28th May '15 8:56:02 PM by gameknight102xx

I dont see any way country A can win. Whatever they do, the "hero" units can trash their territory with impunity. They dont even need to engage A's army, just hold their cities hostage. In a sense, country B has a nuclear arsenal, and A doesnt. In fact, if B plays it's cards right, they can eventually absorb A, by slowly expanding into their territory, and consolidating their gains with the hero units.

Can B make more heroes?

Hero 1 sounds like he'd be best used as a courier. Then country A would have almost instantaneous communication.

In short: the best model to use is not of any conventional force-on-force. It's of nuclear war.

Model Country B's "hero" (or "superhero" may be more apt) units as a nuclear deterrent and you can start to see the heart of the matter. Once "launched" they are nearly impossible to stop; whatever they target can be counted as destroyed. The only limitations have to do with delivery method. All the killsats and whatnot are presumably owned by Country B, meaning that they have the ability to render the world uninhabitable if so desired.

However, Country B lacks a viable conventional deterrent. That is to say, Country A has an army the size of the population of the United States, and a civilian sector that has to be literally thousands of times larger in order to support such a force. (Armies are expensive, remember.) Without resorting to its "nukes", Country B cannot win a conventional war; Country A can presumably drown them in artillery shells, or ballistic missiles, or chemical gas warheads, or whatever their best standoff weapons are—that is, assuming the "hero" units can't stop enough of them.

The way you've set the scenario up, if either side launches a war, it is going to lose. But because there are only nine "hero" units, the temptation is extremely strong for Country A to develop a first-strike capability: if it can successfully disarm Country B's "nukes" in a first salvo—say, 25-Mt-tipped ballistic missiles coupled with ASAT rockets, each "hero" being targeted by multiple missiles just to be sure—it'll have the advantage. Conversely, if Country B can successfully first-strike Country A somehow (and it's only a successful first strike if your opponent is unable to retaliate in a meaningful way), it'll also be strongly tempted to do so. This dynamic is fluid and shifting; Country A's ballistic-missile arsenal may be vulnerable now, but if in ten years they have MIRV tech, or hardened silos, or a bigger, more dispersed force, it will no longer be vulnerable.

@De Marquis No, they are unable to make any more heroes than these 9.

@Sabre So, what I'm getting is that whoever makes the first, best decisive strike will win. Right?

Only if it's actually possible and feasible for them to do so. This is very hard to do.

There's a term in nuclear war planning: second-strike capability. This is the capability to ride out the first wave of strikes and then retaliate. Nuclear missile submarines have this capability, for instance. Because they're essentially invisible once they've sortied and are hiding, it becomes impossible for the opposing power to execute a successful first strike, since they can't target the subs, and thus can't guarantee that they'll be safe from counterattack.

(ABM, Chevaline, MRV/MIRV, and all of those modify this equation, of course, if you really want to get technical, but everything boils down to "can I successfully kill enough of my opponent's weapons to make sure I can ward off what remains?" If the answer is "no", as it will be most of the time, you lack first-strike capability.)

There is a rough analogy for the position of Country B, in fact: North Korea.

We have a country that is hopelessly outmatched on the conventional weapons front, whose force multiplier is a small but adequate force of WMDs. So long as it retains its several dozen nukes (rough estimate), it is safe from invasion. As long as it has a reasonably certain method for getting one warhead through out of a salvo of five or six (whether via tactical ballistic missile, cruise missile, or—less likely—smuggled truck-bomb), it can be said to have a second-strike capability; its opponents can't be certain that they've killed every mobile Scud, Luna, FROG-7, or SS-N-2 launcher before they fire. This sounds a lot like Country B's situation.

(On the other hand, if North Korea were foolish enough to put all its weapons in known or predictable places, it loses that second-strike ability. In theory, its opponents would then knock out its nuclear stockpile in a single strike, and then turn the contest into one of conventional forces, which NK would lose. Of course, NK is smarter than this, and I think Country B would treat its strategic assets in the same way.)

edited 29th May '15 11:26:25 PM by SabresEdge

I'll try contributing in my own little way. Keep in mind that these solutions essentially consider each "hero unit" in a vacuum, so they may not necessarily be silver bullets for Country A's woes.

Disinformation and deception campaigns, cutting lines of communication^note Those couriers sound deliciously vulnerable, and keeping the locations of A's VIPs sound like they'd work wonders here. Get this guy jumping at ghosts and - ideally - he will be so paralysed as to be incapable of materially affecting the war. If you don't know what's factual info and what's false, how can you know who to attack or assassinate?

Uhh... okay, I'm not sure I've got anything. I think the only way you can beat him is to simply leave him with Morton's Fork after Morton's Fork (which is where the immense conventional superiority of A comes in). You can be the most intelligent and powerful man in the world, but after a certain point a foe's advantages in manpower and materiel will be insurmountable (both tactically and strategically).

This might seem a bit unconventional, but Country A could play up the indiscriminate nature of her abilities for international sympathy (and conversely to put a big black blotch in B's record book). Oh, sure, they say they won't do that - but if they became desperate enough, well, who knows?

If international pressure gets intense enough, she might be forced off the frontline by default (at least if B doesn't want to be an international pariah).

As above, but with the addition of deceptive measures^note I'm specifically thinking mock positions and intentional alterations to the landscape to make him alter the wrong places and (if the tech level allows it) anti-satellite missiles to knock out his kill sats.

Destroy the roads the vehicles use - or, failing that, attack their fuel depots. Without those, well, he isn't going anywhere fast.

Just because he can do this doesn't mean it's practical - his designs might be maintenance heavy, or suck ergonomically, or just plain be expensive to manufacture. Wonder weapons are generally very poor in an attritional scenario.

Keep him busy with a steady flow of casualties. If nothing else, it might wear him down mentally. Hell, resort to chemical or biological warfare if you must - just because he's immune to conventional ordinance it doesn't mean he's capable of laughing off deadly, fast acting illnesses or chemical agents.

Drown him in bodies. No, seriously, this is the best way to deal with him IMO. Yes, he can disappear that infantryman coming over the horizon - but what about his 999 or so buddies coming at him from several directions?

Assassination target no. 1. Bonus points if you just go "fuck it" and bomb (or shell) said location so that you don't have to futz around with a complex plan that could be picked up and dealt with.

Thoughts? Additions?

edited 30th May '15 6:32:33 PM by Flanker66

Rather silly question.

The story I'm working on right now is a medieval European fantasy. It features a character, an enormous 7ft/213cm man who is not only the strongest, but also the fastest man in the kingdom.

Would it be too silly to have a scene where he wears very hard and very heavy armor...and just straight out charge at a fortified castle's door and smash it open by slamming his body at it?