Combat-Writing Thread

sharysa:

And there couldn't have been a better demonstration of what luminosity was talking about. You did exactly what a sniper does.

Spoiler: and you're exactly right about both where and what kind of doggy. It's a Shiba Inu in the leaf pile.. The only thing you missed is it isn't eyeshine. It's light patches of fur around the eyes.

Hmm, very interesting. Is there anything else wrong in my post?

Not that I know of. That just stood out to me, since research to avert No Biochemical Barriers in my stories at one point brought me to vitamin A and carrots.

Promptly added to the link collection. Thanks, people. You lot are awesome.

x4 Well, that was unexpected and very intriguing.

I hate the "find the X" or "what does this look like" posts on Facebook because they're so easy for me. :P

Question: about how common/well utilized were shock tactics in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds military?To clarify, by 'shock tactics', I mean a fast-moving, fairly aggressive army with a high proportion of cavalry willing to take larger risks than typical. I've mostly been basing their tactics on the Swedish army under Karl XII, if that helps at all, but special circumstances applying to that army probably won't some up in their case- for one thing, they don't have the luxury of starting out with good training and supplies, unlike the Swedes.

So basically, some kind of lecture on lightning war, with an early 18th century slant, if anyone dabbles in the same kind of obscure knowledge.

Ooh. That's a very good question. Hang on, I'll start ringing up some of my friends who might know. 1600s-1700s is something of a blind spot for me. In the meantime, perhaps look up some of Frederick the Great's tactics?

I don't know if this thread concerns non-military setting, but I got a question. In an alternate dimension (for all purpose, behaves similarly to virtual reality) MMORPG, what are the likely primary offensive and defensive methods of the following classes?

1. Optician (a class specialize in manipulating light intensity)

2. Lurer (a class specialize in spells that restrict opponent's movement space)

That might actually be a good idea, considering one of the countries in this world is a Prussia-analogue. Yeah, 1600-1700s is my current history obsession....last time it was the Soviet Union....

And by the way, I'm finding the children's Clausewitz fascinating :D

Have you checked Gustavus Adolphus tacticts?

He's "The Great" man that basicaly invented those highly offensive tacticts. Formations that where much less deep and aimed at offense. Light maneuverable artillery against those deep slow formations. Crosstraining people so pikemen could replace injured/killed musketeers and pretty much everyone so they could use captured artillery, and so on.

edited 16th Dec '13 11:44:12 AM by m8e

Heh, thanks, that might help.

What kind of damage could a single autocannon round do to a tank?

Not very much, though it would be influenced slightly by where the tank is struck.

The largest autocannon rounds get is 30mm; tank armour is designed to withstand hits from larger calibre weapons that are specifically intended to penetrate them (think APFSDS^* Armour Piercing Fin Stabilised Discarding Sabot, also known as the "silver bullet" due to its power, HEAT and its ilk), not to mention anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). Expect scoring, perhaps some metal gouged out of the hull, that sort of thing.

It might possibly set off the tank's Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA) or equivalent, though, but that's not going to do any damage by itself. It will, however, make getting a kill shot from a dedicated anti-tank weapon much easier. It could do more significant damage if it manages to hit the tracks, though to be honest the most an autocannon alone could achieve is a mobility kill (i.e. preventing the tank from moving due to damage).

In short, there's a reason why variants of IFVs that are expected to encounter tanks have ATGMs mounted to the turret, such as the Bradley + TOW or the BMP-3 + Kornet.

Out of curosity, is there anything anyone would like me to write something on? As demonstrated on the previous page, my main area of expertise is air combat, though I know a fair bit about modern military operations in general (naval shenanigans aside).

From the last page, wow, those are some cool and informative posts about sniping. I didn't even know half of them!

These bits, in particular, made me go "Whoa, this makes so much sense!"

Very cool. Very cool. I don't think I learned so much about snipers in such a short amount of time until today.

Oh, as for the dog, I instantly found it. It kinda looks like a fox to me, though.

edited 17th Dec '13 11:43:03 AM by dRoy

Spitz-type dogs do tend to look like foxes. Especially if they're smaller and on the red side of the scale, like a lot of Shiba Inu dogs are.

edited 17th Dec '13 4:54:49 PM by Sharysa

Thanks :3

And yes, that dog does look like a fox◊

No problem, dRoy!

But as an addendum to my point on attacking from unexpected angles, a sniper could manipulate things depending on what the target(s) are expecting.

Like if the targets are cowering behind cover, and the sniper's hide is behind the targets, the sniper might shoot targets as they peek around the cover - the idea being to make it seem like the sniper is really on the other side from the targets' perspective.

Incidentally, book acquired: The Art of Warfare in the Age of Marlborough. This will hopefully fill in some of my gaps in 1700s-era warfare, and then I'll be able to answer with a little more authority.

Random question/thought.

How do you suppose you can describe Gun Kata in text?

With extreme difficulty.

Gun Kata's always been one of those things that works much better on screen because it's a lot more visually awesome than it is practical, and also because trying to describe it makes you end up sounding like a six-year-old on a sugar rush who's just watched The Matrix.

That said, with all reality tossed out the window, I suppose a good starting point would be descriptions of swordfights or fencers' duels. However, good swordfights tend to involve a lot of footwork and moving around, constantly varying the distance to target, which negates much of gun-kata's rationale.

I have a faction in my 'verse whose military could well be said to have mastered an obsolete form of warfare. Their army is very well drilled in close-order tactics, their uniforms are varied and colorful and their breech-loaded rifled muskets use rounds designed to pierce the first man in the formation and retain enough force to injure or kill more enemy soldiers behind them.

Thing is, they're coming up against a hostile national power who has technology and doctrine similar to that of modern militaries circa 1940, with flexible force divisions and an emphasis on maneuverability. How might this first faction begin to adapt their present tactics to counter this modern threat?

Note that I'm looking for an answer that takes into consideration their specific unique perspective. It won't help me if someone just says, "Just have them make the same changes their enemy did!" How would they adapt 17th Century combat doctrine to fight a modern army?

Hmm. Breechloaders plus close-order puts you close to the American Civil War in terms of tactics and the Franco-Prussian War in terms of technology. It'd be instructive to study the development of tactics there. Tactical sources on the Franco-Prussian War, which might be closer, are harder to find, but here's one guide. I believe the Franco-Prussian War was already marked by a shift away from close order, although the idea of the elan-powered furious bayonet charge would stick around for forty-odd more years.

Note that WWII-level tech and doctrine is two full generations ahead of where the breechloader revolution happened. The first level of adaptation for the breechloader army would be to learn to disperse formations and entrench, WWI-style, counting on long-range fire to do damage. OTL, we saw the American Civil War in many places turn into lines of opposing trenches. The problem is, going from the trench mindset to the mobile-war mindset of WWII would take another huge bound in imagination, particularly as mobile tactics are hugely more complicated to coordinate. That might be a bridge too far for the breechloaders, unless they had a true genius with the ruthlessness and authority to completely reorganize the national army.

Note also that in technological terms, the two sides might have fairly equal personal rifle technology; the Enfields, Mosins, and Kar-98s of WWII were not all that different from their ancestors in the late 1800s, especially if the breechloader army had adopted technology like magazine feeding and smokeless powder. The biggest difference was in the adoption of automatic weapons and in artillery; massed indirect fire was the norm for WWI onward, as opposed to direct-fire. That's before we count the mechanized revolution in warfare that came about after WWI. This would, at one stroke, obsolete the breechloaders' artillery, which would be mostly direct-fire.

EDIT: most of what I've outlined are tactical changes, but there's no doubt that just as important will be organizational changes. The decrease in manpower density per area and increase in battlefield size, the improvement in communications technology from riders to field telephones and telegraphs to radio, and the increase in firepower in any given small unit, meant that military organization in WWI and WWII saw much more emphasis placed on lower-level commanders. Figuring out the organizational changes that will result will be extremely difficult. Since entrenched institutions tend to be very resistant to change, ramming two generations' worth of change through the bureaucracy will be a challenge and a half. The good news is, they can presumably copy the changes made by some other army, as opposed to having to figure out everything from scratch.

edited 20th Dec '13 11:33:19 AM by SabresEdge

The problem as I see it is that a maneuver army will probably be able to create and exploit weaknesses in the opponent's lines before they can effectively respond (assuming no radio - this is part of the reason why it'd be very important for the breechloading army to develop radio). An army acting via maneuver warfare^* "Maneuver warfare" being a type of warfare that focuses on great mobility to maneuver forces into the correct positions etc. Examples of maneuver armies would be any NATO participant is likely going to be acting and reacting much faster than one restricted to an earlier system^* To put it another way, they would be in the opponent's OODA (Orient, Observe, Decide, Act - basically the four steps anyone has to go through in order to act in battle) loop. They're orienting, observing, deciding, and acting more quickly than the breechloaders can do likewise. Look up the OODA loop on Wikipedia for more info! It then becomes a question of whether the breechloader army has enough operational depth to prevent the WWII tech level military from penetrating too deeply into their lines before they can muster a response.

Perhaps we might see the breachloaders aiming for a defence in depth^* The aim being to slow the enemy advance long enough for orders to be relayed, as well as preventing the WWII style army from simply punching through and consolidating their gains rather than a defence in width? Assuming the WWII army has air power, the breechloader troops might have to disperse to limit the impact of cannonfire, bombs^* Though it may not be very effective against cluster bombs, etc. But this may run counter to the aforementioned need for a defence in depth.

I apologise that this is so general, but though I'd be able to tell you a fair bit about the WWII army (particularly technology), I can't really say much for the breechloaders.

Right, I think I might ask something. Hopefully it won't be too tricky to answer, but since it's a (soft) science fiction setting I'm not sure how easy it will be. I've asked the question elsewhere, but since this thread seems to have a high proportion of people who know their stuff, I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask here.

Only one of the civilisations in my setting has powered armour. Though it depends on the actual role of the armour, they generally have energy shields and are pretty durable. They also possess thrusters^{^} These can be used to provide a jump jet capability, though it's not often used due to the risk of MANPADS, as well as generally making the wearer a bullet magnet, retractable rollers (usually used in conjunction with the aforementioned thrusters to improve top speed and agility), and the gauntlets are hooked up to a hydraulic ram^{^} Or something similar/explosive cartridge system that allows them to hit harder in close quarters. The standard small arm is a 30mm railgun^note As for how they can carry these things (the power actuation of the armour aside), these aliens are larger & stronger than humans are, though other weapons can be used as necessary.

What I want to know is how the presence of such powered armour would affect other areas of the military. For example, I thought that perhaps tanks might see a slightly diminished role since the users of powered armour are essentially walking IFVs/tanks anyway. Secondly, I would like to know how tactics would adjust in order to take the advantages of powered armour into account (particularly since their opponents would all lack powered armour).

The last thing I need help with is how the other civilisations' (both of whom are human) militaries would deal with these things. They're very unlikely to develop their own powered armour any time soon; the most they've got are powered exoskeletons, and those are not meant for anything except logistical work. They do have anti-power armour warheads for missiles/rockets, though (which can handily double for anti-cyborg duty). Those work by emitting a localised EMP to overload the shield, whereupon the first stage penetrates the armour and the second stage - which contains durable monofilament wire/ball bearings - shred the target's interior. Though they don't have infantry weapons that are as high calibre, they do have infantry scale energy weapons.

Feel free to speak as generally as you want; I've tried to keep it as non-specific as possible so that it isn't too difficult to formulate an answer.

The powered armor sounds a lot like the MEC troopers in the new XCOM game.

I'd think that since they're a lot more mobile than tanks, it would lead to tanks being used mainly as mobile defensive guns, or for heavily-armored advances where the ability to take punishment is more important than speed.

The powered armor would allow for great overwatch positions, since it could boost up onto a rooftop. I think they would still make some use of cover (unlike the XCOM MECs, who only benefit from cover to break LOS), but the higher mobility and ability to take a few hits of suppressive fire would mean that breaking cover to move to a better position wouldn't be as risky as it is for standard infantry.

Countering them would best be done with ambushes. If EM fields can disrupt the shield, it would be possible to modify grapple guns to fire electrified cables that would entangle and disable the suit, or at least quickly cut off an escape route.

edited 21st Dec '13 8:00:14 AM by VolatileChills

You seem to be describing VOTOMS. Might want to look at that.

The obvious answer is that all the usual anti-infantry weapons, based on fragmentation and blast effects, are considerably less useful. Mortars, grenades, and artillery lose a lot of their value against power armor. For that matter, so will walls: a decently powerful suit will find it easy to burrow through buildings without the need for explosives.

For people without them, it will become very important to develop and deploy a man-portable means of disposing of them that's simple; something like a bazooka for each squad will be almost mandatory, and an under-barrel attachment that can damage or at least significantly hinder (EMP effect?) them would be the holy grail. IFVs will become more important to in urban fights, because they can bring in heavy rapid-fire weapons in a reasonably mobile package to help cope. Specialized close support AFVs (think the real-world BMP-T) will probably make appearances in their ranks both for urban combat and to provide close defense against power armor that infiltrated or otherwise got close.

edited 21st Dec '13 9:13:26 AM by Night