Conduct your own war

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johneeG
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by johneeG »

I agree with bmallick.

I think it all boils down to how important this land strip is in the bigger scheme. If it is absolutely vital and there is no other better option, then the aggressor will simply have to use extra-ordinary numbers and accept large casualities. However, if its a vital battle, then air support would be expected at this place.

If it is moderately important then casualities to an extent would be acceptable.

If it is not an important piece or if there is another opening circumventing this, then there seems no need to take any risk.

It all comes down to the priority of this battle in the overall scheme of war.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Bala Vignesh »

Well, the thread's idea is not the role of the battle but how would the battle be fought to get that piece of land.. So i think we should assume that it's a vital piece of territory that needs to be captured..
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by SaiK »

What a post from Badar! nice thread.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by johneeG »

Bala Vignesh wrote:Well, the thread's idea is not the role of the battle but how would the battle be fought to get that piece of land.. So i think we should assume that it's a vital piece of territory that needs to be captured..
If its a vital piece, then this battle would get priority for resources(including air support). So, large resources(including human) can be committed to the battle and heavy causalities are acceptable to achieve the goal.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by shiv »

Aharam - I have made no specific rules beyond what I wrote and I am overwhelmed both by your response and that of Badar. I am like a general who needs to sober up and be told that his plans are getting their ass kicked.

I thought you nailed it when I read your earlier reply, and was thinking how I would respond and then Badar comes up with his plan. So basically I need to figure out how to counter your earlier plan, or Badar's.

Clearly I would gain from some kind of air support. I was thinking on the lines that if you land heliborne troops across the canal and beyond the minefield - an orderly retreat followed closely by an artillery bombardment of the forces may allow my men to regroup further beyond and push any remaining forces back to the minefield. As long as the canal and bund are not bridged/breached the chances of getting a lot heavy of armor across are limited so there may be a fighting chance.

About Badar's response I am feeling like just keeping my head low and staying in a bunker in my HQ to open my eyes when its all over and hope its a dream. Maybe I'll just wait for someone else to lob a nuke or something.. :lol:

Any ideas anyone?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Badar »

Just a few points to note.

Massed 155mm and MRLS will do little damage to hard points and fortifications unless its a direct hit. Fortifications are built to withstand exactly those kinds of bombardments.

And good luck convincing artillery officers to bombard frontlines and strongpoints with Smerches and Pinakas. :)

Airspace deconfliction will not allow helo landing anyware near artillery bombardment, simply not happening. Even will full on PGMs you have to remember that CEP means that fully 50% of the rounds will fall outside the CEP circle, and some will fall quite far - its a statistical distribution, cant be helped.

Third, landing heliborne troops bang in the middle of built up fortifications is very very risky, near nigh suicidal (yeah Eben Emael was an exception and everyone learnt their lesson). According to shiv these troops have MANPADS and even RPGs are deadly. A general bombardment will not serve to keep the enemy troops heads down if they are under cover in fortifications; they will happily MG and GMG you through the bombardment and take potshots with SAMs/RPGs.

Fourth, putting guns on the mountain tops is an attractive idea. But cost benefit analysis has to be done. Guns on cliff-tops are expensive to deploy and and very expensive to resupply. They will demand helicopter ops in numbers and with frequency making them a good target. For all this expense you get a battery or two of light artillery on the top with limited firing arcs with half of the valley (its only 10km wide) in the min engagement shadow.

Fifth, mines are not barriers to stop an enemy or friendly forces cold. They merely serve to shape and channel the battlefield. If there is a minefiled anywhere you can bet your last cent that there are stongpoints covering those minefields.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by johneeG »

So, there is a defensive force of about 1000-2000. And aharam has an attacking force of 1000-4000. So, what are the likely casualities on either side with aharam's and Badar's plans?

Badar: what is the number of forces that you are using?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Singha »

I would lie low until its fully dark , with preparations both real and fake all over this 10km to keep enemy guessing and worked up

at night make a lot of noise and some small probing attacks all over to keep the enemy tense and engaged

at dawn, lie low until dusk again and let him sweat...the local commander might ask for reinforcement but will be denied because there is no proof of a serious attack

2nd night, use giant viper type systems and ploughs protected by MBTs to breach the frontal minefields at several places

land a batallion of ATGM team behind this 10km at the points where it connects to the main highway to delay and reinforcement that come in. target the reinforcements with artillery.

in the areas we are not targeting, use artillery to drop loads of mines in and around enemy strongpoints to harass their repositioning

call in the limited air support with PGMs a few mins before the canal crossing to destroy a small area of enemy strongpoints beyond it. make the crossing and destroy the bund 10m wide patch. use UAV feed and MLRS to smash enemy units attempting to cross the freshly sown minefields to come and seal the breach.

main mech column relieves the ATGM batallion at dawn the next day. a infantry batallion left behind to mop up the 10km leftovers.

a full armour div crosses over in course of next day and uses the highway to move on...
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by ramana »

Badar,
If PRC decides to launch an attack when and where all along the LAC can they do that? Everyone expects Tawang(Tibet & Dalai Lama) and Aksai Chin(Karkoram Road etc>) again. What about Central Sector to drive the point across that they want to be dominant in Asia?

Can you give it some thought?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Singha »

if you mean HP and Uttaranchal isnt that impassable high himalaya with scarcely a proper pass into tibet? I think threat perception is lowest there and only 1 brigade is deployed for that sector.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by SwamyG »

Aharam:
I thought something similar. Why not use the mountains to advantage? But Shiv has given only 48 hour. On top of establishing vantage positions, one would have to strike the enemy and obliterate them and move on to the flatter territory. On top of it the canal must have been filled with water from somewhere - in all likely-hood, the mountains are going to the source of that much large water - a deep canal 10KM wide. Breaching the canal and flooding the enemy lines crossed my mind. But then, the 10' wall has to be broke down first. Flood waters know no enemy or friends, it will impact the offense too.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by SaiK »

Gives me some thought from these scenarios, what could be a future unmanned arjun variant can do here. remote controlled, fully loaded with munitions than humans. few of them can finish the job, with some good support from UCAVs.

Initially I expected the mission to give some 30second warning to the enemy that an attack is coming.. and our UCAVs and remote sensors scan and track the movements that counters the warning. The scrambled data triggers a real time monitoring and feeds to unmanned deployed systems.

The new mmw-Nag could come to use. rain-shock-awe.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by aharam »

Badar wrote:Just a few points to note.

Massed 155mm and MRLS will do little damage to hard points and fortifications unless its a direct hit. Fortifications are built to withstand exactly those kinds of bombardments.

And good luck convincing artillery officers to bombard frontlines and strongpoints with Smerches and Pinakas. :)

Airspace deconfliction will not allow helo landing anyware near artillery bombardment, simply not happening. Even will full on PGMs you have to remember that CEP means that fully 50% of the rounds will fall outside the CEP circle, and some will fall quite far - its a statistical distribution, cant be helped.

Third, landing heliborne troops bang in the middle of built up fortifications is very very risky, near nigh suicidal (yeah Eben Emael was an exception and everyone learnt their lesson). According to shiv these troops have MANPADS and even RPGs are deadly. A general bombardment will not serve to keep the enemy troops heads down if they are under cover in fortifications; they will happily MG and GMG you through the bombardment and take potshots with SAMs/RPGs.

Fourth, putting guns on the mountain tops is an attractive idea. But cost benefit analysis has to be done. Guns on cliff-tops are expensive to deploy and and very expensive to resupply. They will demand helicopter ops in numbers and with frequency making them a good target. For all this expense you get a battery or two of light artillery on the top with limited firing arcs with half of the valley (its only 10km wide) in the min engagement shadow.

Fifth, mines are not barriers to stop an enemy or friendly forces cold. They merely serve to shape and channel the battlefield. If there is a minefiled anywhere you can bet your last cent that there are stongpoints covering those minefields.
Hi Badar,
With a forward observer on the mountains, I think you underestimate the ability to get a direct hit from artillery. We are talking something as big as a bunker here - the creeping barrage I proposed is not undirected. It has two components - suppression of any open field troops and elimination of the bunkers. The second component is targeted, not blind area barrage, where bunkered troops will simply ride it out. The first objective is to eliminate the hard points. Once that is done a breakthrough can be achieved in several ways since any fording operations can proceed without ruinous casualties. Also, if PGMs were used for targeted attack, troop landings will only happen after the bunkers have been taken out. Even with a CEP of 50%, sufficient number of sorties would be undertaken until the objective of destroying said hard points has ben achieved. BTW, Shiv's defensive minefield with fixed fortifications protecting the minefield channels is similar to the defense of Tobruk, but the enemy there had mobility, which is not true here.

Given that there is a static fortification and there is no direct contact with the enemy, you can't do probing attacks since such attacks still have to cross the canal and bund which are covered by bunkers. This is a trip wire type screen defense since there are very few troops, so it is possible that small forces can cross the canal and peek over the bund to see where they are fired on, but to penetrate or even achieve a viable bridgehead, the bunkers have to be taken out. Also, if a reconnaissance probe detects that it is not fired on in a sector, they can see if this is because of limited field of fire of the fixed emplacements. Why would you simply not move a small number of artillery pieces and directly hit the emplacements covering the area.

Finally, moving artillery pieces to hillsides has been done successfully before. In the siege of Sevastopol, they had a ringed defense with several peaks, which had to be taken, artillery brought up and then directed at the fortress. Per Manstein who was the CO, the big rail gun they used against it was only a small part of the overall effort. It was the successive capture of the ringed defenses and subsequent accurate artillery fire that enabled their breakthroughs. After the pinning, the crucial breakthrough in this case came from the rear from the open Black sea side, where the Germans did not have any cover - only the element of surprise.

Cheers
aharam
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by aharam »

The nice thing about Shiv's scenario is that it is a great brain teaser for unconventional solutions. Lots of nice ideas coming out here :-)

aharam
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Badar »

johneeg, three times whatever Shiv has. But a hell of a lot more artillery. Plus I also have specialist units Shiv doesn't need like bridging units, combat engineers to reduce the fortifications etc.

ramana, I don't have any particular insight into that sector at all. Chinese challenge, imho, is not a problem that can be solved by the army so a lack information in a land engagement vis-a-vis that neighbor. Always willing to learn though.

Saik, An unnmanned Arjun can't spend 12 man hours a day lovingly and painstakingly maintaining and up-keeping itself.

aharam,

I completely agree with you regarding the forward observer on the cliff tops (I wrote about an attempt to insert heliborne FAO in the first post). But the whole gun systems and their crews and their huge ammo supply? I am not convinced.

CEP of artillery was vis-a-vis proximity of heliborne landings; i.e. airspace deconfliction.

regarding probing attacks, the Canal-bunds and not the first line of defense, they are behind a bunker screen. No one wants to give free access to the canal defense.

Regarding artillery on mountains, can be done. Question is cost-benefit ratio.

Regarding surprise, bingo! - my whole setup is an attempt at small scale mashkirovka.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Bala Vignesh »

Badar sir,
Out of curiosity, did you serve???
If too personal, feel free to neglect..
Thanks.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Badar »

Bala Vignesh wrote:Badar sir,
Out of curiosity, did you serve???
If too personal, feel free to neglect..
Thanks.
Bala, My only military laurel is that once the computer told me i was the greatest general in history (Panzer General Dos if anyone cares). IOW, no I didn't serve.

I have no insider information, all the stuff I know is either open source, or, as BR so sweetly puts it, pulled out of my musharraf. I am mostly a aviation enthusiast and picked up a bit or two (much of it from BR) about the land/sea forces as well. I wouldn't take my posting very seriously, certainly not enough to call me "sir".
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by SaiK »

Badar, it is possible if you can drill down to requirements.. one could shut off, and go on low use mode, enough power to restart. Long life battery and logistics are the only concerns. Backup systems can be called on emergency, and intelligence built in to send status on real time basis. Of course, if you are considering 12 hour time, then there is something wrong with the mission, no?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by shiv »

The replies that "my" scenario attracted are interesting. I see no point in quibbling over details - especially because some of the replies have been very detailed. The question that comes to my mind is "Why did I not plan or say anything in the original scenario about what I would do if there was an air attack or a combined air-land attack"

The word "pincer" used by Aharam is an ancient army tactic, but the same "pincer" outflanking can be done by the air using air power except that the "flank" is now in the 3rd dimension.

Clearly this canal-shanal-bund-lund business seems great for tanks but falls flat when air power comes into play. Air dominance clearly becomes a vital aspect of both attack and defence and I just wonder how any of the replies made to my scenario can be defeated by air power from my side. On the face of it - if I can ensure local airs superiority a force of just 3 or 4 attack aircraft should be able to substantially blunt the attempted assault across the canal. No?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by bmallick »

Badar wrote: Assumptions:
  • - Enemy forces are alert and expect an attack, but don't know exactly when.
  • - Blue forces have a fair idea of the enemy ORBAT and eORBAT and their disposition. Red forces don't (they are aware of the holding units but not the assault and exploitation unit details).
Red forces HUMINT units would definitely be operating in the area, since as mentioned by you, Red forces expect an attack but when. Which means Red forces would press in multiple HUMINT units to see whats happening on Blues side. Any attack on this scale would require accumultation of men & machine in a staging area. The staging area cannot be something more than 50 km away from the Canal, esle you would require more than 2-3 hours for your main assault force to reach the canal, thus providing enough time for Red to move in re-inforcements. Moreover mountainous terrain on Blue side ( Shiv said flat terrain is on Red's side) means that there would be few flat sections for staging in good numbers of men & machine. Hence, it is highly unlikely that Red HUMINT would not get to know the "assault and exploitation unit details" and an tenuous argument. Hence any accumulation in the staging area is very very likely to be known and be appropriate counter options put in place.

Also an argument that the staging area can be used to attack any place, hence the enemy would not know exactly where it would be hit is again tenuous because of the terrain. This is not Normandy Landing. Over there the open sea, meant that the Allied vessels from the staging area could sail down to any portion of the French Coast right from Calais to Normandy, a length of more than 250 kms. The same is the case with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The open ocean meant that the Japanese fleet could have attacked any of the US territories in the vastness of the ocean, in fact even the Continental US. Hence, in both these instances the surprise element is there. However in Mountains, you have limited access routes & passes, moreover not all of them would allow heavy machine movements. Such routes/passes which would allow heavy movements are few and well dispersed. Hence once a staging area is chosen sufficiently near the border ( a distance which would allow access to the FEBA within 2-3 hours, lest it provides enough time to enemy to move reinforcements), the likely route of movement is a given. Hence surprise is highly unlikely, unless Red forces are incompetent fools.
Badar wrote: - Blue forces enjoy at least partial night fighting advantage over the red forces.
shiv wrote: It is winter. It gets dark by 6 PM and is still dark/foggy at 7 AM .
As Shiv has mentioned in his scenario post, its winter. Hence the dense fog & mist would negate all night fighting advantages. Everyone if equal in the eyes of the god of winter, doesn't matter whether you have NVG's or not. Visibility is down to few meters. Remember these are high mountains.
Badar wrote:
PRE-ASSAULT (day before the assault)
  • - Neighboring forces will begin probing attacks on their own front as a prelude to the assault.
  • - A special group not part of the main assault will be tasked to probe the defenses in the valley sector. This formation will be told that we are doing diversionary and pinning attacks to support the other attacks in the neighborhood which are the real ones. It is likely a few of these men will be captured and likely to divulge this disinformation to the enemy. Even otherwise enemy leaders would be able to identify these as what they are - distractions to pin their forces.
From where are these neighbouring forces present. In the mountains adjacent to the 10km wide section. From where would these diversionary attack be made, again from the mountains on either side. If so the numbers would be too few to be more than harrassment.
Where is the neighbourhood. How far away is it from this area.
Badar wrote: BATTLEFIELD PREPARATION, Isolate the battlearea (just after dusk)

Physical Isolation :
  • - Get any available long range assets (artillery, MRL, aircraft) to strew mines across the main roads used to feed reinforcements to this valley. Reinforcement will not be stopped, but will be delayed.
  • - If I can get some SoF teams to take out some bridges etc it will be a bonus, but really don't expect SoF teams to succeed. Another target might be cutting the secure landlines.
  • - Any air cover I get would be tasked to disrupt the traffic on the feeder roads and would be made to look like regular BAI.
Good idea.
Badar wrote: Electronic :
  • - MRLs will start the engagement with a salvo of barrage jammers (wideband radio jammers) behind the forward lines. This kills the radio comms for the first few hours. A light barrage behind the FEBA with regular HE shells will help cut some of the landlines etc. If I can isolate the forces down to company level by degrading their comms to higher units then its a job well done.
As you have yourself mentioned that a "light barrage behind the FEBA with regular HE shells will help cut some of the landlines etc". Moreover expecting to cut all landlines would be too fortuitous. Hence Red's communication maybe cut with a few units, it would remain more or less intact. Also since these are prepared defenses, hence expect lots of landlines of communication, atleast to the fixed bunkers/sangars & posts, thus relying less on radio.

Thus Red's communication network would be more of less intact.
Badar wrote:
Control :
  • - Since this is a large static "fortified" area, all identified or likely CP locations or alternates (Company level or higher) will be hammered with a preplan attack. This is the first real inkling to the enemy that this area is being targeted for assault. No frontline units will be targeted. Objective is to degrade C&C rather than destroy it.
Since this is a static fortified area, expect a trench system allowing movement of troops between CP locations, posts, etc. Hence, increase in the chances that the C&C would probably survive. It might degrade as you have mentioned but total decapitation is immpossible. Hence the enemy would maintain quite a bit of C&C in the aftermath of the barrage.
Badar wrote: Flanks:
  • - A few Small task forces (Snipers, MANPAD teams, FAO etc) will be helidropped at critical points along the cliffs and mountains along the valley. They are instructed to raise as much ruckus as possible. While they will not roll up the flanks they must threaten to do so for the first few critical hours of the assault. The enemy command will have to worry about securing their flanks and siphon of some of the ready reinforcements to contain or wipe these groups out. The regular sepoy will look at the flashes from the mountain top and start wondering.
Expecting Red to have good bunker defenses in the valley, but no men & bunker in the mountains on its side of the canal would mean that Red is a great fool. The mountains & hills adjoining as well as a few more on the flanks would definitely be having bunkers, sangars and posts. These would be primarily providing flank protection, as observation posts, Artillery control etc.

Hence the flanking forces would meet good resistance. On top of that, as mentioned earlier, winter, fog & mist, means very very poor visibility, hence helicopter landing on cliffs & mountains is near impossible & highly risky, hence very very likely to be a failure.
Badar wrote: ASSAULT ( starts after full darkness)
  • - If the above activities does not provoke the red artillery to uncloak themselves a feint will be made at breaching the bund using a regular forces. The aim is to silence substantial portion of the red artillery with counter-battery fire. Note that my precious bridging and engineer units will be nowhere near this assault.
  • - All along the front line the mortar units will fire smoke or WP to cloak the bund and its approaches.
  • - All units along the whole front will open fire making it difficult to identify the actual assault crossing area
  • - The main breaching attack will be made in a small sector. All Blue forces organic support weapons will be allocated to support this effort. Liberal use of thermobaric weapons will be used to silence/limit the strong points in this area. Some armor/infantry will be moved forward directly upto the canal in a direct-fire role. If you have krasnodars, Reflex etc this is the time to use them
  • - Engineers will be brought upto do their business.
    • - sappers collapse part of the bund with demolition charges.
    • - Pontonier/bridging units to do their business
    • - forces are rushed in to fan out and cover the bridgehead.
    - Rinse and repeat in next sector till you have a viable bridgehead or you are fired for incompetence.
Winter, fog & mist ( remember mountain region, hence expect perpetual fog in winter), hence you do not need smoke etc to hide your approaches. Visibility is poor anyway. Poor visibility means that Red moving forces around in trenches to counter you would not be seen. Hence the moment attack begins, expecting that you would be hitting the places where Red has men are slim. You might hit static posts/bunkers etc, but Red doesn't need to keep sitting there to be shot at.

Also, high winter, how much effective would your men would be working in on a real cold dark night, with poor visibility. There performance would be severely degraded, hence expecting a breakthrough in the night is highly improbable. Red moves in reinforcements and you hit a road block. Remember Red has flat terrain on his side, hence he can move his tanks, IFV's and APC's etc, over land, even though the roads are damaged. Hence re-inforcement can move in.


I, guess what we are forgetting the most in our attacks is the weather. Any coordinated attack would require good visibility, so that Blue forces can maintain contact with eachother, coordinate there actions and know where they are heading. I believe in the given weather scenario there would be less fire fight and more close in bayoneting, hence numbers. Also cleared sections of mine-field would have to be really really wide and all movement restricted to a narrow path with in the cleared zone, else you would have men & machine seeing the cleared markers too late and becoming casualties.

The scenario is equally bad for Red, there posts would not be able to see Blue forces till they are very near to them. But at-least majority of RED are not out there in the open for the last 2-3 hours, the time Blue forces would have spent preparing for the assault.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by bmallick »

shiv wrote:The replies that "my" scenario attracted are interesting. I see no point in quibbling over details - especially because some of the replies have been very detailed. The question that comes to my mind is "Why did I not plan or say anything in the original scenario about what I would do if there was an air attack or a combined air-land attack"

The word "pincer" used by Aharam is an ancient army tactic, but the same "pincer" outflanking can be done by the air using air power except that the "flank" is now in the 3rd dimension.

Clearly this canal-shanal-bund-lund business seems great for tanks but falls flat when air power comes into play. Air dominance clearly becomes a vital aspect of both attack and defence and I just wonder how any of the replies made to my scenario can be defeated by air power from my side. On the face of it - if I can ensure local airs superiority a force of just 3 or 4 attack aircraft should be able to substantially blunt the attempted assault across the canal. No?
In fact shiv, given the terrain, winter weather & poor visibility, Blue air power would have great difficulty in attacking the defenses. Yes is you can mantain local air superiority you should be very easily blunt Red's attack.

In today's world no body makes fixed defense with no connection between them. Defenses are built with interconnecting trenches, passages etc, to allow troops to move around. Doesn't matter whether your bunker is hit, as long as the men survive and move to another place you are doing good. Expecting the men to sit in the bunkers when they are seeing the bunkers being attacked is wrong. The men would move to save their lives, hence would survive the bombardment.

BTW a question Shiv. Since you have mentioned winter weather and these are the mountains, doesn't it mean that the canal itself would have frozen over. Snow cover. If its december then atleast 7-8 feet of snow. Hence the 10feet wall is just 2 feet high now :-). So actually Blue can move his forces just like that, with out worrying about the canal and wall :-). Also I do not know how effective would be mines under the snow, unless you would have laid fresh mines in the entire area, after the snow fall.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by johneeG »

bmallick Saar,
you are saying that mountainous == extremely cold & foggy(even snowy).

Is this always true? Doesnt specific area(or geography) play a role?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Singha »

modern GPS guided weapons like AASM/GBU/SDB/JDAM pointing at fixed strongpoints in a small area around the proposed canal crossing beacheads should make short work of any concrete bunkers. even a small SDB makes a mean punch as youtube video of it taking out a HAS shows. coming to the trench lines connecting these bunkers and any hidden underground chambers, blast them with a mix of CBU and delayed action mines.

we'd need only one PGM strike and one CBU strike to take care of this. a Rafale/EF could potentially throw 12-16 aasm/sdb per sortie and target invidual bunkers with each weapon from 35,000ft...well out of visual range and hence no warning.

SDB tests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkC-p5AsZ_A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfRWh2FT ... re=related

and the penetration of a 2000lb blu109 is frightening...note it retains shape after going through a huge concrete wall and then explodes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHKkzuU2 ... re=related
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by bmallick »

johneeG wrote:bmallick Saar,
you are saying that mountainous == extremely cold & foggy(even snowy).

Is this always true? Doesnt specific area(or geography) play a role?
JohneeGJi, Shiv has specifically mentioned, Winter as the season and fog. Moreover, do you expect that the mountains have altitude of 3000-4000 ms and the 10 km stretch at 1000ms. The way shiv has described it its basically a valley between mountains, hence its altitude too would be 2500-3000 ms depending on the surrounding mountain. Hence Its going to be cold & foggy, no matter what, expect for brief spells of clear weather in the day, which are generally of short duration in the winters in mountain and not easily predictable too.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by johneeG »

bmallick wrote:
johneeG wrote:bmallick Saar,
you are saying that mountainous == extremely cold & foggy(even snowy).

Is this always true? Doesnt specific area(or geography) play a role?
JohneeGJi, Shiv has specifically mentioned, Winter as the season and fog. Moreover, do you expect that the mountains have altitude of 3000-4000 ms and the 10 km stretch at 1000ms. The way shiv has described it its basically a valley between mountains, hence its altitude too would be 2500-3000 ms depending on the surrounding mountain. Hence Its going to be cold & foggy, no matter what, expect for brief spells of clear weather in the day, which are generally of short duration in the winters in mountain and not easily predictable too.
Thanks for the reply, sir, I assumed that in regions like South India or Equator, the winters in mountains may not be as chilly. Your answer and google have proved the assumption as wrong.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by bmallick »

Singha wrote:modern GPS guided weapons like AASM/GBU/SDB/JDAM pointing at fixed strongpoints in a small area around the proposed canal crossing beacheads should make short work of any concrete bunkers. even a small SDB makes a mean punch as youtube video of it taking out a HAS shows. coming to the trench lines connecting these bunkers and any hidden underground chambers, blast them with a mix of CBU and delayed action mines.

we'd need only one PGM strike and one CBU strike to take care of this. a Rafale/EF could potentially throw 12-16 aasm/sdb per sortie and target invidual bunkers with each weapon from 35,000ft...well out of visual range and hence no warning.

SDB tests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkC-p5AsZ_A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfRWh2FT ... re=related

and the penetration of a 2000lb blu109 is frightening...note it retains shape after going through a huge concrete wall and then explodes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHKkzuU2 ... re=related
Singha sir, are you saying Blue has access to military grade GPS signal. Laser & TV guidance would not work because of the fog.

Also doesn't matter if you destroy the fixed bunker. Modern defenses are not built around fixed bunkers only. The Bunkers etc are the fixed part a fluidic defense set up. They provide additional strong points, but modern defenses are are about moving forces around to gain positional advantages. Hence even though prior position of fixed bunkers are know and targeted using GPS weapons, the loss to the defenders strength would not be much. Red can move troops around trenches.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by bmallick »

Shiv sir, in your scenario we we have the "Fog of War" quite literally :-). This should make the situation grave for all concerned.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Singha »

wiki - analysis of the german failure on northern front in kursk.

Review of attack frontages and depth of German penetration clearly shows the success of the Red Army defensive tactics. While it began with a 45 km wide attack front on 5 July, the next day the German 9th Army's front was reduced to 40 km. This dropped to 15 km wide by 7 July and to only 2 km on 8–9 July. Each day, the depth of the German advance slowed: 5 km on the first day, 4 on the second, never more than 2 km each succeeding day. By 10 July the 9th Army had been stopped.[63]

Much of the Soviet defensive success is attributable to its method of fire control, known to the Germans as Pakfront. This relied upon a group of 10 or more anti-tank guns under a commander, which would fire at one target at a time. These positions were protected with heavy concentrations of mortar and machine gun nests, which were ordered to fire on German infantry only.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by adityadange »

how about heli dropping some light artillary or tanks on mountains? considering the mountains ends beside canal i dont require much long range. i can place my artillery some 5km away from canal. in the valleys i will deploy helicopters. my helis will provide locations of enemy bunkers and other structures and artillery will snipe them. meanwhile in the main 10km road that i have i will use mbrl and heavy artillery attack saturated in straight line in front of the road.
i will start sanitizing area which is in front of the road and advance. as i will advance towards canal my heavy arty and mbrl will broaden their horizons towards left, right and deep inside.

for simplicity in understanding, initially my formation will look somewhat like broad "U" which in turn out to become a "W"
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Badar »

Doctor Saab, you play Socrates very well, I will play along.

The reality is that the bund-cum-canals remain very formidable obstacles. I remember reading a quote from an Indian general saying that the bund and bunker complex could probably survive even a nuclear strike and still remain defensively viable. Exaggeration? Perhaps, but the point stands.

Another point you should consider is what are these complexes are for? Are they intended to stop, defeat and throw back the defenders on their own? Or are they supposed to be a significant barrier thats slows down the enemy long enough to bring up forces for a counter-stroke? These bunds are an investment tradeoff (spend more capital to lower number of troops required to defend a given sector).

regarding air power and bund breaching, air control over the breaching areas will almost certainly guarantee a successful defense ... almost.

bmallick, that was an interesting critique - thanks.

I agree with you that the armor heavy exploitation forces cannot be hidden (hence assumption one), but the breach forces? You could reasonably attempt to achieve a degree of surprise there. I am unconvinced that humint can be valuable in front line ops - but I would concede that strike forces have been tracked through technical means; but it does not impact my plan ... too much.
Hence surprise is highly unlikely, unless Red forces are incompetent fools.
The plot is not to surprise the enemy, certainly not at the operational level (see first assumption). The point is to attempt to confuse the enemy command (perhaps just for the crucial first hours) as to where the schwerpunkt is so as to delay or dissipate his ready reinforcements. Once I have breached the bund at some point and have a viable toehold this phase of the operation is successfully over.

If for whatever reasons the above plan fails and enemy has a clear picture of Blue sides threats and intentions it will result in a massacre. But this is true for any defensive engagement anywhere - nothing specific to the "canal problem", the unpleasant results will only be more 'amplified' in this case. You pays your money and you takes your chances.
the dense fog & mist would negate all night fighting advantages. Everyone if equal in the eyes of the god of winter, doesn't matter whether you have NVG's or not. Visibility is down to few meters. Remember these are high mountains.
I love the fog, I want the fog. I though the first objection people would have to the plan would be "Dude, its a windy mountain valley; your fog will be blown away in no time". But if I get "free" fog/mist or other obscurants that only serves the Blue forces better. II are not very good in a foggy situation but TI work fairly well which should give Blue forces the vital edge.

Even the worst case impenetrable "pea-souper" mist is surely a major advantages for the attackers.
From where are these neighboring forces present. In the mountains adjacent to the 10km wide section. From where would these diversionary attack be made, again from the mountains on either side. If so the numbers would be too few to be more than harassment. Where is the neighborhood. How far away is it from this area.
The diversionary attacks would not be made in this valley, but in adjacent sectors - maybe in some less desirable passes or valleys. The point is to attempt to convince the red forces valley commander that feints will be made in his sector to draw and pin his forces and to dissuade him from too readily committing his reserves. If he is convinced that the attacks in his sector are merely a cover for real ops elsewhere his reactions, at least initially will be quite different. Since you brought up Overlord I will draw you an analogy - its similar to how Montgomery's forces were merely a distraction for the "real" landings in Calais by Patton.
Thus Red's communication network would be more of less intact.
Very likely. But the more sectors stop reporting the more difficult it is for the commander to react. Is the third company not responding because it has been overrun or its comms have been killed? Should he counter-attack there? Maybe he should just ask the neighboring company to send a runners to investigate and report back. Maybe 10 minutes are wasted waiting to see how the situation develops on that sector, or best case, the commander commits one of his reserve units in an inessential sector.

It's a matter of degrees. Worst case it makes no impact whatsoever on the red forces decision loop. Ideal case, it is degraded quite a bit.

Similarly for the C&C. Not looking for decapitation, but degradation surely helps. The point is to protect my bridging troops while they are in the vulnerable process of deploying the bridges. If I can ensure that no significant reinforcements hit those points in that time frame I am satisfied.
fog & mist, means very very poor visibility, hence helicopter landing on cliffs & mountains is near impossible & highly risky, hence very very likely to be a failure.
If anyone has excellent night ops capability its the fly boys. I see winds and weather more of a hindrance than the visibility - but nobody would launch such a difficult operation on a dark and stormy night.

There is a risk, this step like any step can fail. : I am risking a helo flight and a couple of platoons of ghataks and some signalers/FAO. Worth the risk? I presume so. Any preexisting enemy position in the areas of interest would be a prime candidate for an LGB or two.
expecting that you would be hitting the places where Red has men are slim. You might hit static posts/bunkers etc, but Red doesn't need to keep sitting there to be shot at.
You mean the Reds keep running around half the time from one alternate position to the other, and then direct vaguely aimed fire at my men the rest of the time due to poor visibility? Why this is a disadvantage for the Blues? Surely if the weather limits engagement ranges that surely is a boon for the engineers and pontoniers.
Also, high winter, how much effective would your men would be working in on a real cold dark night, with poor visibility. There performance would be severely degraded, hence expecting a breakthrough in the night is highly improbable.
"severely degraded"? Are we talking about the Saichen glacier here? These are specialist hi-grade troops who have trained and acclimatised to this weather and terrain. Sure some performance will be degraded - but "severely"? I think we both are making very different assumptions about the terrain.

We can deal with post breach later. How do you suggest such a defense as shiv has highlighted be handled? Do you consider it "reasonably" impregnable? Is there any way to spruce up the attack plan?

As a general aside and nothing to do with the current hypothetical discussion at all: how many mountain valleys are defended by canal defenses in say Pakistan?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Badar »

Shiv,

A successful defense can be mounted using a canal system even without controlling the airspace.

A way to do that is as hinted by GD in his reference to Kursk. Defense in depth. Two canal-bund systems one behind the other increase your expense by a factor of two, but the attackers difficulty is quadrupled. But this is a very capital expensive approach and cannot be used all across the front line. Perhaps only at critical choke points like the valley you mentioned.

Second, if the attacker is "richer" than you are and can use fancy stuff like LGBs in profusion you take it into account and plan for it. The attacker has pinpointed all the strong-points and fed the coordinates to his GPS bombs? Buy cheap GPS jammers and strew it everywhere so that he is forced to fall back on less effective INS. He can smash your ready reserves at their marshaling points with artillery? Use shortstop to negate all his air-bursts and force him to depend on the much less effective point detonation fuse. Planes buzzing with LGBs and EO bombs? Buy bunch of fog machines from bollywood (wouldn't work so well in the deserts though). Very high value targets can be protected by Laser/EO jammers. Camouflage, dummy locations, alternative locations etc will all help a bit but not much as the adversary has had years to study the defenses. If you have guns in bunker emplacements that can't be moved about, use them from the word go to shell likely assembly and marshaling points, you have nothing to lose.

Your air force can't manage to get recon sorties in spots that bother you? Use cheap UAVs at company, battalion and brigade level. Most will be shot down, but quite a few will get though. What about locations further away? Perhaps you can beg a friendly comrades to give you some sat imagery either gratis or in return for mining rights post war in mumbleistan.

Have a few surprises. Line the bottom of the canal with a bunch of magnetic sea/surf mines and release MAPIs on the surface, just to make the adversary engineers life more interesting.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by shiv »

Badar wrote: Second, if the attacker is "richer" than you are and can use fancy stuff like LGBs in profusion you take it into account and plan for it. The attacker has pinpointed all the strong-points and fed the coordinates to his GPS bombs? Buy cheap GPS jammers and strew it everywhere so that he is forced to fall back on less effective INS. He can smash your ready reserves at their marshaling points with artillery? Use shortstop to negate all his air-bursts and force him to depend on the much less effective point detonation fuse. Planes buzzing with LGBs and EO bombs? Buy bunch of fog machines from bollywood (wouldn't work so well in the deserts though). Very high value targets can be protected by Laser/EO jammers. Camouflage, dummy locations, alternative locations etc will all help a bit but not much as the adversary has had years to study the defenses. If you have guns in bunker emplacements that can't be moved about, use them from the word go to shell likely assembly and marshaling points, you have nothing to lose.
Interesting thoughts. The real clincher might be how much richer is the attacker. And this "richer" business enters into the realm of technologically rich as well as financially.

The idea of pounding an adversary @ 500+ sorties a day for weeks on end to make him into pulp and then having a cake-walk land battle has been tried and tested by the "west" against Kosovo, then Afghanistan and then Iraq. Not surprising at all that in the face of technological defeat human ingenuity takes over and in all cases the more powerful force has been fought to a stalemate by asymmetric warfare in Vietnam, Somalia and Afghanistan. But that is a different issue - maybe we can come up with "scenarios" later.

But let me concentrate on the idea of ditch cum bund". Try as I might I was unable to find a suitable photo of the thing and I was wondering what might be the ideal configuration - assuming I am making one on my side to keep you out.

The ditch and bund are adjacent to each other. If the ditch is on the near side (towards me) and the bund closer to you - it's no use. The bund/wall itself offers you protection and you can do your dirty tricks out of my sight. So I figured the ditch/canal has to be towards you. You will need to ford a ten foot deep, 30 foot wide ditch/canal and when you get to my side you face a wall that forces you to climb 20 feet and perch on the edge before descending 20-30 feet at which point I can (theoretically) pick off your tanks as they look stupid coming over the hump.

For you to bridge this you have to break the wall/bund on my side. he bund itself would be wide enough to have a road on top on my side for observers/maintenance vehicles. so the base of the bund would be a good 40 feet wide apart from the 30 foot canal. So to get across you have to breach the bund first. I would have thought that a good bunker busting type bomb of the 1000 to 4000 pound class might be the sort of thing you would need to breach that. or else you need earth movers which I would be ready to blast to smithereens.

How would one plan to actually cross such an obstacle?
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by adityadange »

shiv wrote:How would one plan to actually cross such an obstacle?
i assume water flowing in a canal is moving at very slow speed. during winter and high in the mountains i expect temperature less than 5 degree (in reality it should be somewhere close to 1 or 2 degrees). i will send special op teams at dusk and put as much salt mixed with cement as i can. it will help it freeze with added advantage lower temperature at night. i will get solid surface to move on and (probably i will send ice hocky team for some practice :lol: )
i know this approach is sounding crazy. the problems i can see in this are:
1. how can i put tons of salt and cement without enemy notice?
2. will the surface allow me to take heavy trucks and whatever vehicles i have and for how much time and in how many numbers? but i am dead sure that i can i can go walking on it.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by johneeG »

One can be richer in terms of human resource as well. Pakis can supply extra-ordinary number of jihadis willing to die. The same cannot be done by others(say US).
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by bmallick »

Shiv sir, a good solid earth bund should be difficult to break using 1000 lbs bombs. 4000lbs bombs may do the trick, however don't you think that the heavy bomb apart from breaking the bund would cause a decent a size crater too, which would then fill up with water from the ditch. However the bund is gone, so at least one of the obstacle is gone.

Operation Badr, Yom Kippur War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Badr_%281973%29 is a case in point with regards to successful Ditch-cum-Bund.

The Israeli Army had defenses on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. The Egyptians were on the western bank. The Israelis created a defensive line called the Bar-Lev Line for defense. The Israeli's made a Sand wall 20-25 m high wall and quite wide wall. The wall stated right at the eastern bank. There was a concrete base to prevent erosion. The Egyptian initially planned to use Heavy Earth Movers bulldozer to break through, then there engineers said it would take too long. In the end, the solution was simplicity itself. They used gasoline powered water pumps, using water from the suez canal itself, to simply wash the sand away. The Egyptian military purchased 300 British-made pumps, five of which could blast 1,500 cubic meters of sand in three hours. In 1972, it acquired 150 more powerful German pumps driven by small gasturbines. A combination of two German and three British pumps would cut the breaching time down to two hours. These cannons pumped out powerful jets of water creating 81 breaches in the line and removing three million cubic metres of packed dirt on the first day of the war.

Interesting simple solution,however very much taking into account the Sand bund problems.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Singha »

in indo-pak prepared DCB lines a bund would be a mix of earth, rock with perhaps concrete liner. I would imagine the huge impact of a BLU-109 type weapon as in the video I posted would make short work of such bunds, but what we need is a more clinical surgery not a ugly mess of rubble and mud , with the canal water gushing out - that would be totally useless. perhaps a 'shower' of low yield 50kg type PGMs on a particular patch would file down the bund to a manageable height, same for low yield artillery from tanks in direct fire HE round mode...but I am skeptical of anything but demolition charges and bulldozers tha traditional soln.

now pls allow me to unveil the maskirovka. the conventional IBG I had lined up for the attack was only a ruse.

behind them is my real assault force.

a frontal flying 'rohirim' wedge of 10,000 masai mounted on zebras - wielding throwing spears and straight machetes
a heavy cavalry of 10,000 zulu warriors mounted in african rhinos - wielding machetes and short spears
a armour core of 300 war elephants with archers and javelin throwers- the biggest, baddest, long tusked loners rounded up from south india
a flanking light cavalry of 5000 angami nagas and 5000 gurkhas mounting sturdy mongolian ponies
a psyops batallion of specially trained 5000 mandril monkeys trained to go after anything two-legged thats not wearing blue force uniform.

the end will be short and swift when this lot gets across our sarvatra and pontoon bridges.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by bmallick »

apparently DRDO has created a small explosive device for clearing Bunds.
http://drdo.gov.in/drdo/pub/techfocus/oct1999/bund.htm
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Badar »

Shiv,

See the section on BBD, the last thumbnail in its use sequence.
http://drdo.gov.in/drdo/labs/TBRL/Engli ... chieve.jsp

A microscope or a vivid imagination is strongly recommended for optimal viewing pleasure, but I think the idea is conveyed.

More on the BDD itself at http://drdo.gov.in/drdo/pub/techfocus/oct1999/bund.htm

edit: bmallick got there first. :)
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by shiv »

:eek: Oh my! Looks like I grossly overestimated the blasting power required for a bund.
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Re: Conduct your own war

Post by Badar »

Shiv,

LGBs to collapse the bunds? I wouldn't be too sure it would work. Dropping the bomb bang on top the bund wont help you much, it has to hit it on the side just so. It might make a crater in the middle and throw concrete here and there - but would it result in a rubble slope allowing your amphibious vehicles or bridgelayers to lay a bridge and traffic to navigate across? very unlikely. This LGB to bust open the bund idea would have to be proven in actual tests and I would be skeptical about it working out satisfactorily. It also has the unpalatable effect of the army sitting on their thumbs until the air force helps them out. Gap crossing is a core competency of any army and they are unlikely to allow themselves to be on the AF's tender mercy.

The problem with BDD is that it expects the sappers to be exposed on top of the bund they wish to collapse and set those things up on spindly little legs. If you can sneak up an engineer squad with those, well and good. Otherwise life insurance premium for those miners will be quite high. Perhaps they also have PAM style sideways breaching tools http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... s/m150.htm
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