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PaladinZeroSix -> RE: Winning the Meeting Engagement (12/31/2014 4:54:34 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Mad Russian
quote:
ORIGINAL: PaladinZeroSix
That's an excellent article, but a word of caution -- or, perhaps, lament -- is in order. The USSR TO&Es in the FPRS scenarios don't accurately represent the Soviet task organization for meeting engagements, nor do they portray the actual timelines between each successive "layer" of a Soviet regiment's advance (i.e., regimental recce precedes everything by 30-50 KM; CRPs are 5-10 KM ahead of the FSE, etc.)
The reason for the shortened distances is, that during the kind of attack that I envisioned the Soviets to have launched, I would have expected them to shorten the layering and concentrate as much as possible in the early going. When the threat of battlefield nuclear weapons was at it's lowest.
I would not have expected the Soviets to be completely locked into their normal organizations because of the nuclear threat and would have expected them to maximize their force multipliers just as NATO would have done with theirs.
Of course, you can put the actual distances in any scenario you like and try those to see how they would work. Anything is possible.
I am new to FCRS, so please forgive me if there is a published "back story" that describes the nature of the overarching campaign, such as the degree of forewarning had by NATO. Assuming that the WP attacked on relatively short notice, one would expect that the NATO front lines would be disorganized and nonlinear, which would seem to be an apt situation for the WP leading elements to advance in march formation and arrayed for a meeting engagement as described in the Armor article referenced above. The separation between each layer of that formation was not, as I understand it, responsive to the level of nuclear threat. Instead, it was intended to give the commander of each successive element the optimum amount of time to react based on what the preceding element(s) were reporting/doing.
That said, NATO did maintain a strong covering force along the border, and I would imagine that the leading recce elements would have a tough time filtering through. I suppose there would have been massive fire strikes on every suspected OP/BP.
Anyway, I think my original observation still stands. The techniques outlined in the Armor article are based on exploiting windows of opportunity presented by the layered nature of the Soviet march formation. So, to the extent that is not reflected in the available FCRS missions, the article is of limited utility. It's still a good read and undoubtedly of great interest to many FCRS players.
And you're right....anyone can create scenarios reflecting their own view of things. Maybe one of these days I'll create a more "orthodox" meeting engagement scenario.
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