T-80 thermals useless?

[DeletedUser1676996457]

Panta_slith, here another scenario I am currently playing.

See, normally my strategy starts dividing the main soviet forces in eschelons. See numbers I, II and III with the planning route once I send them order to advance (yellow arrows). The advance normally happens in two fases, with a resuply step in the middle, prior to the final push. I choose wisely the terrain for that purpose.

I group my reccon forces and send them first to try to investigate as much as posible the front line (see small yellow circles around my line of reccon forces). During this fase my main schelons are kept sitting tight, waiting for me to understand better the frontline situation. Using the help of the Enemy intel at TOC, I try to find and target enemy´s Air defences and Arty as much as posible and as early as posible...If I have recce helo available I try to send them behind enemy lines to search for those threats. if I have air support keep them safe untill I have located the enemy´s air defences or at least have a good idea where they are.

I Try to keep my recce in screen mode to try to save them as much as posible...difficult task in Red Storm.

Once a feel more comfortable with the enemies current situation in the frontline, I finally risk and try to coordinate the advance of my main schelons in different lines of attack to give as much headache as posible to the enemy.

This is one of my main strategies when playing with Soviets. Lots of fun, lots of tension and yelling at the computer screen...hehehe

As I am really not a military expert, not sure if this represents actual soviet doctrine, but works for me to defeat NATO here in this game.

Oh...and as I mentioned to you before...I never fight in open terrain. Never! I take a longer route if necessary, but always look for forests and cities, always.

Lets see how this mission unfolds.

Cheers,

[GloriousRuse]

Not to practice the dark art of thread necromancy, but something jumped out at me here. Namely, the OPFOR manuals.

It's worth remembering that the Big 5 purchasing plan needed to be sold to congress. Political leaders being what they are, Abrams and Co decided that they were going to write an enemy and a doctrine that would be easily explained, and just as importantly, justify why big dollars should be dumped in modernizing the army.

One of the easier ways to do that was to take a theoretical USSR formation, line it up PRECISELY how the manual says, and then feed it into "what it looks like with the old stuff" versus "look how much ass we'll kick if you buy us the new stuff" if we sit in our positions and just keep shooting. Because variables like maneuver, surprise, and the like almost always act against the pure tech demo. The flip side of this was the US basically decided that the role of a company through battalion was to get to their assigned positions and keep killing stuff as it poured on. Maybe with a planned displacement to a new position.

The OPFOR manuals didn't try to actively lie or omit, and were indeed based in Soviet tactics, but they did present a very mechanistically predictable opponent who always conveniently rand that perfect line of approaching elements directly into the engagement area. Which was fine for the purposes of training people how to build engagement areas (a very necessary skill if you plan on sitting in place and shooting things until they or you die), or convincing congress that you needed a new tank because the old one clearly can't kill them fast enough.

So...they may not be flawless representation of soviet tactics. Particularly as they tended to ignore things like the soviet attack shaking out after the initial rebuke.

Point the second, if the soviets had followed those manuals, US training circulars basically said each company on the defense should kill Russians at somewhere between 7-10:1. If you decide to replicate that favorable interpretation of how the soviets would fight, and then use it against someone fighting like how the US said it was going to fight against that exact manual - well, you can probably expect to lose a lot of soviets.

[dvphimself]

Bitter, wo ist der Bahnmuseum?