Thoughts on FASCAM

[Great_Ajax]

After being on the receiving end of numerous NATO FASCAM minefields in the Fulda scenario, I thought I would provide some feedback on their actual use and capability.

As part of my obligatory disclaimer, I am a US Field Artillery officer having served as a platoon/battery and battalion fire direction officer in a M109A5 battalion in direct support of 3rd Armored BCT, 1st Armored Division at Fort Riley, KS. I then served as a battalion fire direction officer and later commanded two firing batteries in the 1-160 FA Bn (105mm Towed), 45th Infantry Brigade. In short, artillery gunnery is my thing.

When I was a battery FDO, we were the dedicated FASCAM battery for the direct support FA battalion. Emplacing a FASCAM standard 400m x 400m high density minefield take a lot of preparation time, firing time, and then a mandatory displacement. Normally, a FASCAM ammo package is not conveniently stored as part of an artillery section's basic defensive load. The RAAMS (anti-tank mine rounds) and ADAMS (anti-personnel rounds) that make up the FASCAM are loaded on flatbed trucks as part of the battery's ammo section. Therefore, if you want to emplace a hasty FASCAM minefield, that means that those roughly 800 artillery rounds have to unloaded at each of the gun section's firing locations. These shells can't be unloaded until the fire direction center makes its calculations to figure out planning module sizes, number of aimpoints, rounds per aimpoint, etc. This calculation itself can take 15-20 minutes. After the computations are complete, the FDC can tell the Platoon Leader/XO how many rounds need to go to each gun. Then the unloading process can begin which can take another 20-45 minutes. Now, in the actual emplacement phase of the FASCAM, we normally had six guns each shoot at an independent aimpoint with up to 96 rounds per aimpoint/gun. Shooting 96 rounds for a high density minefield from a single gun (6 Rounds per minute for the first minute and then 3 RPM) takes about 30-40 minutes of just emplacing the RAAMS anti-tank mines. Once ALL guns are complete with the RAAMS, the remaining two guns can shoot the ADAMS rounds on top of the RAAMS. This is important because the ADAMS mines are small anti-personnel mines that shoot out small tripwires when they land. These tripwires are there to prevent someone from disarming the larger RAAMS anti-tank mines. You can't shoot the ADAMS until the RAAMS are fully emplaced or you would have the falling RAAMS mines trigger the anti-tank mines. The last two guns would each have up to 24 additional ADAMS rounds to fire, taking up an additional 5-10 minutes. Once this whole process is complete, the battery has now fired up to 800 rounds from one position and is now very likely spotted by enemy artillery radar and is a prime candidate for counter battery fire.

So for FASCAM capability within the direct support battalion, we could deliver one 400m x 400m minefield with ammunition at the battery level. Usually, there was enough ammunition at the battalion ammo trains to provide for an additional FASCAM minefield but those trucks would have to pushed to the battery, unloaded, etc.

As the FASCAM battery, we could cut down on the preparation time if we had a pre-planned FASCAM minefield that was rehearsed and part of the maneuver plan. Then, we could already have the target data computed, rounds unloaded and guns laid on their respective targets.

After shooting this massive amount of rounds, our battery ammunition levels would easily be down to 50-60% and would require an immediate ammo push from battalion.

As far as Redstorm, I feel that the FASCAM minefields are way too easy to employ. A prepared pre-planned and rehearsed FASCAM minefield would take the battery approx. 45 minutes to fully emplace. A hasty FASCAM minefield could easily tie up the battery for an hour and a half.

My NATO opponent in Fulda, emplaced (I believe) six FASCAM minefields within the first three hours of game time. Six FASCAM minefields would have left NATO with no other targets to engage and would have consumed a massive amount of on hand ammunition in which NATO would have to seriously cut back on other kinds of artillery missions.


Trey

[CapnDarwin]

Trey,

Thanks for the great info. We are going to be doing a pretty big overhaul of the Indirect fire system for 2.1 and information like this will help us to get a more realistic timing and ammo consumption going. We do limit the ICM/FASCAM/smoke rounds so the entire maps is not littered with mines as an abstraction for now. Any other info on the subject is more than welcome as we are always looking to make the system better and more realistic.

[Combatengineerjrgmail]

Thanks Trey, if I had $100 for every time, as an Engineer Officer, I had to explain that to Bde, Div and Corps '3' sections I'd be rich....

[IronManBeta]

Trey -

Capn Darwin just showed me this post and it was a revelation. I guess we took too many confident assertions as facts when we set up the initial FASCAM game mechanics. We will bring it into line with your notes but it will have to be after 2.04 now. This is too big a change for the last minute prior to releasing a new build.

Thanks for taking the time to explain all this to us.

Cheers, Rob C

[mikeCK]

Dammit. Now I won't be able to just drop minefields at will in front of the dirty Commies....thanks a lot

[Mad Russian]

Another question I have concerning artillery is Soviet Rocket artillery.

The Soviet rocket launchers (Katyusha), like the BM-21, would seem to be very vulnerable to counter battery fire. They should create a lot of fire and smoke, have long reload times and show up like a beacon on targeting radars for the size of the weapons package they fire.

Is any of this incorrect?

Good Hunting.

MR

[Great_Ajax]

I would think so. High angle fire and volume of fire are always more detectable because of the time the projectiles stay in flight. A good radar/artillery team could execute a counter battery mission in about 6-8 minutes from detection if you have a battery that isn't involved in a current mission.


Trey

ORIGINAL: Mad Russian

Another question I have concerning artillery is Soviet Rocket artillery.

The Soviet rocket launchers (Katyusha), like the BM-21, would seem to be very vulnerable to counter battery fire. They should create a lot of fire and smoke, have long reload times and show up like a beacon on targeting radars for the size of the weapons package they fire.

Is any of this incorrect?

Good Hunting.

MR

[calgar]

Hello everyone,

I haven't posted anything in this forum foryears, but Treys post made my fingers twitch again.

He is absolutly right about wat he says. As a young German joint Fire Support Team Leader in training, I can tell that especially the mechanics of FASCAM do need a revamp. Also please bear in mind for the update, that the German Armed Forces used rocket delievered minefield opposed to gun delieverd minefields which results in larger (or in other words: more hexes) minefields in shorter time. The ability to pre-plan such minefields would be of course amazing.

And while I am at it: I would appreciate a short update on when proper engineering features will be implemented, and to what extend.

I would also like to let you know that this game is amazing in many ways and the developers have done a hell of a job, though there is a lot of room for improvement to make this game really feel like a "cold war gone hot" game.

Warm regards,

A

[Mad Russian]

A,

Thanks for your kind words and WELCOME to the forum.

Now to address some of your comments.

Artillery - will get an almost full rework when we can get to it.

Combat Engineers - will have multiple features added. They are in about the second tier of features to be added. I won't give you a time frame for when that will happen because they are never accurate. The exact features that will be added haven't been discussed but having been a combat engineer I would like to see most of what they can do in real life transferred into the game. That will depend on game play vs simulation value as to what gets added and how it's implemented.

Right now we are trying to tie up the loose ends for the initial release. Once we get 2.04 done then we can start looking at what, when and where.

Good Hunting.

MR

[CapnDarwin]

MR hits it dead on. We are looking at artillery and engineering as major focus points for more detail and control for the 2.1 game engine. For arty we want to add in more control over mission types, ammo amounts, improve timings based on mission, better AI use of assets, and more. As for engineers, we would like to get some actual on map counters of men and machines, a better selection of missions to perform and such. We will also need to revamp the AI to use these tools correctly. As we do start to jump from 2.04 to 2.1 work, we will be able to discuss more of what is coming. Right now the main focus is a working 2.04 and the show at Origins through Father's day. After that we can be ready for the 2.1 kickoff.

[calgar]

Thank you for your quick responses.

I think you two will do a great job on the next updates. Since I am not a regular user on this forum, will we be charged for the 2.1 update? I play quite a bit Combat Mission so I am a little traumatized by updates of all kinds and additional fees.

I personally think that Engineering and Artillery features are what makes a cold war game a cold war game at the end of the day. Is there any feature of these two categories that you are personally fond of and would like to see an appearence in-game, unrelated to what will be in the game once we make it to the actual updates?

Regards,

A

[Plodder]

This thread has been discussed over at the Steel Beasts forums and Ssnake, one of developers of SB, had made this responce:

Note the conspicuous absence of any mention of the MLRS in that thread. In SB/SB Pro the implicit assumption in our software and mission design was that FASCAMs would be delivered by rocket artillery, not M 109s.
A section of MLRS launchers can deliver the same 400x400 minefield with a single volley, about 30 seconds shooting time.

FASCAM delivery by tube artillery always appeared to me as a stupid concept. The first time I heard about that after attending officers' school with its many mandatory artillery lectures was years later when working on Steel Beasts. During all our scenarios at officer's school it was always the MLRS section on standby to launch a mission. Of course, the caveat here was that in order to launch such a barrage the FASCAM rockets already had to be loaded, which would prevent that MLRS section from servicing any other call for fire; the more FASCAM missions you planned for in your defense plan, the less general purpose MLRS missions you had available until after the minefields were brought out.

In addition to MLRS, at least the Bundeswehr relied on "Skorpion" mine-dispensing vehicles (I think the US designation is "Volcano") for obstacle creation. At the end of the Cold War the Bundeswehr had a mine-laying capacity (and sufficient stocks) for obstacles in excess of 3,500km length. So, I admit that my perspective on the FASCAM issue may be slightly slanted.

Here's the link to the thread.

[calgar]

ORIGINAL: Ssnake

In addition to MLRS, at least the Bundeswehr relied on "Skorpion" mine-dispensing vehicles (I think the US designation is "Volcano") for obstacle creation. At the end of the Cold War the Bundeswehr had a mine-laying capacity (and sufficient stocks) for obstacles in excess of 3,500km length. So, I admit that my perspective on the FASCAM issue may be slightly slanted.

I couldn't have said it better. I grew curious over the last days about this and called a buddy who is a year ahead of me. He has visited what we call "Officer Course Pt. 2" at the end of 2013, (I have so far only visited Pt. 1...) and I asked him to send me a few documents that can help us shed some light on MLRS mine-laying capability. Acknowledging that the Pt. 2 purpose is not to teach specific knowledge, but rather general issues regarding leadership, DMP, law and these kind of things: What he could say (and is confirmed by the maps he send me), is that we currently work with Rocket Artilelry Delivered Minefields of 2 km in width (single-density) in one firemission. Time on Target is about 5 - 10 minutes if pre-planned and between 40 and 50 minutes if hasty.

As always, this is subject to many factors, but thats what the guys in the "laboratory" came up with.

I will try to get my hands on more documents regarding this question.


Regards,

A