Counter Battery

[Tazak]

At present counter battery fire is abstracted and outside of the EW settings within the scenario or via the national tab on the user data sheet, players have no impact or control over this. I'm putting forward a way to bring this into the game and give players the ability to have an effect on both theirs and the enemies counter battery activities.

From digging around it appears that country battery assets were predominantly vehicle mounted radar used to track the actual shells from the firing battery and work out the reverse path of the shell to pinpoint the firing battery location.

The key word I'm focusing on in this thread is "radar", radars on a modern battlefield in my view would be one of the primary electronic emissions that both sides would track, identify and target for destruction, reducing the enemy’s capability to conduct radar based activities.
So a counter battery activity requires a radar to change its EMCON state to allow active radar pulses, this would place the emitting radar vehicle at risk of being identified, tracked and targeted by the enemy, hopefully it would complete its CB tracking and provide a fire solution to a friendly battery, shut off its radar and move before enemy shells start falling.

Option:
Tie counter battery fire into certain vehicles & emission states, give CB vehicles a radar profile, and provide a EMCON state that players can change, this can be further expanded so once direct support option is working batteries can be placed in direct support of the CB vehicle in order for CB fire to occur.
This allows player greater control over CB activities, while providing players the capability to reduce enemy CB capabilities and forcing them to protect their own CB capabilities.

End result:
Players have more control over CB but not to the point of micro managing
EMCON makes an appearance
Places an element of risk to carrying out CB activities (risk vs reward rather than just reward)
CB activities would require multipul assets to provide 100% coverage, smaller number of assets require a commander to put some thought into a CB plan

Would also need a way to turn this off or automate it similar to how CB fire works at present should players want.

[CapnDarwin]

Tazak, all good points. I would like to get CB units off map where they belong at this map footprint and give the player the options like you are talking about. Set how much time a CB unit looks for targets. Fire mission rate versus a target. Also give the player some inputs on EW in the forms of jamming radar assets of the enemy. Keep it top level but not just a scenario setting. We will have a lot of new ideas and player inputs to review for each area as we jump into 2.1 planning. I need to harass a couple friends of mine on some of the EW used in the 80s and also get a better feel for mission splits for NATO and WP artillery forces.