Is Counterbattery Effective?

[DukeBannon]

How can you tell if counterbattery is being effective or accomplishing anything at all?

[cbelva]

I can tell you it is effective. If you place your arty on counterbattery you we see a decrease in your enemy’s arty effectiveness over time.

[WABAC]

How can you tell if counterbattery is being effective or accomplishing anything at all?

You might have to look at some of those reports that I never look at. That will at least tell you whether or not they are shooting.

But you won't get anything accurate if his arty isn't under observation. Then you'll see little puffs of smoke until the air is too saturated with dust and smoke. You may notice a drop off in the effectiveness of his fires.

[Tcao]

Besides put Arty into CB mode, you can also manually assign arty strike on suspicious hexes.

one of the way to find enemy arty is reading the intel report , that contact 142 (radar only) is a US mortar section detected by counter battery radar.

CB report.jpg (109.3 KiB) Viewed 1507 times

[Stelteck]

How counter artillery fire on offmap artillery displayed/reported ?

[cbelva]

You probably can't tell during the game, except by noticing that the effectiveness of the arty is decreasing as guns are destroyed. You could check the staff reports to see the assessment of kills. I'm not sure how accurate that is based on the fact you can't really see what is happening with off-map units. I'm bounced that question to the programmers to see what they say.

[Tcao]

I can check my combat log, but I remember you will see a popup window says your CB arty is engaging off-map arty.
If that achieves a kill it will show on the units' kill tally.

[blackcloud6]

I can check my combat log, but I remember you will see a popup window says your CB arty is engaging off-map arty.
If that achieves a kill it will show on the units' kill tally.

This is correct. I just finished a PBEM game where I put my BM-21s to perform counterbattery missions and I would get pop-ups telling me when they conducted such a mission and the results.

[sfbaytf]

Speaking of Counterbattery, perhaps in the future there might be an ability to allocate airstrikes and possibly attack helicopters to counterbattery?

Even sending scout helectopters to find and direct counterbattery fire to make it more effective?

Don't know if this would have been standard doctrine of if that's giving too much flexibility than would have normally been the case.

[IronMikeGolf]

Speaking of Counterbattery, perhaps in the future there might be an ability to allocate airstrikes and possibly attack helicopters to counterbattery?

Even sending scout helectopters to find and direct counterbattery fire to make it more effective?

Don't know if this would have been standard doctrine of if that's giving too much flexibility than would have normally been the case.

You might have a look at this paper for a study of US counterfire doctrine and capability circa 1989.

As to using CAS, there was an incident during OIF (Oeration Iraqi Freedom) where a US counterbattery radar was down. CAS was used for 90 minutes to little effect (couldn't find targets) and an Iraqi arty battalion fired missions continuously. When the radar was repaired, tube artillery took it down.

During that timeframe I worked in the G3 staff of a heavy division. The division had limited counterfire capability (1 x MLRS battery). All tube artillery (3 x M109 battalions) would be allocated to supporting ground maneuver forces. Corps artillery had a larger share of counterfire responsibility for enemy tube and rocket artillery. The brigades' supporting artillery battalions had counterfire responsibility for counter-mortar fires. This was reflected in the allocation of a counter-mortar radar to each brigade sector and one counter artillery radar for the division.

Flying helos much beyond the FLOT (Forward Line of Own Troops) requires a lot of airspace management we don't model. You don't shoot indirect fire where helos and CAS flies. And not just around the target, but ingress and egress routes. CAS isn't so bad because you just have to pause firing for a couple of minutes. But helos are slow.

In exercises where one of the division's attack helo companies did a deep strike (to target behind enemy regiments), the planning and coordination was onerous. Part of it is not just disallowing fires in the vicinity of helos, but also disallowing fires that go overhead towards deeper targets. We didn't do "big sky, small bullet" anymore, as far as I remember, but I didn't work the aviation cell.

[sfbaytf]

Thanks for the link and info. Too often in many wargames things are too easy when in fact it’s far more complicated. You don’t like the artillery shelling you, just send in an air strike or helicopters and problem solved.

While not specifically counter battery related another artillery related question that probably doesn’t require a separate thread…

Use of FISTs. I have a basic understanding of them and from the internet it says they have specialized gear and personnel trained to call indirect fire.

In game terms what use do they have? Do they get faster and more effective results when calling in indirect fire? If an area is under their direct observation and an enemy unit moves into the area will they get priority or will they be better at identifying priority targets?

I try to place them in areas where they have good observation and concealment with a good route of retreat if necessary and make sure they are in command range of their HQ unit, which in turn is within range of higher HQ.

I’m guessing in real life FISTs are highly valuable and priority targets but not sure how the AI in FCSS regards them.

[IronMikeGolf]

I am still in my first reading of the above paper. It resonates with what I understand of Corps level artillery of that era:
1. I know a guy (artillery officer) who served at V Corps Fires Cell. Their main mission was tracking locations of Soviet tac nuke systems.
2. The bulk of counterfires was on Corps. V Corps had 2 arty Brigades (Total: 5 x M110A2 8" bn, 2 x M270 MLRS Bn, 2 x MGM-52 Lance Bn, 1 x M109A3 155mm Bn). VII Corps had 3 arty Brigades (Total: 5 x M110A2 Bn, 1 x M270 MLRS Bn, 3 x MGM-52 Lance Bn, 3 x M109A3 Bn)
3. Credible counterfire platforms here are the M270s (30 km range shooting ICM). That's one battalion per deployed division in V Corps and one battalion in VII sector.
4. Per US doctrine at the time, artillery had sole responsibility for counterfires.
5. There simply wasn't any timely communication path to get counterfire targeting info to a counterfire unit, other than from the TABs (Target Aquisition Batteries, who had the requisite radars). Sure tactical units, like meh or tank companies or scout helos might spot a mortar battery or a arty battery on the battlefield and report it. But that went up through intel channels and there was absolutely no "express lane" for that info. So by the time it filtered up to the Corps Artillery Brigade supporting that Division (Plt --> Co --> Bn --> Bde --> Div --> Corps Intel --> Arty Bde --> Counterfire Bn --> Firing Unit) the targeting info would be too stale to shoot. TACFIRE didn't help this either.
6. The notion that any unit can provide targeting info for counterfires (at least for US. I am quite sure the same is true for NATO in general) just runs counter to how things worked back then.

On top of all that, I'll say I doubt Corps level artillery would have much impact on this war past the third or fourth day. Why? They weren't set up for sustained operations and Desert Storm revealed that. The issue was ammo resupply. Most Corps artillery units in Desert Storm went the entire operation with only their Basic load (weren't resupplied). The details would be a separate post.

[WABAC]

Attached is an article about the mission of the 2nd Bn, 28th Field Artillery, a VII Corps artillery unit. Starts at page 33. I always thought it would make an interesting scenario. Maybe someday.

The other two articles now seem to be behind a membership login. Should have snagged them when I had the chance: