Guide to Ground Warfare

There are quite a few common misconceptions regarding trench warfare, and, by extension, fortifications within the realm of NS RP. While there are some players whom use large-scale trench constructs as seen in the First World War, the main problem is simply that most players outright ignore trenches and fortifications thinking they are are useless and obsolete.

In fact, fortifications and digging in is an essential part of modern warfare. The use of minefields, anti-tank ditches, and other obstacles can be used to funnel the enemy forces into kill zones or can delay the enemy for critical periods of time, mine-deploying artillery shells are especially useful for this. In addition, fortifications can be used to funnel the enemy into certain terrain. Let's say you have 3 paths, and fortify 2 of them. The enemy commanders first instinct would be to go for the gap that is not defended by fortifications, allowing you as the defender to know this and orientate your forces to exploit this. Another effective way to use fortifications is in hedgehog defense. Like the previous example, most commanders will ignore any hardpoint in order to keep the speed and momentum of the attack. This allows you to keep hundreds, or even thousands of troops intact in these hard points behind enemy lines. One can then use these groups to attempt a break-out or carry out harassment of the enemy supply lines or troop formations.

However, this is not to say that hundreds of kilometers long trench lines should be used like the kind that have been seen in World War 1. The enemy can simply focus a lot of strength at one point at the trench line, breaking through it. With the speeds of armored and motorized vehicles, an army can cover dozens, if not, hundreds of kilometers in one day, meaning that you cannot contain the breakthrough and your entire trench line becomes obsolete. Contrary to popular belief, trench lines are not all that effected by modern smart weapons. They are still markedly resilient and dugouts can be hard to detect and destroy. While smart weapons would give an attacker an advantage, it does not render the trench system obsolete.

As a general rule you need 5:1 odds for an attack.

This is NOT Call of Duty

There are far too many players running around acting like this is Call of Duty. It is important to note that this game is a unrealistic depiction of modern warfare. Your soldiers are not elite people whom run around with akibo g19's with juggernaut and red tiger camo or whatever and massacre other nations soldiers. Your Humvee shouldn't really run around with gattling cannons on them and you're not going to disable an entire nations national defense grid by copying a single satellite. As a rule, throw everything you think you know about modern warfare from this game out of your head and assume you're an idiot.

Conscripts and Professional Soldering

Numbers don't always mean everything. This has been proven time and time again through the ages, from Thermopylae to Khe Snah. If your nation decides to have a conscript army, you should do so for other reasons besides the plan to “zerg” an opponent.

Generally speaking, conscript armies are inefficient compared to a professional soldier for a variety of different reasons. Firstly, today's ideal soldier is a highly-educated, highly-trained, and highly-motivated engine of war. The cost and length of training means that a nation invests heavily in a soldier. In today's high-technology battlefield, training takes a long time and soldiers themselves are highly specialized. Thus, it would be really dumb to have a conscript and require only a years service out of them. This is far too short of a time for a soldier to train and become specialized at anything, which means your soldier will be no better than an average grunt in WW2. Even with a two-year term, this is not long enough for the investment to pay off or even for advanced training to be completed. If your nation does decide to use conscripts, do so for a minimum of three years if not longer. Your nation is not 100% full of fanatically-motivated zealots whom love the military and want to serve your glorious state. Conscripts are not as highly-motivated as professional volunteers, and this should factor into your nations decision to use them. Military operations require a very precise and serious military mentality which not everyone is suited for, and training can't always indoctrinate it into your men and women. They will have a higher chance of being defeated on the battlefield. Admittedly, how motivated your conscripts are likely depends on the kind of nation and the specific war the nation is facing, for example being invaded compared to an imperialist counter-insurgency. Regardless, as a general rule professional soldiers are better than conscripts.

The conscript problem is especially worse with officers. Being an officer is a highly-demanding job which require the absolute pinnacle in mental-preparedness and skill and merit. An officer should want to be an officer, and have the skills to do so with the proper training. Forcing a conscript to be an officer could be a recipe for disaster. The same goes for noncom soldiers.

If your nation chooses to have conscripts, one should use them for a large, but technologically inferior military, and furthermore both officers and noncoms should be career soldiers. It is wrong to assume your military will be as highly-motivated as any professional force, and one should take that into account when roleplaying. However, roleplaying a conscript army would allow for interesting roleplaying stories, which is what RP is all about. Just remember the advantages and disadvantages.

Air Force is not an IWIN Button

It is a common myth that an Air Force automatically leads to victory. The Air force is an integral part of modern warfare, but it by no means automatically grants victory.

There are numerous way for a ground force to dampen the effectiveness of a hostile air force. Ultimately a lot of these tactics depends on the terrain and the kind of army, but moving in smaller formations, avoiding detection, and fighting the enemy at very close ranges helps to dampen the effectiveness of the Air Force. A hostile air force is not going to bomb its own men if you are danger-close with them as long as the situation is not critical. In addition, a well-designed and operated mobile air defense network will continue to bother an enemy air force for the duration of the campaign. Still, it is advisable to work hard to attain air parity or air superiority, as the Air Force does act as a massive force multiplier for the enemy, and that should be taken into account.

Infantry are not useless

Contrary to popular belief NS is not a RTS game where your infantry are completely useless as soon as the first vehicle comes out onto the field. Hands down, infantry are THE most vital piece to any military and will form the bulk of your ground arsenal.

Highly trained and well equipped infantry are capable of fighting against all other ground forces, including both armored formations and enemy attack helicopters. Infantry are absolutely essential in fighting in jungle or urban environments and for holding ground. One cannot wage a counter-insurgency war without them nor a high-tempo, high-intensity war.

The infantry's vulnerabilities can be made up through the usage of APCs and IFV's as well as helicopters. One can use infantry in specialized situations such as paratroopers, mountain warfare, special forces, and the like.

Assuming infantry suck and sending your tanks in alone against them is one way of very quickly finding out just how wrong you are.

Logistics and Supply
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a269/bobiscool33/Logistics2_copy.jpg

This is an area virtually ignored on NS except by the upper echelon of experienced military
roleplayers. Huge armies are moved and supplied on NS without any regard to the logistical complexities of maintain such a force. Supplying millions of men is herculean effort made by men who are virtually unknown but without whom modern war could not function. Let us imagine the amount of items that must be moved:

Boots, Food, 120mm ammo, fuel, 5.56mm ammo, 7.62mm ammo, 155mm shells, bug repellent, parkas, fatigues, bulletproof vests, guns, computers, dog tags, medical supplies, packages from home, personal hygiene equipment, spare parts, telephones, engineering equipment, demolitions, water, books, shovels, the list is endless.

For attacking alone, for one day, it requires 138 six-ton trucks to deliver the nesseracy ammo. And that does not even begin to include casualty evacuation or any of the other equipment needed for a modern military to function.

To this end, supply lines and the security of them are of vital important, not only for the physical function of your army, but also for the morale aspect. Your soldiers are going to loose morale very quickly if their letters from home keep getting blown up by some jackass with an RPG or a artillery shell landing on that truck or from a manportable SAM soothing down that transport helicopter.

But there's even more to consider. Lets say it takes 138 trucks to deliver that ammo to that armored division. But who's going to drive these trucks? Escort them? Repair them? Load them with supplies? Ah, yes. Look at all that manpower you need to even keep a modern division operating and in fighting shape. Next time instead of wanting to spam 5 million men, you'll want to use just enough to get the job done and your men supplied.

Urban Warfare
Ever heard of Hue? Perhaps Fallujah? What about Grozny? No? How about Berlin? Leningrad? Stalingrad. Surely you have heard of Stalingrad.

Urban battles are unimaginably bloody, horrific, and savage and WILL result in mass casualties against any remotely competent opponent even if you hold significant advantages in about every area. Urban battles should be avoided at all costs, and enough troops left behind to contain the city. If one chooses to invade a city, your opponent will merely grin and prepare himself to grind your troops up in the cheese grater. There is no IWIN to taking a city. You can level it, gas it, bomb it, starve it, firebomb it, or any other thing or combination but your enemy can still resist and will do so in the rubble.

There has been number of debates on NSD and elsewhere about the best way to assault the city. No consensus can be reached, but most everybody agrees you should avoid cities unless you have to take one. How you do that, and the tactics involved, are up to you.

Here are some examples of terrain types, and the ways in which they affect national defense:

Plains

Expansive plains allow for large-scale maneuvers with vehicles and enormous combined
arms battles to be fought. For your purposes it does not really matter if the plains are desert, steppe, or whatever - any expansive, relatively flat terrain on which combat vehicles may move qualifies generally as ‘plains’. The largest tank battles in history - the Battle of Kursk and the Yom Kippur War, for instance - were fought in enormous flatlands.

Flatlands are where massive armored, and mechanized infantry, formations will prevail. Because the land is relatively flat, visibility will be generally high - meaning that your soldiers and vehicles, and, conversely, your enemies, will be able to engage each other at relatively high distances. The flatness of the terrain will also allow immense units - regiments, divisions, entire army groups - to act in concert.

Hills

A terrain of rolling hills, such as that seen in Europe around the Fulda Gap, still allows the use of large ground force contingents, but limits the effectiveness of long-range direct-fire weapons such as tank cannon (since you no longer have such far lines of sight). Still in this environment it is important to take control of major hilltops, to attempt to extend the range of your weaponry and line of sight (although obviously the opponent will try to reduce the usefulness of this by hiding behind other hills, etc.).

An example of hilly terrain

Jungle/Forest/Swamps

The three aforementioned types of terrain often appear together in various combinations, and they have in common the fact they limit the usefulness of large formations of combined arms forces. It is difficult for large groups of vehicle to move through swamps, jungles, and forest (the trees get in the way, and one can easily sink one’s vehicle in the swamp), while low visibility bars them from using the advantages of their heavy weapons.

In such a terrain the use of helicopters (to ‘bounce’ men and resources from one clearing to another), as well as light infantry (more capable of maneuvering and fighting in the jungle) becomes more prevalent. In a crude manner, imagine a mechanized infantry company - about a hundred men and two or three dozen APCs or IFVs - arriving at the edge of a dense forest. Even if they manage to get inside the treeline - without, say, the APCs getting stuck - they will not be able to see each other past the tree cover, and will not have the ability to shoot people at the full range of their APCs main guns’. This means that a lot of the advantage these heavy vehicles would have given your men will be lost to you.

Helicopters in the jungle of Vietnam

Mountains: Mountains have a lot of the same problems jungles and swamps have - they are hard to access by ground vehicles, and the few roads that run through them are easily blocked off by ambushes. However, the engagement distances at which your soldiers fight are now longer (in Afghanistan, soldiers find themselves fighting at distances of up to 800 meters!), as the other side’s soldiers might shoot at them from an opposing mountain slope. Another difficulty is that helicopters are less useful at high altitudes - their payloads decrease, and eventually the rotors give out altogether as the air gets thinner. Finding a landing spot in the mountains is difficult as well. Specialized mountain units utilize lighter vehicles (and even horses and mules) for transport, and often provide their men with mountaineer training.

Arctic Region: Another special area. Many common combat vehicles cannot operate on the snow on ice due to excessive ground pressure. Fighting in the Arctic requires special gear and training (the Russian military mandates cross-country ski training for all mechanized infantry, and additional ski training for Arctic infantry). Even if your country has trans-polar areas it does not necessarily need Arctic Infantry - Russia, a country dominated by it Transpolar regions, has felt it did not need Arctic brigades until very recently, when Russian doctrine began anticipating confrontations with other countries over the natural resources of the Arctic.

Because arctic warfare vehicles are lighter - and thus less armed and armored - than ordinary AFVs, Arctic divisions would probably not stand up well to fighting to ordinary, non-arctic units.

Coasts: The structure of your nation’s coasts is vital for your national defense. Major industrial harbors are needed to maintain your navy - remember those supercarriers you bought at that awesome storefront over at GE&T? Where do your carriers park, huh? You need major ports to maintain and rearm any major naval ship. Typically major naval bases are located at or near major civilian ports.

Conversely, some parts of your coast are open to attack by the enemy. Broadly all forms of coastline can be divided into two forms - those open to an amphibious landing (for example beaches) and those not so open (cliffy terrain technically is not). Note that what we’re talking about an unprepared, opposed amphibious landing - an amphibious landing where the enemy’s troops are shot at, and he did not have time to prepare the landing. In this case, the only areas that are open to amphibious landing are those where the opponent’s amphibious vehicles can drive out of the water and directly onto the shore, under fire (you are, obviously, defending your coast). If the enemy manages to land troops on the shore (say, by airlift or parachute landing), and establish a beach-head, it is conceivably for those troops to blow up a cliff-face to make it possible for further vehicles to drive up the resulting slope, or , if the beach-head is retained for months or more, even build a small improvised port.

There are several strategies to defend a coast from landing. Other than maintaining a strong enough navy to defend against enemy forces in the first place, your ground forces should maintain a force of patrol aircraft and long-range RADAR installations (to defend against enemy ships), as well as mobile launcher batteries for anti-ship missiles (on trucks and on aircraft).

Mobile coastal defense launchers

If this fails, and the opponent’s forces are already approaching your shore, it is useful to deploy anti-landing mines directly in front of them. These are special mines that are deployed into shallow waters and will mess up things like light landing craft, amphibious vehicles, and boats. Your ground forces meanwhile set up a defensive line on shore in the same way they normally do.

Remember: the landing is when the enemy’s tanks, APCs, soldiers and ships are most vulnerable. Landing ships (and even aircraft carriers) are vulnerable to artillery and ATGMs, and amphibious vehicles cannot fire their guns as accurately from the water. Infantry are bunched up tight in landing vehicles and APCs, and are unable to use their guns against you.

Cities: The hardest terrain to fight in. Combat manuals generally state officers are to avoid trying to capture the opponent’s cities, because of the simple fact that fighting in cities tend to be ferocious and take up a great amount of time. However, cities that are transport hubs, industrial or political centers, are likely to get attacked in wartime

What makes cities so hard to fight in? Primarily it is the fact that you can’t really see through walls. Houses - even houses that have been wrecked by shell fire and are not fully inhabitable - are going to provide at least concealment, and probably even cover, for enemy troops, while obscuring communications between military units. In other words, if a platoon goes down one street, and another platoon goes down the other, they cannot really assist each other, and an enemy attack is likely to come by surprise - and given that the reverse goes for the enemy, any battle is actually a series of ferocious firefights between various small units.

This is not an atypical result.

Recon

You WILL NOT know where your enemy is and what he has at ALL TIMES. Like logistics, Rping of proper recon is not very well done in most NS RP. It does not matter how many satellites, UAV's, ground patrols, and the like you will have, you will not know where and what your enemy has at all times, and there are numerous ways of hiding even large formations.