AAR from ''Attack on rail junction'' mission (designed by Ben and available on
www.steelbeast.com)
I modified the original mission switching from British to Finnish and using fewer and less powerfull tanks for Blue
force to make things a little bit more difficult.
BRIEFING
You are tasked to regain control of a rail station occupied by a Russian mech company reinforced by a platoon of T72 tanks.
Finnish force consist of 1 platoon of CV9030 IFV, 1 platoon of Boxer APC, 3 recon squads, reinforced by a section of 2 Leopard 2A4 MBT.
Limited onfield arty support is available by 2 81mm mortars with HE and SMOKE rounds.
Our scouts waiting in the woods, they field soviet style rifles with smoke and he grenades, every squad has a light antitank to deal with armor.
CV9030 IFV's armed with 30mm gun and modern thermal optics
Leo 2 A4 is not the most modern/resilent tank, at least has thermal optics and a good gun
Boxer is a modern and well protected APC, sometimes armed with a RemoteWeaponStation
Mission starts at 6 AM with overcast sky, light rain and wet ground, visibility is limited at around 700 meters.
Weather forecast: visibility and weather will get better.
Battle area is limited by rivers on both sides, on left side there is a sort of wadi running in low ground im gona use it to move my main force.
Original plan is to move infantry and ifv followed by apc across the wadi, doing this to avoid to expose my 'soft' assets to enemy MBT. In the meantime I will probe on right side with limited infantry and the tank section to establish a fire base to suppress the rail station.
No intel on enemy position yet so plan may change after first contact
1st contact, the tank section while overwatching the probe of the scout teams picked up an enemy squad in a building I don’t want the tank to waste precious ammo on them so I let the ifv engage the enemy infantry with their 30mm autocannons
Target from CV90 thermal sights
Same target, this time without thermal: infantry is concealed by fog, visibility is still around 700 meters
The Commander workplace is a buisy one, CV9030 is one of the vehicles represented with deeper detail in SBPRO, lot of switches are clickable (like in DCS) and you can simulate a startup sequence from scratch, as well as using different Fire Control System modes
Using the overhead view you can issue orders to the unit like in a RTS game, fog of war is still in place as well as some camera angle limitations, in order to avoid a gamey use of such view.
Here i move my IFV platoon 200mt ahead in order to establish a positive ID on enemy infantry using normal optics.
In the mean time my wadi scouts (squad 1-4) spotted a tank sitting at the edge of a wooden area, not sure if the tank spotted me (squad was advancing slowly in a crounch posture), still i dont want a headon confrontation with 45 tons of soviet steel...
Note how the previous infantry contact icon is now upgraded to a HMG squad after my IFV establish a visual ID on them...
Overhead view of squad 1-4 popping a smoke screen while hitting the gronud, they will retreat 40 meters to break Line Of Sight
with the russian T72
Back on the IFVs, it's time to kill the enemy HMG, lase, quick burst of 30mm and the squad is ... well its no more...
Quick upgrade to original plan: the wadi tank was not expected, so i need to start a flank manouver on left side with squad leader 1-PL in order to achieve a firing position on the T72 side
Squad 1-PL slowly probing in the direction of the flanking position
Squad 1-PL almost in position, time to hit the ground in order to avoid being spotted
While im almost done with squad 1-PL antitank action, I start earing the sound of ICM arty hitting somewhere, 5 sec later I see my Leopard rushing out the woods: spotted by an unknow Forward Observer they were targeted by ICM arty strike while they were hidden in the woods (well not very well hidden by the looks of it...), one tank is ok the other one suffered a close miss and now has both main gun optic and thermals damaged, so it can engage only using the Auxiliary Gun Sight
Time to kill the T72 and take some revenge for the damaged Leopard, a quick and clean kill at first shoot
the AT4 rocket penetrated the turret front plate near the gun
While killing the T72, squad 1-PL spotted a BTR 80 nearby, the sound of the antitank round hotting the tank allerted the
BTR, now squad 1-PL is pinned by Heavy Machinegun fire, unable to retreat im starting to take the first causalities
Prolonged contact with the enemy is forcing me to update my plan oncemore, need to rush ahead squad 1-4 ( the squad previously retreating under smoke screen ) to kill that BTR
Infantry is a quite powerfull asset even in a tank centric simulation, only problem is... its slow.
Even if running they are too slow to provide some help for my dying squad (1-PL), and here i do a big mistake:
in order to save squad 1-PL from his fate i decided to rush my tank section to the rescue, it was not a complete kamikaze move, but my tanks had to cross some land i havent previously scouted with infantry.
Caught with pants down by a T72 hiding near some far buildings, my almost blind Leo2 was hit twice, second round was a fatal one, Leopards have really well protected turrets and ... well ... not so well protected hulls