Micromanagement, or Guidance? Finding a balance: A Steel Beasts AAR

Steel Beasts AAR: Finnish CT attacks OFPOR Forward Detachment

I don't envy any individual who serves as a company leader in a modern armed force. It's a rank that is increasingly being burdened with considerations beyond the tactical, and whose tactical importance and mission scope is invariably increasing in complexity (hand-in-hand with sensor and weapons technology), all the while seeing their "bayonet strength" generally decrease (regardless, it appears, of attempts to increase it by reorganizations). All this to say: situational awareness for line officers is growing exponentially with technology, as is the means to communicate your intent, but I'm not necessarily sure that's a straight quality of life improvement with no downsides. Frontages are wider than ever before, the list of potential threats seems endless. Tactical combat, it seems, remains a frenetic and confusing affair. So, how to lead on a decentralized battlefield; try in vain to centralize when you may be fighting over frontages once held by a battalion, or trust entirely to subordinates to understand your intent? How can you strike a balance?

The dreaded Aggressors wait in defensive positions.

There is an interesting (and active!) publication called "The Company Leader" which explores, in its own words, '[l]eadership lessons from the tactical level of war.' Anyone who has the luxury of not having to go past wargaming into actual war likely finds themselves interested in that level of tactical fight, and it's a rare bird who prefers to do anything larger without heavy levels of abstraction. So it's not a great surprise to me that this blog has been ticking along for a great many years at this point; it has broad appeal to both professionals and amateurs alike. In 2017 it published an interesting post which explored: what makes a good leader?

It is surprisingly bereft of the usual corporate nonsense I have seen when this question is usually asked. One excerpt did stand out for me, where it states good leadership requires '[communication] up, down, and latterly. 90% of the problems we face at the tactical and organization levels...can be attributed to a failure of communication somewhere along the lines."

After the last co-op session conducted in Steel Beasts, I can certainly vouch for that. An initial failure to communicate results in a potentially disastrous start to a mission, but rapidly rights itself as the human players begin communicating through subsequent phases of the plan. This culminates in, at least to date, one oft the more successful dismounted actions I've seen in this training tool. 

Mission, Terrain and Scheme

This is an edit of the mission Schoppenstedt by Ben, swapping out the Swedes for Fins and making the OPFOR a bit more generic. 

An enemy forward detachment has seized the eponymous town and has established semi-prepared positions there. Our company team is the lead element of an effort to boot them out and arrest further enemy movement in this area.

Light obstacle belt in front of Schoppenstedt.

The approach to Schoppenstedt is generally good tank terrain. There's a heavily forested hill masking our assembly area, but the approaches are open farmland with rolling hills that form long, gentle ridges. At either flank of our area of responsibility there are small towns, and directly to our front is the village of Eitzum. The town of Schoppenstedt is in a bowl, shielded by two ridges that form an inverted "L" shape. 

There's a good chance the enemy has put his armour and recce forward of Schoppenstedt, on these two ridges, and may also have occupied the smaller towns with patrols or ambushes. Complicating matters is the heavy civilian presence, which discourages speculative and counter-recce fires onto likely OPs and enemy patrol hides.

The battle was planned in three phases: bypassing Eitzum, attacking Schoppenstedt by fire, then assaulting to, and through, favourable dismount positions. 

The two buddies I was playing with, Fuller (aka viso) and "eeeeeee" are leading the two platoons already available. Both are relatively inexperienced at Steel Beasts, so I had tried to keep the movements simple. The plan, in detail, was to bypass Eitzum with the assistance of a smoke screen, with Fuller (the infantry leader) peeling off to attack by fire to remove any vehicular threats. Recce elements would be moving towards Schliestedt and Sambleben concurrently with this movement to see if the routes to proposed positions are clear. The first phase would culminate with the lead tank troop (eeee) taking up positions to attack any enemy tanks on the ridge line. 

Following concentration in an attack position, including summoning the follow-on platoons and resupply echelon, the battle would then involve taking up support by fire positions to eliminate enemy vehicles and armour prior to letting the infantry step off. Which course to take, Blue or Green, would depend highly on what recce reported and what, if any, actual threat was detected in Eitzum. The second infantry platoon would remain in reserve until it was needed. I had anticipated a lot of dismount losses, so the idea was to hand command off to Fuller as he saw his original force get ground down, but that turned out to not be necessary. 

Seizing Objective King (Video)

Here is an "Action cut" of the fight, mainly my view from the cupola from the command track, followed by the final infantry fight where I sent in the reserve platoon to cover Fuller's flank. 

The Near-Fatal Miscommunication (or lackthereof)

If you have watched the video, you'll likely notice that bypassing Eitzum turned into a bit of a palaver. The fault there lies with me. For most of the scheme, I had firm ideas of where I wanted my platoons and what I wanted them to do. I did, rightly in my view, leave execution in most circumstances to eeeee and Fuller. He had the entire ridge to use for his support by fire mission, given the course of action circumstances led us to take, and I left it up to him how concentrated or spread out he wanted to be. Likewise, Fuller had freedom to move towards his objective at his selected dismount point whichever way he wanted. 

Where I should have taken a more firm hand in managing the fight and movement was in the initial sweep past Eitzum. This was a massed movement by the entirety of the forces available at the time, and I should have made sure the company formation reflected my anticipation of where threats would be. This should have been the case regardless of everyone's relative experience, but was doubly egregious lack of direction given my buddies are neophytes. I had envisioned we'd be moving with the armour closest to Eitzum and the IFVs further away, all echeloned to the left. 

A moment preceding disaster: a keyholed T72B1 lines up on CV90s.

What occurred instead was the tank troop moved in column, keeping the CV90s on his left and aiming straight for his initial attack by fire position, while Fuller also moved in column, exposed to Eitzum, equally in his haste to execute his own attack by fire orders. Both leaders were eager to fulfil my intent as I communicated it, so it would be ungenerous to fault their execution given my miscommunication. More experienced platoon leaders might have asked how exactly we were going to do this, however: showing communication isn't a one-way street.  

In any event, we got off extremely lucky. One CV9030 was destroyed out right by the enemy, and another had its turret drive jammed, but by then both my own command track and E's platoon had identified the threat and destroyed it. 

Having my command track following in between the two units certainly helped me figure out what the hell was going on, and we quickly were able to pull the two combat effective IFVs back to safety while the threats were removed. 

Perhaps a bit shocked by things going so poorly, so quickly, communication improved remarkably and the rest of the mission went off exceedingly well. It wasn't long until we were seeing some enemy surrendering in Eitzum, and an enemy tank troop rubbished. 

Debrief and Analytics

Rearming and concentrating in attack position.

We ultimately proceeded with the more straightforward course of action (the blue-coded plan), the decision stemming from the fiasco at Eitzum and uncertainty about the ease of which we could clear it. Recce determining there were minefields on the road between Eitzum-Schliestedt finalized the decision to take the more direct route in. 

Moving back into support-by-fire-positions, with a covering smoke barrage.

Ben's probably one of the most prolific mission makers in Steel Beasts and I don't think I've played a single one of his scenarios and not enjoyed them or been challenged. I'm also grateful he doesn't password lock his scenarios, so we can fool around replaying them later with different TO&Es or adjusting ammo to increase/decrease difficulty as needs must. I've done this scenario vanilla several times and am still surprised by how dynamic his plans are. Our infantry break-in went off relatively well, though Fuller did lose a second CV90 which he ordered forward to provide close support. The idea was to try and pin the enemy against their own obstacle belt from the rear and destroy it, but to my surprise it seems the enemy to the south who survived our indirect fires remounted, pulled back, and tried to halt us with reinforcing enemy armour in the town's central park. 

An enemy platoon remounts, and punches to the northwest to try and seal off our penetration.

A short but intense infantry firefight resulted, and somehow we only lost about 3 dismounts. The arrival of the company reserve provided the necessary impetus to restart the attack, and the excellent NLAW did much heavy lifting to eliminate enemy armour threats. Particularly good use of smoke from the dismounts seemed to allow them to bound from house to house unharmed. 

Commanding infantry in Steel Beasts often gets a bad rap, and I know at least a few dedicated mechanized players who swear by simply keeping the infantry mounted up and firing out of rear hatches until its time to consolidate on objective. I can't say I share their experiences, infantry simulation has moved forward by lightyears since 4.0 released, and in patient hands are becoming an offensive threat as well as a defensive one. This was one of the larger urban fights I've experienced in SB and it was shockingly bereft of jank. 

In the end we're awarded a perfect score, the best I've achieved on this mission in any form, and certainly better than any of my single player results. Losses among dismounts are the lowest I've seen, certainly. While you can have fairly flexible, dynamic plans in single player, it's still a poor substitute for having human players leading subordinate call signs. 

Tank munitions expenditure. Sabot and HEAT, respectively.

A great deal of the success likely comes from the effective suppressive fire laid down, which is a far more difficult thing to manage with AI subordinates. Standing orders were to put a HEAT round into any building adjacent to a enemy IFV, and while that set many of the outskirt buildings on fire, almost certainly put a lot of dismounted OPFOR out of the fight before they could do any real harm to Fuller. Judging by the post-game report we didn't have to use HEAT to great excess to have the desired suppressive effects. 

Naturally, the greatest source of success was the rapid improvement of both myself communicating intent and Fuller and E keeping me in the loop about what they doing and how they were about to go about doing it. The initial confusion you can see in the video gives way quickly to well co-ordinated efforts. 

If you would like to try the original version as designed by Ben, you can grab it here. If you would like to access the report html file generated by the mission, you can grab it here.