Artillery vs Tanks

[Volcano Man]

Sure, you could rework the lethality of artillery if thats what you want, but I was stating that I think this is quite a stretch.

I guess it is better if I explained. The images (or at least most of them) are of tanks sitting on an artillery range to observe the effects of hits in controlled tests. The reality is, when the hard target is crewed by personnel, it will seldom sit in place and allow itself to the caught in an artillery strike.

When armor is attacking, it is particularly hard (almost impossible) to catch said moving tanks in an artillery strike. The only time to do it is when they conduct short halts through bounding overwatch, or through immediate suppression from a lucky strike or from a preplotted artillery strike on a known Target Reference Point (TRP) that might be placed on a road intersection. Artillery that falls in front of an advancing armored force will indeed disrupt it as they will either slow their advance (which will disrupt the larger formation), they will bypass it or blow right through it (which also has a disrupting effect) and of course button up. I can't think of anyone that would sit in a Fire For Effect and allow themselves to be shot up, and most of the time several spotting rounds are required to get the FFE strike "on target" at which time the advancing armor will know "something is up". A preplot on a TRP is something different though, you can indeed catch an advancing force in a preplotted fire mission because no spotting rounds are required. But the time of execution would have to be something of a miracle. Despite what some war movies might lead people to think, the "beaten zone" of an artillery strike is not that large. A battery might have a 200x200m area, and a battalion might have 400x400 (it all depends), but it not as if they are saturating a 1 km square area either so, as mentioned, indirect fire is relativelyl easily avoided by a mobile force of hard targets.

On the defense, it is a different matter. In most cases armored vehicles would be kept in a mobile reserve. In PzC and MC, a hard target unit that is sitting in place in a hex on the defense could very well be performing a mobile tactical defense within that and the surrounding hexes, not just sitting in place. In this regard it can be just as difficult to hit said targets. In a "true" defense, the tanks themselves would be dug into fighting positions. In this day and age this usually means that a two tier battle positiono will be dug into the ground where, in the lower tier, the tank is completely exposed (in a turret down position). When an enemy makes an appearance, the tank pulls up to the upper tier (hull down position) and opens fire. It then backs up to the "hide" position to reload between shots, or when direct and indirect fire starts coming in. In the case of artillery, you WOULD have to get a direct hit on a vehicle in this case to cause damage on a hard target that is sitting in a dug in position (unless VT fuzes are used, in which case you are mostly causing superficial damage and the image of the M2 Bradley maingun being damaged is probably the extreme case).

I think everyone tends to view artillery as a force that impacts all over the 1km hex in PzC, in random dispersion so that it MUST cause some sort or damage. The reality is, most artillery calls on a moving threat will likely be a waste of time other than using it for immediate suppression effects. So, needless to say, I don't subscribe to the view that HE artillery is an effective anti-armor force. If anything, I can say without a doubt that the better approach is that hard targets should have a higher chance of being disrupted by artillery, but I thought this was already represented in the game.

Of course the disclaimer here is that I have never spent time as an artilleryman; I spent 10 years in both armor and as an infantryman and made plenty of artillery calls (in simulators and on ranges). The irony is that an artillery man hardly ever sees the effect of artillery fire -- it is always the ones who call the artillery which see the effects (obviously). 99% of the time this individual who "calls for fire" is usually a grunt or a tanker, although there are FOs on the battlefield of course.

Well, I ended up typing more than I intended but maybe all this bloviating will provide some useful insight. Yes, artillery can kill hard targets but it is something different to say that artillery CAN be effective on hard targets than to say that HE is highly effective against hard targets. It is stretch to say the least. It is undeniable though that DPICM on the modern battle field *is* indeed a hard target killer but again, this involves the extremely hard task of actually catching the enemy vehicles in the impact area.