MC NATO national army doctrine design question

[JDR Dragoon]

Thanks JDR, this is wonderful stuff! Very helpful and I am very grateful that you took the time to post all of this!

You are welcome. Since I am planning to make another 1985 timeframe scenario featuring COMLANDJUT against parts of WAPAs "Coastal Front", this is partially for my own benefit as well. The original scenario I made was mostly a revision of the stock DF85 one, in order to make it actually playable. The next one will be much more of an original work.

So based on your examples, I believe I understand that the lowest practical Danish combined arms (tank-mech inf) command level circa 1985 was the battalion?

Thus, inside the 1985-era Danish Jutland Division Heavy BN, the tank, mech infantry and infantry companies did not cross-attach platoons between them to create mixed arms "company teams" like the Americans and the British did. Rather, the component companies of the Danish heavy battalion fought "pure" in support of the Danish battalion commander's mission objective. There was no need to swap companies between BN's because each Heavy BN was already a mixed combined arms force of Tanks, Mech Inf and Wheeled Inf companies.

Basically yes. This was the whole point behind creating these kind of formations. The field manuals do mention the possibility of "trading" platoons between companies, but it is not my impression that this was done often or on a permanent basis. The main reason is obvious: the tank company only has 10 tanks. If you "trade" a platoon, this is reduced to seven, which impairs the offensive potential of the unit. In addition, there is the problem of the motorized company, whose leader is likely to be a reserve-officer kind of type. You don´t gain much extra combat power by overburdening him with the command of a platoon type he might not have much experience with. Much easier to tell him, that he should prepare a battle position for the tank company (or parts hereoff) within his own company sector, where the tank company commander can then take up positions in support (or execute a planned counterattack)

But in some of the tactical examples above (the armored infantry battalion in defense/attack of congested terrain), you have several cases where the tank company commander "lends" his platoons (or even single tanks) to the infantry companies. But this is temporary and driven by the terrain which dictates the need to flexibly direct the correct tactical "tool" needed for the task. This might also work the other way, if say a tank company is leading a battalion attack axis and need an infantry platoon in order to secure the passage or clear a small congested area, in which case one will be passed forward to them (if more than one platoon is needed, then it is a company task and an entire company will be sent)

I haven't researched 1985-era West German doctrine but intend to represent the mixed Leo-Marder Btl's as combinable mixed company sized units as well. All of these will be represented as "Coy" type units rather than "KG" type units, with the fatigue penalties etc.

The germans would trade companies as well, but still leave at least one armor battalion as "tank heavy" w. 28 tanks. For an example of task organization, see This video 2.35-8.15 (especially 5.18)It is in german, but the diagram should be readable.

The IDEA de jour is that where appropriate, Zapad 85 NATO heavy battalions will break down and recombine. About the only KG designated units will be the RECON forces in every army in both alliances. If this doesn't fly in testing, I will go back to using the KG as the basic NATO company designation and just accepting this as a limitation of this otherwise incredible game engine.

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Ok. I can see some problems with this. The first is how to represent infantry in a tank company and vice versa. One solution would be to convert the infantry into an equivalent number of tanks and then simply add this number to the rest. But how many "M1 Abrams-equivalents" does an infantry platoon in M113s (or M2 Bradleys for that matter) constitute? The alternative would be to simply ad the extra number of vehicles to the ones in the tank company and then "average out" the values. The problem here is of course, that a company of MBTs becomes quite vulnerable, by having their defensive value "averaged out" with a bunch of APCs or IFVs, and are thus at a disadvantage. Which is probably not what you are trying to achieve. The same also goes for the infantry, but here each tank will need to be made into a number of "infantry equivalents" (but again, just how many infanry squads in M113s or M2s is an Abrams worth and under which tactical circumstances?) or just have the basic crew size added to the number of men already in the company (each tank thus adding 4 men typically). In addition,if using the latter method, the HA and SA of the infantry company will likely go up, thus ending up with the opposite outcome: the infantry gets additional HA and SA, without giving up much more than some men, thus becoming much stronger.