Engineer Doctrine in a 2,000 words or less, a primer in the breach[1]

> --- Indy <kochte@stsci.edu> wrote:

> I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts as to how

OK, when I say maneuver forces I mean tankers and infantry. If I use any other
arcane words without explaining, let me know.

In the attack there's one rule. SOSRA!

Supress: Throw enough fire on the enemy to keep them pinned down. Artillery
and tankers are best for this. Try to push the enemy away from the breach
site.

Obscure: Drop smoke on the obstacle and in the line of site of enemy
defenders. Where possible, try to pick a breach site that is covered by
terrain.

Secure: Move your maneuver forces up and out over the flanks to try and use
fire to get rid of all the enemy forces that can still threaten the engineers.

Reduce: That's the engineer's actual job. Actual mechanics of the breach
depend on nature of the obstacle and resources available.

Assault: Have a designated assault force which will roll through the breach.
There's nothing more pointless than taking heavy casualties creating a breach
only to find that you have nothing left to push through the breach to take the
objective.

Specifics depend on the mission.

Deliberate Attack: You know pretty much where the obstacles are, and breaching
them is a focus for one
of your subunits (platoon + EN PLT if the attacking
force is company, company + EN assets if attacking
force is batallion). So that unit focuses on nothing but getting the engineers
to the breach. Also on the plus side, you've got a lot of artillery with smoke
rounds (that's what those light artillery units, ie batallion mortars are good
for) and even more with MAK and HEF to supress.

Hasty Attack: Simillar except you get to plan on the
fly.  Still have a designated breach unit (maneuver +
EN), but there's a tendency to let it get into fights. Also since the
situation is real fluid, there's a tendency to want to have scatterable
minefields available to throw out to cover flanks and prevent
counter-attacks.

Movement to Contact: Engineers shouldn't have much of a job. Maybe some WAM or
MOPMS point obstacles to cut
down on counter-attacks and some Volcanoes
(mechanically dispensed scatterable minefields launched from the back of an
M548 cargo track) to secure flanks.

During a defense you don't need to worry about breaches, but you need to do
obstacle planning. That's a bit of an arcane science, but some general rules.

1)Weapons ranges. This determines where your obstacles are in relation to the
friendlies. If you're fighting the Parumphians and you know that the
Parumphian POS-class main battle tank is their
mainstay and it carries an HKP/4 that means their
weapons are pretty spiffy out to 42" and still work out to 54". Now, you're
digging in the 1st
Gildenstern Jaeger Batallion and their main anti-armor
unit is Delta Company with GMS/H-armed Jeeps.  Your
weapons are effective out to 48". So that means you
want your delay and fix obstacles out from 48-42" from
the Gildenstern Jaeger units. If you have time, put
in another belt at 30-36" so that you get in a couple
shots from the GMS/Ls before they get into short
range.:)

2)Effects desired. There's basically 5 things you can do with a obstacle
group. You can block, which means a deep obstacle that requires multiple
breaches to
actually create a lane.  Really resource-intensive and
frequently narrow enough to bypass unless carefully planned. Second, you can
turn enemies. This is sort of a slanted, narrower block obstacle which
channelizes enemy maneuver into a fire sack where your fires can kill them.
Third, you can throw in delay minefields. Disrupt obstacles force them to
commit engineering resources prematurely and break up formations. Generally a
loose group that could be bypassed, but consumes time. Fourth, fix. The idea
behind a fix obstacle is that it's in the middle of the fire sack and is used
to hold the enemy in place where you want him to die under the integrated
direct and indirect fires of your main effort. Fifth are
protective minefields, which are used for close-in
protection against the enemy's final assault.

3)Fires integration. An obstacle not covered by, at a minimum observation and
indirect fire is NOT an obstacle. Obstacles don't kill any more than a couple
vehicles unless the enemy is total morons. But you can do some serious damage
to them if you use the fact that they are holding still to inflict damage.

4)Planning cycle: Figure out what you want to do to the enemy. Figure out how
to do this with direct fire. Then plan your indirect fire plan. Then your
obstacles. Make sure all of these support what you want to do to the enemy.
Make sure you have observers in place to cover likely avenues of approach, and
never, ever, ever leave an obstacle unattended.

5)Resources and time available. You'll never have all the time, mines, wire,
WAMs, etc to do what you want to do, especially in a hasty defense.
Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize.

> > Speaking of which, I still havn't gotten my