After Action Report: Saggers and Supply Convoys November 2, 1996 Briefly, this was a meeting engagement in which a Syrian force of tanks and Sagger ATGMs met an Israeli tank force nearly twice its size. The report contains the following sections: 1) Orders for each side and a brief view of their plans; 2) What happened; and 3) Lessons learned. 1) Orders for each side. Note that through an error on the part of the umpire, the Israelis wound up getting the Syrian orders in addition to their own. Oops! Green (Israeli) Force Orders For the past few days your Task Force (TF Chaim) has been operating to block supply shipments to the Syrian 2nd Division. By continuing to keep it bottled up we hope to force its surrender and then drive on Damascus. Intel indicates that the next Syrian supply convoy will be moving through the Area "Map 16" along the road, proceeding from north to south. You are tasked with finding and destroying the trucks and their cargo. While the exact nature of the cargo is unknown, it is thought to be either infantry replacements or ammunition. The convoy is thought to be escorted by several battalions of T-62 tanks. You force is currently in the eastern-most kilometer of the Area "Map 16". The enemy convoy is believed to be entering Area "Map 16" at the northern end of the road at this time. Forward! Your forces: 2 battalions of M-60A1 tanks, each with: 2 HQ tanks 4 companies of 14 tanks (4/4/4/2) 3 Lynx Recon Vehicles 6 M-106 mortars The second battalion is missing one company of tanks (consolidation of previous losses). Total: 102 M-60A1, 6 Lynx, 6 Scout teams, 12 M-106 These may be deployed as desired in the easternmost kilometer of Map 16. Off-map air and artillery support: none. ============ Syria The infidel has cut off our 2nd division in the Golan, and a reinforced battalion of tanks has destroyed the supply convoys headed to it. If we cannot resupply the division it will be destroyed within days. We believe we have succeeded in feeding to Israeli Intelligence the location of our next supply convoy. You will command this convoy; your mission is the destruction of the enemy tank grouping. In order to accomplish this, we have been provided, by our Soviet allies, with a brand-new weapon system: the AT-3 Sagger. This is a guided anti-tank rocket with a three kilometer range that the Soviets believe will revolutionize tank warfare. 12 Sagger teams will be placed on the trucks of your convoy in place of its cargo; for close escort these teams will have standard RPG squads, and you will also have 2 battalions of T-62 tanks. In addition, you will also have a convoy of trucks carrying supplies for the 2nd Division. You will protect these trucks and ensure the delivery of their cargo to the 2nd Division. Intel believes the enemy will attack in the region known as "Map 16", moving in from the east. We may be able to place some of the team in the town in that area if you wish but this may compromise operational security. Your forces: T-62M 62 Truck 12 for Saggers plus 40 in convoy Sagger Teams 12 RPG Teams 12 BRDM2 4 Inf Team 4 These forces may be placed, at start, along the northernmost kilometer of the road on map 16. The Syrians (played by Corinne Mahaffey) planned to send the bulk of the Saggers and half of their tanks to cover the northern valley of Map 16. Some of the other tanks were to guard the southern valley, while others stayed with the convoy. Sagger teams were also detailed to take up position in the north of the town and on the hill in the middle of the map. The Israeli plan (Chaim Krause and Bill Jennings) had 4 companies advancing by bounds across the 03-05 Northing row, while another company drove down the south valley, and the remaining two drove across the southern edge of the map to take up positions in the town. All had orders to stop if fired on; the southern three had orders to stop and pop smoke. 2) What happened. The battle turned out to be brutal and short, and proceeded in three phases. In phase one, the Israeli forces in the north began to contact the Syrians. While the Israelis took losses to the Saggers that were deployed, they also killed a roughly equal number of Syrian tanks in gunfire exchanges. After about 6 minutes, this area quieted down somewhat, with the bulk of the Syrian tanks and a number of the Saggers deployed in the area of 035045 and four Israeli companies deployed along easting 06 from northing 03 to 05. The quieting was because as tanks on each side stopped, they wound up no longer visible to the other side (outside of spotting range) and those shot at were suppressed and thus fired less often, so they did not thus reveal their positions. At about this point, the southern Israeli forces began to get into the battle. The company moving into the southern valley took Sagger fire and stopped; it tried to move forward and had those platoons destroyed, and then retreated to go via the southern ridge. Meanwhile, the two companies moving along the southern edge were taking Sagger fire from two ATGM teams on the central hill. The Israelis began to try to stop the Saggers with smoke, which failed; they then switched to HE which had rather better results, though not always perfect ones. The southernmost Israeli companies arrived at the west edge of the southern hill at about the point that the Syrian convoy got to northing 01 on the road. However, given that their primary orders were to enter the town, and distracted by the Sagger fire, the tanks on the hill edge only killed 10 of the trucks before they escaped off the southern edge. At this point the southern two companies had sustained perhaps 25% losses. The Syrians had sent the one tank company they had in the southern half of the map - at approx 03/02 - charging south through the town to rescue their trucks. Amazingly, this Company of Heroes proceeded to wipe out the two Israeli companies in the south in a series of engagements. In the first, in the middle of the town, it took 2 losses; it then proceeded to the southern edge of the town, where it blew away nearly a company without suffering return fire, let alone losses, and then proceeded to storm the crest of the southern hill, and, with some Sagger support from the central hill, again suffered no losses. This was an *amazing* streak of luck; I had expected to see the company trade at roughly one for one and die, leaving the city largely to the Israelis - a position they could have used! Instead, the Israeli southern force was wiped out. As the tail end of this action occurred, the four Israeli companies in the north began to slowly try to advance towards the Syrians at 035045 by bounds. This coincided disastrously with a Syrian withdrawal attempt - disastrous for the Syrians, that is! While they tried to withdraw by bounds, as their tanks turned to go south they exposed side armor, enabling the Israelis to kill them at much longer ranges. The Syrians lost about half their tank force and a few Sagger teams in this battle before deciding to stop and fight in place. Once they did, the balance shifted equally dramatically the other way. When we called a halt at 0724, the Israelis had 16 tanks left. In the north, neither side was able to move - if the Israelis moved, they were spotted and killed by Saggers. If the Syrians moved, they soon presented their weaker armor to the Israelis and were killed by tank fire. Both sides called for reinforcements to break the deadlock.... All in all, the Syrians won the game. They exited 3/4 of the supply convoy and shattered the Israeli force. While their casualties were not light, they held open a supply corridor, albeit a contested one, to their cut-off division. Losses during the game: Israel UNIT START NOW ELIM EXITED M60A1 Tank 102 16 86 0 M106 Mortar Carrier 12 12 0 0 Lynx RV 6 0 6 0 Inf Scout Team 6 3 3 0 Syria UNIT START NOW ELIM EXITED T62M M1975+ Tank 63 28 35 0 Truck [OP] 52 3 19 30 AT3 ATGM Sagger 12 6 6 0 Inf Team RPG 9 5 4 0 BRDM2 APC 4 1 3 0 Inf Team 4 4 0 0 In retrospect, however, there were two points where the Israelis came close to winning the game nonetheless. The first was when Bill's tanks in the south came across Corinne's unescorted truck convoy. If more tanks had been sent to the edge of the ridge instead of into the town, more trucks would have wound up burning.... Corinne was, basically, very lucky here. Second, Corinne's attempt to withdraw was a disaster. If she had not cut that off when she did her force might have been weakened to the point where Chaim's forces in the north could have carried the position, Saggers or no. However, she figured out the problem and corrected it in time, averting defeat. In addition, the Company of Heroes in the south may have turned the situation decisively in the Syrian favor, by ensuring that the Syrians had a solid anchor to the south of their northern forces, instead of a open flank and rear. 3) Lessons Learned. There's a number of these, most of them having to do with balance and some quirks of TacOps. As Bill Jennings put it, "I've never seen a scenario which more ably demonstrated the power of ATGMs and thermals over armored forces." This it did. When trying to balance this scenario, I worried about the number of Saggers to include. Eventually I realized that a lot of their effectiveness came down to their employment by the Syrians: if the Syrians could get them deployed before the Israelis could shoot up their transport, they would probably do well. If not, they would be in deep trouble. A number of you are probably wondering why the Sagger had thermal sights. This was an error of mine formed by a quirk of TacOps. I went through the database in TacOps a lot trying to find good matchups of tanks (the M-60A1 and the T-62M+ are, frontally, a very close match, with a slight edge to the M-60 for accuracy); I also checked on the Sagger. I was surprised to note when I did that it had a thermal sight.... So, when I went to turn on and off preferences, I saved myself a mouse click by not clicking off "OPFOR ATGMs Have Thermal Sights" - no point, since they have them anyway, right? Wrong: *the TacOps database reflects your current Preferences settings!* While I'd figured before the game that the two mortar batteries I gave the Israelis would be enough to cope with the Saggers, I was wrong there too; there were more targets than they could hit effectively at once. The battle might have gone somewhat differently if the Saggers had not had thermals; smoke would then have been impenetrable to all, and this would have enabled the Israelis to close more effectively. On the other hand, the surprise of thermal sights on the Saggers did, perhaps, recreate the Israeli's surprise at meeting Saggers back in 1973, when Mandler's tank brigade charged some suitcase-carrying infantry and lost 90 tanks in a very short time. This is cold comfort, though. The scenario thus wound up rather imbalanced in large part through errors of mine. Perhaps the Israelis might have done better if they had chosen to mass their forces in the southern sector of the map - a force headed down the southern valley and a force headed across the southern hill to form a backstop at the southern end of the road, south of the town. The greater mass involved might have been able to overcome the somewhat dispersed deployment of Saggers used by the Syrians. Then again, maybe not - it is hard to say; the lack of a threat in the north might have enabled the Syrians to outflank the Israelis in the northern valley, or to mass all of their forces on the Israeli groups in succession. Given two lucky breaks the Syrian plan coped reasonably well with the Israeli one. On the other hand, the Syrians might have handled things better too. They persisted in trying to scout in the south with truck-mounted Sagger teams - which proved a poor recipe for success and tended to lose the trucks, and often kill or serious hurt the Sagger team. In addition, the Syrians had no reserve, of Saggers or tanks, to speak of (though neither did the Israelis); when faced with a crisis of protecting their convoy in the far south, the Syrians had to march off the tank company they had protecting the southern valley and leave that route protected - ably as it turned out - by a few Sagger teams. Finally, the Syrian withdrawal might have gone a lot better if they had used the tank's smoke grenades to cover their retreat. Other notes: fighting with older equipment produces battles that are often much less immediately lethal than battles with the modern equipment. Accuracy over range is less, and the ranges at which the tanks can penetrate each other's armor is likewise less. Spotting ranges are significantly greater than frontal-armor kill ranges for tanks (M-60A1s and T-62M+s can penetrate each other's frontal armor at just under 1500 meters according to the TacOps database, compared to a maximum spotting range of 4000 meters.) Players expressed interest in trying an "old tech" scenario again; I think that with *all* the thermal sights turned off, it could make from some fairly interesting games and a different twist on familiar terrain. Finally, there were a number of poorly-designed elements to this scenario. The Syrian truck convoy ought to have been slower, so that the Israelis had more of a chance to catch it. The Sagger thermal sights was a mistake, even if one I thought I'd dealt with by putting in extra mortars (I'd originally planned on one battery). These, and possibly too high a number of Saggers in the game, tilted the game against the Israelis in a manner not compensated by their receipt of the Syrian orders - which they were good enough game players to basically ignore. My apologies to all for these errors; I hope to avoid them in the future.