What if we replace the four Two-man MG and AT elements with two or more Three-man "Hybrid" Support elements?
During Rebound, our support section was comprised of 6 dudes organized into three teams of 2 according to the 2.6.1 loadout as follows:
- 1x MMG team (M240 Gunner and ammo-man / spotter)
- 1x HMG team (M2 mini-tripod gunner and tripod-man / spotter)
- 1x MAT team (MAAWS gunner and ammo-man / spotter)
After this, I took over as HMG gunner, and Black Mamba picked up one half of my gun and became HMG's tripod-man as well as MAT's ammo-man / spotter, and here's where it gets interesting.
Our depleted support squad operated all down the valley, finding firing positions both good and bad. The main difficulty of being an HMG gunner is that in order to have an effective field of fire, your gun has to be horrendously exposed - part of the reason that Soviet, NATO, and Mujahideen CSW doctrine in Afghanistan was to mount it on a hill a mile away, and use it from such range that the enemy simply could not respond. Here, in the Shukurkalay / Chaman valley, we had no such distances to work with, so I settled for daring instead. We found a pretty good rhythm: I'd find a decent spot, Black Mamba would dump the tripod where I was standing, I'd set up my gun, and then he would provide security and help Strang the MAT gunner find decent targets. Having finally discovered after half-a-year of ArmA-ing that you could sight in on the M2, I was mowing dudes down pretty well.
Simply put though, it's fairly rare that both AT and MG are firing at the same time. The targets you'd save MAT / HAT for (mainly just tanks) can't really be harmed by an MMG / HMG, and the targets you'd engage with an MG are usually a waste of MAT ammo, to say nothing of HAT, meaning that at any one time, the spotter / ammo-man / tripod man only needs to spot for one gunner at a time.
So my thought experiment is this:
3-man MG / AT hybrid support team. Whether this is MMG / MAT or HMG / HAT or any other combination thereof smooshed together would depend on the mission, I suppose. A hard and fast rule would have to be that there can only be one mounted gun in this setup - obviously with three people, you can't carry four CSW components. Examples of potential mixtures would be:
US Army:
- Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, M16A4, ammo, smoke grenade, 3 mags M240, tripod bag)
Support 1 MG - M240 Gunner (M240, ammo, smoke grenades, M9, pistol mags)
Support 1 AT - TOW Gunner (M4A1_AIM, ammo, smoke grenades, TOW bag)
- Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, AKS-74 Kobra, ammo, smoke grenades, 3 mags PKM, tripod bag)
Support 1 MG - PKM Gunner (PKM, ammo, smoke grenades, Makarov, pistol mags)
Support 1 AT - SPG Gunner (AKS-74 Kobra, ammo, smoke grenades, SPG Bag)
- Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, M16A2, ammo, smoke grenade, 1 MAAWS rocket, backpack {2 MAAWS rockets, 3 mags M60})
Support 1 MG - M60 Gunner (M60, ammo, smoke grenades, M1911, pistol mags)
Support 1 AT - MAAWS Gunner (M4A1, ammo, MAAWS Launcher, 2 MAAWS rockets)
- Support 1 Lead - "Assistant Gunner" (Rangefinder, AK-74, ammo, smoke grenade, 3 rounds PG-V7L, tripod bag)
Support 1 MG - DShKM Gunner (AKS-74, ammo, smoke grenades, DShKM bag)
Support 1 AT - RPG-7 Gunner (AKS-74, ammo, RPG-7, 3 rounds PG-V7R)
The basic premise of these arrangements is that the person most concerned with logistics and security and, well, anything but "shooting stuff" is the element leader, allowing the gunners the freedom to concentrate on their targets and not worry too much about security and coordination. Anyone with a big gun tends to get tunnel vision, because they think (and often times they're right) that employing their weapon will probably help the battle more than yakking on the radio with someone. This allows for that natural tendency and lets someone else focus on the big picture and coordinating with other elements.
If you want to get as complex as any sort of doctrine, this is as bad as it needs to get: position the static first if you have one, and then let the other gunner free-form to the best firing position nearby. Chances are, a good firing position for AT is going to be a good firing position for MG as well, and vice-versa.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- The Team Leader takes the burden of comms off both AT and MG gunners, allowing them to focus on the task at hand.
- A large amount of support power is consolidated into one element as opposed to spread among two.
- A three-man element is more player-efficient. 3 players : 2 CSW's or 6:4 instead of the current 6:3 right now.
- The Team Leader is not as effective an assistant to either MG or AT as the Assistant Gunner in a 2-7-0 two-man element.
- Splitting AT and MG assets is much more difficult here than if two 2-7-0 support elements were working together.
- A three-man element is less able to absorb casualties and remain effective than two two-man elements.
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