A video link sends back the night-scope pictures to HQ. As has been traditional for hundreds of years in military circles, HQ comes back with clear, definite orders: ‘If it’s the enemy you must stop them, if there are civilians amongst them they must not be harmed.’ So you know where you stand. Your choice is simple – you either do nothing and risk letting the enemy across the bridge with the consequent failure of your mission or you open fire and risk killing civilians. Ethics is not an integral part of military training. Rather, pragmatism is raised to an art form. You have the machine gunners loose off a few bursts in front of the crowd to let them know you have the bridge covered. No one is hit but the crowd breaks and you can hear screaming and shouting – then single shots. Looks like the opposition were herding civilians across the bridge in front of them and have shot a couple to calm them down. A radio message comes in that both Divisional airfields are under sustained attack and aircraft are grounded for the time being. It’s started.
Uninvited guests
From all around the perimeter of your camp signals are coming that the enemy is approaching on foot and in some strength. Perhaps 500 men are surrounding you. You give the order and the men hold their fire. It seems the incident on the bridge was a distraction from the approach of a strong infantry force. How did they get within a quarter mile without your sentries seeing them? They knew where the dead ground made a hidden approach possible and it explains why they eliminated the drone. Mortar bombs start to come down on the position in ones and twos. Maybe the visitors the other night were there to get the range right. Certainly their mortar shooting is good and getting better. Enough to make you want to keep your head down anyway and that is just what the enemy wants.
TOP TIP!
For creating and defending your position...
Mortars lay down defensive fire. (Corbis)
Your mortar commander calls out there is a column of tanks coming over the bridge. They look like Russian T55s – the last-but-one generation main battle tank of the Soviet Union now sold all over the Third World. Not high-tech but reliable with thick armour and a heavy gun. So the nationals over the river are involved. Surely they can’t be hoping to keep armour on this side of the bridge? Your aircraft would destroy it in moments – if they were around. But they aren’t are they? They are sitting in their bunkers and hardened shelters 200 miles away while the airfield protection teams chase off the guys with the missile launchers.
You decide the opposition are aiming to assault and overrun your position with armoured support and then the armour will return to safety over the river leaving the visiting terrorists with a free hand. And you waiting for the body bags to take you home. There is no air support because NATO Air Forces are under unusually heavy attack at their base. The opposition has brought out some decent missiles – probably black market Stingers – for the occasion and if they are sacrificing these to keep friendly air assets on the ground just to attack your position they must be serious. And you are on your own.
Assessment
It looks like the opposition are going to make a serious attempt to take your position so they can get men into the country to disrupt the elections. They have tried artillery and, thank God, been stopped by a simple threat of destruction by the high-ups on your side. Now they are pressing forward with an infantry attack supported by ex-Russian tanks. Where the heavy artillery could have destroyed you in your bunkers with a couple of salvos the tanks would take some time and are really to keep your heads well down while the infantry close with you. But they can do that very effectively if you can’t neutralize them. You realize that this attack depends entirely on the tanks. If you don’t stop them you will be overrun and already the attacking infantry are in their assault positions.
Contact
Fortunately, they don’t seem to realize you have the Javelins. The .50cal Brownings could give armoured cars a headache but hardly scratch a T55. The Javelin, though, was designed to destroy a modern main battle tank and against these old jobs it will be like using a sledge hammer on a peanut.
The tanks are coming over the bridge now – if they fired from the other side there would be hell to pay with Division probably allowing our fly boys to launch a devastating air attack over the river against anything they could find. So the tanks are going to cross the river, take up a position a few hundred yards away and shell you steadily while the infantry advance from the flank. Classic stuff.
The attacking force have set up an 82mm mortar section about a half a mile away and they are starting to lob bombs onto your position. The tanks are over the bridge now and have turned along the road the form up line abreast facing the position. Then everything kicks off at once. You glance at your watch for your Contact Report and it is 21:07.
The Javelin team open up first and take out the lead tank, then the other end to block them in and work their way along the line. As it is hit each tank smokes then erupts in jets of flame and blows its own turret off as the propellant charges and shells inside detonate. In two or three minutes they are all burning wrecks.
As soon as the Javelins open fire so do the GMGs, the .50cal Brownings, your mortars and the rifle sections. The GMGs and Brownings take out the enemy mortars in moments as their heavy rounds cut straight through the sandbag wall protecting the crew.
The mortar crews have the key areas marked on their charts and they are able to bring down a murderous fire onto the attacking forces all around the position. Mortars are no use against men dug in holes but against troops caught in the open like this they are devastating. Stuck between the wire coils the attackers are slaughtered by mortar, GMG and rifle fire.
The few remaining enemy are visible running in the middle distance – until they are brought down by your snipers. You glance again at your watch and the time is 21:21.
It is all over in 14 minutes.
Summary
Every situation is different, of course, but I’ve tried here to give you a view of the principle weapons and events that the ordinary infantry soldier might come across in a set-piece firefight within a counter-insurgency situation. This ought to give you a feel of how different weapons are used for different tasks. Maybe not all at once, and maybe you don’t have the right ones when you need them, but this little scenario should show you why you have to do some things and how everything fits together. I always think weapons and tactics work like the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
Probably the most surprising thing to the soldier new to combat is how quickly things move when they start. Rather than a romantic struggle between two evenly matched teams most battles are a slaughter. This is because one side, normally the one initiating the contact, usually has a decisive advantage in terms of weapons, position, training or all three. An ambush should be over in a few seconds. An air strike on a road convoy the same. About the only time a contact should take a long time is when you are in a strong position and the enemy will not come close enough to be killed but rather take pot shots and loose off machine guns and RPG7s from the middle distance. Even then, you can often bring in air assets to destroy them quickly.