Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Steel Beasts ProPE 4.0 - The Roadblocks to Walloonia

This post is entirely fictional and makes no political statements. Please refrain from reading too much into the stuff written here. It's just a game.


Sometime in the near future, some 2 miles south from the residential area of Boitsfort (Brussels).



NATO is crumbling as Belgium descends into a political chaos. Banded arms based in Wallonia -backed by the French government- are quickly solidifying against what they perceive as a wide open right wing extremism held by the majority of the Flemish people.

In this vignette, the "Jagers te Paard" Battalion is moving south from Flanders towards Wallonia. Their mission is to link up with the Belgian Light Brigade. The advance guard is a section of Pandur vehicles.


The view from the gunners' target acquisition system. Visible through the foliage, two main battle tanks are positioned down the highway.
Off course, the Pandur can't cope with heavily armored vehicles. Under the cover of one of the hills, the infantry is ordered to dismount and secure a perimeter.

A Javelin ATGM is ordered forward to deal with the two enemy tanks.

Command/Launch Unit (CLU) view of the tank targets down the road. Note how the thermal image needs to be adjusted for depth of field. This is a new feature in Steel Beasts ProPE 4.0.

CLU view, now in focus, just for comparison against the previous one.

Locked on one of the tanks.
And is a hit!

After being hit with Javelin missiles, neither tank moved again. But they didn't burn or explode.

The infantry is recalled to mount and the Pandur vehicles move down the highway. This is the thermal imaging system for the vehicle. All eyes in the tanks, which turned out to be Leclercs.

The resistance down the road didn't stiffen, but this technical truck on the other lane of the highway had a MILAN missile in the launcher. It was dealt in time with no major issues, but it is becoming evident that the Pandur detachment has to call it a day.
Advanced targeting (RWS turret) or not, the Pandur has only a HMG as its main weapon. 

And some issues engaging targets at close range -infantry at both sides of the road in this case-.

The whole affair became a raid, with the Pandurs moving at high speed and receiving fire from missiles and RPGs. The enemy missed the light armor by a wide margin, but it was time to bug out.

After action report of one of the Javelins hitting an enemy Leclerc tank. Note the top-down flight path of the missile (green line).

And the corresponding record for the other Leclerc tank. The Javelin launcher can be seen in the very far background, on top of the hill.
 A few tactical peccadilloes here are needed sometimes in order to get the job done. In this case, highly exposed missile launcher crews who needed -at least in theory- a very clean surrounding to launch the Javelin. In the simulation, I didn't verify is the missile would be wasted if flying through the trees canopy. But its better to be safe than sorry.

Cheers,





3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Frightening (I live in Belgium ...).
Are you familiar with our kingdom ?
Rgds, Koen

JC said...

Hi Koen. I didn't know you were Belgian. No, I'm not familiar with your kingdom and it shows, doesn't it? I hope I'm not offending anybody ...



Anonymous said...

No worries, don't think it will happen (in the near future), rgds, Koen