AAR ARMA 3 | FEBRUARY 2024 WARFARE WEDNEDAY | WFW 226

[Westcott.R]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT​

Name of Combat Mission: WFW 226
Number Within Campaign: 3/4
Game: ARMA 3
Server Hosted on: TACR
Date of Combat Mission: 21FEB2024
Time of Combat Mission (Zulu): 2300z
Mission OIC: Colonel LaCombe.M
Mission Controller: Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sparrow.P, Staff Sergeant Westcott.R

Attendees: 38
Colonel LaCombe.M
Lieutenant Colonel Dread.M
Captain Beiter.A
First Lieutenant Sam.T
Second Lieutenant Lewis.A
Second Lieutenant Narramoor.A
Second Lieutenant Fields.Q
Sergeant Major Preacher.A
Sergeant First Class Abate.L
Staff Sergeant Vincent.L
Staff Sergeant Phillips.B
Staff Sergeant Westcott.R
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sparrow.P
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Spitnale.K
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Dujakovic.R
Sergeant Crowley.T
Corporal Zander.D
Corporal Whitehead.B
Corporal Rodahl.S
Corporal Almaguer.R
Corporal Mobius.T
Corporal Kastor.K
Corporal Holiday.T
Corporal Gann.T
Corporal Dixon.E
Corporal Blake.H
Corporal Bethea.A
Specialist Harsh.M
Specialist Xinos.T
Specialist Stover.C
Specialist Rok.M
Specialist MacTavish.J
Specialist Hamm.C
Specialist Borenstein.B
Specialist Bonnet.J
Specialist Winters.R
Specialist Fox.R
Private Vincent.C

 

[Beiter.A]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT​

Element Callsign: CHAOS-1
Element Leader: Captain Beiter.A

7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Myself

Pros:

• Raider, and Lightning had a lot of fun engaging what seemed like a battalion worth of armor before it hits
• Felt good to be back into the seat for gaming with the boys
• Love going for the jump

Cons:

• Op kinda felt a bit messy
• Need to take the FAC course
• Contact felt a little much outside of the scope of the mission. We had about a squad and a half and went up against what felt like a company plus armor.
• Map was terrible for thermals

 

[Dread.M]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT​

Element Callsign: RAIDER
Element Leader: Lieutenant Colonel Dread.M

7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Lieutenant Colonel Dread.M
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Spitnale.K

Pros:

• Tons of engagements, good use by ZEUS in sending in targets to keep assets on their toes
• Coordination with LIGHTNING and RAIDER stayed solid all night
• CHAOS good "talk-ons"

Cons:

• No thermal layers at range made engaging micro targets difficult
• At one point didnt mutually support infantry because of an AA strike, LIGHTING-2 rearming, and LIGHTING-1 disconnected.

 

[Narramoor.A]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT​

Element Callsign: MISFIT-5
Element Leader: Second Lieutenant Narramoor.A

Pros

• Good succession of command
• QRF felt like it was enveloping
• Good work with Buffalo flight
• Very stable server, 0 crashes that I saw
• Pace after the resupply was much more violence of action as people were chomping at the bit
• Nice bespoke designed compound by mission maker
• Nice work from Atlas and -7 in an environment that wasn't permissive for them
• Great work from Chaos coordinating a LOT of strikes with Lightning flight

Cons

• Quite a few blue-on-blues
• Lack of reinsert tasking for Buffalo / overall attendance
• Airbourne drop + size of AO led to some tough to balance pacing
• I had a lapse in judgement, temporarily forgot there was a -7 and jumped on the Atlas-1 net

 

[Dixon.E]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT​

Element Callsign: Atlas-1
Element Leader: Corporal Dixon.E

7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Specialist Winters.R
Specialist Stover.C
2nd Lieutenant Fields.Q

Pros:

• Tons of engagements and contacts
• Good teamwork, people mirroring what they were doing and someone was always super responsive when told to do something
• Fun mission
• New people doing atlas

Cons:

• Lack of medical work
• Surgeon leaving mid surgery

 

[Sam.T]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT​

Element Callsign: Misfit-1
Element Leader: First Lieutenant Sam.T

7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
First Lieutenant Sam.T
Second Lieutenant Lewis.A
Staff Sergeant Fox.Z
Sergeant Crowley.T
Corporal Almaguer.R
Corporal Bethea.A
Specialist Borenstein.B
Specialist Fox.R
Specialist Bonnet.J
Private Vincent.C

Pros:

• Really good squad fundamentals (movement, communications, reporting etc).
• The jump was executed very well, no injuries and good time frame.
• Misfit-1 worked through a lot of contact.
• Generally fun OP with a very good cast of personnel within Misfit-1 tonight.
• Aviation in general rocked tonight, great airborne drop and good CAS coverage in the AO.
• Love to see "mixed composition" OPs with both C.Co and B.Trp infantry MOS present!

Cons:

• Realistically this objective far exceeded the realistic capacity of even a full strength platoon.
• My jump brief was a bit rusty, it's been several months since I've done one of those.
• Conducting airborne OPs are always really fun, but having them be conducting several weeks into a campaign into an area with an active AA net against near-peer opposition doesn't lend itself to realism.
• During these "mixed composition" OPs, Viking should replace one of the rifle squads not the weapons squad. The weapons squad is the rifle platoons organic base of fire and force multiplier, whereas a Viking rifle squad is just a normal rifle squad with a vehicle for mobility and support. The armor we encountered tonight would've been much more manageable if we had a Misfit-4 with a good MAAWS or Javelin team.
• The low turnout made the above point academic, as we barely filled out the 2 squads we had.
• Several instances of blue-on-blue (CAS strike on Sierra/M1 conflicting with V1 in final compounds).

 

[LaCombe.M]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT​

Element Callsign: Misfit HQ
Element Leader: Colonel LaCombe.M

7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Second Lieutenant Narramoor.A - Misfit-5
Captain Beiter.A - Chaos
Specialist Harsh.M - Misfit-7

Pros:

• Mission accomplished
• Did a lot of work with only two squads, Thanks to everyone on the ground, we were a small unit and were still able to push through
• Chaos and the air assets were on point, this mission would have likely ended in failure without help from the air
• Thanks to 1LT Sam for taking on JM
• Pro and a con, near peer enemies gave a challenge

Cons:

• Low attendance
• Too large of a mission scope. An airborne drop takes enough time, then asking even a fully manned platoon to take over an entire town against a company of dug in/defending neer-peer threats with armored reinforcements is not feasible. Maybe for a company event, but not a platoon. Couple that with low turnout (only had 2 squads rather than 4), and it's asking for trouble. The mission took 3 hours and that's without needing to clear the latter half of the town. I understand we had a lot of air support, but that isn't a replacement for such a lopsided ask from infantry.
• Speaking of air support, we had a catastrophic blue on blue with a GBU vs friendly vic which was several meters away from another squad, leading to a mass cas to nearly half of the ground forces which greatly bogged us down. Ultimately that's on me for not stopping the CAS call as 6 since Chaos was down, but proper PID is paramount at all levels.
• Also had sporadic blue on blue on the ground. When fighting neer peer threats, PID is extra important.
• Resupply was slow. I had this planned in the opord and called for it at the proper time, but I failed to properly task ground units to secure it which slowed us down by another 15 minutes. Caused a palpable lull in the action.
• Mixing Viking with Misfit is not ideal. Having to manage a light infantry platoon, during a "stealthy" approach secondary to an airborne night drop (my intent, ideally, was to run us up to the AP without being engaged if at all possible), with a vehicle several klicks away who now needed to move undetected to our position while avoiding outgoing audible contact from the engine, just made things messy. I'm thankful we had the maneuverability and fire support provided by Sierra, but we don't operate this way anywhere else in 1-7. While I understand the desire to allow for everyone to have a role during every WFW, this seems like a square peg in a round hole solution. We need to be either all Misfit/Bandit or all Viking.
• Large amounts of the execution portion of the opord were prefilled by S3. S3 handles the intel or the "what, where, why" and the OIC handles the execution or the "how".

 

[Kinser.E]

S1 Locked!
Assigned Agazzi.J for processing.

 

[Agazzi.J]

S1 Operations Processed.