AAR Operation Retribution

[Mix.C]

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
S3 BATTLE STAFF
Headquarters
7th Cavalry Regiment
COMBAT AFTER ACTION REPORT
Name of Combat Mission: Operation Retribution
Game: Hell Let LooseServer Hosted on: 10MD training server
Date of Combat Mission: 03Aug24 Time of Combat Mission (Zulu): 0100Z​

Mission OIC: Major Mix.C
Mission Controller: Corporal Lee.N & Major Mix.C
Number of Attendees:
7th Cavalry Personnel Involved in Action: 64

Major Mix.C
First Lieutenant James.M
First Lieutenant Smith.V
First Lieutenant Anderson.P
Second Lieutenant DAmico.J
First Sergeant Sven.S
First Sergeant Webber.R
First Sergeant Balazova.S
Staff Sergeant Cantrell.J
Staff Sergeant Rasmus.M
Sergeant Guillermo.C
Sergeant Lucas.A
Sergeant Warren.G
Sergeant Noriega.D
Sergeant Silvis.B
Sergeant Travis.W
Sergeant Whitefish.S
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mullins.R
Warrant Officer 1 Thumper.N
Corporal Owens.J
Corporal Moreau.M
Corporal Wisniewski.A
Corporal Bean.P
Corporal LaRoche.P
Corporal Macpherson.C
Corporal Ackelson.K
Corporal Lee.N
Corporal Leifried.R
Specialist Woody.W
Specialist Laui.M
Specialist Watters.W
Specialist Sokol.Z
Specialist Quake.B
Specialist Gimson.M
Specialist Leaf.J
Specialist Feathers.A
Specialist Johnson.G
Specialist Munch.R
Specialist Fisher.R
Specialist Rousseau.A
Specialist Ackerman.J
Specialist Shaw.JW
Specialist Parton.D
Specialist Hood.D
Specialist Fowler.D
Specialist Knapp.D
Specialist Walker.S
Specialist Donk.B
Specialist Jefferzon.Z
Specialist Daver.R
Private First Class Lewis.P
Private First Class Night.M
Private First Class Jay.JH
Private First Class Von Busch.M
Private First Class Helmick.A
Private First Class Smith.ER
Private First Class Patterson.C
Private First Class Ellison.C
Private First Class Matos.J
Private Barnes.D
Private Hansel.R
Recruit Dixon.L
RET.Smith.N

 

[Rasmus.M]

Element Callsign: Recon Mike
Element Leader: Staff Sergeant Rasmus.M
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Staff Sergeant Rasmus.M Spotter
First Sergeant Sven.S Sniper


Pros:

• We managed to destroy a lot of their spawning assets in the Rail Crossing area.
• We created a lot of pressure in the enemy backline, giving them the impression we had a larger force there than actual.
• We both won a lot of our gunfights.
• We gave a hard fight as a team and were fine details away from a Victory.
• It was a lot of fun.

Cons:

• Would have liked to be able to make happen more backline garrisons but they were constantly pushing to those supplies drop, could have tried to use more the supply truck in that goal cause i was able to infiltrate easily with transport truck in the South.
• I think we needed a little bit more pressure on Rail Crossing from the South when we controlled Town Center. Gotta keep the pressure high. The point was not defended from a bunch on it and its East, but i think they were applying good zone of control in the North/South West of that point.
• Gave some good flares but can improve and could get closer to defense strongpoint when enemy is hard pushing.

 

[Webber.R]

Element Callsign: Able Squad Left 4-Grid Infantry
Element Leader: First Sergeant Webber.R
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
First Sergeant Webber.R
Specialist Quake.B - Anti-Tank
Specialist Gimson.M - Support
Private First Class Patterson.C - Flex

Pros:

• Struck first taking Town Center and managed to hold it for first half of the game.
• Previous SPs we had worked on changes made to Town Center last month which came in clutch understanding new OP placements and where enemies would flow from.
• I'd love to scrim 10th MD again in the future, I felt like we were on equal levels of gunplay and it was a match that could have gone either way.

Cons:

• On maps that flow East to West, we should be focusing on keeping infantry north/south instead of east/west to better control the line. We do not need 10+ infantry stacked in the backfield before the enemy makes a flank, we'd be better suited to control the Line to start with and not let them control key areas for free. For instance, on Town Center, it's much more important to control the Church and Warehouse to the north and trenches/train station to the South of Town Center and not let the enemy get those locations for free.
• Very start of the game it was obvious that 10th MD was not going straight to the point but rather pincer us from the north and south and we were too slow to react. Sorta goes with my first point, but they were able to envelop us for free and take prime locations with little effort because we were stacked in the strongpoint which they just let us have. Then we were on the back-foot for the rest of the match in constant pressure.
• We need some work on our garrison placements. At times we'd only have one to two garrisons near Town Center and the rest spread over the rest of the map. Garrisons constantly go down so we should be keeping around three surrounding the mid-point as both backup as well as radar to glimpse where the enemy is pushing from. I'd also suggest more line garrisons, when we lost TC, we had zero garrisons on the line outside TC to attack it from, which set us way back from a maneuverability standpoint. Took us probably ten minutes to reorganize because of walking. Spawns are king.
• I feel like we may need to update our gameplan a bit. I feel like the Infantry and Airborne portions are too disconnected and we aren't flowing as a team, like we have two separate gameplans that just aren't fitting together. Maybe we can send an infantry team or two with Airborne to help them secure redzone garrison locations and pressure the next point? I feel like there was a spot or two where we could have flexed a team up to help attack Rail and relieve some pressure from TC, but we played it a bit too passive.
• Something we need to work on going forward, from an Infantry perspective, is assisting our Tanks. I think a big part of this is communication. Once a Tank is surrounded by enemies, it's very hard as Infantry for us to keep them protected, but if we know where a friendly Tank is headed from spawn, we can keep secure the zone they plan on parking in. It takes 5-10 minutes for us to clear out enemies and spawns so it's not something that can happen in an instant, but going forward we should work on combined arms a bit. If a Tank Commander tells an Infantry Lead "Hey we're moving to our move mark, can you hold it down until we arrive" it's something we can do and I think will help our combined arms effort.
• We had a good push into Town Center in the last 15 minutes that was sooo close to capping, looking back our team was all pushing from a singular direction which made it very easy for them to defend against and flank around to remove our spawns. If you see several teams pushing from a direction already, flank around from a different direction and force them to spread out their defenders and have to look multiple directions. Much harder to defend if you're worried about getting shot from multiple direction rather than a single road.

I put a lot of Cons but I'm the kind of person who thinks this was a prime game for us to learn from. It was very close and could have gone either way, very well fought from both sides. Hope to see us scrim 10th MD more in the future!

 

[Lee.N]

Element Callsign: Lead TC, Callsign "Rocinante"
Element Leader: Corporal Lee.N
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Specialist Laui.M
Corporal Leifried.R

Pros:

• Fun match!
• Command comms were rather good throughout, no one talked about them during hotwash so the consensus must be they were decent
• For the most part, pings were cleaned up rather quickly.
• Won nearly armor vs armor matchup we had across the board
• We went toe-toe with 10th MD, a no-joke team. Sure it was a loss, but we held our ground for the full match.

Cons:

• Lost nearly every armor vs infantry engagement. This was due to accidentally overextending ourselves several times, both by pushing ahead of infantry or not realizing until it was too late that our infantry support died.
• We tankers are definitely disconnected from the infantry in many regards, and it is something both parties need to work on. The tankers had a separate hotwash after the fact and that was one of the major points we talked about.
• Those of us who tank 99% of the time have a hard time understanding friendly infantry scenarios on the field. Once again, a true disconnect that we need to work on. That being said....

After the hotwash, I and several other tankers talked with some of the infantry. A few asked to be put in a tank with us to understand what we have going on in a real match. This is an open invitation to come join us to play a few pub matches with us. We're happy to show you what we have going on on our side of things, and I'm going to make it my goal to play more infantry, specifically infantry helping tanks, in the coming weeks. Please reach out if you want to run with us, or if you want to show something specific to me.

The only way we are going to get better is to work on our infantry-tank game.

 

[Von Busch.M]

Element Callsign: Armor TC
Element Leader: Private First Class Von Busch.M
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Private First Class Von Busch.M
Corporal Ackelson.K
Private First Class Helmick.A
Pros:

• Fun game
• Command comms were mostly clear during the game
• Great learning experience and new tricks learned from 10th MD

Cons:

• I had my tank overextended and out of postion quite a few times
• Enemy Infantry and artillery cohesion with their armor was far superior
• After we lost Town Center, it felt like we were on the defensive and just reacting to 10th MD

Speaking of tricks 10th MD was using; they would often work with infantry and artillery to hide tanks, which would then only show themselves when they fire at us.

Echoing what Cpl. Lee said, I'm always down to tank and run Infantry.

 

[DAmico.J]

Element Callsign: Recon Mike
Element Leader: Second Lieutenant DAmico.J
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Private Hansel.R


Pros:

• It was a good to play a game against a near-pear team. This is probably the level we are at right now.

Cons:

• All the garrisons were underutilized. Garrisons placed closer to the objective were lost nearly immediately, or they simply weren't placed at all. In order to compensate, I placed them further away to help the defense, but I felt like no one spawned on any of them. When the enemy captured the church, having a garrison on the church is absolutely pointless. There was a garrison less than 100m north of the church that the enemy had zero idea about. When we lost the church, the team didn't even both to spawn anyone north of the church to retake it. Saying that garrison is too far is a pretty lame excuse, honestly. We had absolute control over the northern spawns the entire game, yet we had zero presence there. They should have had zero chance of flanking us, since we had all the necessary spawns to counterattack.
• As we were losing Town Center, the garrison was destroyed on point. Of the 5+ squads up there with support in their squads and supplies already placed, no one built a garrison. I ran up from the rear and placed a terrible garrison in the street because it was the only place I could do it. I really felt like I was way out of my assignment having to do that, and it was frustrating to even be in that position. Not only that, but when I did get the garrison up, only four people spawned on it. This was after calling out what I getting ready to do 20-30 seconds before the garrison even goes up. Just hold your spawn and wait... That garrison was in the hard point, and the enemy was unaware of it. I had smoke popped in advance of the spawn wave that never came. Instead I watched as about 20-30 people ran from way up north through enemy resistance. HLL is a game of spawnpoints and redeploying to the best ones. In that situation, there was absolutely zero reason to run from that far north to retake Town Center. Even if you spawned up north, stop and recognize the situation. Redeploying and spawning on the circle would have been twice as fast! This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to even play the game, and frankly I expect better of our experienced players in this community.
• We continue to have zero to minimal offense. We seem incapable of establishing a line. It is as simple as looking at the map, seeing where the gap is, and moving to it. Instead, we clump up in a circle waiting for the enemy to come at us. If we aren't doing that, then we are forming a half-ass line on the grids while the entire enemy team is already behind us capturing the point. It doesn't do much good to form a line if they are already mixed in behind us, so I don't understand why we kept pressing forward off of Town Center when we are losing the objective.
• During the recapture of Town Center, we had two friendly heavy tanks approaching in the south. Then one garrison gets built up north, and the entire team abandoned our armor! I just cannot understand what is so hard about a double fronted attack. If you see 6 squads up north, you probably should pick a different direction to attack from. Stop waiting to be micromanaged into position, look at your map, and identify the weaknesses. That was probably one of the most frustrating moments I have ever experienced in an Op.

 

[Smith.N]

Element Callsign: Foxtrot SL (Defense)
Element Leader: Corporal Smith.N
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Corporal Smith.N
Corporal Macpherson.C
Specialist Sokol.Z
Private First Class Smith.ER
Pros:

• Fun match
• Learned enemy strategy between arty/tank cohesion
• Didnt get 5-0'ed

Cons:

• Very hard to assist friendly tanks with support due to enemy arty
• Town Center defense felt constantly on the verge of loss throughout our whole time defending
• Maybe need to change up attacking/flanking strategies to pour more units into weak points rather than small scattered elements (which is fine at some points of the match but they need to utilize the 7-man strat to reinforce squads attacking when theres opportunity)

 

[Guillermo.C]

Element Callsign: TC
Element Leader: Sergeant Guillermo.C
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
SPC.Watters.W
WO1.Thumper.N
Pros:

• Fun match
• Well maintained and planned by S5 and S3

Cons:

• Had good infantry and tank support at moments, but quickly dwindled and never built up again

 

[Whitefish.S]

Element Callsign: "Travis Hunters"Love (2nd Event Lucky Strike vs RoTN)
Element Leader: Sergeant Whitefish.S
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:

1. First Sergeant Balazova.S
2. Specialist Knapp.D
3. Specialist Walker.S
4. Private Barnes.D
   

Pros: We had fun!

• Always fun to get with other groups in the community and click some heads.
• Got to run with a pub player, not sure which group he was affiliated with, cool dude.
• It was fun seeing three different companies with different MOS play together.
• Cool to see how other clans operate.
• Makes you appreciate the CAV.

Cons: We lost

• My pea sized brain couldn't handle the continuous buzz in my ear that was command comms.
• Needless information continually transmitted made it hard to hear when commander called for a reset or anything for that matter.
• No clear direction from commander led to the team being disorganized.
• The commander kept referencing plans they had made up in what sounded like Google slides, it would have been nice to have access to them.
• Since we were the extra signups we were moved to the second event we played with other non cav clans, I will now sign up 10 days early in the future
• Had to face off against Travis and Owens. They took 7 of our garrisons

 

[Bean.P]

Element Callsign: Infantry Strongpoint Right
Element Leader: Cpl. Bean. P
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
SPC. Feathers.A
CPL. Wisniewski.A
SPC. Johnson.G
PFC. Ellison.C



Pros:
I can never complain when I play with reapers. These guys are always on their A game and bring out the best in me as a SL. On many occasions we adapted and overcame several obstacles. A major shoutout to Wis who took the guys on the attack and made a hell of an effort to take the point.

Overall Command Comms were clear, we need to work on understanding clarity. What I mean by this is that if we say we want marks and callouts to be simple than we should expect them to be just that.

You reaper boys should be proud of how we did. Its impressive how far all of us have come and will continue to grow here.

Cons:

Us as a group need to revisit what makes us strong. What makes things work. We know when the infantry are involved with an attack we can land the blows and push for the knockout but we can't be static in our approach. Having a roving defense that is in the red that can push the attack may be something that we look into. I never really felt like we had guys that were really pushing the attack in numbers that could actually do something. We need to look back on what went well in our previous matches where we have won and see why we won those.


Overall, these matches are meant to help us grow and learn which is why we should continue to pursue them not just at an S3 level but at all levels. Our players love these events and it allows us to play and see how teams ACTUALLY ARE without RINGERS. Thanks for putting this together.

 

[Noriega.D]

Element Callsign: Airborne Wide Offense Right (South) Dog Squad
Element Leader: Sergeant Noriega.D
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Staff Sergeant Cantrell.J
Corporal Moreau.M
Specialist Hood.D

Pros:

• Very fun match I enjoy the challenge.
• This was a great learning experience.
• Everyone did a hell of job executing their assignments.

Cons:

• Command chat was just chaotic and clustered at times. Infantry, Airborne, and Armor SLs should be a in separate discord to better communicate enemy flow etc.
• My squad was stretched pretty thin even for a 4man in our AO, as wide offense right. Our squad should have been split. The job for me as SL to identify enemy flow, maintain garrisons, assault enemy spawns, assist rear Airborne when need, press the 4 grid when needed and outflank as far south as the enemy was spawning for the most part in the SE was difficult for one SL.
• We could not properly execute our assignment due to the wide open space in our AO, the enemy was able to outflank us every time. I would identify enemy flow, my squad would engage, destroy Ops and garrisons and the enemy always found a way into the SE of the middle point and constantly reset.
• With hesitation, I had to send one of my troopers to operate independently assisting rear units. His motovation to do so, well appreciated and helpful. At times were even crucial to the mission objective, took manpower away from the actual squad assignment.
• I believe if I had been more aggressive and not so apprehensive trying to press the attack and operate solely as an AB offensive unit, the southeast AO of the middle point and further would have collapsed a lot sooner.
• The enemy was able to flow freely in the SE. That AO was my responsibility in the end and I take ownership for any headaches given.
• Personally I need to continue improving my gunplay, being patient when trying to run around placing and replacing garrisons. The next time I am assigned a 4 man Airborne unit I will take it upon myself to split the squad.

 

[Mullins.R]

Element Callsign: Lima (Infantry | Grid 4 Front)
Element Leader: Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mullins.R
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Chief Warrant Officer 2 Mullins.R
Specialist Fisher.R
Specialist Munch.R
Private First Class Dixon.L

Pros:

• 10MD were a great opponent for the Cav.
• Dixon, Fisher, and Munch did phenomenal acts of "violence of action" and aggression especially in Town Center from the church.
• 120+ kills between the squad, removed 9 enemy outposts.

Cons:

• Significant difficulty to break through the 10MD's front.
• Felt like we had no answer for the 10MD's armor which interfered with assaults beyond Town Center.
• Felt like we needed one or two more offensive garrisons to establish a stronger front to slow down 10MD and give the Cav avenues to breakthrough and seize the next control points.

 

[Travis.W]

Element Callsign: Team 2, Axis, Recon JIG
Element Leader: Sergeant Travis.W
7th Cavalry Personnel Within Element:
Corporal Owens.J Sniper


Pros:

• We were able to bring enough troops to play multiple teams and were able to balance out numbers well.
• Owens and I were able to get well into enemy lines and take out multiple crucial garrisons.
• Team 2 was able to stack a couple sections of Cav members and play together.

Cons:

• There was a misunderstanding where 7Cav was supposed to bring a commander, but I was not made aware.
• Owens and I had a good time, but we did not get to play with other Cav guys. So no comments on what the team did well or not.
• As recon, we did good disrupting enemy logistics until the front line was moved up to our OP, I did not efficiently move OP further back into enemy territory to maintain the flanking angle.

 

[Rutkowski.P]

S1 Locked.

Assigned Houser.J for processing.

 

[Houser.J]

S1 Operations Processed