Let me give you some feedback on some of those points, as much you wont have been aware of.
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My squad leader was Chalcas, he seemed to have some problems. It sounded like a lot of unnecessary things were being said in the command channel and this made it hard for him to get through with request and reports. For example he had to ask 3 times before someone did anything about bringing his dead squad members to the front (he said he had asked 3 times). I am guessing this was due to other communications in the command channel. But when an infantry leader can't get through to his support units/commander someone have the wrong priorities.
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What exactly would you consider "unneccesary?" When the requst for reinforcements came in, it was early in the battle and certain lines of communication were frantic, I'll give you an example...in just one minute, Command had the following;
A request from Chalcas for reinfrocements,
A request from bravo for a Medic,
Recce giving target details,
heavy Weapons Team advising of an inbound enemy squad to bravo's position,
Air team advising they are standing by and ready to provide CAS,
Artillery requesting information on the artillery markers and target verification and ....
requests from the PLT SGT and a MEDIC constantly asking where he needed to be....followed up by the 2nd request for reinforcements....
Bear in mind ALL of this happened in a 60 second period...I kid you not... Not one of those requests was unneccessary...each squad has it's own priority and each squad feels their radio broadcast is just as important as the next...but wha people HAVE to remember, is that there is just ONE commander, who has to take in all this information and give orders in reaction, in order to keep a grip and control on battle, otherwise things get out of hand very quickly...
Back to the point in question....
Command put in 2 requests for the reinforcements to be picked up. (bearing in mind that the air lead was doing a superb job under difficult personal circumstances) it was on the third request that Command actually chased down the reinforcements to find out where they were, sensing something was wrong. As a point of note, No one from the downed squads was feeding information back to their SL that they were at FB Falcon and not the main base, which is where Command thought they were...once that was sorted...the ferrry flights began on a regular basis.
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Our support fires left something to be desired. I do not know what or who is to blame but 200-300 meters off target (happened multiple times) don't seem very accurate to me.
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Yes we had a couple of incidents where we may have had some learning mistakes made by people not used to doing certain roles. Remember, they did not pick their role, it was chosen for them. However the majority of fire missions were pretty much where I wanted them.
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On the plus side I would say the briefing before the round was top notch the same with the document. I am wondering why it wasn't distributed to every member of the team since people are more efficient when they know their job. I know it was only done the day before so you haven't really had time to send it around but think that a general briefing is better.
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Your data is not quite accurate here. The briefing was NOT done the day before the event, it was merely issued the day before the event. That was CO's choice and done for a reason. As to why it was not distributed? The Squad Leaders were issued with their orders! Do you know of a single military unit in the world where the mission commander sends a briefing document to every man in every unit? No....I did this again by design...I wanted immersion in the mission, where the Grunts HAD to rely on their SL's to issue appropriate orders to tell them when and where they needed to be.
Had I issued everyone with the briefing, it would have taken the surprise of the plan, the surprise of the position selected for the grunts, out of the window. Again....all done for effect and the effect was exactly as I wanted. Is that a point for improvement....not at all as I would do that aspect of the mission planning exactly the same way again.
As to commands perspective of things that might have been better....
The primary issue was FF incidents and I learned that in ArmA2 is it pretty hard to make an exact mark on the map for arty to hit on that mark. A classic example was my Arty4 marker, North West of Alpha's position. I had to confirm 4 times with Alpha lead that my mark was good and where they wanted the fire mission? Unfortunately as soon as the first rounds came in.... Alpha were anialated... the fire mission was immediately stopped.
So what I personally learned from that is that I had to give a MUCH wider margin for error for later fire missions....
Soupy is SPOT on in this as I did not specify spread.. that was my bad and a lesson learned personally. I dont put blame anywhere for this, it was simply a learning excercise...
With regards CAS... we had some comms issues with Air and understandably so, but again after an errant fire mission, I knew that I had to give VERY clear instructions using visual confirmation as well as grid references/map marks as to where I wanted the Hydras.... This meant me confirming several times.. "Rockets in the treeline NOT the OPEN"... again when it worked, it worked beautifully. I had an entire enemy squad destroyed to our south with a real danger close fire support mission toward the end near LZ Echo...
As to positioning.... again...by only going off map details, it was hard to to know exactly how much room we had in the LZ, how steep the hill was etc. In hindsight, I think I would have made defensive positions A LOT tighter in a BOX formation, this would have given me more freedom with my fire missions, as the firendlies would have been in a very tight area. The only issue with this style of defense is the increased risk from enemy GP25 or Arty rounds, destroying more squad members due to tighter bunching...
At the end of the day...the mission was great fun...and HAD NEVER BEEN BEATEN...
We beat it... and I was very impressed with all my Squad Leaders.
For the record, I personally HATE using TS for large scale missions, it does an ok job, but in NO way shape or form does it replace VON and the comms would have been infinitely cleaner in VON.... but... I agree that every mission always has room for improvement, however just because you are not privy to certain information, that may not neccessarily be an area for improvement but a personal choice for the CO...
