Hey, so I thought I'd do a little AAR on one our split-team mission last night. I'll do a broad platoon AAR and give Bravo's AAR, and hopefully Alpha or Charlie can give their own AARs. I've drawn up this diagram of our movement, so that we can see how we all fit into the big picture.


A1: The letter stands for the squad and the number is the chronology. All positions marked with the same number are simultaneous. So, when Alpha was at position A1, Bravo was at B1 and Charlie at C1.


Platoon-wide movement
This mission is particularly easy for platoon-wide movement, as each objective's relative position to the insert presents obvious, direct, mutually supporting firing positions. As we each moved directly to our positions, the squads on our left or right were simultaneously covering our flanks and, for much of the mission, could interdict any reinforcements.

Positions 1
This mutually supportive stance helped us on our very first engagement. En route to positions 1 on the map, Charlie engaged targets on the hill around grid squares B10/B11. In response, enemies came running north towards Charlie. Bravo's position just southeast of Charlie allowed us to eliminate those targets before they were a threat to Charlie. It was a perfect example of flanking. Alpha drew the targets north and Bravo hit them from the side.

Alpha was the first to reach positions 1 on the ridgeline, but Bravo and Charlie were able to reach their positions soon afterward. Positions 1 were excellent, giving us a broad sightline across the river, leaving little opportunity for any enemies to get between our lines.

What could have been improved?

Even when working as individual squads, we need to pay very close attention to what our other squads are doing. When Charlie engaged the enemies on the hilltop, Bravo was out in the open. I was following everyone's radio communications early on, and I heard Charlie's command to engage the targets on the hill. I was able to radio to Bravo to take cover before Charlie engaged. In the future, it would be wise for squad leaders to check where other squads are. If engaging targets may expose other squads to danger, those squads should be alerted. Also, if there is a possibility of tangos responding across other squads' paths, they should be alerted so they can prepare. This is all, of course, dependent on having proper time to set up on the enemy without alerting them.

Positions 2

Once we crossed the river, we were spread out enough that we no longer had mutually supporting fire positions. This was necessary for the completion of our objectives.

What could have been improved?

Alpha engaged to the south just as Bravo was crossing the river. This caught us a little off guard and disrupted our tactical movement (see the post on Bravo's AAR for more on this). Our response was poor and this is our fault, but if Alpha had let Bravo know about their engagement, we could have prepared better.

Positions 3

After subduing their threat, Alpha was quick to begin tackling their objective. Nice work. From my perspective, your run seemed very cleanly done. Bravo was still trying to recover from our disrupted positions and we got spread out. I believe Charlie lost a man at Position 3, but I'm not sure of any of the details.

Positions 4

After rescuing the friendly, Alpha headed back for extraction. Bravo made its way slowly toward the house, but Charlie was still engaging targets to our north and we had a nearby rise obstructing our view. I wanted to take precaution moving west until I felt Charlie was in control of their situation.

What could have been done better?

It's my fault for not letting Alpha know what to do, but in the future, if an objective is complete, the squad lead should contact the platoon lead and ask for further orders. In this case, I would have had you support Bravo's convergence on the house.

Positions 5

By this time Alpha/Charlie objectives were complete and they had swept the ridgeline. My goal was to have them secure the ridgeline so that Bravo could move quickly back to them under cover. Enemies spawned on top of them, though. Totally cheap. Bravo secured the hostage and once Alpha had taken out the spawning enemies, the mission auto-ended.

What could have been done better?

Initially my goal was to have Alpha/Charlie finish their objective and be able to provide Bravo with exterior cover while Bravo entered and cleared the house. I don't know if Leejo would have survived had we done that, but I would have felt more comfortable.

Conclusions

All-in-all, I think we did good trying this out. I can only speak for Bravo about individual tactics, but I thought we did a good job of keeping each other covered and taking out threats quickly. This mission was built for the split-platoon technique, though. Don't expect any mission to be this easy when splitting squads. That's why I had us run through it as our first run. Next time we will try C02 - Military Base. It's another mission with clear benefits to the split-platoon technique, but the mission itself will be much more demanding on the individual squads.