Recon Capabilities

[kalos72]

Lets ignore fuel/electronics / aircraft survival to start...

I am trying to figure out how a unit gets intell on an active possibly hostile town without making itself known.

1 - You can send 2-3 foot soldiers with binos and watch them for a few days. But you stand the chance of such a small unit getting hit while travelling since it would have limited offensive capability.

2 - A mounted patrol would be faster, bring more firepower but be harder to conceal.

3 - Aerial infrared/photos of the area. But would you get the detail you needed? Whos in command? Are they friendly?

4 - A spy, lone guy wanders into town to barter or something. Again, limited survivability if attacked. What if he is white and the town is filled with Mexican army regulars or vice versa?

5 - Develop a small trade route to the city and develop a wandering caravan type of cover. Again weak if attacked, hard to develop the cover, but you would have unlimited access and would also develop an additional trade route in the process.

How would you recon an area you wanted to know the goings on in before you send troops? Who lives there? What are their affiliations? What resources do they have? What about that coal mine outside of town? All the while limiting your risk of asset lose AND intel that I am there and looking....

[kcdusk]

Is your question based on a T2K type situation? Or more modern times (Merc)?

[StainlessSteelCynic]

This is one way to do it.


A small patrol (4 to 8 personnel) will infiltrate the target area to conduct initial reconnaissance - this is as much to find good surveillance sites as it is to gain first impressions.
This recce may only last a few hours or up to 12 or more hours and typically, the main group stays in a harbour back from the observation post (OP) to provide support should the observer team get into the shit.

The observer team is typically just two people. Notes are taken about the things they observe, range cards drawn up and so on.
Temporary hides are constructed for the OP and harbour so personnel remain hidden from ground and aerial observation.

Based on their observations, a more thorough recce is conducted using the surveillance sites the first group identified (and if they aren't suitable then the second team will need time to find more suitable locations). Team will construct longer term hides for same reasons as above.

This team could also be small or it could be larger and split up to cover more area (i.e. multiple harbours and OPs or one harbour and multiple OPs). Specialist tools may be deployed at this time e.g. microphones, video cameras, ground sensors and so on.
Again a small crew will observe the target area and compile information while the main body occupies a harbour area. Sometimes you may not be able to have a separate observation post and harbour and you may have to combine them in the same hide.

Observation time may be a single day but more likely several days so you can observe such things as main entry/exit points, secondary entry/exit points, daily routines, what time people stop working/go to sleep, what paths sentries take (e.g. do they take the same path every day or a different path each time), water sources, comms capability, vehicles, condition of the vehicles, number of personnel, attitude of the personnel, condition of their equipment, who appears to be in command, fortifications, obvious weak points and strong points and so on.

In regards to point 4, if the information gathered indicates that it is worth the risk, then you could send one or two people into the town to spy out the location but this should always be considered as very high risk and they should have good backup support.

Reconnaissance takes time, sometimes the team could spend four or five days laying up in the area to recce a site and sometimes you might spend several weeks in the area rotating teams in and out as needed.
However you have to base the requirement for extended intel against the amount of time you actually have to collect that intel and also against how much/little time you have to report the information before it is needed.

[kalos72]

Thanks Stainless...that gives me a better idea of how its done.

And KC, T2K really but even just the real life data is helpfull.

I was wondering if the FLIR capability was good enough yet to use a small ultralight with a FLIR pod to recon the site. At night with no power, I imagine you would get some good images.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

You're welcome, that's the benefit of having served in a recce platoon
What's interesting for me is that the techniques I was taught for the army are now being taught to police and other investigators to help tackle crime in rural areas - and not just to prevent Farmer Jack's new tractor from being stolen. It's also being conducted to prevent poaching, livestock theft, illegal dumping, animal cruelty and environmental damage, to investigate cases of fraud and to intercept smugglers amongst other things.

In regards to the FLIR pod, I don't know offhand how big/small they'd be in the mid-1990s but I think the biggest problem would be the power requirements of the pod with the second biggest problem in a T2k setting being the equipment needed to view the images. All that stuff might be too much for a small ultralight to carry?

[kalos72]

Perhaps a light and quite helicopter then? An OH-58 or Defender maybe.

Here is a scenario:

You and your group are in control over a town. Your town needs more trained mechanics lets say. So you want to send scouts out to other towns looking for mechanics to come work in your town.

1 - You aren't sure of the others towns status - hostile/friendly
2 - You aren't sure how they would react to a proposal to steal assets like trained locals
3 - How do you convince the local to move to your town and that your offer isn't some scam to kidnap you and put you in chains?

OR

You want to send a scout team to check out the NG Armory in the closest major city to look for weapons but whats the best way to do it?

From a T2K perspective...