So what about '99?

[Tombot]

Since the "powers to be" are digging in (building their cantonments), it could be about civilian scouts, too.
Local people, like hunters. They know the sorroundings and could be excellent scouts and spys.

Scenarios like in "Ride with the devil" (Ang Lees western about a group of Missouri bushwhackers) come to my mind.
The situation there had something in common with europe in 1999; the big battles occured somewhere else (or are over); and militias are fighting skirmishes and hit-and-run-raids, while the army is dug in somewhere.

[Adm.Lee]

Thank you, Webstral, I think trench-raiding was the kind of thing I was thinking of. Stuff to keep one's one side informed while keeping the enemy off-balance.

[Webstral]

Glad to help. At the risk of continually referring to my own work, much of the campaigning in the American Southwest in 1999 is of this nature. The big action occurs in Texas, and there is a sideshow in Arizona. However, for most of the year the action the Southwest resembles the fighting in Europe, of on a much larger scale.

Tangent warning:

Sonora Army, which was established to create a separate command from Second Mexican Army, spends 1999 conducting raids against SAMAD. These raids are intended to inflict damage to property, kill some people, destroy morale among the Americans, and supplement the intelligence coming from the rather effective network operating inside SAMAD. One of the reasons so much of southern Arizona is deserted is that throughout late 1998 and the first half of 1999, Mexican raiders cross the border west of Nogales virtually at will for the purpose of killing and destroying. The small city of Ajo is wiped out and burned to the ground in one of these raids. The Tonoho O’Odham are subjected to repeated raids until most of the survivors flee east to areas under more direct control of SAMAD forces. During this time, infiltrators set numerous fires in SAMAD territory, causing major damage to homes and infrastructure as well as significant losses in life and livestock.

CINC Sonora Army, who has been given the order to make the Americans bleed in advance of the 1999 effort to finish off SAMAD, forms a special unit that assumes the moniker Chupacabras—a term that came into being around the beginning of the Sino-Soviet War to describe a blood-sucking monster. The Chupacabras specialize in setting fires and slitting throats. When regular units of Sonora Army capture Ajo, it’s the Chupacabras who rape, torture, and kill.

All of this is supposed to weaken the Americans in Arizona in preparation for the final assault in mid-1999. The Mexican Army intends to move five brigades from the interior to reinforce Sonora Army. Once the irritant based at Fort Huachuca has been destroyed, the force from the interior will reinforce Second Mexican Army and drive into the Central Valley with the intent of inflicting a decisive defeat on Sixth US Army. This, the Mexican leadership believes, will force the Americans to the bargaining table on Mexican terms. Unfortunately for the Mexicans, Fifth US Army launches its counteroffensive in Texas before the planned Mexican offensive in Arizona can begin.

Getting back to the raiding, with the exception of a set-piece battle in which Sonora Army attempts to capture SAMAD without the planned reinforcements, the fighting along the border is virtually all based on raiding. Much of the action is small unit fighting. The Americans develop a counter-raiding system based on LP/OP, main defensive bastions, tracking patrols on horseback, and quick response teams with overwhelming firepower. Loss of life is high on both sides, but the Americans get the best of it because once a Mexican raiding party is pinned down on the American side of the border, they’re done. The sheer distances involved make it difficult for the Mexican raiders to get in and get out on foot in a single night, though they don’t give up trying until Sonora Army withdraws from the border following the outbreak of the Second Mexican Civil War.