Night action?

[Mohoender]

I'm looking for advice here. From several previous thread I have a fair idea of night vision elements and that's not what I'm looking for.

I'm looking for your opinion on night fighting without night vision if any of you know about this. I have no field experience but we had night exercises when I did my service.

As I was in the air force (ground personnel), we of course had no night vision equipments. The result was a nice interesting messy situation where no one could identify the other, where everyone (outside myself) had thrown it's two grenades (blindly)...

So, how would you manage a night assault with no night vision equipment?

[rcaf_777]

Conducting a night assault with no night vision equipment, well that would depend on what type of operation you were conducting, in a raid or assault you would get into your jumping off positions using no light and then launch the attack using para flares or call for Illumination from the Artillery or Mortars, most other sneaky stuff you would just go with if you had no night vision equipment, When I was a Canadian Army Reservsit we hardly have any NVG, lucky if we had one per section. The Human eye will adjust to most night time conditions to give some degree of sight, and lets no forgot our pal the moon you be amazed how much light you would get from a full or half moon.

Hope this helps

[Mohoender]

It does, I should have thought of some of it myself but it seemed I simply could get my mind to work. Thanks.

[jester]

That is why everyone has their sectors of fire. And yes when used to night operations the eye becomes very atune to the light it gives off. And in your view you can almost think it as daylight just short of being able to read by....and in some cases you can.

As for how to operate,

1.) You need to be well schooled with your team. This would be a given in T2K as the troops as few as you have would have been whats left of a unit after four years of fighting.

2.) Confidence, again having done such things for so long it will not be that big a deal.

3.) Cover and Concealment, this covers so many elements;

A.) The men need to be camoflauged, blackout facepaint so no white skin is reflected and your outline is broken up.

B.) Use of natural terrain, using the terrain and foilage to get as close as possible unseen.

C.) Light and Noise discipline! Again, keep the people darkened with camo, no smoking or use of flashlights, and no talking you want to talk grab a man, pull him close and whisper into his ear. And also soundproof your equipment, remove weapon slings, no clanking or rattling of metal or similiar gear, stuff rags and tie it down.

D.) BALLS!!!! You need to be ballsy! So when you have snuck as close as you can just go for it! Going all out, and take the suckers out. Hopefully by then you will be upclose and personal so you won't have to brave a field of enemy far for to great a distance. And when you get close, toss grenades and automatic weapons fire.

E.) Coordination; so you have coordinated with you supporting elements to open fire with the mortars, machineguns or even riflemen who have moved into position to give covering fire at a set time, when a set signal is given, when they observe the teams have reached their staging points, or when the first shots start.

Those are some of the things I recall from planning a night attack. I am sure there is much much more I have forgotten.

Oh yeah, STEALTH is an important factor, this goes with the whole cover and concealment thought.

[kcdusk]

Page 21 of the referees manual if your using v1.0 talks about how to work out visability at night if its rules/distances your after.

Or page 223 of v2.2 has the same info.