Source: TW
Alright team, in light of the ongoing Russian offensive in the Donbass we’ll be talking obstacles, protective fortifications, and getting through them. First up will be tactical obstacles. There’s a key distinction here - I’ll be specifically speaking to obstacles intended to keep an enemy from moving through an area. Many kinds of fortifications are purely or partially protective of your own troops - I’ll cover those later.
Obstacles can either be deployed “protectively” - to keep the enemy from overrunning your battle positions, or “tactically” - to funnel them into a kill zone, delay them, or otherwise force them to move in a way you want them to.
Little-appreciated fact - machine guns didn’t cause the stalemate of the WWI Western Front. Barbed wire did, by forcing attacking troops to slow down to work their way through the wire and keeping them exposed to gunfire and artillery. Barbed wire remains a key part of any obstacle scheme, deployed as either “straight” wires or in concertina coils. To make something that enemy troops can’t just carefully walk or crawl through takes a lot more time and effort than you’d think. Don’t believe me? Ask the Vietnamese, they got really, really good at it. Barbed wire is evil stuff, it can even tangle up tracked vehicles if you use enough of it.
Next up is ditches. Antitank ditches can be used as fighting positions in a pinch, but generally you want an infantry trench to be narrow to protect from airbursts. AT ditches need to be wide and deep, to the point that tanks can’t get across them properly.
Roads can be cratered with explosives, and trees felled to create an abatis. The terrain can also be flooded to create a near-impassible mire.
Mines
And I haven’t even gotten into land mines. Minefields are one of the fastest obstacles to emplace, and they can be seeded into constructed obstacles to make clearance extremely hazardous. They can also be laid remotely by aircraft, rockets, and artillery. They can also remain extremely hazardous for an extremely long time.
Still-extant Argentine minefield on the Falklands pictured, deliberately left uncleared to provide a penguin sanctuary. Most old minefields have much grimmer long-term results. Clearance can take decades. All of this is integrated together into a planned set of obstacles designed to keep the enemy where you want them - in your kill zone, and out of your fighting positions.
Next up will be those fighting positions, and then I’ll get into clearing through all of this.
Addendum: There’s all kinds of other obstacles beyond just these.
Pictured: Dragon’s Teeth, Czech Hedgehogs, “Rommel’s Asparagus” anti-glider rail/wire obstacles and French antitank rails on the Maginot Line.
Overcoming obstacles
Alright team, we’ve already talked about obstacles and fortifications. Now we’ll talk about getting through them. This will be a two-parter - today we’ll talk about breaching tactical obstacles on a relatively sterile battlefield. Later we’ll talk more realistic scenarios.
It’s my private theory that the whole tactical/protective obstacle division in Western doctrine is the product of preparing to defend West Germany from the Soviets for so long. It assumes a mobile battlefield where you can set up a proper kill zone, not positional warfare. As we’ve seen in Ukraine, positional warfare with heavily entrenched front lines integrated with obstacles can easily develop even with the most modern weapons available. This is to be expected, but don’t tell that to doctrine writers preparing for a war that will never happen.
The easiest way to defeat an obstacle is to simply bypass it. However, this may be funneling you into someone’s kill zone, or bypass may simply be impossible. In that case you need to breach.
But the first step in any military operation is reconnaissance. First you want to get a very good idea of what exactly you’re going up against and what the enemy forces in the area look like. There’s many ways to do this but it needs to be done.
In the course of your reconnaissance you may find that this obstacle is undefended or poorly secured - maybe the enemy hasn’t placed outposts nearby. Undefended obstacles can be breached quickly and easily. Poorly secured ones can be breached stealthily if you have the time.
Properly defended obstacles require sterner measures. The defenders must be suppressed and the obstacle must then be secured and reduced by engineers to allow assault troops to push through and engage the enemy in close combat.
- Suppression is done with direct and indirect fire. Any particularly difficult positions can be obscured with artillery smoke to prevent them from engaging troops advancing onto the obstacle itself.
- The enemy may have outposts up near the obstacle itself, and in any event the engineers require security as they do their work. This requires troops to secure the near side of the obstacle to allow the engineers to work freely.
- Then the sappers move forward and set to work tearing the obstacle apart and creating breach lanes. This involves everything from wire cutters and grappling hooks to bulldozers and explosive line charges to clear minefields. Some more pictures. Tanks can mount mine-clearing plows and rollers.
- Finally with the breach lanes open troops are free to assault through the obstacle and continue on to engage the enemy’s proper defensive positions.
This entire process takes time. The enemy may use artillery or even attempt to re-seal the obstacle with scatterable mines. As such this is one of the most difficult tactical operations a unit can undertake, and not something to be done lightly.