Through his field glasses Carrera saw the four tanks move by bounds toward Cerro Marieta to the east-southeast. As one group of two moved forward, the other protected them, overwatched in military parlance, by searching for and engaging any targets that presented themselves. As he watched a pair bound forward, Carrera's attention focused on one tank in particular. He couldn't see what had hit it, but the expanding cloud of red smoke told him something had. Perhaps the crew didn't know either, though Carrera could see a red- faced Russian, he assumed it was a Russian, screeching a small four wheel drive vehicle to a stop and getting out. In his glasses Carrera saw the tank crew, already emerging, flinching from the anticipated lesson.
Carrera cursed himself for a fool. I've made a mistake in this training plan. This range is simply too hard. Truth be told, this platoon has already been "killed" more than once over.
The primary problem was that the jungle and the hills and ridges made the range available to let the tanks engage targets far too short. This meant that when targets appeared they were so close to the tanks that the Jaguars had little chance to traverse and engage before, realistically, they would have been hit.
Everything is a trade off in tank design. Engineers trade size against ammunition and fuel capacity, height against ability to depress the gun, armor against speed, and engine and speed against fuel consumption and-sometimes, in peacetime-safety.
Politicians trade off expense against numbers. Sometimes, in the industrialized parts of Terra Nova, they traded safety and combat performance for environmentalist sentiment, too. Politicians on Old Earth had once made similar choices. If they'd never paid for those choices, their soldiers often had.
One of the trade offs the Volgans typically made was slow speed of an electrically powered turret traverse against the complexity of a hydraulic traversing system and the danger of its fluid catching fire if hit. The Jaguar, like all Volgan tanks, was notoriously slow in traversing its turret. There were actually ranges, close ones to be sure, where a fast man on foot could run in a circle around a standing Volgan tank faster than the turret could track him. This sounded like more of a design flaw than it really was. Volgans used tanks in mass and with supporting infantry always close by. Try to run circles around one Volgan tank in combat and the odds were good that a dozen others would perforate you before you had a chance to turn the first corner, if the infantry didn't get you first.
Carrera thought, Once they get to the desert this won't really be a problem. Shots there will usually be so long-range that the typical engagement will require only a small angle of turret movement. On the other hand, if the boys start believing their tanks aren't up to it here, they're likely to carry that attitude over to the desert. This is definitely not good.
Carrera reached a decision and it didn't take him long to do so. He told his driver to call on the radio for Brown, Sitnikov and Kennison.
Brown was the first to arrive, having been the nearest. "Sancho Panzer reports, sir."
When the other two showed up, a few minutes later, Carrera told them, point blank, "This range sucks. Not your fault; still your problem. The troops aren't getting the chance to engage targets at a realistic distance and they're getting their clocks cleaned by the targets because they can't traverse quickly enough to engage. Here's what I want done by tomorrow morning. Carl, you go get your hands on a dozen small boats with outboards and a dozen, no better make it two, without. Get five hundred feet of tow cable for each powerboat. Brown, find some ballsy fuckers from among your tankers to man the powerboats. Offer a bonus if you have to. Don't be overgenerous… say, no more than daily combat pay would be. Fit out the others with tank-sized plywood targets. We'll tow the targets behind the powerboats out in the ocean north of the FS Army's old drop zone at Vera Cruz. Sitnikov, move half the Jaguars you've dedicated to gunnery to Vera Cruz. We'll do long-range firing from there."
With a moment's reflection, Carrera added, "Carl, better get the word to the merchant freighters anchored out there to move. And find me a place to do a tank platoon attack where they can shoot at some distance."
Kennison thought briefly. "No place near the Transitway, Pat. Rio Sombrero, maybe? I'll look tomorrow after we get the Vera Cruz affair set up."
"Fair enough."
Santa Clara Schoolhouse,
Balboa, 14/5/460 AC
The training schedule for Cruz's unit-now reorganized as Second Century, 1st Cohort-called for exercises in city fighting. That put them in this paint-chipped and abandoned, multistory and multilevel building. The building had once been a school. Of the two major sections one stood atop a hill, another at its base. A long, covered and enclosed walkway ran up the side of the hill, connecting the two.
No Volgans, except the five that were attached to the cohort for their equipment training, were present. City fighting was an area in which the BDC had been reasonably well trained prior to the 447 invasion. The cohort's own NCOs, therefore, trained their own troops in the tactics and techniques of defending and attacking buildings. Those NCOs had, themselves, spent the previous three evenings in refresher training run by Abogado's organization while their troops rested.
Cruz's section leader, del Valle, took his men from station to station within the building. He showed them how to clear a room, to watch for booby traps, to use a rope to climb up the side of a blank wall, and all the other usual techniques employed in combat in builtup areas.
The upper part of the school was used to practice offensive operations. In the lower part were set up a number of demonstration areas showing how to prepare to defend a building, from making fighting positions to blocking normal passages to making new passages to setting traps. Cruz's section leader explained each, pretty much as it had been explained to him by FMTG. By supper time the company was finished with the schoolhouse. Eating his supper, a heavy stew over rice, Cruz and his friends had to admit that today's training had been the most fun so far. And it hadn't really been very hard work.
After supper Cruz's squad leader rejoined the rest of the squad. He marched them over to one of the abandoned houses the Federated States military forces had kept for the families of its soldiers once stationed in Balboa. The house was on stilts. It was also in very poor shape, which explained why it was abandoned. Underneath the house were several piles of fortification material, barbed wire, lumber, sandbags, shovels, axes and picks. Just outside the area under the house was a huge pile of dirt.
Del Valle gave a half evil smile just before saying, "Fun's over. Tomorrow morning we will be attacked. We will work all night to prepare this house for defense. You can use those two shovels and that dirt for filling sandbags. Sanchez, you are the acting section leader. The rest of you stay here. Sanchez come with me."
Fort Cameron, 17/5/460 AC
Artillery was a mixed bag. The artillery cohort was organized into five firing centuries of six guns each, though in one case instead of guns the century had multiple rocket launchers. Of the other four, two had Volgan-built 122mm howitzers and two had 160mm Suomi- manufactured mortars. The Volgans, too, had manufactured mortars in the 160mm range but those had been one of the rare cases where Carrera had opted for something besides Volgan equipment. The Suomi guns were lighter, more maneuverable, easier to get into and out of action, had greater range and a more effective shell on target. Nor was the price terribly bad, though it was more than the Volgan guns cost. Still, mortars were so cheap, generally, that the price differential for a mere twelve systems was small change, even for a force trying to squeeze out the last bit of value from every drachma.