US Mech Platoon

When my granny was ninety one!

"Wars are fought with weapons but they are won by men."

– Colonel Chester Philips

The average American Soldier is a member of one of the finest fighting forces in the world. The US Military is an all volunteer force, (though conscription is legal in the form of the Draft and in the event of the cold war flaring up would likely be reinstated) highly trained and highly motivated. Standard Platoon size is 50 men, Commanded by a fresh faced Lieutenant with some of the finest training money can buy and the advisement a Platoon Sergeant (this being 1985 when that rank still existed) with about ten years more experience that it can't. These men wield a variety of weapons from the standard issue M16 Assault Rifle, to the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, to the M47 Dragon Anti Tank Missile.

In Team Yankee

The Stat Card

The Mech platoon excels in midrange combat, with the rifle squads holding the line while dragons engage light armor or even some MBTs. Skilled and well armed, these brave soldiers excel in holding key positions on the battlefield and protecting your tanks from getting overrun by the Soviet hordes.

The two parts of the Mech Platoon are the M249 SAW/M72 LAW Teams and the M47 Dragon Teams.

The SAW/LAW Teams are your anti-infantry component that can occasionally deal with light armored vehicles or early model MBTs from the side. When halted, each individual SAW/LAW Team has a very respectable ROF of 3, which is a considerable amount of DAKA for opposing infantry to deal with. When combined with the general resilience of infantry (3+ save against everything remember), a mech platoon can be quite a stumbling block. If your opponent sends their reconnaissance vehicles or IFVs to try to root you out, the AT 12 of the LAW is more than sufficient to punch through the front of these vehicles. The cool thing is that both weapons of the SAW/LAW teams have a FP of 5+, which means that they can deal with dug in infantry and armored threats with the same efficiency as auto cannons (I guess the combination of DAKA from the SAWs and M16s plus the explosives air mailed by the M203 grenade launchers make up the difference).

When the Commies get a little frustrated with their light forces being held up by your GI's and send something more serious your way, it's time to bring out the M47 Dragons. The Dragon missile is an optically guided ATGM (Anti-Tank Guided Missile) that excels at dealing with all but the latest model PACT armor. The AT value of 18 is in an interesting range of numbers where it can punch in one side and out the other of almost every vehicle in Team Yankee, but is easily stopped by the front armor of almost every MBT, though the sides are a different story. The range of the Dragon means that you can comfortably engage threats out to 28" away, which is more than double the range of the Soviet RPG-7, and with its 3+ FP can surprise unaware opponents by detonating vehicles that they thought were at a safe distance. Don't worry about the penalties for engaging targets at range, though, as the guided and HEAT rules ignore those anyway. There are some downsides; the Dragon can only be fired if you have not moved, meaning you can't fire while charging like the Soviets can with the RPG-7, and BDD Armor can prove quite difficult to deal with.

Remember that both weapon teams have thermal imaging, which means smoke can be used to great effect to help preserve their numbers while they bleed the enemy of their troops and support vehicles.

Compared to other US infantry, the mech platoon is far more versatile and cost-efficient thanks to the additional M113s. However, the Marines and Airborne are undisputedly superior options if you wish to use your infantry as assaultmen or as dedicated infantry killers.

IRL

File:1200px-DA-SN-83-08452 Members of 1ST Bn., 28th Infantry, charge out the back of an APC during Exercise Reforger '82.jpeg

Give me a rifle, one round and point me to Berlin Moscow!

The latest mechanized units of the United States Army are the last in a long line of similar units stretching all the way back to WW2. Today most Mechanized Infantry Units are equipped with either the M2 Bradley Infantry fighting vehicle or the Stryker IFV, though reserve units and other less important formations may still roll around in M113s with replacements of those starting in the 2020s by upgraded Bradleys. The Dragon ATGM has been replaced by Javelin ATGMs and improved TOW missile variants.

Oh, here's an interesting tidbit about the M47 Dragon. The Dragon was guided by a wire that trailed from the launcher. This wire would relay commands from the sight, which the operator would point at the intended target. Basically, wherever you looked at through the sight, the missile would home in on. This lead to some issues with inexperienced operators accidentally firing their multi-thousand dollar missile (one that they have humped across a battlefield for possibly days mind you) straight into the ground. See, the whole contraption weighed about 30 lbs, and when preparing to fire, the operator would have to brace himself against it. When the missile was fired, the majority of the weight was quite literally lifted from his shoulders, and all of that tension required to keep the missile steady would suddenly no longer be restricted by gravity, which would cause the soldier to rock forward a bit. Not much, but enough to send the Dragon burrowing into the ground, possibly alerting the enemy to the fact that someone is shooting missiles at him. Experienced soldiers would aim a bit high to give themselves some room to correct that inevitable issue. (Why didn't they disable relaying commands from sight for the first second after launch as pretty much anyone in the world did though?).

The RPG-18 and LAW rockets are actually very similar to each other, in terms of weight, rocket size, and effective range. The later LAW rockets, decades after the Vietnam war, had greater penetration but around the same effective range. Perhaps the Team Yankee devs wanted to simply things (Have rifles and disposable rockets with the same range) or make the Americans all around better than the Soviets?

Another fun fact is that during the Cold War, the best second best and most plentiful body armor given out on the Western side of the Iron Curtain was the PASGT vest... A glorified police vest... 9mm .44 Magnum (Based on US NIJ testing and dozens of aftermarket tests) was about all it could take, which sounds dreadful, especially compared to Soviet 6B3 designed to stop AKM ammo (Which couldn't stop M855 5.56 and only could stop M193 5.56 at long range), but most casualties in modern war come from shrapnel, explosive and the like, so 9mm is enough for most cases. In general the best way to survive even with any kind of armor is not to get hit at all, as modern armor covers only vitals with rifle resistant armor. However, it is possible a speed up of the issuance of the ISAPO which had some resistance against rifle rounds, happened due to war. The Ranger Vest, which at the time had front and back protection, could've been mass issued as well.

By 1985, the US was one of the few NATO forces to switch over from 7.62 NATO rifle to 5.56 NATO rifles. Government fuck-ups gave some terrible first impressions for the non-Air Force users (who bought their rifles before the government fucked everything up), deleting many features critical to reliability (And adding new features that reduced reliability) because they were "too expensive" such as the chromed barrel (which, mind you, was a feature that even the last ditchest of last ditch Japanese World War II rifles had and was established technology), loading ammo with the wrong type of powder, and ordering reuse of the magazines designed to be disposable. Since the many deaths in Vietnam, the army stopped fucking up so bad and began correcting their mistake. Unfortunately some of these fixes were themselves retarded, like sights optimized for a firing range instead of battle and adding weight to the ultra-lightweight space age rifle to make it more usable as a machine gun prevent some problem that no documentation is available for, but the rifle does largely work by 1985. The magazine problem wouldn't really be corrected till 2007-2009 though, and soured reputation has taken just as long to fade.

This transition was also just starting to make its way into machine guns with the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW), which was introduced in 1984. While Team Yankee infantry carries the SAW, in reality the transition was still in progress and most units in 1985 still had their Vietnam-vintage M60's, as well as M240's.