"Your Majesty, you see, now an infantry company of Team A has bypassed the left defense line of Team B, and it will soon be able to return to its position!" In the observation post of the exercise, Shi Qingxuan pointed to a certain marching team and said.

The exercise was conducted at the army's live-fire exercise ground on the outskirts of Nanjing, and the exercise area covered more than 20 square kilometers, forming a rectangular area six kilometers long and more than four kilometers wide.

The area has common terrain such as small rivers, hills, and flat land.

In order to better reflect the characteristics of the 1861 model and skirmisher tactics, and also to persuade more military generals to accept this new formation, the 1st Guards Division sent a reinforced battalion consisting of an infantry battalion, a cavalry platoon, an artillery company, and an engineering platoon as a first team.

The B team is a reinforced battalion composed of an infantry battalion, a cavalry platoon, an artillery company, and an engineering platoon sent by the 2nd Guards Division, which is also a Guards but has not yet undergone organizational reform.

The only difference is that the specific establishment of the infantry battalions of the two sides is different, but this is only limited to the difference in establishment, and the total strength of the old and new infantry battalions is actually comparable, both of which are more than 600 people.

In other words, the units participating in the exercise are quite equal except for the detailed establishment, and there will not be a situation where the gap in strength is too large.

This is because only when all else is the same, the troops with the new structure can still win, and only in this way can the superiority of the new establishment be demonstrated. Only then will they be able to convince more senior generals in the military to support the reform of the new establishment.

In today's exercise ground, the troops of both sides are already acting separately. And according to their respective characteristics, tactical maneuvers were carried out, in which team B served as a standard line unit. Therefore, its tactical maneuver is very obviously in the style of the Napoleonic wars, and I saw that the three infantry companies belonging to the six infantry companies to which it belonged were led by one left and one right, and directly used three columns to run forward, and then seized a small hill located in the middle of the exercise war, and then the three infantry companies formed a standard horizontal formation behind the hill and waited for the fighters.

The six guns in the rear were rushing to the hill under the impetus of the artillerymen.

One of the other four infantry companies was reserved behind the hill, and it was clear that this one was used as a strategic reserve.

The other infantry company, however, began to make a detour to the left and into a small woodland, accompanied by an infantry platoon of fifty horsemen.

This arrangement was seen by many high-ranking generals at the exercise observation post. couldn't help but nod secretly, this kind of tactical deployment in the face of war is not to say how surprising it is, but it is the best arrangement in this situation.

At the same time, this tactic can also give full play to the greatest advantage of line formation, and many people have already begun to encounter it, when the infantry of Team A attacked Team B on the hill in a skirmish formation, it was ruled that there were heavy casualties.

However, Team A's actions made them a little confused!

This reinforced battalion of Team A had a total of four infantry companies, but now they sent only one infantry company to make a detour to the left, although it was said to have bypassed the left frontal line of Team B. But even if an infantry company bypasses it, it won't be of much use, and maybe it will be surrounded and annihilated.

But soon, Team A began to deploy their second tactics. It was seen that he sent another infantry company to follow the first infantry company in.

Time passed little by little, and soon, the first infantry company was close to the core defense line of Team B. Immediately, the referees issued various rulings.

The referee ruled that the first company of team A was ambushed by team B's dense fire, and the first company of team A started on the spot and relied on obstacles to dodge. Twenty casualties were ruled out, which were severely suppressed.

Five minutes later. The referee informed that the artillery company of Team A carried out a large-scale and intensive howitzer bombardment of Team B's position, and the 1st and 2nd companies of Team B were found dead and wounded due to their dense formation and lack of solid offensive.

The commander of Company B immediately led the two infantry companies behind and informed the artillery companies belonging to Team B to carry out heavy artillery bombardment to cover their transfer.

Later, the 2nd Company of Team A cooperated with the 3rd Company to launch a direct frontal attack, and this time they showed a very standard infantry and artillery coordination, and launched a direct attack on the skirmish line after fifteen minutes of artillery preparation.

Not long after, the cavalry of both sides also met on the right side, and a charge between the cavalry occurred, and the referee ruled that the cavalry of both sides was completely destroyed.

Half an hour later, Team B, which was still in a dense formation, was judged to have suffered heavy losses, and its three infantry companies deployed in the direction of the hill were lost in battle and routed.

Although the offensive force of Team A also suffered a lot of losses, it was judged to be victorious.

Naturally, this kind of ruling aroused the dissatisfaction of many people, especially the generals who stubbornly hoped to maintain the formation of the line and fight, and shouted one after another why.

Why are the two sides equally equipped and engaged head-on, and why are the casualties of the troops fighting in line formation much larger than those fighting in skirmishing tactics?

In this regard, a referee group composed of nearly 20 or so middle-level officers from the General Staff Department, the Military Training Department, and the Army Military Academy, as well as outstanding middle-level officers of field units, came up with several documents, all of which were some experiments conducted by the military in the past.

One of the most important is that when the attacking troops use rear-loading rifles and skirmish tactics, they spread out during the attack, even if they use cover or lie down directly to avoid enemy fire, and carry out fire counterattacks and suppression during the march.

At this time, they were hit by the same density of enemy fire, and the chance of being hit was only about 20 percent of the dense charge in a line formation.

At the same time, the use of skirmishers does not mean that the number of troops invested in the unit offensive area is less, and although the soldiers are densely formed in line formation, it is not that the density of troops in the skirmish formation is less.

Because the skirmish formation does not mean that the horizontal interval is increased, but also the depth of the attack. When a straggler formation attackes, the depth of its attack, that is, the soldiers at the front and the soldiers at the rear, usually gather more than 100 meters, or even hundreds of meters.

At the same time, the soldiers do not need to obey the officer's salvo and other commands, and they generally fire freely, and they can still shoot continuously even if they are suppressed and lying on the ground during the march.

Moreover, one infantry company in the new formation has three infantry platoons, and these three infantry platoons can just form a zigzag attack line, with the first platoon acting as the vanguard, and the remaining two platoons suppressing the enemy fire in front to cover the attack of the first platoon.

This means that a single infantry company can carry out various tactical changes on its own, and even be responsible for a single battle line, which was not possible with the old formations of the past.

In the old establishment, an infantry company had no more than 80 people, and it had eight platoons, and it was difficult for the company commander to directly command them in complicated situations.

Of course, in actual combat, the commanders of these line-up units will not be as stubborn as the exercise, and they will definitely not use only line-formation tactics like today's Second Guards Division, and the actual combat commanders will divide the troops, and they will not use any line-up tactics, and often also use skirmishing tactics.

But if you do this in actual combat, it is better to use the new formation.

Why?

This is because the reason why this new establishment can appear is that the troops often abandon the line tactics and adopt the tactics of skirmishing in actual combat, and the battalion commanders will divide the six infantry companies under their command into three or four parts, and the company commanders often divide the troops into two or three parts to command. In this way, these grassroots company commanders and battalion commanders will be able to effectively command their troops when they are using straggler tactics to fight.

Therefore, if the 2nd Guards Division adopts this workaround, even if it wins this exercise, it will undoubtedly prove the victory of the new establishment.

This exercise is not to verify which of the 1st Guards Division and the 2nd Guards Division is more capable of fighting, but to prove that the new formation is more suitable for skirmishers tactics and future warfare than the old one.

And today, Team A of the 1st Guards Division undoubtedly gave the answer.

Instead of using a myriad of strange tactics, they resorted to the most conservative, even stupid, frontal attack, in which they sent a company of infantry and then tested the disposition of Team B. This was followed by an artillery bombardment, which was followed by a frontal assault.

Because they need to attack head-on to show the advantages of the new formation.

If the commander of the exercise used some skilful tactical maneuver to win the exercise, it is of no significance at all for today's exercise.

Because the purpose of the exercise is not for a certain exercise commander to prove his own talent, or even whether the exercise is a victory or a failure, it is only for the purpose of verifying certain problems or conjectures, in short, it is just a military experiment, and exercises that cannot verify those questions or conjectures are meaningless.

Therefore, in the real world, some exercise commanders who rely on ghost ideas to win the exercise, such as sneaking up on the exercise headquarters, violating the rules of the exercise, or even relying on their superb tactical talents to win, generally do not end well.

After the exercise, it is often the generals who lose the exercise who are promoted!

This is also the reason why the exercise process is relatively boring today, and there are no amazing highlights!

However, it has to be said that this was the first very successful exercise, in which the 1st Guards Division and the 2nd Guards Division used an almost actual combat mode to deduce for many senior generals of the military the huge gap between the old and new formations, skirmishers tactics and line tactics.

After the exercise, Lin Zhe gave a lecture to a large group of senior generals who followed him to observe the exercise! (To be continued.) )