Marine Platoon v NVA Company Rand Corp Analysis

Some of you may be aware that during the Vietnam and Cold Wars the US Military simulated a lot of fighting scenario's so they could establish expected battle casualties when planning operations.

Rand Corp had a methodology they called FAST-VAL for doing this and they regularly compared actual battle outcomes, KIA/WIA/MIA, versus simulated losses based on many criteria.

While most of you probably don't want to get bored with the Math and statistics and standard deviations, etc. some of the analysis reports provide some good data for scenarios.

A lot are battalion or higher but every now and then you get a little gem like this PDF.

Rand FAST-VAL USMC Platoon v NVA Company

At 121 pages there is a lot you can skim or even ignore.  Areas of interest, for me at least, where to TO&E's on pages 26 and 27 and Appendix D starting on page 42 which is a transcript of a taped interview with the platoon commander of the USMC platoon in the battle, 1/L/3/5.  The maps on pages 20 and 21 and then 115, 116, 117 and 118 have a lot of detailed information.

In between, for the rules writers amongst us, there is some very good data tables on rates of fire, number of rounds fired per minute for different categories of weapons and casualty rates, actual and estimated.

The map that is continually referenced in Appendix D can be downloaded as a PDF here: 1:50,000 6640 IV ĐẠI LỘC

The area on the map you need is the right 3rd, middle 3rd, roughly 10 x 10 grid squares.

It is interesting to note things like route 4 that runs east-west at the southern side of the cordon while marked on the map as a "all weather, loose or light surface, one way road" was actually an 18" wide foot track.

In the middle of the southern cordon edge there was a ROK compound and they bought them into the cordon at one stage as well as the Marine's were too light on the ground in the area near the ROK compound, especially once 1/L/3/5 was pulled out to help protect the Battalion CP and from which the attack on the NVA company eventuated.  The NVA it appears where attempting to create gaps in the cordon on the southern edge so that the NVA/VC in the cordon had a chance of breaking out and not be captured or killed.

Another good read.

Interesting stuff

Some of the data I like is on pages 67-69 where the platoon commander states that he believes the average rifleman is 80%-85% as accurate when in defence compared to being on an open rifle range but only 50%-60% as accurate when returning fire when shot at first, in this case as they approached a defended woods over some open ground coming out of a creek line. They all hit the ground and were returning fire prone but the level of accuracy was way below when firing from a defensive position. And the two sides were only 50 m or so apart.

Take away entirely the "hit ratio" as that is based on other factors like the NVA being well and truly dug in most likely with railway sleepers/ties for overhead and "guards" that they pushed open, popped off some rounds and then dropped again to camouflage the fire openings.

This is entirely how accurate where the shooters compared to where they needed to be aiming!

"I was told there'd be no math..."
Always interesting when RC did simulations. I know they also did one that was supposed to predict the number of "heroic acts" so the expected number of MOHs to manufacture could be ordered but I have not seen that report in PDF. IIRC fewer were awarded than expected.
I wonder where they got the TO&E of the NVA company?

Darby wrote:"I was told there'd be no math..."

Darby wrote:"I was told there'd be no math..."

And you believed them!

Always interesting when RC did simulations.

There are some very detailed simulations for incoming mortar and artillery as well and of course they worked very closely with the Air Force so there are many about the effects of CAS and high level bombing.

Great post TEC. Not only the items themselves, but your valuable comments. Thanks.

Tom