I decided to provide a proof of concept by running the Soviets last night.
Question: Can air power decisively defeat armor, and do so without using stacks of 30 TACs to shatter enemy formations?
Answer: Yes.
Methodology: I built the Red Army with no armor, no AT, no TD, no INF, and no fuel consuming units of any kind. Divisions on the front lines in Poland/Baltic/Odessa would consist entirely of MIL/MIL/ART/ART divisions. These slow divisions lack any kind of anti-tank firepower, and are so slow as to be vulnerable to overruns if they lose their defensive positions.
Scandinavia and the Far East got MTN divisions, per my usual SOP. I built a corps of PARA and 3 TRA to assist in forcing minors to surrender quickly.
The Soviet Air force would be composed of some INT, but mostly MR and TACs.
I intended to reach Great Air Force by the time hostilities commenced, but I overbuilt divisions in 1940, causing me not to hit Great Air Force until November of 41.
Given a lack of Soviet mobile forces of any kind, static defense and defense in depth are the only options available to the Red Army. The heartland of the Soviet Union must be protected; however, several major rivers and the Pripet Marshes lie between the Heer and the Soviet industrial base. I used my standard static defense pattern: holding the river lines and marshes on the old border between Poland and the Soviet Union. While there is some open terrain, it is largely river, forest, and swamp. Poland, and part of the Baltic, would be given up without a fight. I built several new airbases in range of the chosen defensive line.
The plan is simple. MIL/ART divisions will hold the line using both terrain and superior numbers to stonewall the German advance. An entire corps will hold each province on the border; there are also a number of "reserve" corps that can be placed into combat the moment the German schwerepunkt is detected using strategic redeployment (remember, MIL moves at 3 kph on its own, and the terrain sucks, so they need to move by rail when possible). Large Front and Human Wave doctrines will ensure that even in a single province/single axis battle, I can put up to 10 divisions into combat without incurring width or stacking penalty problems (I'll take a 22% stacking penalty if it means I can add another 10 brigades of ART to the combat.)
All INTs and MRs will lock down the front using air superiority missions until Luftwaffe resistance ceases. When Luftwaffe resistance ceases, 50-75% of the MRs will switch to ground attack until Luftwaffe resistance increases again. (It happens; the AI will lick its wounds and then contest the sky once more.)
Air forces will not perform any of the following missions: logistics bombing, strategic bombing, port strikes, naval strikes, runway cratering, or interdiction. PARA will only be used to seize objectives, not to create or complete encirclements.
Target priority for ground attack is as follows: the schwerepunkt, any visible armor divisions or WSS divisions, smaller battles, and finally forces in retreat.
Covert ops will not be used on the front lines to slow enemy attacks. Let the panzers come at me in all their glory.
Results:
Well, it's December of 41, and we have already pushed out from our defensive positions along the river line. I'm about to use PARA to finish off Romania by seizing her capital (her army is routed). The Hungarians are fighting better, but they are facing collapse in the near future. The Germans are not fleeing, but they are in retreat in several sectors. The key here is that their armor has not gotten a respite from bombing since the war started. So, even though my MIL divisions have absolutely no counter to German armor, it makes no difference if German armor has no ORG left from constant bombing.
Players should keep in mind that you don't have to fight the whole Luftwaffe anyway. A significant portion is committed to defending Germany from strategic attack. So, 75+ Soviet wings gives you plenty of firepower. The transition from air superiority to ground attack sped up the collapse of the Axis minors, but even the Germans are feeling the pinch.
Note that intelligence has confirmed at least 4 HARM divisions on the front (there's another one wandering around Sweden somewhere). They have contributed very little to the fighting because they never get to replenish ORG. Also, since even LARM could get the lack-of-penetration bonus against my MIL, the HARM is wasted. It would have been better to just build ARM or LARM and spend the extra IC on planes.
Thoughts:
You have to keep in mind that the entire military strength of the nation fights together. This means that you need to counter enemy advantages, but you can counter them using any part of the nation's military. Once you know that airpower always penetrates armor on armored divisions, bombers can become part of your counter to enemy armor. You can also 'immunize' the front with mass production of AT, or use counter-armor armored divisions (ARM/MOT/TD/TD/TD) to specifically defeat enemy armor. Each choice carries consequences, but as long as you plan ahead, there is no problem. The point is to have some kind of counter to enemy armor; it doesn't matter if that counter is a guy on foot with a TOW, a Huey with Hellfire, a howitzer with Copperhead rounds, an A-10 looking for tanks, naval gunfire from a battleship, a B-52 doing an ARCLIGHT strike...... (the list goes on to 1537 items, so just roll with me here). It only matters that you CAN defeat the enemy armor.
Question: Can air power decisively defeat armor, and do so without using stacks of 30 TACs to shatter enemy formations?
Answer: Yes.
Methodology: I built the Red Army with no armor, no AT, no TD, no INF, and no fuel consuming units of any kind. Divisions on the front lines in Poland/Baltic/Odessa would consist entirely of MIL/MIL/ART/ART divisions. These slow divisions lack any kind of anti-tank firepower, and are so slow as to be vulnerable to overruns if they lose their defensive positions.
Scandinavia and the Far East got MTN divisions, per my usual SOP. I built a corps of PARA and 3 TRA to assist in forcing minors to surrender quickly.
The Soviet Air force would be composed of some INT, but mostly MR and TACs.
I intended to reach Great Air Force by the time hostilities commenced, but I overbuilt divisions in 1940, causing me not to hit Great Air Force until November of 41.
Given a lack of Soviet mobile forces of any kind, static defense and defense in depth are the only options available to the Red Army. The heartland of the Soviet Union must be protected; however, several major rivers and the Pripet Marshes lie between the Heer and the Soviet industrial base. I used my standard static defense pattern: holding the river lines and marshes on the old border between Poland and the Soviet Union. While there is some open terrain, it is largely river, forest, and swamp. Poland, and part of the Baltic, would be given up without a fight. I built several new airbases in range of the chosen defensive line.
The plan is simple. MIL/ART divisions will hold the line using both terrain and superior numbers to stonewall the German advance. An entire corps will hold each province on the border; there are also a number of "reserve" corps that can be placed into combat the moment the German schwerepunkt is detected using strategic redeployment (remember, MIL moves at 3 kph on its own, and the terrain sucks, so they need to move by rail when possible). Large Front and Human Wave doctrines will ensure that even in a single province/single axis battle, I can put up to 10 divisions into combat without incurring width or stacking penalty problems (I'll take a 22% stacking penalty if it means I can add another 10 brigades of ART to the combat.)
All INTs and MRs will lock down the front using air superiority missions until Luftwaffe resistance ceases. When Luftwaffe resistance ceases, 50-75% of the MRs will switch to ground attack until Luftwaffe resistance increases again. (It happens; the AI will lick its wounds and then contest the sky once more.)
Air forces will not perform any of the following missions: logistics bombing, strategic bombing, port strikes, naval strikes, runway cratering, or interdiction. PARA will only be used to seize objectives, not to create or complete encirclements.
Target priority for ground attack is as follows: the schwerepunkt, any visible armor divisions or WSS divisions, smaller battles, and finally forces in retreat.
Covert ops will not be used on the front lines to slow enemy attacks. Let the panzers come at me in all their glory.
Results:
Well, it's December of 41, and we have already pushed out from our defensive positions along the river line. I'm about to use PARA to finish off Romania by seizing her capital (her army is routed). The Hungarians are fighting better, but they are facing collapse in the near future. The Germans are not fleeing, but they are in retreat in several sectors. The key here is that their armor has not gotten a respite from bombing since the war started. So, even though my MIL divisions have absolutely no counter to German armor, it makes no difference if German armor has no ORG left from constant bombing.
Players should keep in mind that you don't have to fight the whole Luftwaffe anyway. A significant portion is committed to defending Germany from strategic attack. So, 75+ Soviet wings gives you plenty of firepower. The transition from air superiority to ground attack sped up the collapse of the Axis minors, but even the Germans are feeling the pinch.
Note that intelligence has confirmed at least 4 HARM divisions on the front (there's another one wandering around Sweden somewhere). They have contributed very little to the fighting because they never get to replenish ORG. Also, since even LARM could get the lack-of-penetration bonus against my MIL, the HARM is wasted. It would have been better to just build ARM or LARM and spend the extra IC on planes.
Thoughts:
You have to keep in mind that the entire military strength of the nation fights together. This means that you need to counter enemy advantages, but you can counter them using any part of the nation's military. Once you know that airpower always penetrates armor on armored divisions, bombers can become part of your counter to enemy armor. You can also 'immunize' the front with mass production of AT, or use counter-armor armored divisions (ARM/MOT/TD/TD/TD) to specifically defeat enemy armor. Each choice carries consequences, but as long as you plan ahead, there is no problem. The point is to have some kind of counter to enemy armor; it doesn't matter if that counter is a guy on foot with a TOW, a Huey with Hellfire, a howitzer with Copperhead rounds, an A-10 looking for tanks, naval gunfire from a battleship, a B-52 doing an ARCLIGHT strike...... (the list goes on to 1537 items, so just roll with me here). It only matters that you CAN defeat the enemy armor.
