Close Topic Options

Combat Warfare: Jungle

Combat Warfare: Jungle

Based on your experiences what for you was the tactical Combat Warfare: Jungle's environment advantages and disadvantages against the enemy?

Jungle Warfare Combat

The jungle environment is one of the most favorable to a defender. Jungles tends to be double or triple canopy. What that means is this is some of the thickest jungle with vegetation growing at 3 levels, often reaching up more than 50 feet. This makes it hot, humid, hazy, maybe even dim during the day. At night it is totally pitch black. A defender well dug in and concealed with night vision devices would be deadly in this environment. Not to mention that a defender is static, and thus not expending energy moving while the attacker is expending a tremendous amount of energy just moving around, slicing through the foliage, in the heat and humidity.

To attack an environment like this requires overwhelming superiority, upwards of nine to one for just an average defender and much more than that if the defender is dug in and has had time to fortify. Now, that ratio has to take into account the attackers artillery, naval fire if applicable (Like during the island hopping campaigns of WW II), air superiority. If the attacker doesn't have artillery and air superiority an attack in the jungles is suicidal. Except where we are talking about very low level operations, such as guerilla warfare, where the jungle actually helps the attacker. This may seem like a paradox, but in this case the jungle acts to hide a small unit conducting hit and run raids.