US Aero-Rifle Platoon (ARP) - the 'Blues'

Whilst recognising that the Incoming! rules are ideal for playing games involving forces of company size and larger, one of their limitations is that smaller scale actions are difficult to represent. About the smallest force that you will reasonably be able to play with is a platoon (about 8-10 stands). At or below this level, it is probably best to use individually mounted figures and a rules set such as Free Fire Zone or Charlie Company. However, if you accept that a platoon-sized force is the minimum then the incorporation of an Aero-Rifle platoon into your Vietnam Crossfire games is a must!

Increased Effectiveness

At first glance, the aero-rifle platoon looks much like it's line infantry counterpart but there are some major differences. One of the fundamental differences between an Aero-Rifle platoon and it's infantry counterpart is that the platoon does not have a weapons squad - instead each of the four rifle squads has an integral M-60 team. Also, in terms of command and control, each squad has an AN-PRC 25 RTO. In effect, the platoon has a lot of fire-power as well as enhanced communications capability. Both of these factors are difficult to represent within the standard rules. For instance, I allow the weapons squad of the standard infantry platoon (a single stand) to function as an HMG stand and yet the Aero-Rifle platoon has twice the number of M-60's, albeit spread amongst the squads and not located in a single stand. Also, the standard rifle platoon has a single RTO at platoon HQ whereas the Aero-Rifle platoon has an RTO in each squad as well as an RTO in the platoon HQ.

Dealing with the first issue, increased fire-power from the additional M-60s, I have introduced a house rule which gives the second fire-team of each Aero-Rifle squad a fire-power equivalent of an HMG stand i.e. 4 fire-dice instead of 3 fire-dice as is usual for the standard rifle squad fire-team. I justify this on the simple grounds that Aero-Rifle troopers were generally elite volunteers organised to maximise their fire-power. These troops were good at their job and knew how to conduct a fire-fight, even when severely outnumbered. So, instead of having a single HMG stand as you would have in the basic rifle platoon, the 'Blues' rifle platoon has four integral HMG stands (4 fire-dice each) as well as four standard rifle stands (3 fire-dice each) and a platoon HQ stand (operates as per the standard Incoming! rules (2 fire-dice, counts as an SMG squad when in close combat or for Ambush). In this way, the Aero-Rifle platoon has increased effectiveness and is quite capable of holding it's own against larger enemy forces until relieved by a quick reaction force.

With regard to the increased communications ability of the 'Blues', I allow the squads to act independently (see Incoming! rule 4.0.2) as if they were Free World Special Forces Teams so that they may operate independently from their Command Group at all times. LOS to the command group is not required for movement purposes. Again, I justify this on the basis of these troops being elite and experienced and used to operating in circumstances where a great deal of command leeway was available.

Painting the Aero-Rifle Platoon

The ARP's can be painted in the same way as a standard US Infantry Platoon. The best way to explain how I went about painting these is to refer you to a previous Crossfire article, Painting a US Infantry Platoon. The article explains in some detail how I paint all my US figures and is well worth looking at separately as opposed to repeating here. Suffice to say that I did not use any different techniques in painting the ARP's than were used in painting the infantry platoon.

The only recognisable differences between the two, ARP's and Line Infantry, is in the composition of the stands and the troop types that I put on them. In effect, this is a result of the fact that the ARP squads have an integral M-60 gunner figure and there is no weapons squad. Apart from that they are identical.

One distinguishing feature of the aero-rifle platoons is that they took to wearing blue neck-scarves which can easily be painted on figures at this scale.