The Light Riflemen are a new Infantry unit that was introduced in Wargame: AirLand Battle for the United States.
History[]
"Light Infantry" is a bit of a misnomer; they are trained to move and fight without well established Logistics so the tendency is to carry more of everything into combat-more food, more water, more ammo.
In Central European theater, most of the American infantry are mechanized to fight against the armored Warsaw Pact threat. Only the Berlin Brigade's three infantry battalions, 2-4th Infantry Battalion providing security to Pershing TBMs and Southern European Task Force's Airborne battalion are light infantry.
In the Northern Europe and Asian theaters were the areas where most of the American light Infantry formations were deployed. The 10th Mountain Division has contingency plan to be sent Norway. While units in the Pacific theater were mostly light infantry only two brigades of 2nd Infantry were mechanized. 101st Airborne Division and 82nd Airborne Division has three light infantry brigades with the 101st Airborne trained for Air Assault mission and the 82nd Airborne Division trained with the parachute mission.
M47 when first developed were given to each infantry squad or platoon. The Platoon weapon squad replaced their M60 with M240B in 1990s.
Overview[]
AirLand Battle[]
Light Riflemen are available to all decks except for the Armored and Mechanized deck types. The main difference between them and normal Riflemen is that they carry the Dragon ATGM instead of the M72 LAW. They also carry the M240 in place of the M60, giving them slightly better accuracy.
Red Dragon[]
In Wargame: Red Dragon, Light Riflemen '75 are a light infantry squad available to the United States. The difference between Light Riflemen '75 and Riflemen '75 is fairly significant: wield an M47 Dragon instead of an M72 LAW, carry an M240 instead of an M60, and are 5km/h faster. The Dragon gives them roughly three times the range of the M72, and is slightly more accurate, but is also less powerful with 10AP instead of 13AP; thus requires 2 hit to kill a vehicle with only 1 armor, and the reduced fire rate makes the unit useless in almost all situations, in deep forest m72 is better suited to take out vehicles because of the increased accuracy from the range scaling and the faster fire rate allow a faster second shot should the first miss or fail to kill the enemy vehicle, the light riflemen on the other hand, needs at least 2 shot to kill all but unarmored vehicles, since unarmored vehicles are all unarmed, killing them with 1 shot is irrelevant. For an armed APC and by extension armored, the M47 would required at least 2 shots to destroy it, after the first shot the long reload would give the enemy plenty of time to stun and to lower the morale of the team, significantly degrade the reload speed and accuracy, thus it's safe to say that light riflemen is outright incapable to kill any armed vehicles at close range. However, the M240 offers greater damage per second compared to the M60.
For an additional 10 deployment points, one can get the Light Riflemen '90, a variant of Light Riflemen with a much improved M47 Dragon but significantly lowered availability and still quite useless, considering that 20 points (30 with the cheapest transport) is the price of mid-end shock infantry, and the ATGM carried by the team is worse than average with low range and low AP.
Available transports[]
AirLand Battle
Red Dragon
Weapons[]
AirLand Battle[]
| Weapons | 
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Assault Rifle | ATGM | LMG |
| Name | M16A1 | Dragon | M240 |
| Caliber | 5.56mm | SACLOS [HEAT] [GUID] |
7.62mm [STAT] |
| Ammo | x 2400 | x 10 | x 1000 |
| Range | Ground = 525 m Helicopters = 525 m  Airplanes = N/A m
|
Ground = 1575 m Helicopters = N/A m Airplanes = N/A m
|
Ground = 875 m Helicopters = 525 m Airplanes = N/A m
|
| Accuracy | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| AP Power | N/A | 10 | N/A |
| HE Power | 1 | N/A | .5 |
| Suppression | 40 | 150 | 55 |
| Rate of fire | 141 r/min | 12 r/min | 461 r/min |
Red Dragon[]
| Weapons | 
|
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Assault Rifle | ATGM | LMG |
| Name | M16 | M47 Dragon | M240 |
| Caliber | 5.56mm | SACLOS [HEAT] [GUID] |
7.62mm [STAT] |
| Ammo | x 1200 | x 9 | x 1500 |
| Range | Ground = 525 m Helicopters = 525 m Airplanes = N/A m
|
Ground = 1575 m Helicopters = N/A m Airplanes = N/A m
|
Ground = 875 m Helicopters = 595 m Airplanes = N/A m
|
| Accuracy | 30% | 35% | 20% |
| Stabilizer | 15% | N/A | N/A |
| AP Power | N/A | 10 | N/A |
| HE Power | 1 | N/A | .5 |
| Suppression | 40 | 150 | 55 |
| Rate of fire | 160 r/min | 5 sec r/min | 428 r/min |
Gallery[]
