WarPac Vehicle Guide?

[Muti]

Well that's true ...indeed...however Muti you might have use for some of mine and HQs work - loads of tanks,airplanes and whatnot

http://thebigbookofwar.50megs.com/DOX/

Thank you! I really appreciated it.

[chico20854]

Chico, you are simply A M A Z I N G !

Thanks!

Looking at the file history, I started working on that document in January 2007. Research for it started in early 2004 and called on sources in English, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Russia. At times the rest of the guys in the DC Group were frustrated that when it was looking like an end was in sight, I'd find another source and re-open a can of worms (like when I discovered a comprehensive list of Mobilization-only divisions for 1985). I'm glad its done!!! (Although I need to do an update to put the division's readiness category on the TVD-level sheet rather than leaving on the summary document).

It's up to Jason to transform it into a Vehicle Guide!

[Muti]

Finally I had the time to read all the OOBs but now I have several doubts mainly because my english is not good as yours!

1) First of all, what do you mean for "Direct reporting" Maybe something like: "Independent units"

2) What do you mean for "Spare" For example: "Spare Artillery Brigade" or "Spare Motor-Rifle Division"

3) What is the TOE for a Missile Brigade And for a KGB Motor-Rifle Regiment, a Border Guard Battalion and a Special Border Control Battalion

Thank you in advance for your patience!

[chico20854]

Finally I had the time to read all the OOBs but now I have several doubts mainly because my english is not good as yours!

1) First of all, what do you mean for "Direct reporting" Maybe something like: "Independent units"

2) What do you mean for "Spare" For example: "Spare Artillery Brigade" or "Spare Motor-Rifle Division"

3) What is the TOE for a Missile Brigade And for a KGB Motor-Rifle Regiment, a Border Guard Battalion and a Special Border Control Battalion

Thank you in advance for your patience!

1) Direct reporting units report to the Front/Army headquarters without any headquarters in between - for example, an independent battalion that reports to an army headquarters rather than a regiment or division.

2) Spare units were mobilization-only units that had at most a small cadre although often fairly complete equipment sets. (For example, when the Soviet forces in Mongolia upgraded from T-62s to T-72s, they sent the complete set of tanks to spare units in Siberia.)

3) The missile brigades varied depending on the number of systems they had. In general, batteries had 2 or 3 TELs, grouped into battalions with 2-4 missile batteries, a meterological detachment, engineers, maintenance and guard units. 1-3 battalions per brigade.

Border Battalion: 4 infantry companies, mortar battery (mix of 82mm Vasilyek and 120mm), AT platoon with SPG-9 recoilless rifles. Foot, horse, ski or truck mobile.

Reaction (Mechanized) Battalion: 1 BMP-2 infantry company (10 BMPs), 4 BTR infantry companies (40 BTRs total), tank company (10 T-80s), mortar battery (as in border battalion), AT platoon with SPG-9s. Trucks for units not in APCs/IFVs.

Air Assault Battalion: as border battalion.

Border Guard Brigade: 3 border battalions, 1 reaction battalion, engineer company, artillery battery (6 76mm light guns), rocket battery (9 BM-21s). May be wilderness or mountain capable, depending on area of peacetime employment.

KGB Motor-Rifle Regiment: 4 reaction battalions, 1 air assault battalion, engineer battalion, artillery battalion (12 76mm light guns), rocket battery (12 BM-21s).

Border Aviation Regiment: 18 attack helicopters.

[Muti]

Great! Thank you Chico, by the way, where you found those information For Soviet TOEs I have the Twilight 2000 sourcebooks, some books from Osprey and the FM 100-2-3 "Soviet Army: Troops, Organization and Equipment".

[chico20854]

Great! Thank you Chico, by the way, where you found those information For Soviet TOEs I have the Twilight 2000 sourcebooks, some books from Osprey and the FM 100-2-3 "Soviet Army: Troops, Organization and Equipment".

The KGB Border Guards is an average of information from the 80s. There were about 80 border detachments, and the number of battalions varied according to the terrain. The border guard brigades therefore represent an average of some of the specific units I found information about. The tanks and artillery were frequently referenced (in both Western and Russian sources) but I couldn't find where they fit in the TOEs, so I had to make some assumptions. The KGB Motor-Rifle Regiments likewise represent an average of the Border Guard Mobile Groups which were in action in Afghanistan. The information on the TOEs comes from forums for vets of the Border Guards, http://www.ryadovoy.ru/forum/index.phptopic=16 and
http://forum.pogranichnik.ru/ both in Russian. (I spent a LOT of time with google translate, since I don't speak Russian although I can read bits of it!)

For the Soviet Army I got TOEs from the same sources you used, plus "Weapons & Tactics of the Soviet Army" by David Isby, the forums at tank-net.org and the following:

Fes'kov V.I.: "The Soviet Army in the Years of the "Cold War" (1945-1991)" online in Russian at: http://www.soldat.ru/files/f/000000d8.pdf
soldat.ru forums (in Russian)
airborne & Spetsnaz (in Russian): http://desantura.ru/forums/index.php
Armed forces of the USSR (in Russian): http://www8.brinkster.com/vad777/sssr-89-91/sssr.htm
Rubezh forums (in Russian) online at: http://ryadovoy.ru/forum/index.php

Bulgaria:
boinaslava.net forum disscusion (in Bulgarian) at: http://forum.boinaslava.net/showthread.phpt=7695

Czechoslovakia:

http://armada.vojenstvi.cz/

Hungary:
(in Hungarian) http://forum.index.hu/Article/showAr...12&la=51202149

Poland:
Serwisu Militarnego forum post "Wojsko Polskie w 1986 r" (in Polish) at: http://www.serwis-militarny.net/link...ik=lwp1986.zip

[Muti]

Fes'kov V.I.: "The Soviet Army in the Years of the "Cold War" (1945-1991)" online in Russian at: http://www.soldat.ru/files/f/000000d8.pdf

I have an english translation of this book! Never used it anyway because it was made with a translator and I found it a bit incorrect...

People on TankNet forum usually call this book "Tomsk Book"... Don't know why, maybe because they didn't understood that Tomsk is just the city where it was originally published!

Anyway, before someone ask, I took the liberty to upload the translation (in PDF format) on Megaupload. If you have not familiarity with a web sharing site just follow my instruction: click on the following link, insert the code, wait some seconds and then start the download.

http://www.megaupload.com/d=MN4JWXJ6

[antimedic]

Chico, how would the Fortified Regions be equipped

[chico20854]

Muti-

I have the English translation as well, and I also find it's not that useful. I had better luck with the Russian version!

Antimedic-

The fortified regions are smaller versions of the machinegun-artillery divisions. A 1996 US Army report described them:

"Machinegun-Artillery Divisions

In accordance with the need to defend extended sectors with fewer troops and at lower cost, the Basic Forces now also field some machine gun-artillery divisions. These are linear descendants of the World War II fortified regions.

They are strong in machineguns, mortars, artillery, antitank guided missiles, and dug-in tanks, but weak in bayonet and modern tank strength. There is no standard organization for these divisions as they are tailored specifically to the terrain they are to defend.

The role of these semi-static, economy of force formations (and of separate machinegun-artillery regiments) is to hold long secondary sectors or areas where the terrain is especially suited to positional defence. Their tactical areas of responsibility are fortified in peacetime with well prepared and camouflaged primary and alternate positions and plentiful dummy/reserve ones. They form a series of independent strongpoints, often echeloned in considerable depth, with limited counter-penetration and counterattack reserves to plug gaps and support the defense. Figure 1-4 [below] illustrates one of a number of possible variations of organization."



A few I've been able to find details on:

97th Fortified Area (Priargunsk): 3 motorized rifle bns (4 companies in each), a combat engineer bn, 4 tank Bns (also w/ 4 companies each), AT Bn (85mm AT) & BM-21 Btry

and
11th Fortified Region (Bogdanovka, Chita oblast): 5 machinegun-artillery battalions, a T-55 battalion, BM-21 battalion and engineer company.

These units don't play much of a role in my vision of the war. They are generally along the Chinese, Turkish or Iranian borders, all of which the Soviets fight well beyond. By the time (if) NATO troops get close to those borders, the garrisons have been stripped of men, ammunition and mobile troops.

[Muti]

Chico, I'm sorry to abuse of your patience again.

I'm looking for TOEs information also on Independent Regiment for Protection and Guarantee, Mixed Air Squadron, Rear Area Protection Division and Helicopter Transport Regiment. I found all those units in your OOBs. If it is possibile I'm also searching the approximately number of men and vehicles.

I trust in your knowledge!

[chico20854]

Chico, I'm sorry to abuse of your patience again.

I'm looking for TOEs information also on Independent Regiment for Protection and Guarantee, Mixed Air Squadron, Rear Area Protection Division and Helicopter Transport Regiment. I found all those units in your OOBs. If it is possibile I'm also searching the approximately number of men and vehicles.

I trust in your knowledge!

No problem!

I think the Independent Regiment for Protection and Guarantee was a glasnost/perestroika-friendly term for the commander's personal independent regiment. Suvorov (widely discredited, I realize, but useful for creating a big, bad 10-ft tall Russian!) described such units as tank regiments, but by the late 1980s they'd been reformed into mixed tank-motor rifle units. I basically cast them as high quality (both in terms of equipment and personnel) independent motor-rifle regiments, sometimes with 2 tank and 2 M-R battalions (plus arty, engineers, etc)., depending on what info I could find on the real unit.

A mixed air squadron was usually a commander's liaison aviation unit, containing airborne command post, light transport and elint aircraft.

I haven't found anything on the TOE of a rear-area protection division, just some grumbling along the lines of "they really don't deserve to be called a division of the Soviet Army" in Russian. I cast them basically as 1950s style rifle divisions, with a single battalion of obsolete tanks (T-34, T-54 and the like), some obsolete artillery and lots of mobilization-only reserve infantrymen. Their role was to protect supply lines and hunt down partisans. Only when the situation becomes truly desperate do they get committed to action against NATO.

A helicopter transport regiment had 29-46 Mi-8/17 and 26-30 Mi-6/26 assigned in the late 90s. That's enough lift to move a big chunk of an air assault brigade (75 Mi-8/17, 35 Mi-6/26 without BMDs).

Oh, I also found the official TOE of a Scud/SS-23 brigade (in Russian):
http://9k72.ru/page.php41 - I'd post a translation but you might have better luck translating directly into Italian from Russian than putting it in English first.

[Matt Wiser]

Those rear-area divisions must've been someone's way of having additional divisions on the OB without having to really do much. I mean, late WW II or early 1950s era equipment and forty-year old reservists to man them Reminds me of the image in Bear and the Dragon where General Bodarenko is settling into his new command and finding out he's got warehouses full of World War II era tanks and artillery, and the soldiers assigned to the stockpiles turned the engines over on the tanks, and even took them out for test drives (and probably test fired the guns, too). That would've worked in the '60s or '70s, but in a continued Cold War into the mid '90s The Russians actually had exercises in 1995 which featured JS-3 tanks, and they were withdrawn from service immediately after the exercise.

If no Glasnost, those "Protection and Guarantee" Regiments would probably have maintained their designation as independent MR Regiments. Those independent regiments may have been how Ivan found four regiments available to deploy to Cuba in 1962, as none of the four that were sent to Cuba belonged to a parent division. And separating four regiments from their parent divisions may have alerted Western Intelligence that something was up.

[Muti]

Thank you again Chico!

[chico20854]

Those rear-area divisions must've been someone's way of having additional divisions on the OB without having to really do much. I mean, late WW II or early 1950s era equipment and forty-year old reservists to man them Reminds me of the image in Bear and the Dragon where General Bodarenko is settling into his new command and finding out he's got warehouses full of World War II era tanks and artillery, and the soldiers assigned to the stockpiles turned the engines over on the tanks, and even took them out for test drives (and probably test fired the guns, too). That would've worked in the '60s or '70s, but in a continued Cold War into the mid '90s The Russians actually had exercises in 1995 which featured JS-3 tanks, and they were withdrawn from service immediately after the exercise.

In 1988 a category B(!) tank division in the Ukraine turned in its T-10s to the local steel combine to be melted down. And the 1990 Victory Day parade featured T-34s running through Red Square. http://www.youtube.com/watchv=7Ix7UwFwlDI

As far as 40-year old reservists, with conscription it would be possible to really increase the size of the Red Army (at the cost of crippling the economy further) with just men in their 20s. (To double the peacetime strength would require callup of the last 2 classes, those 20-22 years old. That would bring the whole army up to or near full strength. Expand the net to 22-26 year olds and you double the size again. New conscripts equal to 50% of peacetime enlisted strength come in every six months before lowering the age of conscription. With these sort of numbers it takes a while before you get to 40 year olds. (Officers and michmeny are another issue, however...)

If no Glasnost, those "Protection and Guarantee" Regiments would probably have maintained their designation as independent MR Regiments. Those independent regiments may have been how Ivan found four regiments available to deploy to Cuba in 1962, as none of the four that were sent to Cuba belonged to a parent division. And separating four regiments from their parent divisions may have alerted Western Intelligence that something was up.

Those regiments were tank regiments before Glasnost. I remember reading something in Russian about the units sent to Cuba in 1962; they were single regiments assembled as composites from entire divisions from the Moscow and other central military districts; new regiments were raised to replace them.

[Matt Wiser]

A Cat B division still having T-10s They had to have been tagged for Southwestern TVD not to have any T-64s or T-72s. I do remember seeing the 1990 V-E Day parade on the news, those T-34s looked factory fresh. They had T-34s in the 1995 parade if I'm not mistaken.

Chico, have you read the book Defcon-2: the Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis The authors say that the four MR Regiments sent to Cuba were independent regiments, and were reflagged before deploying to Cuba. The reason they were chosen was that if they were split off from a parent division, it'd be a sign that something was up and Western Intelligence might get wind of it.