zraver

You've allocated the bulk of the recon assets to by-pass missions rather than screening/masking operations needed in the r/cr fight. This leaves the maneuver units lead/scout elements unsupported and out numbered.

I am not so sure how spetnaz would work for recon work when your trying to move faster than a man can walk. IIRC Spetnaz and Soviet Airborne assets were assumed to be designed to create airheads behind NATO lines.

Lets stick with the recon assets, the BRDM, BRDM-2,BRDM-3 PT-76, and ACV. Once the MBT showed up the BRDM-2 AT became only marginally effective for suppressive/anti-tank roles with its saggers. This left most Soviet recon assets fighting with HMGs against Bradleys, Fuches and other cannon armed armored cars and of course tanks.

Look at thier emphasis- 1st find and develop so you can by-pass. The US emphasis was find and destroy while developing. Perhaps not a big difference but an important one. Lets admit the relaity, the most common way a mounted recon trooper on the attack finds the enemy is when his buddy's track brews up. The defender is more than likely not moving, camouflaged and hull down and probably has bigger weapons to boot.

Great on paper, but I think the recon troops are the wrong ones to restore that. They are not themsevles heavy enough to affect an encirclement.

Getting the Mk1 eyeball with a good pair of binos into the equivalent of a movable church steeple is a vast improvement over being ground bound.

Unlike US or German conscripts, the Soviet Army had to deal with a plethora of languages. Even if half the platoon grew up speaking Russia, the other half didn't so the number of commands is limited by language. Even if everyone in the recon unit is a slav and shares a unified language the Red Army's combat units still got the bottom of the human barrel. The more skilled or more apt personnel went into more skilled trades (air defense, sig-int) or more skilled branches.

Unified language and heritage, being on the defensive, 3 vs 2 year tour, formalized basic and advanced training, better diet, proffesional NCOs. On the equipment side NATO does not begin to tip the balance until the mid-late 70's.

Covering scouts who lack their own heavy fire capability requires some close by direct fire capability. of course if you push your tanks up you limit your scouts freedom of movement and define the route of advance without scouting. If you give them freedom of movement then they are out from under the guns of the security element.

The M68/L7 and L11A5 could both paste recon vehicles well past 2500 meters. The M-60A3TTS and Chieftan both had night vision and laser range finders. The TOW fired from a behind cover M901 could hit past 3000M. Against a return fire of AT-3 and 14.5mm and 12.7mm HMG bullets....

S-2

Zraver,

There was a LOT more tactical reconnaissance assets employed by Soviet divisions than you've acknowledged. At this point, eight companies within a division of which six are tasked w/ that mission.

These forces didn't engage in screening the approach march of the division's combat elements. I've accounted for that as well. Somehow you believe that Soviet officers wouldn't overwatch their security forces. Is this true?

Soviet systems evolved as rapidly as U.S. Zraver, what's the range of sagger? Can it penetrate an M-60A3TTS? They hulled Centurions and M-60A1s nicely in the Sinai. Reactive armor? Later than 1980, for sure?

I don't need a helicopter if a church steeple view is what I'm getting and I wouldn't attempt rising much above that church steeple were I you. Europe has bad weather and low visibility conditions often. We've no significant advantage there in their AD environ until the OH-58D emerged.

M901? You are young. For the seventies our TOW gunners didn't have such luxuries and fired uncovered and EXPOSED.

Human material? Ours wasn't better into the eighties. Maybe worse in MANY cases. We didn't piss-test for dope before late 1981. Meanwhile, I've tried to make my case that the human material used in the Soviet reconnaissance units was their highest quality ground troops but either that doesn't matter or you've missed it. I'd also make my case that GSFG received the best human material, in general, which the Soviet Union had to offer.

Personally, were it 1976 and the GSFG was crossing the IGB, I'd leave those thoughts at the door. They wouldn't help you one bit.

I'll leave it here.

__________________
"This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski

vannor

To Firral,

Thank you very much for posting. I find what you have to say very interesting, especially coming from your experience base. Sometimes, these boards can become myopic and biased(Not to mention the shameful personal attacks) Please,continue posting as time permits.

zraver

I think that our problems lies in the bold. I am talking the Reagen era, your talking the post Vietnam era. I can be well cited on this board for saying during the 70's specially 73-75 and 76 is close enough to this that the Soviets had the edge.

In the frame your talking the most modern equipment in the Army's inventory was the AH-1 with the tow and M-60A2 starship. The rest of the force did not enjoy the technology edge I have been arguing.

S-2

My single comment would be-

"ALL HAIL THE L7/M68 105mm TANK CANNON"!

imishin

Sounds like someone is watching too much Charlie Wilson's War. Soviet troops were incompetent? We never contributed more then 10 percent of our military to the war in Afghanistan and yet managed to inflict a million fatalities onto the Mujahadeen. We also never lost a major battle and there were very sucessful offensives carried out such as Operation Magestral. Mujahadeen were never a match for the Soviets, not man for man, not 10 men for man. Was Brejnev and all the other monkeys in suits listening to the Generals and sent more troops in the war in Afghanistan would have been won. In either case Afghanies used guerilla tactics, we're talking conventional war here and the Soviet armed forces were prepared for a conventional war against the west more then anything else. As for the out come of a battle in Europe, I don't know, I highly doubt however that either side would be able to advance far before they came to a stalemate.

--edit--

I hear some people here mentioned Spetsnaz. Im in no way in expert but here is a common knowledge explanation that you may or may not know. There is no unit in the Russian/Soviet military that is/was named Spetsnaz, Spetsnaz means Otriad Spetsialnogo Naznochenia, Special Purpose/Assignment Squad, basically special forces, its a category that describes units with a wide range of specializations. Where is Spetsnaz GRU, there is Vympel, Alpha, etc, there is VDV Spetsnaz too. All of them have different roles, I think Spetsnaz GRU were the recon specialists since GRU is the Army intelligence/counter-intelligence service. Just putting it out there.

There wasn't really a problem with languages in the Soviet armed forces. My father was a Captain-Leutenant in the Navy, a submariner, reactor-maintenance, served on the Komsomolets (but thats a different story, he is alive too btw he was on a leave than it sank, he later went into R&D until the Union collapsed). One of his high school buddies whom he still knows was an officer on a diesel sub. He told my father that they had a lot of native Siberians, Yakutians and so on in their crew, he joked "Came down from a mountain to buy some medicine for his deer and got dragged into the navy." about them. A lot of them didn't speak Russian so the solution was simple, you don't understand the order you get a fist to the face, still don't understand it, the procedure gets repeated, by the end of the first month all of them spoke Russian.

zraver

I actually think the chances of stalemate are pretty limited, certainly not any more of a chance than one side winning hands down. One side or the other was always transitioning to a very large edge. By the time that trend was identified and steps started to correct it, the side with the edge was at the end of its cycle and the roles of catching up would reverse.

overall on the ground the Soviets seem to have reacted faster. For example just a year after the US finally answered the T-55 with the M-60 the Red Army had the T-62 which means the Soviets were already planning to upstage the T-55 series before the US even had an answer to it. The US seems to have been the leader in the air. After the debut of the F-4 Phantom II the Soviets never really regained parity.

That being said the US almost always had an edge in the quality of manpower it could use. The nature of the Soviet System with its Russian bias assigned cannon fodder jobs to minorities. The US did the same thing to a degree, but US African-Americans and whites at least shared the same language and both were familiar with technology to some degree. On top of that the 2 year conscription of the Red Army vs the 3 year US hitch is significant. Longer enlistments mean a slower turn over and more time for the experiance Joe Schmo learned to be passed on to new recruit John Doe. Plus the US had a professional NCO corps. These professionals knew things you can't learn in school. So even the given that Soviet Officers were as good as American Officers, the US officers got a ready made pool of experience to draw on. On top of that, once the battlefield became much more technical following Vietnam. The US's manpower base with its wider grounding in mechanical and technological systems would without a doubt increase efficiency.

Officer of Engineers

We have a Captain of the Russian Naval Infantry on this board. It is to him that I trust any evaluation of the Soviet/Russian professionalism.

__________________
Chimo

imishin

Should I be insulted? As I stated Im no expert but there are some things that are a matter of common knowledge, which I have listed.

Officer of Engineers

If I want to insult you, you will know it. The point being that we have Russian military expertise on this board. You would be wise to use it.

imishin

Is where any particular reason you are coming at me like I owe you money?

imishin

Hmm, as I said, I don't really know. As for the language problems in the Soviet military read the explanation in my previous post that I have edited. It just seems logical however, two massive forces on each side, stretched out frontline, no? Stalemate is illogical?

zraver

The Soviet Navy and IIRC the VVS used a 3 year hitch and got a better quality recruit especially once the military got technical. The Red Army got 2 year hitches and lower grade recruits and that makes a world of difference. With lower quality of recruits you have to do more training, but with 2 year conscriptions you have less time to do it in.

zraver

Your explanation is anecdotal at best. It does not detail what job or how technical of a job they were doing on the diesel subs. What we do know is that in the Red Army commands and small unit tactics were limited and language was one of the reasons for this.

imishin

According to my father they had plenty illiterate Siberian natives in the navy serving on the diesel subs.

--edit--

Since I've read your response. Hmm, unless Im getting something wrong the majority of the people in the Soviet army were Russian, also Russian was taught in schools all across the Soviet Union. Is there a good documented source about this issue?