Quote:
Originally Posted by Abbott Shaull
Well I always found it hard pressed that many US Division weren't radically altered after 1998. Then that is just me.
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I think many US Army divisions probably were radically altered from July, 1997 onward. The NATO divisions falling back through the smoking wreckage of Poland following the initiation of nuclear war will have sustained considerable losses during the offensive across Poland and horrible losses during the burst of tactical nuclear activity. They will have to reorganize virtually on the fly in order to survive.
Surviving troops in each division probably were consolidated once the NATO forces had fallen back behind the Oder. The same would be true of other NATO forces in southern Germany and Austria, which probably were hit by Soviet tactical nuclear devices during the fighting in July. The fighting during the Summer 1998 campaign in Germany, Austria, and Czechslovakia probably would have solidified whatever reorganizations had been undertaken. We might imagine that USAEUR undertook some sort of systematic reorganization during 1999, such that the term "division" had a halfway decent chance of meaning something reliable, if not exactly "division". Replacements, who by 1999 were largely East Coast draftees of highly questionable quality, local recruits of equally questionable quality, and turned Pact EPW (who might have been the best of the lot) would be incorporated in whatever numbers they were available.
Webstral