Quote:
Originally Posted by Legbreaker
Even a battalion is probably pushing it a bit unless there's been sufficient time between capture of individual units and supporting stores to transport it all into one place, train the new crews and deploy them (probably months I'd think if they were intended to survive very long).
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The other problem then becomes some of the other ways mechanized warfare has changed since the WW2 era as well. If you've only got a battalion or so sized unit of NATO armor, putting those guys in the field for continuous, 24-hour operations under limited visibility conditions and such is just a screaming recipe for blue-on-blue (or red-on-red, I suppose, in this case) fratricide incidents.
That stuff was a major concern and consideration in Gulf War One given the Coalition warfare aspects of stuff, but I think it would be a nightmare in the more complex terrain of central Europe. There might be the plus side of being able to confuse guys on the NATO side, but then NATO optics and sensors are better, and I'm pretty sure if I was a Soviet or Polish AFV crewman catching glimpses of distant M1s behind my lines I'd expect the medal I'd get for opening up on them to be especially shiny and impressive . . .
If such a unit were formed I think the crewmen in it would be justifiably paranoid and just as terrified of their side as the enemy. About the only place I can see it being workable would be more of a SOF kind of scenario that's been discussed already -- if you could airlift in a couple company teams of mixed NATO armor to an airfield seized by
desantniki or something, for instance, they could go tearing around the German countryside in the NATO rear area with relative impunity for a little while at least.
Did someone already talk about the idea of sending the AFVs and logistics for this sort of unit to the Chinese front? That would be a scenario where the fratricide angle would be reduced.