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Originally Posted by HorseSoldier
Order of battle information for Cuba seems really hard to track down. I've been interested in seeing an OOB for their real world involvement in Angola and there just doesn't seem to be any hard info out there, even historical estimates from US or other western intelligence agencies of old SADF intel.
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A lot of the answer depends on which timeline want to play out.
In RL, Cuba had 20-40,000 troops plus some 11,000 civilian advisors and workers (teachers doctors, enginneers) in Angola between 1975 (Angolan independence) and the end of 1988.
In spring 1988, in RL, the Cubans had some 55,000 troops in Angola (a notable portion of the total), 40,000 of them in southern Angola, poised to launch an offensive into SW Afrika (Namibia), in an attempt to outflank an offensive from South Africa and UNITA that had beaten the tar out of Angolan forces in southeast Angola. 15,000 of those troops had just been brought from Cuba - Fidel's own 50th Div. Cuban and Angola between them had some 600 tanks. South Africa reacts by calling up 140,000 reserve troops.
The Cuban offensive was cut short as part of a general effort toward disengagement by Gorbachev. At the end of 1988, The Brazzaville Protocol was signed, and Cuban and South African troops both began to leave Angola, and were all gone in a 12-18 months. In the same time frame (1989), a UN brokered-peace is negotiated in Mozambique.
And in South Africa itself, no longer needed as a close ally against communist supported former Portuguese colonies, international pressure rose against the Apartheid regime, and the political process was allowed to change South Africa, avoiding a violent revolution, and ending apartheid.
But, in a V1 timeline, there is no general east/west easing and disengagement. In Europe. It doesn't mention it, but if Gorbachev did not make an effort to end the Cold War (that was killing Russia trying to keep up with western military expansion/upgrades that inspired T2K in the first place), then.... would the Angola War have ended?
Or would there still be tens of thousands of Cuban troops in Angola, fighting the full-scale war against South Africa they prepared for?
The V1 timeline preserves the apartheid government of South Africa, meaning the pressure from the west did not occur - probably because they were needed against Cuban troops. So there is probably still a war - cool with points of hot action every few years.
Actually, that can play fairly well into the creation of Division Cuba - add almost another decade to Cuban involvement in Africa, and that is a small country taking losses it cannot well afford. Cubans can get angry enough to blame Castro and his support for the Soviet Union. They can remove him from power, and then create a new government bent on achieving a neutral stance. And then choose to withdraw their remaining troops and advisors from Angola.
A V2 timeline, following RL through the build down of the 1980s, Africa is less changed from our RL timeline (up to 1997), especially the further you get from the Middle East. (I have an alternate southern Africa timeline I've been working on about President Mandela and WW3, but that is another story).
Uncle Ted