[Louied]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

There are often misconceptions about the TA's role in T2K. That may be because the original V1 British order of battle was a complete work of fiction in that it completely ignored the TA and appeared to have been written by someone who had zero knowledge of their role / structure (IRL the TA would have formed the bulk of the 2nd UK Division and would have also rounded out other Divisions in the same way that US National Guard Brigades rounded out Regular Divisions). Or it may be because at the end of the Cold War the TA's role changed so it can sometimes take a bit of digging to get to the Cold War period.

The TA in this period was split. Some units did have a home defence role, but others were tasked with reinforcing BAOR. LouieD is more of an authority on this than I am and can correct me if I'm wrong but off the top of my head, the split was something like 75% to BAOR vs 25% UK Home defence (both of those figures include support as well as combat units).

From memory there were something like 14 TA Infantry Battalions and 2/3 Light Recon Regiments (each equivalent to a Battalion and equipped with Land Rovers) allocated to home defence - roughly one per civil defence area plus a couple of spares. There would have probably also one Regular Brigade tasked to home defence, probably based in the London area and mostly made up of Guards Battalions. The TA have no training role - that would have been down to the Regular Army.

Also, there was an attempt to recreate the Home Guard in the early 1980's - it was called the Home Service Force, and numbered approx 5000 men in approx 50 Platoons across the UK at its peak.

As some of you know in the past I've spent many hours working on a realistic (and non canon) T2K timeline for the UK. I've read the new timeline (briefly) and the section on the UK. I find the idea of a Soviet invasion of the UK fanciful and will be ignoring it going forward but I do not think it's Alien Space Bats territory. If I really had to rationalise it I'd posit it the same way as Division Cuba in V1 - a Division sized unit (7th Guards Air Assault according to the UK write up) secures a toehold, HMG is unable to assemble the forces to kerb stomp them, and the Soviets end up securing a town (or maybe a County) - it's basically the Group of Soviet Forces England in the V1 SGUK on a larger scale.

Other than that, while I appreciate it's only a few paragraphs, I don't think they've done too bad a job with the UK setting. There's room for improvement for sure (even with no help from the mainland I rather doubt the IRA would be able to hold their own against the RUC and the UDR without overt military support from the Irish Republic) but it's certainly an improvement on the V1 Survivor's Guide to the UK (although that is admittedly a pretty low bar - at least they didn't have the Queen abdicating). The Cornish Independence angle is plausible.

Rainbow is spot on, the bulk (for instance 26 of the 40 TA Inf Bns had NATO commitments) of the TA would be going across the Channel on TTW. Plans were very detailed (I have even found documents in the NA showing that plans were being drawn up in the late 1980's to blow the Channel Tunnels which had just started being built !). My co-authors and myself are currently engaged in fleshing out UKLF, besides the 47 HSF Coys, there were 175 HD Res Coys, 14 TA Bns, and 17 Regular Bns committed to Home Defence. Not to mention the whole 7,000 plus UDR would be placed on active service in NI......

If anyone needs more detail I will start a new thread (and I'll try to be short....)