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Old 02-11-2010, 06:14 PM
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chico20854 chico20854 is offline
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Another, related question on the Soviet Army:

How fast do you see the USSR being able to mobilize divisions?

I've seen declassified, post-Cold War discussions as to the planning norms for the Pact. Category A divisions could realistically enter the field in 3 days (the 30-minute rush the units out of garrison drills usually resulted in the units making it out of the garrison, but with limited combat capabilities - soldiers left most of their field gear in the barracks, no time to fuel and arm the tanks, etc.). Category B units in a week or two, Category C in a month or so, Mobilization-only units in 2-4 months.

I’ve also seen accounts of the actual experience in the late 20th century, most notably Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979-80. In both cases it took a few months to call up Category B and C units and, looking at things in perspective, they performed (barely) adequately although not looking pretty doing so.

As to the key military indicators: personnel and equipment. First, the personnel. In peacetime, the Soviet Army rotated nearly half of its enlisted force (since their NCO corps was overwhelmingly conscript). By recalling all those that had been discharged in the previous two years (20-22 year olds) the enlisted force would double in size. If you expand the callups to those under 30, you get another 200% of the enlisted strength, 250% in total. That should be sufficient enlisted men to both replace combat losses in China and bring the understrength divisions up to full strength. In addition, every year the draft brings in 18 year olds equal to 50% of the peacetime enlisted force. Officers are going to be more problematic; although the Category B and C units were usually set up so that all the units had most command and NCO positions full. (Example – if the tank regiment in a Category C division was at one third strength, it would have all the subunits established and understrength, so that a tank platoon would have a platoon leader and three tank commanders with no drivers and gunners (although the commanders would be able to act as drivers or gunners). The idea was that reservists would be recalled to fill the lower skill positions, and that someone who had trained as a commander 2 years before would fill the gunners position and someone who had been out for 4 years would drive). There were reserve officers too – it seems that regular male university students would undergo some training similar to US ROTC and be eligible for callup in time of war.

Ok, now to equipment. The mobilization-only divisions IRL were stocked with equipment sets from units that upgraded. For example, when the T-72 was fielded in Mongolia, the troops that had been operating the T-62 brought the T-62s to depots in Siberia for use by mobilization-only units. In the late 80s and 90s some truly ancient equipment, long thought retired, was pulled out of depots for scrapping. (The 1990 Victory Day parade in Red Square featured several battalions of T-34s, and T-10s from a tank division in Ukraine were scrapped in 1988). On the small arms side, US gun shows over the past years have been overrun at times with quantities of Nagant revolvers, SVT, SKS, Mosin Nagant and captured German Mauser rifles, not touching the mountains of early model AKs that couldn’t be imported. Some of the older equipment might have been exported to allies, such as the T-34s that were sent to Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 70s, but IMHO there seems to be ample combat equipment to equip the entirety of the Soviet Army on day one. Trucks obviously would be an issue, I’ll get to that. (I’m also not touching the issue of production – losses vs production, presumably at some point production could exceed losses, allowing divisions arriving at the front to field some equipment that wasn’t 40 years old! Taking a pessimistic view, I’ll discount that possibility, even given that the USSR maintained a considerable mobilization industrial infrastructure such that every heavy industrial plant had some sort of mobilization military production capability and the USSR had been at war for almost 18 months by the time the US enters the war)

That raises the issue of timing. To meet the demands of the war in China, by late 1996 mobilization-only units are drilling. The war expands rapidly in intensity and scale from there. What I’m having a hard time grasping is why, given the strategic situation, does the USSR not mobilize the rest of its units simultaneously? In fact, it continues to call up divisions long after the nuclear exchange – the 117th MRD, according to the Soviet Vehicle Guide, is called up from the Kiev Military District in the Spring of 1999. Why wasn’t this division called up and sent to the front in the desperate days of July 1997, when NATO tank brigades so threatened Brest-Litovsk that the Soviet commander was forced to use tactical nuclear weapons to halt them?

A few ideas as to why. First, maybe the division’s allocated personnel and equipment were taken away to replace losses in other units. Second, maybe the output of the Ukraine’s war economy – providing masses of grain, ore, coal, steel, tanks (from Kharkov) and aircraft (from Kiev) would have been seriously hurt by calling up 10,000 men in their 20s.

But that raises the issue of why in 1999, and a secondary question of how. In 1999 the situation in Ukraine is much worse (from all perspectives), so the 10,000 men (likely far fewer would show up, and likely a bit younger or older and in worse health) would be an even greater burden. It also raises the question of how, over 18 months after a (limited) nuclear exchange, the Soviet central government is able to (no matter how poorly) organize, train and equip a division in one of its rebellious provinces.

I’d like to hear your thoughts as to the hows and why’s. For my T2k universe, I’m inclined to go with a more rapid mobilization in most theaters than that outlined in the Soviet Vehicle Guide, but I’d like your thoughts on it too.
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