Soviet Renaissance

[Adm.Lee]

I just finished reading "The great gamble: the Soviet war in Afghanistan", and was struck by how crappy the Soviet Army was in the '80s. I think I knew all this back then, but I haven't read much on them since then.

Conscripts were beaten down by their senior privates, not the noncoms. Officers were often absent, noncoms ran a lot of the actions themselves (which fed a tendency towards non-coordination).
Supplies were shoddy, nonexistent, or stolen. Several veterans say they only ate what they could steal from the nearest supply dump or buy from the Afghans (usually trading gas or ammo for food and warm clothing).
Looting was rampant, especially of Western consumer goods (electronics and jeans), despite orders and beliefs that they were there to help the locals.

We have seen what the US & British forces could do in both Iraq and Afghanistan since 1990, their abilities from training and improved equipment are rather impressive. The GDW guys, I'm sure, didn't see all of that coming, much as they didn't see the quiet death of the Soviet Union in 1991, either.

So, in T2k, how do these guys hold off the Chinese /and/ the West for 4+ years? That would have taken an effort in line with what the Soviets did in 1941-45, but now they're the ones facing a two-front war. I think a big reason is going to have to be a renaissance in Soviet military thinking and organization 1989-1995, similar to what the US did after its own Vietnam War near-collapse. Afghan War veterans in and out of the service will have to have banded together to make sure this doesn't happen again!

Opinions, comments?

[pmulcahy11b]

Sheer numbers and nukes?

[NanbanJim]

Not to be confused with actual research, but I did some reading on the Russian Army in the 2008 South Ossetia War for an RPG character.

The beatings continue amongst conscripts. Junior conscripts are compelled to serve senior conscripts, doing the senior's various tasks. Hazing and sexual assault amongst and between conscripts and kontraktniki (see below) are common. One could make analogies to a well-armed, patriotic prison.

There are conscripts (and scads of them), then there are contract soldiers--kontraktniki. In theory, the kontraktniki are more professional soldiers, and are meant to slowly turn the force from a conscript army to an all- (or largely-) volunteer force.

The reality is that in most cases the kontraktniki are treated, trained, and utilized about the same as conscripts. And so they live up to those expectations, behaving like the conscripts. While it may be true that the most professional and competent Russian soldiers are kontraktniki, it is also true that some of the worst troops are kontraktniki--be they thugs or just the wives of officers who want a paycheck (talk about your Dependapotamus nightmare scenarios!).

What I've heard through other channels more or less confirms this: There is extremely broad variance across the board in the quality of Russian troops, from violent prisoners to real hardcore professional soldiers, but that it's still weighted heavily toward the bottom. Part of the problem is described as a lack of desire, discipline, and funding from the top to properly arm, train, and utilize forces. Too many officers are too distracted by political ambition to do more than paint a thin veneer of a massive capable army over their glorified prison system. This paragraph is so heavily slanted I felt the need to put it in italics to illustrate the point.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

[Draq]

I'm inclined to agree Adm. Lee.

[.45cultist]

What's funny is when they needed to go to a smaller, more quality army. The word came that they were to copy the best Russian unit in the world. "Where is the best unit stationed?" "Fort Irwin, CA" was the response. And so they asked Clinton if they could send a team to study OpFor. Very heavily paraphrased.