Soviet Presence in Germany/Poland after OpOmega

[Legbreaker]

What a lot of people tend to forget is that it's not just the soviets and their allies who are in disarray - NATO forces, that is, Germans, British, Canadian, Norwegian AND American units aren't exactly in good shape, and in fact some may well be in conflict with technical allies.
There are hints throughout the published material that raids on neighbouring units are commonplace although these are primarily aimed at the enemy, it's not unknown for them to be aimed at "friendlies" if said friendly units have items that are needed.
Although the units involved escape me at the moment (away from books) I believe there is at least one German unit which has turned maurauder, and I think Going Home refers to an American unit or two which has gone the same way.

One of the only advantages the Nato unit commanders have in keeping their units together is proximity to friendly countries - they're almost all within or close to Germany. Another advantage for the British, Canadian and US is they're overseas - the troops have no hope of returning home on their own, any chance of repatriation relies on the military.

[HorseSoldier]

Circa 2000 the dividing line between marauders and military units is probably defined, at least in part, by how predatory they are, not whether they are or are not predatory. Depending on the command environment and such, I'd think that some units loyal to higher headquarters are just as bad when they roll into town as marauders -- worse, probably, since most marauder bands aren't as big and well armed as military units.

There's probably a pretty good suspense/conspiracy/action sort of gaming scenario in there with something like some mostly independent brigade or division commander on the NATO side running his own marauder outfit on the side and knocking off the occasional supply convoy for other NATO units, trader convoys, robbing refugees, etc.

[Legbreaker]

It could well be that the Divisional commander has no idea where the supplies are really coming from. His supply unit might actually be the local maurauders his troops have been so desperately trying to find. Of course the "maurauders" know every move in advance of the troops who have been tasked to stop them. The pursuit force may even be in on it as tehy're the ones who stand to gain in the long run.