ChalkLine's Desiderata

[ChalkLine]

The KGB
(Russian: Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) "The Committee for State Security".

I see the KGB mentioned a lot and I thought I'd define who they are and what they do in the Twilight War to clear a few things up.

First up, the KGB is a counter-intelligence military organisation. They are separate from the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) and the SSV (the Soviet Ground Forces). Regardless of what they did in peacetime they have two primary functions in war time; defeat domestic espionage and to succeed in foreign espionage. This will take the form of two main operations, the first being hunting down and capturing foreign agents in the USSR and the second is to maintain intelligence webs in enemy countries and to carry out acts of sabotage.

As you can see, they have no place on the battlefield. About the only time you might encounter them would be in either a NATO-held Canton or in Kraków and even then they would be loathe to be found out. For the KGB their secrecy is their armour, they depend on it to survive.

The KGB does not hunt spies in other Warsaw Pact nations, they have the native intelligence organisations do that instead. They do maintain a liaison officer in each branch and are part of any Warsaw Pact intelligence command chain. Very little is known how this command structure worked but they seemed to have had a dual-reporting system where they let other nations do their thing but had to be kept in the loop.

Sabotage units do not liaise with special forces units such as Spetsnaz. Instead they create their own cells of saboteurs that source equipment through deniable channels to create confusion in the enemy. For instance it is likely that a saboteur operating in the USA would be American and armed with US equipment.

All the other stuff, the military intelligence operations you'd see in Europe, is done by the GRU. If you have the (frankly silly) "Division Cuba" in your campaign then all the spook stuff should be done by GRU officers and their attendant Spetsnaz.

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The MVD.
(Russian: Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del) Ministry of Internal Affairs

Probably one of the most important formations in Twilight 2000 and one that is totally neglected. The MVD is a parallel military organisation to the SSV and is a defining feature of Leninist Communist countries; it is a militarised umbrella organisation that includes not only internal security troops but firemen, paramedics and police. There is considered no distinction between these and other groups. In European terminology it is a Gendarmerie and it is the parallel to the Polish TKO. In US terms they have a separate identity and a Corp d' Esprit similar to the situation with the USMC in contrast to the US Army.

The reason MVD troops are so important to the game is that they act in concert with similar Warsaw Pact organisations to provide rear area security, ie; the area the players are in.
Unlike the Polish TKO the MVD was a behemoth that had over one and a half million men under arms. These troops aren't second rate warriors, they are specialists that not only secure rear areas from stragglers, provide disaster relief and wipe out special forces but they also act as a ready reserve to deal with penetrations of main force units as well as fight on the front lines. One of their specialties is urban warfare. To do so they are heavily armed but have an emphasis on fast movement and independent action.

For a TOE you can use standard USSR Motor Rifle Division for the Field Units (the ones the players will encounter) but generally with a smaller armour contingent. The MVD also do prisoner control, both civil and military, and so on being the police force. The MVD was essentially broken into three parts, the Police Force that stays in the USSR, the Logistics units and the Field Units. Note that the MVD rigorously maintains a separate chain of command to the SSV and this means that the MVD is not going to be drained off to fill up depleted army divisions. However they do fight in front line situations as well, having fought in all the conflicts of the USSR up to and including the 2nd Chechen War.

The MVD had unique uniforms with their own particular camouflage patterns and are often easily distinguished from main force SSV troops. MVD troops used a variety of specialist weapons such as the OTs-02 Kiparis SMG, OTs-14 Groza bullpup, OTs-20 Gnom revolver and many more. I can actually trawl up all their unique ironmongery if people are interested.
The MVD had several Spetsnaz groups of their own and these may well figure in the campaign, however most of these will have suffered massive attrition and others had a policing orientation similar to elite SWAT groups that would probably keep them in the USSR.

I have mentioned elsewhere the MVD “did not get on well with the KGB”. To give you an insight into this situation in the early 1980s some MVD officers and enlisted men hunted down and murdered a KGB officer in the Moscow Metro, as they were the police it’s unsurprising that no one is was never charged for this crime and the reason for why the man was killed is unknown to this day.

The MVD in the Twilight War.
While some of the MVD is going to be on the Oder Line holding back the “capitalist imperialists” they are also going to be behind the lines and controlling the population, providing what disaster relief they can and dealing with stragglers (ie: player characters). The USSR was quite sensitive to how their troops operated after the fiasco of the Prussian Campaign in the latter Second World War and preferred that their troops acted as back up to local internal troops, in this Poland this is the TKO. However it is likely that the TKO would have suffered massive casualties fighting for their homeland so it is equally likely that MVD units will instead have the local surviving TKO contingent attached and who are the primary interaction with the locals.
The MVD is going to secure the web of supply lines leading back to what is left of the USSR. As the strikes were quite limited there will a degree of industrial capacity, the USSR having a far more dispersed logistics network, and as this is a communist group of nations the military will be given the bulk of that capacity and the civilians will get what’s left. Note that while the situation is bad in the USSR a lot of cooperation can be gained over the civilian population by loudly supplying the troops and like everything in a communist country these operations have to have a political/ideological component. From these logistics centres the MVD will range out and try to exert control over the devastated areas. The players will encounter them holding checkpoints, involved in disaster relief operations, guarding logistics routes, maintaining communications relay outposts, engaged in bandit and partisan suppression and of course hunting down NATO stragglers.

[ChalkLine]

OTO Melara Mod 56 Pack Howitzer

This old soldier served in several nations before being put into storage and in fact remains there in many European nations. In the Twilight War it's in the armouries of Britain, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and it still soldiers on with the Greek and Italian armies to this day.

It's a pack howitzer meaning that it can be broken down into sections for transportation and to overcome obstacles by loading up squaddies and making them hump it over the intervening barrier. It's 1,290 kg weight breaks into 12 sub-sections and it's such a little gun that it can be towed by a Jeep or Land Rover. You can even pop the wheels off and fit it into the back of an M113.

This is almost a field gun, an obsolete class of weapon that equally mixes direct and indirect fire capabilities. The weapon has an asymmetrical axle meaning once in place you can lower the gun for a smaller silhouette or leave it at its normal height for indirect fire. Its little stubby barrel means it hasn't got the range of the longer howitzers but it can pop up anywhere due to its mobility. However it's not suitable for long fire missions due to its light construction, it works best as a shoot-and-scoot gun. It fires the standard US type M1 ammunition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTO_Melara_Mod_56
http://www.pmulcahy.com/towed_guns/i...owed_guns.html

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Artillery and the Twilight 2000 Soldier

From 1939 to 1985 artillery was the biggest killer at war.

This is no generalisation. A study over that period titled "Development of Protection Technologies" published in the June 2009 issue of Defence Technology Review, ballistic casualties in general war, including World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Israel, and the Falklands were recorded as 59% from projectile fragments, only 19% from bullets, and 22% from other causes.
Obviously artillery has a place in the Twilight 2000 game.

However as an adventure device it's awful. Players understandably dislike not having the ability to strike back in some way and their ability to influence artillery's lethal power over them is limited to mitigation techniques, primarily relocating or taking cover. Due to this nearly all GMs leave it out of their games (the same as proper sniper attacks).
However, it can still be used - albeit carefully.

Firstly, artillery doesn't automatically hit.
Weather (you guys don't have every game on a cloudless and still summer afternoon do you?) can disperse fires, spreading out the rounds so that even accurate shots don't all hit on target. Shifting targets like moving player vehicles can land in front or behind, signally to the players that the enemy will shift fire soon. Bad weather can lower the gunner's effectiveness, serving the guns in a heavy rainstorm just makes everything harder as the gunners slog about in deep mud. The guns might physically shift in bad positions, meaning the dispersion of their fire is increased.

NPCs using artillery on players have to take many things into account.
Gunners don't live attached to their guns and the artillery and its command might not be ready for shooting. The guns might be pointing the wrong way, some guns such as the Soviet 122 mm howitzer 2A18 (D-30) have a 360º traverse but most do not, meaning the weapon's trails have to be physically shifted to aim at the target. The guns might be remote and may have to be moved to be in range of the target and that alone can take hours as the guns don't just have to be pulled down, hitched up and towed to the new firing position but that position also has to be scouted and secured all while the artillery convoy is protected. Once there the guns have to be oriented on the map, the fire mission calculated and so on. This is especially hard if the players have annoyingly moved in the meantime.

If artillery is pre-ranged on an area there may well be signs of it in the mess left after previous fire missions, alerting the players to the unhealthy condition of the location. Ranging markers might be found in the area, alerting players to the danger.
Finally, there might be mitigating factors that limit the effectiveness of the munitions. Artillery shells are meant to come in almost vertically and don't explode in a sphere of unhappiness, but rather as a disc with a lessened danger zone on front and behind the shell. Direct fire artillery is more dangerous to the sides of the line of fire than to the front angles or behind, although this is only relative and if you're close you might have a lessened fragmentation threat to some degree but the shockwave is still the same. Fuzes might contain high levels of duds as happened during the initial stages of The Great War due to poor manufacture. Clever direct-fire gunners try and hit above or just behind infantry if they have the option as infantry to get cover in front first.

Artillery uses different fuzing and this directly modifies the effects of the munition. "Super-Fast" fuzes detonate instantly on contact with anything and produce a ground burst, individuals in field positions such as rubble sangars, trenches or other fighting positions have a significantly lessened fragmentation danger. "Proximity Fuzes" detonate above the target and this can be set before shooting, the distances are variable depending on the fuze type (many have variable distances that can be set) and some of these also have a Super Fast setting in case the Proximity setting fails. These are extremely dangerous as the can burst above firing positions or individuals in the open and cause maximum casualties. They are offset by having overhead cover. Note that as they burst above the ground they have a slightly reduced blast effect. Finally "Delay Fuzes" detonate a fraction of a second after contact allowing them to penetrate cover and detonate behind it or to dig into earthworks and detonate for maximum effect beside or inside the position.

There are many other types of fuzes. Some fuzes such as the US M734 fuze have the following settings (from wikipedia):
PRX = Proximity air burst between 3 and 13 feet
NSB = Near surface burst between 0 and 3 feet
IMP = Impact burst on contact. (In the event an IMP setting fails, detonation is 1/2 second after impact.)
DLY = Delay after impact of 0.05 seconds in the fuze explosive train before the shell detonates.

In all four settings, the high explosive in the mortar shell is detonated by a cascading explosive train of four increasing energies within the fuze. These are the Microdet electric detonator, the explosive lead, the explosive booster, and the delay primer assembly functioning as follows:
In the PROX, NSB, and IMP fuze settings, a firing circuit applies a voltage to the small Microdet which faces and ignites a bigger explosive lead that channels into the explosive booster which initiates the shell's high explosive.
In the DLY setting, the explosive lead is initiated instead by the delay primer assembly, which operates even in the event of power supply or electronics failures.

Reliability against duds is increased by the fact that if the M734 fails to detonate the mortar shell at one setting, it will immediately and automatically use the next one along, i.e. failure at the PRX setting causes NSB detonation to be selected. Similarly, failure to detonate at the NSB setting will automatically cause IMP to be selected, and so on.
This redundancy is a safety factor designed to prevent malfunctioning mortar shells from being buried upon ground impact and becoming a risk to civilians after a battle or becoming ammunition for enemy activities.
However it is likely that as the war ground on and the vast amount of fuzes were expended simpler, single-setting fuzes would return in large numbers and the gunners might have the wrong fuzes for the task. Proximity Fuzes with their multifunctional uses and high lethality would probably be expended firstly, followed by the various instant fuzes. This might once again ameliorate player casualties.

[ChalkLine]

D-44 85mm Divisional Gun

What, an AT gun? isn't that a Second World War thing?

Believe it or not the USSR still used this sort of gun as a stop line defence. Never supposed to see the main line of battle, this style of gun lurked in the rear line and right now is seeing action in several places across the globe. They would be carefully sited for oblique fire and dug in with a security element and most importantly belts of minefields. Notably it was calculated that weapons in this class like the "Rapira-3" ("Rapier-3") cost 05% as much as similarly armed MBT (note that the 125mm Rapira-3, although not the 100mm "Rapira", and the 125mm Sprut-B were never really adopted for service and only made in small numbers. The vast majority of this sort of gun was either the 85mm D-44 or the 100mm MT-12 anti-tank gun (2A29), a heavier weapon)

The D-44 is a strange gun, it's an actual field gun. This means that it is optimised for both direct fire and indirect fire. It's also extremely obsolete, the last MBT it could penetrate everywhere frontally was the US M47 (which had really terrible armour, like only 200 BHN) and that old warhorse was retired in the early 1960s.

What makes this gun so significant is that it was the primary training gun of the Soviet Bloc. Everyone used this gun or similar versions to train their gun crews, and as such there are simply buckets of them. 10,800 of them to be exact. And as such they still see combat to this day and they're still churning out ammo for it. This means there's tons of them to appear in the AO when more sophisticated weapons disappear through attrition.

The D-44 is actually a viable weapon in Twilight 2000 as apart from the odd rare MBT that someone somehow manages to haul about it only has to face IFVs, APCs and Light Tanks, something it can easily demolish. It's no heavier than the Second World War Wehrmacht 7.5cm Pak 42 yet it develops much more behind armour effect. What makes this weapon distinctive is not only is it comparatively mobile but it is physically small for such a weapon, it's only 1.42 metres (4 ft 8 in) high. Tactically that's tiny. This thing can be dug in with it's barrel not far off the ground in an earthwork and be almost invisible, and this is probably where it will turn up. Note that even thermograph has trouble seeing positions like this.

Mass: 1,725 kg (3,803 lbs)
Length: 8.34 metres (27 ft 4 in)
Barrel length: 4.7 m (15 ft 5 in) 55 calibers
Width: 1.78 metres (5 ft 10 in)
Height: 1.42 metres (4 ft 8 in)
Crew: 8
Sights:
- OP2-7 daylight sight
- S71-7 and PG-1 indirect fire complex
- APN-3-7 "Yablonya" passive/active infrared (note that the IR illuminators are not always attached to the weapon but tripod mounted supplementary units that complemented the system may be some distance from the gun itself. This can cause confusion in attackers as illuminators are switched on and off as tactical requirements require.)
- DAK-2M laser rangefinder
- Some batteries may have the PSNR-1 portable ground reconnaissance radar station (10km)

It's usually deployed in three-gun platoons, two of which comprise a battery. It's tractor is the ubiquitous MT-LB fully tracked vehicle and it is accompanied by other MT-LBs as ammo carriers and command vehicles, otherwise they'll use various trucks, usually the Ural 375 or older ones like the GAZ-66.
Why mention this dinosaur?

You can do a "Guns of Navarone" scenario for these or other AT guns. A friendly group has to pass by some area dominated by these weapons, which are of course immobile and dug into a trench system complete with firing positions. The friendly group is being chased by some overwhelming group so they have a strict time limit. The players must infiltrate and destroy the guns before the friendly convoy passes. This can be the bit where the players get separated from their unit and head off into Poland for further adventures. I know, it's a lot of waffle just for one little scenario idea.
http://www.pmulcahy.com/misc_pages/lgcal_guns.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/85_mm_divisional_gun_D-44

(Note that the images are of practice formations. You'd never see them in battle like this. The last image is of a WW2 Soviet light AT position for reference)

[ChalkLine]

BTR-152

Paul Mulcahey has some great info on the BTR-152, an armoured truck that players should try and grab a hold of. However he doesn't have the up-gunned version I'll note here.

First up, the venerable BTR-152 is an odd critter, it has oodles of space inside, especially the open-topped version. This makes it a decent T2K cargo hauler that's immune to 7.62x51mm on the sides and 12.7x99mm on the front. They can carry a ton of people however the engine is kind of ordinary to be charitable, although the transmission and suspension is great. Inventive players might consider an engine swap (and move those fuel tanks away from behind the driver and front passenger!)

But the old beast also had a little-known career as a sort of guntruck. They mounted a stock 7.62mm GPMG over the driver behind a gun shield but got festooned with all sorts of weapon loads after that:
- Single 12.7mm DShKM HMG (instead of GPMG)
- Quad 12.7mm DShKM HMG (no GPMG)
- Single 14.5mm KPV HMG (instead of GPMG)
- Double 14.5mm KPV HMG (no GPMG)
- Quad 14.5mm KPV HMG (no GPMG)
- Single SPG-9 Kopye (Spear) 73mm recoilless gun

And they could even carry a decent load while mounting these monsters; eight troops or equivalent cargo. This makes it a great cargo/fire support vehicle.

As an aside, I found the load list for it:
Axe
Compartment for RPG launcher
Headset bag
Container for RPG rockets
Compartment for driver/co-driver personal effects
Compartment for spare radio parts
Gun rack
Compartment for spare parts
Compartment for ammunition
Starting lamp
Oil tank
Compartment for spare parts
Block winch (some variants have a front winch, the rest have tow cables)
Spare tire
Ammunition box
Shovel
Canvas bucket
Spare box (?)
Mounting kit (?)
Antenna
First aid kit
Tool kit
Compartment for spare parts
Saw
Extinguisher
“Document bag”
Jack
Starting handle
Tow cable.

The open topped version came with a canvas cover and later versions had IR driving lights to be used with IR driving goggles.

http://www.pmulcahy.com/wheeled.../r...eeled_apcs.htm

[ChalkLine]

Just a little thought:
Every armoured Soviet vehicle with NBC capability uses the GO-27 gamma radiation detector. This device alerts the crew and actives the seals and over-pressure systems. A huge amount of similar systems outfitted Soviet vehicles as well as the infantry, in fact these types of detectors were very common among the Polish Obrona Cywilna PRL Civil Defence units.

Even if NATO units didn't have access to these devices it's not a long stretch for GMs to assume that they'd been recovered from Warsaw Pact vehicles and integrated into NATO survivor vehicles.

[Edit]
AND/VDR-2 Gamma-ray and Beta radiation Detection System. (Civilian name RDS-110V)
This unit comes standard on all US armoured vehicles such as the M2 Bradley IFV. It's a demountable, lightweight radiation detector with the following characteristics:
Wide dynamic range for dose rate and dose
• Pre-settable audio and visual alarms
• 600 hr battery life
• Vehicle mount for operation using vehicle or aircraft power (available option)
• Not affected by EMP
• Nuclear hardened
• Meets MIL-STD-810G for military environments
• Operable/readable by personnel in Mission Oriented Protection Posture (MOPP IV) or arctic clothing
Dimensions:
• Radiac meter: 19.2 x 10.4 x 4.8 cm (7.6 x 4.1 x 1.9 in.).
• Detector probe: 18.2 x 5.1 x 3.8 cm (7.2 x 2 x 1.5 in.).
• Radiac set in pouch: 23.2 x 17.5 x 7.9 cm (9.12 x 6.88 x 3.13 in.).
Weight:
• Radiac with Beta /Gamma Probe: 1.73 kg (3.8 Ib).
• Radiac set in pouch: 2.08 kg (4.6 lb).
Power:
• Six AA batteries.
• 600 hours of continuous operation and monitoring.
• Low battery LCD indication with 10 hr of battery life remaining,
a “Go/No Go” feature provides battery status.
• Can be operated on vehicle or aircraft power (12 or 24 V dc via universal connector).
Alarms:
• Has selectable Visual and Audible indicators for DOSE and RATE alarm for
day or night use.
• Alarm levels are settable over entire dynamic range.
Probe and Detectors:
• “SMART” probe Technology: Instantly recognized and functional upon hook-up, without any adjustment, programming or calibration.
• Combined two GM Tubes; low range EWGM and high range GM.
• Beta radiation: 0.01 μSv/hr to 50 mSv/hr.
• Gamma radiation: 0.01 μSv/hr to 99.9 Sv/hr (dose rate) and 0.01 μSv to 99.9 Sv (total dose).
• Energy response: ±20% 80 keV to 3 MeV.
• Accuracy: ±10% of true dose and dose rate over the entire dynamic range.
• Dose rate: Minimum detectable level 0.01 μSv/hr.
• Response time: Within 10% of final reading in 4 sec at 10 mSv/hr; returns to background within 4 sec. Meets ANSI N42.17A.