WarPac Vehicle Guide?

[Matt Wiser]

Those rear-area divisions must've been someone's way of having additional divisions on the OB without having to really do much. I mean, late WW II or early 1950s era equipment and forty-year old reservists to man them? Reminds me of the image in Bear and the Dragon where General Bodarenko is settling into his new command and finding out he's got warehouses full of World War II era tanks and artillery, and the soldiers assigned to the stockpiles turned the engines over on the tanks, and even took them out for test drives (and probably test fired the guns, too). That would've worked in the '60s or '70s, but in a continued Cold War into the mid '90s? The Russians actually had exercises in 1995 which featured JS-3 tanks, and they were withdrawn from service immediately after the exercise.

If no Glasnost, those "Protection and Guarantee" Regiments would probably have maintained their designation as independent MR Regiments. Those independent regiments may have been how Ivan found four regiments available to deploy to Cuba in 1962, as none of the four that were sent to Cuba belonged to a parent division. And separating four regiments from their parent divisions may have alerted Western Intelligence that something was up.