Desant

 I was having a bit of a hunt through the back-blocks of my hard drive today and came across a TOE for Russian airborn units published by those nice chaps at the Army Infantry School in Fort Benning. Its part of ST 7-198 FY 84. N this is a handy document as I am rather sceptical of the TOE's that I have seen. Now I suppose I should hold any information from the 80's with a grain of salt as information on TOE's was very hard to come by (even more so at the arse end of the world). However the official TOE's for MSH are in places not much better (British anyone?)

Now I must admit that I have some misgivings about bits of it which I'll address at the end.

Divisional HQ     HQ infantry stand.

                            2 BRDM-2

Support regiment

            Artillery regiment 4 x D-30 122mm

            Artillery regiment 4 x BM-14/GAZ66

            AT battalion 4 x ASU-85

1 BMD regiment    HQ in BMD

                                1 BRDM-2

Mortar battery     1 x 120mm Mortar/GAZ66

AA battery           1 x 23mm AA /GAZ66

AT battery             2 x BRDM 2S/BRDM 3

3 Battalions    HQ in BMD

                    3 companies 2 BMD-1 

2 Parachute Regiments HQ infantry stand 

BMD coy 2 BMD-1

Mortar battery     1 x 120mm Mortar/GAZ66

AA battery           1 x 23mm AA /GAZ66

AT battery            1 x SD-85/GAZ66

3 Battalions          HQ stand 

                    3 companies 3 Inf stands

                                         1 SPG9

                    3 companies 3 SPG9

                                         2 AT3/AT4

Man the formatting for the new blogger is rubbish for something like this.

So issues I do have is a lack of regiment/battalion recce elements, engineering stands and 82mm mortars. The 82mm mortars might be replaced by SPG-9's as they would be easier to cart round than a mortar baseplate. 

Now oddly enough the airborne units that I have modeled seem to be from another source which from what I can tell was Jake Collins old site.

First up the parachute units. This appears to be a BHQ, 3 companies of 2 platoons, an 82mm and 120mm Mortar, an SA-7 and 2 AT stabds (mixed SPG9 and AT-4).

The BMD battalion is BMD comand (BMD-KSH), 3 compaies of 2 platoons, plus an 82mm motar and a 30mm GL

To cap this whole story off I have another TOE for 1979 in one of those annoying "every vehicle represented by a sillouete" which doesn't give numbers (which counting 30 trucks is just daft) or platoon/squad breakdowns. it also has some really odd stuff of which I'll give 2 examples;

-BMD companies have an extra platoon with SPG-9 in trucks. now why if you have 10 73mm guns would you want another 3 that are unarmoured?

-The Regiment has a battery of ASU-57, when these were phased out in the mid 1970's

So, a bit of a mess really, and no clear winners.

I'll leave you all with a picture of my ASU-85 battaion, possibly the worst idea anyAFV  designer could come up with.