Soviet expeditionary force during the cold war

Anybody, literally anybody, can send an "expeditionary force" anywhere in a permissive environment. You just need the cash to charter merchant ships over and above what you control, and to charter aircraft to move troops. When you are not landing forces and equipment at a port or a large airport, even if nobody is shooting at you, that's when things begin to get sticky. Now you need to supply your force over the beach +/- airdrops and it becomes a lot more difficult. Regular merchant ships and standard passenger aircraft have limited uses now. Have to worry about naval or air forces that don't want you to deliver supplies, difficulty goes way up.
I agree anyone can send them. I'm not totally convinced anyone (or any Nation) can send forces that can effectively operate away from their home bases, but I suppose given enough money to hire experts those issues can be worked out as well.
 
A few comments:

- I thought about including the Falklands as an example of post world war 2 divisional landings but I didn't think they were truly divisional in size. Perhaps they were more or less divisional in size and should be on the list ? They were a long distance away from a friendly port (Ascension Island ?) and the operation was conducted in the face of considerable opposition. Other than the Vulcan bomber, Nimrod and I believe a handful of C130 sorties all the air support was flown from the RN carriers.

Basically if the Falklands get discounted according to the criterion of not having division sized units landed then no country fits that very odd definition of a superpower you gave earlier and certainly none of the historical expeditionary forces were ever actually expeditionary forces (which of course defeats the entire point of this thread which wasn't even asking for anything like what was being described as superpower worthy expeditionary forces.

-The Suez landings should likely be on the list as well although I believe the UK flew sorties from Cypress in support, but they also had their own air craft carriers providing support as well
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Anglo-French forces landed from Malta and Cyprus if I'm not mistaken. Those were of course nearby friendly ports.

In the case of Inchon and perhaps Lebanon in 1958 I'm not sure how relevant it is that the landings were being conducted on the territory of a country that had requested them. In the case of Korea they had more or less been largely over run by North Korea and it is unclear to me how much help they were able to provide at Inchon. I'm less clear about the situation in Lebanon in 1958.

Landings being conducted on the territory of the nation that requested them would be relevant since that would most definitely qualify as host nation support. Doesn't matter that southern Korea was more or less run over by the KPA. A definite section of it wasn't and it was from there that the host nation government operated and provided host nation support for the Americans to field an expeditionary force to engage the enemy in another part of the host nation. Sure they had opposed landings, but in the Pusan Perimeter they had a permissive enough environment to build up forces noticeably for a future landing (which the Americans attempted to deceive the North Koreans into thinking it would be at Kunsan). Pretty much every expeditionary force in history has gone through a similar dynamic:

- the AEF and BEF in World War I France disembarked in a permissive environment and then went straight into the worst war environment ever experienced up to that time

- the American forces in South Korea, well just see above.

- the Cuban forces in Angola, disembarked in a permissive environment and then went on to engage rebel Angolan armies and the South African army.



The ability to do this with little or no help in an un permissive environment is what separates super powers from the others.

Okay sure, if that's what you think. It doesn't seem to fit with any other definition of a super power that I've ever seen which usually refers to the ability to project power globally (note that expeditionary forces are far from the only way to project power globally) and the definition seems to rely very heavily on seaborne landings as some kind of yardstick when the Soviets relied on a very different doctrine to achieve similar purposes. For instance the Soviet Union as noted here (highlighting such as italics from the original):

The Soviet Union maintained the world's largest airborne force during the Cold War, consisting of seven airborne divisions and a training division. The VDV was subordinated directly to the Ministry of Defense of USSR, and was a 'prestige service' in the armed forces of the USSR and Russia to reflect its strategic purpose. Recruits received much more rigorous training and better equipment than ordinary Soviet units. Unlike most airborne forces, which are a light infantry force, VDV has evolved into a fully mechanized parachute-deployed force thanks to its use of BMD-series light IFVs, BTR-D armoured carriers, 2S9 Nona self-propelled 120 mm gun-howitzer-mortars and 2S25 Sprut-SD 125 mm tank destroyers.

Between submarines equipped with missiles, surface ships, aircraft carriers, aircraft and airborne troops (and let's face it, there were practically no circumstances under which any superpower is going to be staging a force directly from home to engage an enemy force directly in combat when they could be staging their forces from nearby allied territory (which has the added benefit of giving the staging forces a chance to rest and if necessary adjust to local/regional conditions and time differences) and the fact that pretty much foreign military adventures short of World War III are going to be in Third World countries with much weaker forces, the Soviet Union as a super power most was able to achieve any of its expeditionary force goals if it wanted to. All military operations need to have some kind of goal, and usually that goal is to achieve victory (however defined) with the fewest casualties and least amount of resources expended as necessary. The US would have needed a force capable of a combat landing against opposing forces because it didn't border it's most likely World War III battlefields (central Europe, the Korean peninsula, the Middle East). The USSR on the other hand definitely did: barring Cuba, where else would it really expect to be fighting World War III in areas it didn't border? And why build up a force capable of sailing directly from say Odessa all the way to Cuba to do a forced entry against occupying American forces there in the event of a World War? Logic would dictate spending that money on building up a force structure relevant to fight the more essential battles, and one lonely communist island in the Caribbean is just never going to an essential battle. For central Europe, Korea and the Middle East the US would have precisely needed to at least have the force structure in place to allow it to field a force capable of going from the US to say Europe to conduct a combat landing because there could be (very rare) scenarios where there are no friendly Western European governments left to provide allied support for continued US combat operations in Europe. If the situation had somehow been reversed you would likely also have seen a reversal of what each thought necessary for its military to be able to do.
 
Basically if the Falklands get discounted according to the criterion of not having division sized units landed then no country fits that very odd definition of a superpower you gave earlier and certainly none of the historical expeditionary forces were ever actually expeditionary forces (which of course defeats the entire point of this thread which wasn't even asking for anything like what was being described as superpower worthy expeditionary forces.

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Anglo-French forces landed from Malta and Cyprus if I'm not mistaken. Those were of course nearby friendly ports.



Landings being conducted on the territory of the nation that requested them would be relevant since that would most definitely qualify as host nation support. Doesn't matter that southern Korea was more or less run over by the KPA. A definite section of it wasn't and it was from there that the host nation government operated and provided host nation support for the Americans to field an expeditionary force to engage the enemy in another part of the host nation. Sure they had opposed landings, but in the Pusan Perimeter they had a permissive enough environment to build up forces noticeably for a future landing (which the Americans attempted to deceive the North Koreans into thinking it would be at Kunsan). Pretty much every expeditionary force in history has gone through a similar dynamic:

- the AEF and BEF in World War I France disembarked in a permissive environment and then went straight into the worst war environment ever experienced up to that time

- the American forces in South Korea, well just see above.

- the Cuban forces in Angola, disembarked in a permissive environment and then went on to engage rebel Angolan armies and the South African army.





Okay sure, if that's what you think. It doesn't seem to fit with any other definition of a super power that I've ever seen which usually refers to the ability to project power globally (note that expeditionary forces are far from the only way to project power globally) and the definition seems to rely very heavily on seaborne landings as some kind of yardstick when the Soviets relied on a very different doctrine to achieve similar purposes. For instance the Soviet Union as noted here (highlighting such as italics from the original):



Between submarines equipped with missiles, surface ships, aircraft carriers, aircraft and airborne troops (and let's face it, there were practically no circumstances under which any superpower is going to be staging a force directly from home to engage an enemy force directly in combat when they could be staging their forces from nearby allied territory (which has the added benefit of giving the staging forces a chance to rest and if necessary adjust to local/regional conditions and time differences) and the fact that pretty much foreign military adventures short of World War III are going to be in Third World countries with much weaker forces, the Soviet Union as a super power most was able to achieve any of its expeditionary force goals if it wanted to. All military operations need to have some kind of goal, and usually that goal is to achieve victory (however defined) with the fewest casualties and least amount of resources expended as necessary. The US would have needed a force capable of a combat landing against opposing forces because it didn't border it's most likely World War III battlefields (central Europe, the Korean peninsula, the Middle East). The USSR on the other hand definitely did: barring Cuba, where else would it really expect to be fighting World War III in areas it didn't border? And why build up a force capable of sailing directly from say Odessa all the way to Cuba to do a forced entry against occupying American forces there in the event of a World War? Logic would dictate spending that money on building up a force structure relevant to fight the more essential battles, and one lonely communist island in the Caribbean is just never going to an essential battle. For central Europe, Korea and the Middle East the US would have precisely needed to at least have the force structure in place to allow it to field a force capable of going from the US to say Europe to conduct a combat landing because there could be (very rare) scenarios where there are no friendly Western European governments left to provide allied support for continued US combat operations in Europe. If the situation had somehow been reversed you would likely also have seen a reversal of what each thought necessary for its military to be able to do.
Well IMHO Real superpowers need the ability to land and sustain sizeable combat forces more or less anywhere with out relying on other nations. I suppose by my definition the U.S. may well be the only real super power. (Although the UK certainly showed their potential in the Falklands and I suspect the French could also have given a good account of themselves. IMHO the Soviets had strong capabilities near their own borders, but there world wide abilities were limited compared to the U.S. )

In so far as ballistic missile and nuclear weapons seem to be attainable by countries such as North Korea and a number of countries have large conventional armies this seems a reasonable definition for a real super power :)
 
Well IMHO Real superpowers need the ability to land and sustain sizeable combat forces more or less anywhere with out relying on other nations. I suppose by my definition the U.S. may well be the only real super power. (Although the UK certainly showed their potential in the Falklands and I suspect the French could also have given a good account of themselves.)

In so far as ballistic missile and nuclear weapons seem to be attainable by countries such as North Korea and a number of countries have large conventional armies this seems a reasonable definition for a real super power :)

If that's what you like then sure. Just seems like rather circular logic, but okay.
 
If that's what you like then sure. Just seems like rather circular logic, but okay.
Fair enough.

The U.S. has a unique ability to deploy air craft carriers, amphibious forces, air borne forces and sustain them in combat more or less unilatelraly in the face of all but determined opposition from other super powers (or use of multiple nuclear weapons) and if they so choose they can fundamentally alter the ballance of power in a regional non super power conflict. It is what it is :)
 
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Another way to look at this is that host nation support is the cherry on top of the sundae. Even in a permissive environment, many "host nations" cannot provide essential support - you need to bring your own logistics force/combat service support. If you want to call the supported country giving you a patch of ground to put your field hospital on "host nation support" I suppose you can, but if all of your medical personnel and supplies have to come from your own country or a forward base you "own", IMHO that does not qualify. Host nation support means they are providing materiel and/or personnel to supply or perform tasks that otherwise your forces would need to do.

An example of this sort of host nation support, real world, involved a live fire exercise with joint training in an African nation. In the relatively remote area the only support was the fact there was a concrete runway/airstrip without a control tower or services. This allowed aircraft without rough field capabilities to land, however if there were going to be sustained operations a portable control tower, airfield control folks and some sort of fueling etc would need to be brought in. By road it was 5-6 hours, and it was a crappy road, to the closest "major" city, there was a town close by. Food and water, to the extent available in the local town was unsuitable.

At the other extreme consider a WWIII scenario (no nukes thank you) in NATO. There you have local resources for food and water, you have the ability to use civilian hospitals for medical care, the local industries can supply you with at least ammunition and some spare parts. The civilian workforce on railroads, at ports etc, is busy helping you. Civilian trucks, ambulances and more are available for use or requisition. The situation in Korea (not during the Korean War) is similar.

Your ability to operate in the first scenario as opposed to only being able to operate in the second (or relatively close to home) is a big difference in capability.
 
Well, Pakistan, India, Australia, etc have regularly performed peacekeeping duties in areas like scenarios 1.
It’s not much different from operating in remote areas of your own country.
Take over an airfield. Does not even have to be concrete. C130 will fly fine.
PAF/IAF/RAAF flies in troops. A couple of battalions worth over several days. Engineers make a nice small base nearby. Tents and some pre fab structures. MRE feeds troops, and engineers hit the local water table and use filters to make it potable. These days solar panels are used, but even before, portable electricity generators can be brought in.
We have actual examples of U.N. operations being supplied mostly from the air. With hostile locals.

Yeah, I think you need to rethink that.
 
Peacekeeping is very different from power projection, very different. Peacekeepers arrive when both sides have agreed, more or less, to stop fighting and the peacekeepers are there to monitor things and keep the opposing sides apart. Power projection means a situation where you are prepared, if not actually doing from day one, to take names and kick ass.

The ability of many countries to go in to a situation where they need to bring in pretty much all the support is extremely limited. During the UN intervention in the former Yugoslavia a lot of support for "second/third world" forces was provided primarily by the USA and to some extent the Europeans. An example of this, from personal knowledge, was trauma medical support for these forces being provided by US medical units, and in quite a number of cases wounded had to be kept in these facilities (contrary to normal policy) until healing was complete included months of rehabilitation and reconstructive surgery as the home countries had no capability to evacuate wounded that could not take a more or less "regular" airline flight and were unable or unwilling to pay for commercial air ambulance service. In one case, a soldier who had multiple injuries including a leg amputation remained in a US field hospital not only through healing but also fitting of a prosthesis.
 
Well, Pakistan, India, Australia, etc have regularly performed peacekeeping duties in areas like scenarios 1.
It’s not much different from operating in remote areas of your own country.
Take over an airfield. Does not even have to be concrete. C130 will fly fine.
PAF/IAF/RAAF flies in troops. A couple of battalions worth over several days. Engineers make a nice small base nearby. Tents and some pre fab structures. MRE feeds troops, and engineers hit the local water table and use filters to make it potable. These days solar panels are used, but even before, portable electricity generators can be brought in.
We have actual examples of U.N. operations being supplied mostly from the air. With hostile locals.

Yeah, I think you need to rethink that.

The Canadian experiences when they held an exercise to practice sending a Brigade Group to Norway in a world war 3 setting (in addition to the Brigade group they already had deployed in West Germany) and the actual deployment of forces to Somalia (including light armored vehicles) may give some insight into what could happen when non super powers try and deploy more than light infantry forces over seas and or into remote areas. I am not looking to criticize the Canadians but their experiences are worth looking at in my view.

Edit to add:
In fairness to the Canadians they also seemed to perform quite well in Afghanistan (and managed to deploy tanks and other heavy equipment.)
 
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Non Great power expeditionary operations since 1945.
1) Cuba in Angola. Used commercial aircraft and merchantmen. Pretty impressive.
2) Pakistani support to King Hussain versus PLO in 1970. Already had troops in country as part of a training mission. Host government asked for help and these guys were reinforced. Both from forces in Saudi Arabia and back home.
3) Indian operation in the Maledives in 1988, Operation Cactus. A hop and a skip across.

So, either have friendly hosts or be literally next door. Or have zilch opposition?

Does the amount of support Iran has provided to the Assad regime in Syria meet the threshold of expeditionary force?
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Does the amount of support Iran has provided to the Assad regime in Syria meet the threshold of expeditionary force?
You means Sean Connery's al quds ?
I believe they are more of a clandestine deployment of troops and personnel and since the exact number of units and their organization is unknown it would be difficult to put it in the same category but it's an impressive achievement logistically nevertheless
 
The soviets were always handicapped in power projection overseas during the cold war due to lack of a capable of a capable expeditionary force.

IMO one of the things that allowed the USSR to survive as long as it did was that durng the Cold War it did not--until Afghanistan--get large numbers of its troops bogged down in foreign adventures, as the US did in Korea and Vietnam. (Sure, the US survived these conflicts and eventually won the Cold War-- but the losses it sustained in these conflicts certainly didn't help it.) The USSR on the whole confined the large-scale use of its army to assuring "loyal" Communist regimes in nearby satellites like Hungary and Czechoslovakia, where the troops could do their job quickly and with few losses. (They probably at first thought of Afghanistan in those same terms, and thought they could prevail almost as quickly and decisively there.) IMO, for the USSR to have sent more troops to, say, Angola (where in any event the Cubans managed to maintain MPLA power over Luanda and the oil fields) would if anything have hastened the Soviet regime's end.
 
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IMO one of the things that allowed the USSR to survive as long as it did was that durng the Cold War it did not--until Afghanistan--get large numbers of its troops bogged down in foreign adventures, as the US did in Korea and Vietnam. (Sure, the US survived these conflicts and eventually won the Cold War-- but the losses it sustained in these conflicts certainly didn't help it.)
Korea was a net loss for the US? Sure it failed to reunite the peninsula, but in saving South Korea it improved its reputation, halted Communism (in one location), and won a steadfast ally. It also got Japan's economy back up and running.

The cost in human lives was notable, but they definitely accomplished something of immense value unlike in Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan.
 
Korea was a net loss for the US? Sure it failed to reunite the peninsula, but in saving South Korea it improved its reputation, halted Communism (in one location), and won a steadfast ally. It also got Japan's economy back up and running.

The cost in human lives was notable, but they definitely accomplished something of immense value unlike in Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan.

I wasn't trying to say that the US shouldn't have acted in Korea or that it didn't accomplish anything in doing so (though the accomplishments, important as they were, basically amounted to restoring the territorial status quo). My point was simply that the US lost a lot of troops in Korea and the USSR did not. It was able to use proxies to fight to a draw. That's why I thought that the original post's argument that the USSR would have been better off with a large expeditionary force is questionable.
 
Your underestimating the Soviets a bit there. The Yom Kippur War gave us a pretty good look at what sort of power projection force the Soviets could theoretically muster up by the 1970s: the Soviets intended to deploy seven VDV divisions and roughly a corps worth of mechanized naval infantry to Syria and Egypt until the USN went "lolno" and forced the Soviets to scale down their deployment to the couple of airborne divisions that they could airlift in. Ultimately, the war ended before the Soviets ever had to go through with any of their plans but it shows that the scale of the Soviets sealift capabilities and it's concurrent impact on their power projection had grown greatly during the 60s and 70s.
Bumping this up, I had dinner with an ex USN type last night and this cake up. He said that it was the USN assessment that the Kusnetsovs were designed after this experience, to provide some fleet defence against interdiction in an Eastern Med situation.
Must admit I found that claim surprising.
 
IMO one of the things that allowed the USSR to survive as long as it did was that durng the Cold War it did not--until Afghanistan--get large numbers of its troops bogged down in foreign adventures

Your opinion regarding pacification in Ukraine, Poland, Baltics into the early 1950s? Not bogged? Not large? Not foreign?
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Bumping this up, I had dinner with an ex USN type last night and this cake up. He said that it was the USN assessment that the Kusnetsovs were designed after this experience, to provide some fleet defence against interdiction in an Eastern Med situation.
Must admit I found that claim surprising.
Seems to be , as even the kusnetsov airgroup is badly outnumbered by even one CVBG
What was he basing it on?
 
That even if the Kuznetsov and her group are lost, they will probably delay the NATO navies long enough to ensure that the Soviet’s are able to land in the EASTERN MED.
The analogy would be that of an O Lineman. Just stop the defender long enough for the ball to be thrown or handed off.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
That even if the Kuznetsov and her group are lost, they will probably delay the NATO navies long enough to ensure that the Soviet’s are able to land in the EASTERN MED.
The analogy would be that of an O Lineman. Just stop the defender long enough for the ball to be thrown or handed off.
But that seems like a huge waste of sophisticated naval warships as likely all the escorts of Kuznetsov will be lost too

What about a strategy akin to portugese island or Fort bases strategically located around the world ? before start of any planned hostilities their garrisons can be swelled, defences improved with more SAM ,artillery, SSM etc brought in by soviet merchant marine so they can survive on their own for a while until broader political/military objectives are met? At the same time they can be used to project power against smaller hostile nations by basing strike aircrafts and submarines there.
 
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