Warsaw Pact in SWAT...

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That brought back the problems the CF was having with the Leopard C1s in Afghanistan, actually. Those were some sucky sucky days having to sit in those ovens.



I brain farted. East German.



Gridley: Another brainfart on my part. You'd think after writing Soviet Invasion of Iran, 1981 I'd have been more anal. It was late, I was honestly just spitballing. :D

I'll rephrase: they deploy a division-esque sized force with one brigade of Soviet heavy armour and two brigades of West German and Romanian mechanized infantry. (more troops, yes, but what the hell. You only live once.)

I think you're fixated on the FRG for some reason.

Again: no brigades. The WP used regiments. Romanian troops are more likely to shoot Soviet troops than fight alongside them - the Romanians often refused to let other WP transit over their territory!

If you want this to be at all realistic, make it a M-R division with Soviet tank and BMP regiments, and the BTR regiments coming from, say, Poland and Bulgaria. The division base would probably also be Soviet.
 
Originally posted by Gridley
If you want this to be at all realistic, make it a M-R division with Soviet tank and BMP regiments, and the BTR regiments coming from, say, Poland and Bulgaria. The division base would probably also be Soviet.

Add a batalion of KGB troops. Otherwise WP forces can watch Polish regiment driving away to South Africans and waving their comrades goodbye.
 
What about instead of troops from other WTO members, a North Korean regiment is sent instead, North Korea was pretty heavily involved in the region with advisors both in Angola and Zimbabwe.
 

mowque

Banned
T
I'll rephrase: they deploy a division-esque sized force with one brigade of Soviet heavy armour and two brigades of West German and Romanian mechanized infantry. (more troops, yes, but what the hell. You only live once.)

You just did it again.:p
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Again: no brigades. The WP used regiments.

I'm looking at Russia's War in Afghanistan by Isby, and it's naming off brigades and divisions. The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought And Lost by the Russian General Staff also lists some independent tank battalions that fought in Afghanistan.

If you want this to be at all realistic, make it a M-R division with Soviet tank and BMP regiments, and the BTR regiments coming from, say, Poland and Bulgaria. The division base would probably also be Soviet.
I don't know about Poland. I mean...is that the same Poland that just got clamped down under martial law 6 years before the POD? Because the Soviets actually had a plan in place to invade it. Check out The Threat by Andrew Cockburn.

You just did it again.:p

God DAMN it...what the fuck is my problem? :rolleyes:

Olifants aren't gonna stop T-80s, though Ratels on BTRs would be a fair fight and South African Rooikat or Eland armored cars will tear up BTRs like beer cans.

Get out of Angola, for starters. You can't stop a Red Army tank brigade with Olifants, and there is way too much open ground in Angola, as well as local opposition. T-72s would be too much for the Olifants, let alone the T-80s the Red Army was using by 1987.

I was thinking about this at work: the Sho'ts that went into Lebanon in 1982 tangled with T-72s several times and managed to come out the victors in those engagements.

Now we can compare the Sho't and Olifant and decide just what we can make out of this:
The Sho't operated in 1982 used a 750hp S-1790-2A Teledyne-Continental diesel with an automatic transmission. I can't track down how many gears it had, but my guesstimation is that it was three up and two back. It had the 105mm L7 gun, and Blazer ERA which was able to soak up hits from Sagger missiles.
The Olifant, from 1985 onward, had a 750hp diesel engine (I'm assuming built by Denel) and a semiautomatic transmission. The gun was an ARMSCOR-built version of the L7, pairing the 105mm barrel of the classic with a modified 20-pounder breech. Handheld laser sights for the commanders were deployed on each tank, and an IR searchlight was attached above the barrel.
 
East Germans and Bulgarians, maaaaaaaaaybe Hungarians.

BTW, I'm no expert of transit rights, bout how would soviet fleet come to Angola with soldiers and supplies ??
 

MacCaulay

Banned
BTW, I'm no expert of transit rights, bout how would soviet fleet come to Angola with soldiers and supplies ??

They fly the stuff there, just like they flew all the supplies there for years before. There were Soviet planes and ships coming to Angola during the Border War all the time.

An-22s and what not were all over Africa.
 
They fly the stuff there, just like they flew all the supplies there for years before. There were Soviet planes and ships coming to Angola during the Border War all the time.

An-22s and what not were all over Africa.

Ok, I just wanted to know. I find the scenario really fascinating ! :)

It would make for a really good technothriller ! What would US reaction likely be ?
 
Wow, now this is truly an interesting scenario that could have actually happened. I'm not sure if the USN/NATO would allow it however.

Also, if SA uses nukes (which it only would have a couple of), they would run out fast and then quickly be pummeled by Soviet retaliation.
 
Would Thatcher be willing to send a British/Commonwealth task force to aid SA given the longstanding historical ties to SA and also Thatcher's opposition to SA sanctions? After all, SA fought for King and Empire in both world wars.
Very unlikely I would have thought. Whilst Britain maintained economic ties with South Africa I don't think even Margaret Thatcher would have been prepared to face down massive public opposition to sending British troops to fight and die in South Africa for the apartheid government. South Africa might have fought for King and Empire during the wars but the introduction of apartheid, becoming a republic and withdrawing from the Commonwealth killed off a lot of good feeling that might have earned them.

So whilst I think direct involvement would have been right out, unless the US was involved as well and it included the South Africans getting rid of apartheid after the fighting, would the British have supported them indirectly via weapons shipments and intelligence? How does the MILAN ATGM compare against the Ingwe vs. T-80s?
 
I'm looking at Russia's War in Afghanistan by Isby, and it's naming off brigades and divisions. The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought And Lost by the Russian General Staff also lists some independent tank battalions that fought in Afghanistan.

I don't know about Poland. I mean...is that the same Poland that just got clamped down under martial law 6 years before the POD? Because the Soviets actually had a plan in place to invade it. Check out The Threat by Andrew Cockburn.

Yes, the Soviets used brigades... as Army/Front level assets. You're sending a division. This would be akin to the US sending an two brigades of an armored division and putting in the 75th Ranger Regiment as the third.

"Independent" tank battalions were MR Division & higher assets, with one per formation. "Independent" tank regiments were similarly assigned to many Armies.

Yes, Poland was less than fully reliable... but it was a heck of a lot more reliable than Romania! Poland had quite a lot of anti-Soviet sentiment, but some factions were notably pro-Soviet.

There is a regrettable tendency in Western military circles to apply Western naming conventions to WP units. As an example, independent tank regiments are sometimes called brigades to distinguish them from tank regiments assigned to Tank and MR Divisions; some logic there, the org was different.

The US used Regiments for lineage and some administrative purposes, forming brigades (often semi-permanently) as operational units subordinate to their parent divisions. Some US tables show three empty brigades HQ's and ten mobile battalions both directly assigned to a division. Others show each brigade with 3 or 4 battalions attached to it. Both are true depending on what you're trying to show. In either case, battalions from a single regiment could easily be assigned to multiple divisions, and were seldom in the same brigade.

The Soviets also had battalions, somewhat smaller then US battalions and much starker in terms of non-primary equipment. That's because they were intended to fight as part of their parent regiment. Even an independent tank battalion was slightly inferior to a US tank battalion in number of tanks (51 vs. 58) and greatly inferior in C3I and support assets (for example, a US tank battalion had its own organic mortar and cavalry platoons, neither present even in an 'independent' Soviet tank battalion.

If you're talking about a battle, its fine to talk about Soviet battalions moving on their own. If you're sending units overseas, it would be just as odd as if the US sent units overseas by regiments.
 
Would Thatcher be willing to send a British/Commonwealth task force to aid SA given the longstanding historical ties to SA and also Thatcher's opposition to SA sanctions? After all, SA fought for King and Empire in both world wars.

During apartheid? Not a chance in hell. Can you imagine what Labour and the Lib Dems would say to that? "Did you know that Margaret Thatcher supports sending units of the British Army to support the apartheid state?"
 
I was thinking about this at work: the Sho'ts that went into Lebanon in 1982 tangled with T-72s several times and managed to come out the victors in those engagements.

Now we can compare the Sho't and Olifant and decide just what we can make out of this:
The Sho't operated in 1982 used a 750hp S-1790-2A Teledyne-Continental diesel with an automatic transmission. I can't track down how many gears it had, but my guesstimation is that it was three up and two back. It had the 105mm L7 gun, and Blazer ERA which was able to soak up hits from Sagger missiles.
The Olifant, from 1985 onward, had a 750hp diesel engine (I'm assuming built by Denel) and a semiautomatic transmission. The gun was an ARMSCOR-built version of the L7, pairing the 105mm barrel of the classic with a modified 20-pounder breech. Handheld laser sights for the commanders were deployed on each tank, and an IR searchlight was attached above the barrel.

Olifants are not as well armored as Merkavas, and can something with a 105mm gun punch through the front armor on a T-80? If its a Red Army tank brigade being sent out there, it'll probably be a unit equipped with T-80Us. I rather doubt that a good Red Army unit with top-class gear could be stopped by even the best South African tank brigades. Stopping the tanks is the primary problem for the South Africans, because killing APCs when you have lots and lots of mobile gun platforms like the Rooikat and Eland is easy. Shit, the 20mm AA guns the South Africans had mounted on their Ratel 20 APCs could probably stop a BTR-60.

As far as the Canberras go, that could be an interesting point, but from high altitude dropping dumb bombs you'd be lucky to have it land in the right county. The Canberras might be better used by having them fly low, giving the Russians less of a chance to see them.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Olifants are not as well armored as Merkavas, and can something with a 105mm gun punch through the front armor on a T-80? If its a Red Army tank brigade being sent out there, it'll probably be a unit equipped with T-80Us. I rather doubt that a good Red Army unit with top-class gear could be stopped by even the best South African tank brigades. Stopping the tanks is the primary problem for the South Africans, because killing APCs when you have lots and lots of mobile gun platforms like the Rooikat and Eland is easy. Shit, the 20mm AA guns the South Africans had mounted on their Ratel 20 APCs could probably stop a BTR-60.

That's a very good point. If I was commanding the South African military and faced with what is essentially a Motor Rifle Division spearheaded by Soviet armour, first off I'd wonder what sort of bankrupt regime would put me in charge of anything larger than a steering wheel. Then after that I'd probably pick whatever geographical feature I knew the MRD would have to advance through, and dig in so as to reduce the tanks' mobility as an asset.

Then I could offer battle on as close to my terms as possible.

Probably some sort of mountain range straddling a road, or perhaps a river crossing.
 

NothingNow

Banned
That's a very good point. If I was commanding the South African military and faced with what is essentially a Motor Rifle Division spearheaded by Soviet armour, first off I'd wonder what sort of bankrupt regime would put me in charge of anything larger than a steering wheel. Then after that I'd probably pick whatever geographical feature I knew the MRD would have to advance through, and dig in so as to reduce the tanks' mobility as an asset.

Then I could offer battle on as close to my terms as possible.

Probably some sort of mountain range straddling a road, or perhaps a river crossing.
So Basically, A Pico-Kursk?
That'd be a slaughter fest if you can out-flank them at the same time, and keep them from pulling out.

Oh, and here's a site I just found that's somewhat related. The writers occasionally lapse into Spanish for an article, but a lot of it's still useful.
 
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No one is really talking about the US in this scenario. The USN is still floating around and causes numerous problems if they take an aggressive stance against the WARPAC. After all this was the time of the Gipper in office.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
So Basically, A Pico-Kursk?
That'd be a slaughter fest if you can out-flank them at the same time, and keep them from pulling out.

Oh, and here's a site I just found that's somewhat related. The writers occasionally lapse into Spanish for an article, but a lot of it's still useful.

In many ways...yes. When your enemy's armour is better than yours (and Mann has pretty well made the point that the Soviets could bring better weapons to bare), then you need to find your own strength and use it to counteract your opponent.

The best way to kill a tank is with another tank. Failing that, it's with an Anti-Tank Guided Weapon. The South Africans had a fair amount of them, whether in the form of older French SS.11s, or others. And while they may not have superior armour, the average South African infantryman might be counted on as more reliable in battle than those in the Soviet Army.

More so if the South Africans were to stiffen said defences with elements of the Parabats (Parachute Battalions) or if special units like 32 Battalion could be used in the rear of the enemy.

But towards the end there I'm just spitballing. :D

No one is really talking about the US in this scenario. The USN is still floating around and causes numerous problems if they take an aggressive stance against the WARPAC. After all this was the time of the Gipper in office.

Sure, Reagan loved dropping bombs (though I think we need to remember that he didn't drop near as many as supposed "dove" Clinton did in his 8 years), but the world hated South Africa.

Hell, the US stood buy while the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Why would we decide to start going head to head with the Soviets in South-west Africa Territory of all places?

Though I've got to say that as I typed that last paragraph I was thinking honestly about...harassment. The US and Soviets loved buzzing each other. And there's nothing to say the US might not do that just to peeve the Reds.
 

NothingNow

Banned
Though I've got to say that as I typed that last paragraph I was thinking honestly about...harassment. The US and Soviets loved buzzing each other. And there's nothing to say the US might not do that just to peeve the Reds.
A US SSN intentionally Running a little bit too loud as it trails a Convoy, maybe an Orion flying by a bit too often or something like that?
Basically just enough to Un-nerve the Soviets/WP?
 
That's a very good point. If I was commanding the South African military and faced with what is essentially a Motor Rifle Division spearheaded by Soviet armour, first off I'd wonder what sort of bankrupt regime would put me in charge of anything larger than a steering wheel. Then after that I'd probably pick whatever geographical feature I knew the MRD would have to advance through, and dig in so as to reduce the tanks' mobility as an asset.

Then I could offer battle on as close to my terms as possible.

Probably some sort of mountain range straddling a road, or perhaps a river crossing.

That fact gives the South Africans options. Windhoek, the capital and economic center of the SWA Territory, is surrounded by the Auas Mountains and getting tanks through mountains is a pain in the neck. The Soviets would be forced to move along the main roadways, and their supply lines would be a bastard. They'd lose a bunch of tanks between Luanda and the SWA borders from mechanical attrition (a well-known problem with the T-80, which had engine reliability problems right from the off), but most would make it. The Soviets will have two options here. The South Africans are not stupid enough to garrison the border with Angola against a Red Army MRD - they'd get eaten alive, and giving up much of the northern part of the SWA Territory makes it easier because of fewer guerillas. Windhoek would be the key, as all of the roads lead there. If the main thrust is coming from Angola, they'll have to go across the border and SE around the Etosha salt flats (Don't even think about running any tank or armored vehicle over a salt flat. Really.), taking the towns of Tsumeb, Grootfontein and Otavi, before going south. The B1 road is the only way to move a major mechanized force southbound, and it has multiple spots where a South African commander could cause problems.

Key spot #1 is around the town of Otjiwarongo. The town has an air strip and great transport infrastructure, but has mountains on three sides, and a dedicated South African commander could cause a major problem there. The one problem for them is that there is two good roads going out, though blocking both is possible, but it would be a problem because moving the force to support either blocking force would be a pain. Either way, one has to go uphill.

The opportunities for blocking forces are many, which the South Africans would know - and the absolute worst one is at Windhoek. Windhoek to Rehoboth is about 90 kilometres (55 miles), but its going straight up and over the Auas Mountains and would be a nightmare for the Russians. If the South Africans can hold Windhoek, South African airstrikes, artillery fire and commando raids would make life a bitch for the Russians, and it would be easy to do in all cases. There is few roads worthy of the name in the hinterlands, and there is no direct line between Swapokmund or Walvis Bay and Windhoek. The line would end up stalemated between Windhoek and Okahandja. The Russians could try swinging around to Gobabis, but the only rail lines goes to Windhoek and the roads around there suck.

If the Russians were willing to force an amphibious landing, they would be advised to hit Swakopmund and Walvis Bay, which would put them several hundred miles closer to their objective. An MRD would need the port at Walvis Bay to keep supplied in any case, because trying to move enough fuel from the ports in Angola is going to be a mighty challenge, even before UNITA stirs up more logistical trouble, which they undoubtedly would.

South Africa is gonna have a logistics problem, too. From Windhoek to Upington is nearly seven hundred miles. Keeping the road and rail line to Windhoek from the RSA open is going to be very important, especially if the Russians take Walvis Bay. The only other major port in Namibia is Luderitz, but getting supplies to Windhoek from there is worse than getting them from Upington. South African Railways would have its hands full, though SA's rail net to Upington gives options - move supplies southwest to it from Pretoria and Johannesburg, due west from Bloemfontein, Northwest from East London and Port Elizabeth or Northeast from Cape Town. Beyond Upington, however, you have one major road and one rail line, and only a small number of rudimentary airfields.
 
...
So...how do you folks figure the South African Army could handle itself against a fairly large, well-trained Warsaw Pact ground force in the late 1980s?

The South African Army by 1987 wasn't designed to fight Soviet tank divisions. On the other hand the Red Army wasn't designed for expeditionary warfare of this type either.

The Soviet experiences from Afghanistan should stop them from sending a "regular" division, but instead get a special volounteer force (like they tried to do in Afghanistan towards the end). Unmotivated conscripts are bad enough in the homeland. But still it would be very difficult for the Red Army - new climate to fight in, probably new and interesting diseases, a totally new logistic structure, cooperation with the Navy against an enemy that has both high- and low tech weapons and is used to infiltration and sabotage. Not to mention the diplomatic problems - the Soviet Union will be seen as agressors and challenging status quo. The US don't need to support South Africa - it could simply declare that the wheat export to SU for some reason has to be cut with 25%.

But let's ignore these basic problems: I guess that the SA simply would retreat from Angola (after destroying bridges, laying mines etc) and let Soviet maintainence and supply undermine the Soviet forces. The T-80 had a gas turbine engine - in other words a fuel guzzler and difficult to keep working in a hot, sandy environment. During this retreat south the SA would leave commando units to track and (if possible) harass the advancing Soviet forces and send other commando units even further north to attack the Soviet infrastructure. Mining some angolan harbours would cripple the whole expedition.

The Soviet force (about a division, probably tanks and BTRs - less use for tracked BMPs, and some extra support units like supply, air defense etc and an air force component) would then have to decide if they would advance south, and how much would stay and guard the supply line.

Without a doubt some small shirmishes will occur, where both sides finds out that the opponent are far better than what they have fought the last years. Some causalties due to pure arrogance and sloppy planning. The air war could go both ways, but my money would be on the SA.

Sooner or later the SA would pick a place to fight, and it would be a place that favored them. And during this time SA diplomats would quietly point out the disadvantages of a Soviet-conquered SA for a lot of governments. France would probably get the question "If the SU succeeds it will repeat, buth this time go for _your_ African clients like Chad etc -so you should help us stop the SU before that happens". The SA would hunt for, and pay very well, decent ATGMs - so the Soviet advantage in tanks would be eliminated.

Frankly I think that a division is to few troops for a successfull mission. If the Soviets guarded their bases in Angola (airfields, harbours, supply dumps etc) and their supply convoys to the front units these front units would be to few to win over the SA. You could use the remaining Cubans for these duties, but even then they are undermanned. And adding soldiers make the logistiscs more difficult.

There was a reason the SU didn't get involved.
 
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