So the conventional forces of the United States in All Union, unlike its superpower counterparts, have not been the most central to any of my drafts (yet…). Therefore I figure I should infodump some of my musings on it right now.
Background
The reformation of the USSR brought about a period of aimlessness among the US Army. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the former Warsaw Pact states forming an independent de facto buffer, priorities became much lower. Going from all of Germany to the northern tip of Norway and Thrace is somewhat of a downgrade.
That being said, there has been a shift of forces to the south. The US 9th Infantry Division is in Turkish Thrace to, in the event of a Thraciapocalypse, serve as a mobile counterattack force. The lighter 51st Infantry is in Northeastern Greece near the triple border to make sure the rival NATO countries play nice serve as a tripwire for any Soviet-Bulgarian push south.
The need for “Americi-BTRs” that historically was filled by the Strykers came in the form of LAVs, both the LAV-25/Piranha of real life USMC fame for that branch and the unrelated but similarly named LAV-300/600 series for the Army.
The medium-ization of the Army came as followed: Two brigades in existing heavy divisions with their Bradley mech inf brigades replaced with LAV mech inf brigades ie BMP-BTR mixes, two “medium-heavy” divisions based around LAV-300s with a divisional tank battalion that would stay behind on lower-intensity deployments, and one “medium-light” division with the LAV-300 series, more uparmored HMMVs as the infantry carrier, and no organic tanks. For the USMC, the Seventh Marine Division came into being, along with Combined Arms Regiments (mixes of tanks and LAV-Bisons proposed in real life) for the three active USMC divisions.
More to come…
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