Tag: All Union

Uniforms and Equipment of the Soviet-Romanian War

On By coilerxiiIn Art, Essay, Weird WargamingLeave a comment

An excerpt from an in-universe book by “Kestrel Publishing” (any military history fan will know who this is a reference to) on the gear of the Soviet-Romanian War in All Union. I spent way too much time and had way too much fun making this.

From “Uniforms and Equipment of the Soviet-Romanian War” by Kestrel Publishing

Fig 1. Yefreiter (Corporal), 17th Mobile Corps, Dniester Front

-This representative mechanized infantryman wears uniforms and gear typical of the most advanced mobile corps. He has a low visibility unit patch depicting the phoenix/”Huma Bird” that served as the 17th’s symbol over his PKU-94 army uniform set, which served as the newest uniform set in the army. He also wears a heavy (over 30 pounds) 6B4 ballistic armor vest and the newest UBS-1 helmet.

Gear:

The man depicted in figure 1 is representative of most mobile corps BMP/BMPM infantryman. As a result, he carries a 5.45mm AK-74, still the standard infantry weapon among mobile corps as it would cost too much to fix what wasn’t broken. The soldier also has several grenades, a medical kit, and a pair of NPDS-‘YUKON’ night vision devices (helmet mounted and rifle-mountable handheld). Also of note is the MV-9 rifle grenade in a leg pouch. Similar to the Spanish FTV series, these rifle grenades use a “bullet trap” system where a live round can be fired to trigger them without issue. With a theoretical 150 meter range.

Camouflage:

The 6B4 vest is plain green, while the PKU-94 uniform is colored in the large-spotted “Gumdrop” camouflage worn by mobile corps soldiers.

Notes: 6B4 vests were available in large numbers and were proven to be durable, but were also very heavy. They were the most common mobile corps infantry outfits among BMP troops who spent most of their time in vehicles. MV-9 rifle grenades were an awkward experiment, many viewing them as more trouble than worth given that proper underbarrel launchers, LAWs, and full-size RPGs (to say nothing of vehicles and artillery) were not in short supply. More modern and efficient armored vests were used by mobile corps, but were more limited in supply.

Fig 2. Junior Sergeant, Tank Crewman, 64th Mobile Corps, Dniester Front

-This representative mobile corps tank crewman wears a coverall in “Gumdrop” camo and an internal microphone variant of the UBS-1 helmet (which was meant to be usable by infantry, law enforcement, and vehicle crews alike, starting off as one of the famous ‘face shield helmets’ similar to the Altyn/K63 before being adapted).

Gear: The figure depicted carries an A-91 bullpup PDW in a slung scabbard, a weapon commonly issued to mobile corps vehicle crews. He also has a classic Makarov pistol in a shoulder holster.

Fig 3: Spetsnaz recon troop, 48th SPF Brigade

-This spetsnaz operator is dressed in a “Gorka” canvas suit popularized in Afghanistan, and wearing a similar chest rig. He notably does not have a helmet, instead wearing a bandana/durag and night vision goggle rig.

Gear:

The man in Figure 3 carries a suppressed AK-74 along with the gear for a long-range recon patrol mission (which explains the lack of armor). He wears a Taiwanese-made version of the American PVS-7 night vision goggle system. These more advanced night vision devices (either imported or domestically built) were reserved for the likes of recon, special forces, lighter infantry, and anyone not bound to operate in close proximity to a vehicluar sight. Even in mobiles, regular infantrymen usually kept only the Gen I “YUKON”.

Camouflage:

The Gorka Suit and bandana is in KLMK-Berezka, an existing minimalist but effective camo pattern used for decades in the USSR.

Fig 4: Motor Rifleman, 87th Motor Rifle Division

-This man from a legacy division wears the classic plain khaki Obr88 “Afghanka” and a similarly Cold War vintage SSh-68 helmet. His load bearing equipment is a belt and “Chicom” chest rig, a classic easy to build or obtain type.

Gear: The man in Figure 4 is equipped almost identically to the average man on the eastern side of the Fulda Gap. An AK-74 5.45mm rifle, a basic steel helmet, and nothing an American of the 80s wouldn’t find familiar.

Camouflage: Legacy divisions had not (yet) adopted camouflage as standard issue. However, helmet covers from large fabric tarpaulins and the like were frequently made, as is the case here.

Fig 5: Infantryman, Bulgarian 1st MRD

-One of the higher-equipped Bulgarian formations. He is dressed similarly to a man from a legacy motor rifle division, but his items are of a particularly Bulgarian quality.

Gear: The man has a Bulgarian Arsenal AR, a locally built version of the 7.62x39mm AK-47 which was the general Bulgarian standard issue item. He wears a large “slick” plate carrier (Bulgaria’s prewar army had adopted such things) and has a more modern-looking “Mayflower” chest rig over it, both licensed for production in Bulgaria starting in the late 1980s. His helmet is the slightly different shaped Bulgarian M51/73.

Camouflage: Bulgaria, unlike the USSR, had by this time had a splinter-type camouflage pattern as standard issue for its standing army, and it is shown in the gear depicted in the picture.

Fig 6: Infantryman, Bulgarian 10th Infantry Division (Mobilization)

-This older man stuck in a ‘deep mobilization’ infantry unit is a double anachronism. His uniform is an M15 Bulgarian uniform from World War ONE, along with the green-with-red-stripe peaked cap from the time period and a set of civilian shoes he provided himself. A Bulgarian Chicom-style chest rig serves as the only sign from a distance this is not a reenactor.

Gear: The infantryman has an old surplus AK-47 as his main armament and little else. Most is personally obtained and inadequate. Bulgarian low-tier mobilized infantry like this would have a ratio of around 7 AKs, 2 SKSes, and one Nagant per ten soldiers, varying up and down a little. The smarter officers would give long rifles as designated marksman weapons to their best shots.

Fig 7: Soldier, Romanian Army, 2nd MRD

-The average Romanian soldier was dressed like a Soviet soldier from thirty years earlier and armed like one, and this representative man from the prewar standing 2nd MRD shows it clearly.

-Gear: This man wields an AK with the famous Romanian wood foregrip. His Romanian M73 helmet ironically was introduced in the 1970s to distinguish Romanians from other Warsaw Pact armies.

Fig 8: Mechanized infantryman, Romanian Army, 5th TD

-This Romanian infantryman wore what was called the “Persian Outfit”, a reference to gear made in one of its few remaining allies, Iran, and given to a luckier few Romanian units. His outfit looks more western, a reference to their continued production of American-style equipment first imported in the shah era.

-Gear: This man in a ‘Persian battalion’ carries an Iranian-made AR-15 platform rifle in 7.62x39mm, and wears a helmet with the outer shell of a WW2 American M1 yet with kevlar inserts to add to it. His load bearing equipment could have been straight from the Iran-Iraq War.

Camouflage: The camo is a brushstroke pattern with red, black, and green stripes on a tan backdrop, used frequently by Iran and with a similar color to various Swiss and German patterns. Similarly better-equipped “Chinese battalions” had MAK-90 AKs with distinctive large wooden stocks, Chinese GK80 helmets, and camo in the green-dominant pattern of that country (which was frequently more suited to Southeast Asian jungles than Europe in early autumn).

Fig 9: Romanian Patriotic Guards, Independent Brigade

-The Patriotic Guards were the mass mobilized, bottom-barrel desperation Romanian infantry. They had a distinct uniform built up over decades that meant it could satisfy even the large call-up. A soft blue harking back to the World Wars, this color makes the Soviet-Romanian War the final war as of this book with a mass-produced, standard issue blue uniform for ground troops.

-Gear: This Patriotic Guardsman carries a World War II surplus VZ-24 Mauser Rifle and gear of similar standards. Such desperation measures were not uncommon, as were the effectively homemade grenades and explosive charges. He wears a blue cap. Often such formations would have something like a similar vintage and same caliber ZB-53 tripod machine gun as their primarily (or, to be blunt, often only) heavy weapon.

Tanks of the Soviet-Romanian War

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Main Battle Tanks of All Union’s Soviet-Romanian War, starting with the victors.

Sovereign Union

  • T-94. The star of the tank scenes in All Union, the T-94 was inspired most heavily by the Object 640/Black Eagle prototype with its advanced gas turbine, low turret and crew position, and much more. It also has a heavy remote turret with an aircraft-adapted 23mm autocannon (for improved anti-soft target AND hitting things not worth a main gun shell). This was an actual proposal. Most advanced Sovereign Union tank of the war, used only in some mobile corps.
  • T-84. The T-84 was chosen as the “low” tank in the high-low mix (ie T-64/80 and T-72 in real life). The real reason was as a bribe to the Ukrainian SSR where a potential situation was defused by All-Union President Yatchenko. Ukrainian firms would get preferential choices in procurement while Crimea was handed back over. T-84s were used in mobile corps and some high-category legacy divisions and had the most advanced suites of the “125mm classics.”
  • 125mm Classics: IE the T-64, T-72, and T-80, in various states of upgrade. Even the mobile corps had many of these. The 7th Mobile Corps famously had only T-64s and BMP-2s. Not much else to say except that T-64s were disproportionately used because so many units were drawn from the Ukrainian SSR where they were historically based.
  • T-62/55s: These classics were minimum viable tanks that did minimum viable tank things, seeing service in low-category legacy divisions.

Bulgaria

  • T-72. The most advanced Bulgarian tank, which showed their limitations compared to the Sovereign Union.
  • T-62. Bulgaria was the only NSWP country to use the T-62, and they saw extensive use (and losses). Likewise with the T-55, the most common Bulgarian tank.
  • T-34. The absolute contrast between the electronically linked supertanks and Bulgaria fielding hundreds of T-34/85s in its crazed mobilization was one of the big ironies of the war.
  • LPT-100. A fictional tank based on a real proposal, this like several other semi-improvised vehicles could be built in Bulgaria, so it was used by the Bulgarians. Others included APCs on bus chassis and uparmored jeeps from local factories.

Weird Wargaming: The All Union US Military Part 2: Air Force(s)

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Part two of this alternate history series.

Background/USAF

Until September 9, 1998, the US Air Force and Navy was mostly in a holding pattern. About the only large procurement decision was going ahead with the A-6F and F-14E Super Tomcat programs due to the continued USSR, leaving the Super Hornet as a paper plane in this timeline.

Then the Sovereign Union destroyed 80% of Romania’s air force on the ground in minutes, and panic set in. V/STOL research and dispersed operations immediately began taking the highest priority, and as an interim measure, the first major foreign-built fighter in American service since the AV-8A was made in the form of the F-21 Griffin, aka the Gripen. A huge fight ensued over whether to phase out the F-16 or keep it. The results were mixed.

US Naval Aviation

The US Navy and Marine Corps have a mixture of Super Tomcats, F/A-18A-Cs, Sea Gripens, F-24 NATFs, and A-6Fs in a support role. The Intruders and Hornets are being phased out. No, this is not just an excuse to run scenarios in CMO.

5th Gen/Updates

A lot of helicopters, high-performance VTOLs, and the F-24 being “Phantomed” into the Air Force as well. The equivalent of the F-35 is just the F-35 B/C equivalent, since a pathological fear of normal air bases exists. (Ironically the Sovereign Union does NOT have quite a fear despite knowing what it can dish out, but that’s another story).

Soviet Romanian War At Sea

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Naval forces in All Union’s Soviet Romanian War were bound to play a peripheral role. Romania had a small and weak navy, a relatively short coastline, and massive conventional amphibious landings were geographically dubious and militarily even more so. Constanta was overrun and surrendered almost immediately after the war began. Even Soviet historiography talks very little about what they and the Bulgarians did at sea, mostly just mentioning bombardment, surveillance, transport, and other routine supporting tasks. Most naval infantry units fought on land.

Yet it would be a mistake to assume that the navies did nothing or that there was no drama. Although overshadowed by the crossing of the Danube and the massive deep airborne operations, one of the largest postwar aerial/amphibious landings was conducted in Tulcea County.

  • Units near Bolhrad would cross/lift/fly over or infiltrate via smaller boat.
  • Heliborne units from the Black Sea would stage and make large landings in the depths. Black Sea Fleet aircraft and ships would naturally support them.
  • The Tulcea operation was considered lower priority and was assigned fewer resources and, uncharacteristically, had its commanders given instructions to not try and force it if the initial advance stalled. (In contrast, the Danube Front units tasked with taking the Constana area were told to rightfully treat it as a high-priority one).

Notable events:

  • September 8-9: Landings. Many inoperable Romanian ships destroyed in port.
  • September 8: Romanian corvette M290 sunk by SS-N-14 missile. Romanian submarine SC-02 sunk.
  • September 9: Sole successful Romanian air attack against Soviet Warships. Missile craft Kittivyek sunk by Romanian MiG-21s. Two other unsuccessful attacks. Five aircraft and four ASMs shot down.
  • September 10: Gunboat PSKR-710 destroyed by mine. Four Romanian craft sunk. Romanian submarines Pastrav, SC-01 sunk.
  • September 11: Final attempted Romanian air/missile attack on naval targets. Completely unsuccessful. Romanian submarine SC-05 sunk by Soviet submarine S-39 in the first post-WW2 mutually submerged sinking. Soviet landing ship SDK-303 sunk by mine.
  • September 13: Tulcea operation completed with mutual link-up.
  • September 14: Final surface engagements of the war, a duel between small boats in the north and Bulgarian ships sinking an attempt to flee southeast into the open ocean, presumably to Turkey.
  • September 16: Final naval engagement. Romanian submarine Ton sunk.

The main takeaway was that ASW was successful (no Soviet ships lost, no disruption) but it was under ideal circumstances (being able to just smother a small area).

Rates of Advance in (Fictional) Practice

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So a while ago I did the obsessively number-crazed Soviets studies on their planned rates of advance. Looking at my descriptions and map games writing in All Union, I’ve thought “hmmm, how could this go in practice? Or at least fictional speculative practice?”

The Theory

Against NATO, 40-60 km a day on average was the goal. Against a weaker opponent (like one based on the Chinese conventional forces at the time), it was even more, around 70-100. By the 1990s GENFORCE (what I patterned the mobile corps off of), it was down to ideally 30-40, albeit against a stronger opponent.

Romania in Practice

As it stands, I focused mainly on the 17th Mobile Corps, and had a (fairly) detailed route after much Google Mapping. It left a line of departure from near Chernivtsi on September 8, 1998, and came to a final stop around Sibiu on the 16th-17th. On the way it cleared out the important crossroad town of Toplita, crossed the Carpathian mountain roads, and fended off an attack on its bridgehead near Dulcea.

Map is a vague generality. Different subunits progressed around different mountain roads and frontages. Length is hard enough, don’t ask me to do width.. :p

Using a pure napkin calc, this comes to 285 kilometers from the Chernivtsi border region to Sibiu, which leads to 8-9 days of high-intensity fighting, which means a very rough 30-35 kilometers a day. So not bad by GENFORCE standards, especially with a rough terrain making up for a weaker on paper opponent and with the counterattack at Dulcea costing it an entire day.

So not too bad….

The Problem

Of course the definition of “rate of advance” is incredibly arbitrary (does it mean anything in that unit, so can we count a patrol of BRDMs moving far ahead and encountering no resistance before circling and stopping, then the main force reaching that spot without issue later?) and depends a lot, as anyone would admit, on circumstances.

In the same war, many Danube Front formations barely made it past the river, and some that did moved at the equivalent of a brisk walk. But clearly a unit of press-ganged Bulgarians with 1940s equipment having to do an opposed crossing of a very long river and then facing coherent defenders with many fortifications is not the same as a high-tech, high priority force smashing across the plains against a broken foe.

What Artillery Mobility Means

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From the Heavy OPFOR Tactical:

Now a 199X Soviet-patterned formation isn’t going to be representative of everything (in particular, the commander is not always going to double as a forward observer), but it’s worth noting that the movement involves narrow movement around different parts of the same observed, prepared area, not wide ranging, sweeping kiting.

Now redeployment is another story, and it’s where the artillery is going to be more inherently vulnerable and varies a lot on the circumstances. IE not so much in a stabilized front like WWI, post-1951 Korea, or contemporary Ukraine, but a lot in a classic Fuldapocalypse, 2003 Iraq, or the Southern African brush. It also depends on how much the artillery has to actually fire (because if it’s forced into moving/hiding, then it’s effectively suppressed).

So for the fictional case study of the Soviet-Romanian War:

  • The northern front is going to be advancing extremely rapidly, close to the best-case paper projections. Deployed artillery will cover the armies when they have to stop, but even the Sovereign Union will struggle to keep their mega-barrages during the rapid advance. Thankfully (for the invaders) enemy counter-artillery capabilities are very weak, especially in the context.
  • The southern front has a lot fewer SPGs (and even less advanced ones) and has to bludgeon its way across a very wide river and through fortified areas. There’s just less room to move and the opponent’s capabilities (due to their better units and C3I on this front) are more dangerous.

BTR-92 Squad

On By coilerxiiIn Essay, Weird Wargaming1 Comment

First I did my past piece on Mobile Corps squads, then came the BTR-92. Now the most ahistorically Soviet part of All Union’s military can be made with the two mixed together. In-universe, the creation of this squad was an extremely involved and controversial process.

  • Unlike previous examples, including the mobile corps own BMP/IFV squads, this operates two organizational fireteams. With lots of teeth-gritting, the doctrine emphasizes that “if necessary”, it can operate as a unitary squad or simple overall fire/overall maneuver element. In the Soviet-Romanian War, many did.
  • This has a full-time deputy squad leader for dismounts, whose job is pretty obvious. An emphasis was put on out-of-vehicle operations as these units were designed to spend more time outside.
  • The PDW is the A-91M. The LMG is the “Vepr”, one of many bullpup RPK proposals. The light RPG is in real life the South African (!) Denel FT5 (since a post-apartheid government would be very close to a surviving USSR, and since a post-apartheid arms industry would be very desperate, a license deal for this Goldilocks Rocket Launcher is not impossible).
  • This can be detailed in the Kestrel Publishing entry: Clash: Soviet BTR vs. Romanian TAB . Despite the name, about 80% of that book is just devoted to the Mobile Corps BTR reformation. The pieces on the Romanians basically amounted, cruelly but not inaccurately to “They just followed 196X BTR doctrine, had the equipment to match, and lost”.

The BTR-92

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Stable Diffusion has given me the chance to bring a vehicle from All Union to life. Now I had a vision of what the “BTR-92”, the wheeled mainstay of the Mobile Corps, looked like, but on the pages it was described only as “blocky” (and wheeled).

So how I made it: I first smushed some elements together externally. The top and turret came from other APCs, while the bottom (possibly meant to symbolize it being built on that truck’s chassis) came from a Ural-4320. Then I used it as the outline for a controlnet to avoid the “AI doesn’t know what shape to make it” issue.

It’s of course not perfect and with some nitpicking/hindsight, I’d probaby make something that looks less like a low-end APC/MRAP and more like a futuristic advanced one. But it’s still the general shape I wanted, and it was still very fun to make.

Soviet-Romanian Air War

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With All Union now on a little cooldown, I figured I’d share my exposition/notes about the Soviet-Romanian air war:

Overall course of the war: Starting on September 8, 1998, the Sovereign Union invaded Romania with two fronts (army groups). The northern Dniester Front was arguably the most advanced and powerful fighting force in history at that time. That combined with good terrain made it sweep south in close to nine days. The southern Danube Front had a more difficult task in the form of more fortifications,more cohesive defense, the daunting task of crossing a massive river opposed, and the bulk of it consisting of forcibly mobilized Bulgarians. Still, after the same nine days they had encircled Bucharest and linked up with the Dniester Front. For the rest of the month they prepared to storm the city, continued bombardment, and tried to push for a surrender that eventually came.

In the end, the USSR lost around 3,500 soldiers and the Bulgarians and other minor allies around 7,000. Romanian casualties are almost literally uncountable with at least 70,000 being essentially confirmed and with estimates as high as 120,000 KIA.

Now for the air:

The USSR’s air force was a curious mixture of everything from the hyper-advanced Su-37 Fermion fighter to dozens of ancient Il-28s. In general, METT-TC was used to allocate things, with older planes doing area strikes with smother/splash damage weapons in the daytime and newer ones using PGMs at night whenever possible. While not perfect, it was extremely devastating.

Romania:

The initial fire strike took out around five hundred Romanian aircraft on the ground, over 80% of its total. This caused a lot of panic in the USAF after the war. A few planes made it through, most notably in the defeat of a Danube Front forward detachment at Alexandria very early on. Otherwise Romanian aircraft were limited to tiny nuisance strikes and suffered very heavy losses while doing so, though surprisingly few to the vaunted SAMs. (Total air superiority+tons of friendly Soviet aircraft = a very short ROE leash and lots of fighter opportunities).