Page:Fm100-2-3 - The Soviet Army, Troops, Organization, and Equipment.pdf/8

FM 100-2-3 orchestrate and control TVD-wide strategic operations as directed by the HCF in support of VGK campaign plans.

Forces within a TVD can consist of as few as one front or as many as five or six. Other forces allocated to a TVD can include fleets, airborne divisions, tactical aviation, strategic aviation, military transport aviation, air defense forces, and strategic rocket forces.

There ate 14 military districts in the USSR and 4 groups of forces in Eastern Europe. The Eastern European groups of forces include—


 * The Western Group of Forces (WGF) in Germany.
 * The Northern Group of Forces (NGF) in Poland.
 * The Central Group of Forces (CGF) in Czechoslovakia.
 * The Southern Group of Forces (SGF)in Hungary.

In peacetime, each of these districts and groups of forces is an administrative headquarters directly subordinate to the MOD. In wartime, the Soviets will organize them into fronts for combat operations. The military districts will continue to function as territorial commands, serving as mobilization and training bases and providing logistical and other support services.

The front is the largest field formation in wartime. It is an operational and administrative unit whose size and composition are subject to wide variation depending on its mission and situation. Roughly equivalent to a US/NATO army group, a front can include three to five armies. Other forces organic or attached to a front can include artillery, missile, air defense, engineer, chemical, signal, reconnaissance, and rear service units. They can also include aviation, airborne, air assault, airmobile, and special purpose forces.

The Army is the highest peacetime combined arms formation. The Soviet ground forces designate two types of armies: the combined arms army (CAA) and the tank army (TA). While both types are actually combined arms organizations, a Soviet CAA will normally have a greater number of motorized rifle divisions (MRDs), while a TA will have a greater number of tank divisions (TDs). By altering the mix of MRDs, TDs, and artillery and missile support in the army organizations, the Soviets gain flexibility in either offensive or defensive toles. An army can operate in different geographical areas and under various operational constraints. Besides its complement of two to five maneuver divisions, a typical army of either type will normally have artillery, missile, air defense, aviation, engineer, chemical, signal, reconnaissance, and rear support units.

Soviet maneuver divisions are well-balanced, powerful, and mobile fighting units. They have a combined arms structure as well as a comprehensive array of combat support (CS) and combat service support (CSS) elements. In early 1987, there were 211 active Soviet maneuver divisions: 150 MRDs, 52 TDs, 7 airborne divisions, and 2 static defense divisions. The totals did not include 2 new army corps (NAC) and 5 mobilization divisions.

The basic structures of the three types of divisions (motorized rifle, tank, and airborne) appear in Figure 1-1. While this manual presents "type" Soviet divisions, different configurations and different categories of readiness exist among actual divisions.

Divisions receive new items of equipment according to the priorities established by the MOD. High-priority formations, such as the Soviet forces in the Western TVD, are usually the first to receive modern equipment. When they replace older material, the Soviets send that older equipment to lower-priority units in the interior of the USSR or to reserve stocks. Late-model T-64/72/80 tanks constitute about one-third of the USSR's tanks. While older T-55 and T-62 tanks constitute moat of the remainder, over 1,500 T-80s are currently deployed opposite NATO and nearly 75 percent of the 19,000 Soviet tanks in the Western Theater are T-64/72/80 models.

Since the mid-1960s, the Soviets have been building a force capable of fighting decisively at all levels of conflict. Recent improvements in force capability include—

* Modernization of nuclear and conventional weapons.


 * Marked increases in the quantity and quality of conventional fire support (air and artillery) available to ground maneuver formations.
 * Changes in organizational structure that generally make fire support systems (air and artillery) more directly responsive to the supported commander.