Scandinavian testers needed

[low_bidder]

I guessed at the "Tank Battalion ÖN" and got pretty close. I figured on the Rail line taking iron ore south bringing back some armor so I replaced one Tank Co, with light tanks, thinking they could get more on the train.
The bulk of NATO's anti-tank capability is in the US Marines Weapons coy. There are 3 of them with 4 Dragon launchers each. A smart NATO player will use his infantry anti-tank teams to bother the Soviets and save the armor for dealing with the convoy. I am autotesting it now and am thinking of some timing changes.
Most players will use the Marine helios for recon. That is just wrong and I'm thinking of a way to stop it. Any officer that did that would be relieved of command. The asset is to valuable to lose.

[Vesku]

The closest I've come to Scandinavia is Copenhagen, which a Norwegian once assured me, isn't Scandinavian.

Scandinavia is the piece of land north of Denmark, there's some water between them to make it easier to tell them apart :)

[wulfir]

I guessed at the "Tank Battalion ÖN" and got pretty close. I figured on the Rail line taking iron ore south bringing back some armor so I replaced one Tank Co, with light tanks, thinking they could get more on the train.

During the Cold War Sweden practised a dispersed mobilisation of forces. Depots were established all over the country, most were camoflaged to look like farm buildings or other non-military installations. Those depots contained uniforms, weapons, vehicles and all the other gear neccessary.

Typically a soldier would have been instructed to rendezvous at some given location from where he would be transported to his mob depot. There he would slip on his uniform (probably an older type) zero his weapon and test the NBC protecitve gear. After that the unit would shake down and deploy to its wartime mission. Wartime units, contrary to the peacetime formations, did not mobilise at the regimental installations or other garrisons.

Because the north of Sweden is sparsly populated some of the manpower needed to man the units in the north had to be transported from the south. Likewise hospitals had to be emptied on patients and transported south to make hospital space availiable for wounded troops. To do this nearly every transport asset in society was conscripted - busses, trucks of trucking companies, trains, airplanes, even suitable private cars were assigned to the military. In the initial stages it would mostly be a question of transporting people as their gear was prepositioned, but in the later stages - in the counterattack phase - it would be neccessary to bring up the bulk of brigades from the south.

[low_bidder]

I sent you files for one of the games.

[wulfir]

I sent you files for one of the games.

Got them!

[wulfir]

Some notes on Soviet units with Arctic Warfare mission:

The Soviets fielded a number of Motorised Rifle Divisions adapted for Arctic Warfare ("Mot Rifle Div North") where the tank regiment had been downgraded to a tank Bn - IIRC during the 80s the most common tank type in Leningrad Milo was T-54/55. The artillery units were mostly equipped with towed D-30 type guns. The Motorised Rifle Regiments were equipped with MTLB (superior mobility compared to the BMP series, a BMP-1 could not negotiate 50cm of snow cover = very common during a normal winter). Usually the rifle regiments also inlcuded a tank company with PT-76 light tanks. The Division Recon Bn usually used PT-76 and BMP-1, or in some cases BMP-2 - even though they had limited mobility in winter.

[low_bidder]

I should have talked to you sooner. MY Soviet Armored Regiment has T-72's and BMP-1's. OH well, IT's summer and this is a major effort so we will say they moved up the first team. I just got screwed by Youtube going google. I wanted to include videos of various tank clips. I was feeling real clever after figuring out how to use a random variable in a table to get a different video clip every time the page reloads, in an Old Dogs new tricks sort of way. I found lots of non-Youtube clips but I might have to save them as part of the Web page. I suspect that will push my overhead past the limits for free web sites. I really don't want to give up my eye candy.

[wulfir]

I should have talked to you sooner. MY Soviet Armored Regiment has T-72's and BMP-1's.

Not every Soviet formation in the Leningrad or Baltic Military District were equipped "Arctic style" , some had a regular mot rifle div organisation. AFAIK both T-72s and BMP-1s were present. T-80s started to appear in numbers when Soviet forces were withdrawn from Eastern Europe.

Some Soviet Mot Rifle Division North units didn't even have MTLBs but had to make do with GT-T amphibous tractors...

[wulfir]

Some notes on Norway:



The Norwegian defence was hinged on the so called "Lyngen Position" a narrow piece of land along the Lyngenfjord where defensivie positions originally had been built by the Germans during WWII. It was considered near impossible for the Soviets to force their way through and that they would likely try to outflank Lyngen - the most likely being through amphibous landings.
Going through Sweden and Finland was deemed highly unlikely because of the expected resistance from Swedish and Finnish forces and the severe limitations of terrain and lack of infrastructure.

The Finnmark region of north Norway, however, was considered impossible to defend and was to be more or less given up. Norway had about 5000 troops allocated to this region and some 30 000 near Lyngen. Those troops in the Finnmark region were to offer maximum resistance but it was expected to last for hours, in the best case for a few days, before the Soviets reached Lyngen. All roads between the Soviet border and Lyngen were to be destroyed. Every house, barn, shack were to be burned when the civilian population was evacuated. The Norwegians even wanted to get rid of the reindeer herds (to deny the Russians this possible food source) from the region although this was hard to do in practice.

Norway were also to be reinforced by various NATO forces, USMC, AMF Land, Canadian CAST Brigade, but none of these units seem to have been meant to fight in Finnmark.

This is just a FYI. Don't let it get in the way of a funky scneario.

[low_bidder]

Actually it ties in with Scenario AFNORTH #3 pretty good. IN that game, the USA is setting up an experimental ABM site along the coastline of either Sweden or Norway. Not sure which nation the little town belongs to. The idea is to give the ABM's a shot at ICBM's in the boost phase. That will allow NATO to threaten Russia with nukes if they don't pull back from central Europe.
Politburo sees it as an opportunity to grab some state of the art ABM technology. So they send a Para Battalion after it.
I'm testing it now, about half way thru. Once done I'll make the adjustments my testing discloses and try to con/hustle/ beg somebody into testing it.
I'm gonna see if I can chage the carry cost of a SAM to where a Mil can pick it up. I have civilians representing the technicians but it would be nice to also have some equipment to steal for those technicians to work on.