British light forces 1989

[AnthonyBoscia]

Some on-topic questions for the off-topic guys, to get a wider perspective.

I'm trying to work out equipment and organization for some British infantry units for a Civ scenario set in the summer of 1989. The standard unit size in the game is brigade level, though some forces are represented by battalions.

For the Parachute Regiment, I've got three active battalions (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and three TA (4th, 10th, and 15th). The question is how to organize them. Do they all fall under the 5th Airborne Brigade, or is that a mission-based formation with a brigade HQ? I've also heard that a Parachute Regiment Group HQ was established that year, which served the role of Brigade HQ. For game reasons, I'm trying to determine whether this should be one large brigade, or perhaps two separate formations (one active and one TA). Not sure what degree of readiness the TA bns were kept at. Also, I might be able to make a Para unit, but would like to get the uniform semi-correct. I'm guessing DPM-85 Para smocks with civ-colored kit and a nice big rucksack. But would they have switched from L1A1 to SA80 by this time? Not sure if the paras wear their berets on real world missions either, but figured it would be a distinctive addition to the unit for game purposes.

Second, was 24 Airmobile Brigade simply a light infantry force, or a true heli-borne formation? The info I have shows two battalions, with artillery, engineers, and an attack helo regiment, but no organic rotary wing transport. Trying to decide the strength of the unit in-game, as well as either making it airdrop on its own or simply able to load into helicopters like other light infantry.

Finally, I'm working on how to be represent Royal Marines, SBS, and SAS. 3 Commando Brigade could be a single, powerful unit, or divided into Commandos which would be more flexible but individually weaker. I also think having the SAS as separate regiments instead of a monolithic force would be more logical.

Anyway, any thoughts or ideas on the subject are welcome. Thanks.

 

[Phrossack]

Ask Flying Pig.

 

[Cutlass]

Who is away for a week or so. You could try to bring this to his attention when he gets back.

 

[Flying Pig]

I found it.

I'm trying to work out equipment and organization for some British infantry units for a Civ scenario set in the summer of 1989. The standard unit size in the game is brigade level, though some forces are represented by battalions.

A British battalion is the size of an American regiment; that is, roughly a third of the size of a brigade: there's no way that it could hope to compete with one for firepower. When deployed on operations, a battalion becomes a 'battlegroup' which is a formation centred around the battalion with supporting assets (REME, logistic, RMP and so on) tacked on; this is the basic deployable unit. A brigade is a mixed formation of infantry, armour and artillery, and therefore much less specialised - we still have categorised brigades, but the difference between a 'light' brigade and an 'armoured' brigade is much smaller than that between a light battalion (ie; 2 PARA) and an armoured regiment (ie; the RSDG as they are now). That said, the British commitment overseas to combat operations is normally in terms of a brigade - the Falklands was two brigades (3 and 5), Northern Ireland was normally managed by three, and the force in Afghanistan today is structured around one.

For the Parachute Regiment, I've got three active battalions (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and three TA (4th, 10th, and 15th). The question is how to organize them. Do they all fall under the 5th Airborne Brigade, or is that a mission-based formation with a brigade HQ?

5 Airborne was, after 1982, our 'spearhead' along with 3 Commando Brigade; it would have been shipped off to an emergency to provide well-trained infantry boots on the ground quickly. Territorial battalions were not routinely called up en masse; the role of the TA is to fill gaps in regular formations. Before 1998, this meant that individual men (most common) or (less often) formed platoons and companies, with their own officers, would be sent to fill in the orbat of weakened regular battalions, but it would be unusual to see a formed TA battalion or brigade going into battle - although they did conduct exercises as such. Note that the parachute TA battalions were not attached to 5 Brigade; 4 PARA was part of 15 Brigade until 1999, and the others were disassociated until the Parachute Regiment Group was established in 1989.

I've also heard that a Parachute Regiment Group HQ was established that year, which served the role of Brigade HQ.

Not quite. The PRG was the grouping of the three territorial battalions, and existed to reinforce BAOR; essentially an extension of what the TA paras did anyway. Men were still being sent to reinforce 1, 2 and 3 PARA, particularly in Northern Ireland.

For game reasons, I'm trying to determine whether this should be one large brigade, or perhaps two separate formations (one active and one TA).

Definitely not one large brigade; it would be more accurate to make it a single brigade with an increased healing capacity to represent TA reinforcements.

Not sure what degree of readiness the TA bns were kept at.

Theoretical readiness, but they were nothing like the level of regular soldiers; it's only since Afghanistan that they've even come close. Large-scale deployments of the TA would have been a last-resort measure.

Also, I might be able to make a Para unit, but would like to get the uniform semi-correct. I'm guessing DPM-85 Para smocks with civ-colored kit and a nice big rucksack. But would they have switched from L1A1 to SA80 by this time?

The weapons came out in 1985, and production was finished in 1994; the infantry were first in line to get them, and in Kuwait in 1991 everybody was using the thing. Special Forces, of course, totally ignored this and carried on with their M16s, although those of us unfortunate enough to be palmed off to working with (gasp!) the Americans in roles unlikely to involve actually having to kill anything were made to carry SA80s to keep up appearances. Or something.

Not sure if the paras wear their berets on real world missions either, but figured it would be a distinctive addition to the unit for game purposes.

We wore berets whenever we felt we could; they're much more comfortable when you're not actually having to attack anyone. In the Falklands we had them on our heads most of the time, then switched to helmets to go into battle. It's also part of the escalation of force - the dress, equipment and stance of a soldier sends out a message, and so is managed carefully. In the least dangerous areas you have a beret on, working dress, and rifle slung like a rucksack behind your back; as they get more dangerous you bring the rifle round to the low port position, then exchange the beret for a helmet and body armour, then fix your bayonet. The last person to go into battle in berets was Lord Lovat attacking Pegasus Bridge, and that went... badly.

Second, was 24 Airmobile Brigade simply a light infantry force, or a true heli-borne formation? The info I have shows two battalions, with artillery, engineers, and an attack helo regiment, but no organic rotary wing transport. Trying to decide the strength of the unit in-game, as well as either making it airdrop on its own or simply able to load into helicopters like other light infantry.

The helicopters would have been provided by the RAF. Since they would have been one-use - that is, the RAF will drop you off, but not follow you around - it's better to have them as airdropped units with a low chance of interception.

Finally, I'm working on how to be represent Royal Marines, SBS, and SAS. 3 Commando Brigade could be a single, powerful unit, or divided into Commandos which would be more flexible but individually weaker.

3 Commando should work in the same way as 5 Airborne, since their roles were almost identical.

I also think having the SAS as separate regiments instead of a monolithic force would be more logical.

22 SAS (the others are territorial, and the way that the SAS works means that they never deploy more than individual men) does not work in the same way as any other battalion; the only time since 1945 that the vast majority of it has been in one place was the Gulf War. Squadrons are typically deployed to threatres, which break down into mostly-autonomous troops used for reconnaisance, raiding and generally making a nuisance of themselves. When I designed it for my own mod, I had them as invisible and relatively weak troops with a high withdrawal chance; able to reconnitre and pillage easily, unlikely to cause major damage but hard to kill as well.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Thanks for the helpful responses, Flying Pig.

A British battalion is the size of an American regiment; that is, roughly a third of the size of a brigade: there's no way that it could hope to compete with one for firepower.

Regiments are uncommon in the US Arny, and for most units the regimental designation is purely for historic purposes and has no higher headquarters. For the few regiments that have their own headquarters (75th Ranger Regiment, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment), these are brigade-sized units. So it would seem UK battalions and US bns are equivilant, ie. made of several companies, and about 1/3 of a brigade. It's the Troop/Squadron that screwed me up at first: for Royal Engineers, etc. it equates to Platoon/Company, while in US Cavalry units it's similar to Company/Battalion.

When deployed on operations, a battalion becomes a 'battlegroup' which is a formation centred around the battalion with supporting assets (REME, logistic, RMP and so on) tacked on; this is the basic deployable unit...That said, the British commitment overseas to combat operations is normally in terms of a brigade

Cool, good to know. Individual battalions are uncommon in the game as the basic unit size is brigade (for the West) and regiment (for Warsaw Treaty folks). An example of a battalion-sized unit in the scenario would be UK forces in Gibraltar, though perhaps this would be beefed up in wartime?

For UK forces reinforcing West Germany and AFNORTH, brigades seem the way to go.

5 Airborne ... Definitely not one large brigade; it would be more accurate to make it a single brigade with an increased healing capacity to represent TA reinforcements.

Great, that makes thing more clear. Part of translating real units to civ terms has been determining where they can be deployed as individual units or where they act as replacements/reinforcements to existing units. For example, a unit that is healing in a city and regaining hit points has to be drawing men and equipment from somewhere. This comes up a lot with aviation assets, where just because a country has four squadrons worth of aircraft doesn't mean they can maintain four squadrons.

The weapons came out in 1985, and production was finished in 1994; the infantry were first in line to get them, and in Kuwait in 1991 everybody was using the thing. Special Forces, of course, totally ignored this and carried on with their M16s, although those of us unfortunate enough to be palmed off to working with (gasp!) the Americans in roles unlikely to involve actually having to kill anything were made to carry SA80s to keep up appearances. Or something.

Unit making is new to me so we'll see what I can come up with. Sounds like SA80 for the Para unit and M16 for Special forces would be best, although it's very hard to discern at Civ scale.

We wore berets whenever we felt we could; they're much more comfortable when you're not actually having to attack anyone. In the Falklands we had them on our heads most of the time, then switched to helmets to go into battle. It's also part of the escalation of force - the dress, equipment and stance of a soldier sends out a message, and so is managed carefully. In the least dangerous areas you have a beret on, working dress, and rifle slung like a rucksack behind your back; as they get more dangerous you bring the rifle round to the low port position, then exchange the beret for a helmet and body armour, then fix your bayonet. The last person to go into battle in berets was Lord Lovat attacking Pegasus Bridge, and that went... badly.

So the helmet would be more logical for the game, but the beret would be more distinctive. I still need to get a beret 3d prop. I'll see what I can do.

The helicopters would have been provided by the RAF. Since they would have been one-use - that is, the RAF will drop you off, but not follow you around - it's better to have them as airdropped units with a low chance of interception.

3 Commando should work in the same way as 5 Airborne, since their roles were almost identical.

OK, good to know.

22 SAS (the others are territorial, and the way that the SAS works means that they never deploy more than individual men) does not work in the same way as any other battalion; the only time since 1945 that the vast majority of it has been in one place was the Gulf War. Squadrons are typically deployed to threatres, which break down into mostly-autonomous troops used for reconnaisance, raiding and generally making a nuisance of themselves. When I designed it for my own mod, I had them as invisible and relatively weak troops with a high withdrawal chance; able to reconnitre and pillage easily, unlikely to cause major damage but hard to kill as well.

Then it seems that 22 SAS should be a single unique unit. Since the squares in the game represent large geographical areas, you could almost say that it represents X number of teams operating within a given area. US Special Forces battalions and Soviet Army, Navy, and GRU diversionary troops work in a similar fashion to what you described. That is: roughly battalion-sized (and thus smaller and weaker than combat brigades), good offensive, low defense, airdrop, invisible, detect invisible, bombard (for blowing stuff up), and stealth attack. US Army SF units also have the enslave ability as part of their Stay Behind mission, giving them a one in three chance to spawn anti-communist guerrillas. The Soviets operate both small battalions and entire Spetsnaz brigades, which can be used for things such as trying to catch ballistic submarines in ports.

In an early build I wanted to add assassination missions as well, with VIP 'King' units. With over 6000 units on the map to start, however, I've had to cut out some of this stuff. So the Soviet player will not have the opportunity to interrupt breakfast time for Mr. Kohl or Mrs. Thatcher.

 

[Flying Pig]

If you look in my signature, you'll find a United Kingdom civ, which includes the SAS unit with a beret and M16 rifle. I had more on my old windows, but I'm afraid I've lost all of that.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Ahh, it would be an excellent addition, if only the scenario was for Civ 4.

I did enjoy reading some of your signature articles, though.