New Information about Soviet Tactics

A few new books about the Soviets and the Red Army are available at QuikManeuvers.com
Out recently, one about the NKVD Secret Police, and two of the newest series called Espionage Manuals: Soviet Spy Methods, and Soviet Defector and Tradecraft
An interesting book about to be released on Soviet Battle Norms (for those of you who are scholars of the Military Sciences) should be available later this week.
See what QuikManeuvers books are available on the Red Army and Soviets

A History Lesson...

Red Army World War II forces created special assault (or “storm”) detachments and groups, specifically developed for independent action in urban terrain. Each detachment included a rifle battalion, a sapper company, an armor company or self-propelled assault gun battery, two mortar batteries, a cannon or howitzer battery, 1 or 2 batteries of divisional artillery, and a flamethrower platoon.
The detachment was subdivided into 3 to 6 assault groups as well as a support group and a reserve. Each assault group, in essence a rifle company (the source says “platoon or company,” but the structure described seems more appropriate to a company), included 1 or 2 sapper detachments, an anti-tank rifle detachment, 2 to 5 individually carried flamethrowers, smoke devices, 3 or 4 other man-portable weapons, and 2 or 3 tanks or self-propelled assault guns. If necessary, groups could be further subdivided to better focus specifically on such missions as fire, command, reserves, reconnaissance, and obstacle clearing. Individual soldiers were supplied with a large number of grenades and explosives. Training and preparation for the urban environment emphasized independent thought and action from each soldier and warned of the pitfalls of standardized procedure.

Was all of this forgotten between the years of World War II and the post–Cold War battles in Grozny? To an extent, it was. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Soviet analysts and soldiers diligently studied the urban fighting of the past, but as time went on, attention focused elsewhere. By the 1980s, urban combat was no longer the focus of in-depth exercises, and military textbooks ignored the issue almost entirely. By 1994, neither the Ministry of Defense nor any of the other government organizations with troops at their command had any forces geared specifically to urban combat. The last such force was dissolved in February 1994, at which time 400 of its 430 officers retired.
This is not to say that Russian forces were entirely untrained for operations in urban environments. The overall excellently prepared Spetsnaz (special forces units) and paratroopers continued to train for some urban contingencies. The preparation of Spetsnaz and FSB snipers, for instance, focused almost exclusively on urban situations. But with the end of the Cold War, the prognosis for urban deployments was that they would involve primarily small-scale counter terrorist actions, not full-blown warfare. Therefore, the special forces and others prepared for exactly this sort of contingency and Russian urban training sites supported such counter terrorism preparation, as well as perhaps some peacekeeping training. As a result, the motorized rifle troops that formed the bulk of the force in Grozny continued to prepare for the open-terrain warfare that was expected when the Cold War turned hot. Only five or six of the 151total hours of squad, platoon, and company tactical training mandated by Russian training standards for forces bound for battle were dedicated to the urban environment.

ALSO
Some related and interesting information that we uncovered about Soviet Special Forces is worth the read. Check out our other blog, dedicated to Special Ops... http://specialops-voa.blogspot.com