"Soviet bases in Afghanistan" Topic

Curious question one I have tried to search for myself, does anyone know what operational bases looked like in the Soviet invasion? We are familiar with the British and American bases in this land, I am rather curious to build an encampment for my VDV to while away the hours in…

There was a link/topic here on TMP to a French photo spread of their troops in Afghanistan……….some of the shots were of a unit using a former Soviet hilltop position………..reminiscent of a US Vietnam style fire base without the jungle……..lots of sandbag bunkers and berms…..wire perimeter with covering minefields……..have you seen the Russian film 9th Company?

You can try the book "The Bear Went Over the Mountain". It only has rough diagrams of Soviet fire/patrol bases but from the descriptions it wouldn't be hard to make something close to what they used.

As Gaz says the perimeter was mostly wire and lots of mines, with foxholes and bunkers (often stone) for heavy weapons.

When waiting in "ambush" most units would have their troops concealed in a central location (as most couldn't be depended upon to guard the perimeter) with heavy weapons in forward positions. When the Mujahadeen inevitably attacked the heavy weapons would cover the infantry moving to their fighting positions and then the heavy weapons would relocate to avoid RPG fire.

I was into this period for a while, and the easiest thing to do would be to use the Vietnam era American firebases from Grand Manner (in 28mm) or perhaps Battlefront (15mm) or whatever else you can find. From what I could tell they weren't too far off. Check out the movie 9th Rota also for a firebase at the end. If you are scratch building, they still probably wouldn't be a bad place to start…