"cold war artillery doctrine" Topic

A couple of questions for those of you in the know. Working on some artillery rules for my more operational level game.

Artillery is not my best subject but from what I can put together there are a couple of generalizations. WP artillery was a little less flexible… so my regimental artillery only supports units within their regiment.

NATO artillery has more flexibility and NATO guns can support any unit within their division.

First, would these be correct assumptions for the most part.

Also, are there general assumptions in regards to counter battery fire and who is capable of it? Would the same WP regimental artillery be able to conduct counterbattery fire? And within what parameters. My thought is to have artillery in either an active support roll or counterbattery fire.

Are there other considerations that help the different artillery doctrines stand out at the operational level, or is it zoomed out too much to be much of a difference?

I wouldn't say WP artillery was inflexible exactly.. Rather that they had enough artillery that they didn't have to be flexible at lower levels. They would also use Divisional and Army Artillery Groups to support their breakthroughs (reinforcing success rather than failure).

I would wholeheartedly recommend cold war gamer for easy access read up on Soviet artillery: link

In general, any artillery is capable of counter battery fire, if it is supplied with the correct fire coordinates. Krieger is correct in that the WarPac forces were very artillery heavy; a doctrine the Soviets carried with them from WWII experience.

US doctrine is to never keep artillery in reserve. If a division is out of the line, its DIVARTY was kept forward in general support of another division. Likewise, separate artillery brigades were assigned general support or reinforcing rolls to divisions in contact. Heavier guns were preferable for counter battery fire due to their longer range. Once computerized fire controls were introduced in the early 80s, pretty much any US unit could access any guns in range if mission orders permitted.

Don't forget, Regimental Artillery Groups would frequently deploy well forward attached to maneuver battalions, firing over open sights. Useful for suppressing those pesky NATO ATGM's. Every echelon was chock full 'o guns and MRL's.

Another good source is:
PDF link

Yeah the main difference is that Soviets didn't have "on call" artillery. A platoon leader couldn't just request a fire mission from a general pool of assets. A unit commander would either use their integral assets, or ask the next level up for support. Though units could find themselves with additional arty assets attached (a regiment commander attaching a battery of howitzers in support of each battalion would be common).

The Soviets generally expected to be doing pre-plotted fires either on the attack or on the defense. In Afghanistan it took them a couple of years to figure out how to do "on call" fire missions properly (and that knowledge wouldn't have spread outside the units that saw service in Afghanistan).

For stuff like counter-battery I believe that is generally a divisional or corps level mission (as that is where the high caliber weapons tended to be pooled). Though a regimental commander might order a fire mission on an area which he believes (or knows, due to recon making contact) contains enemy arty.

In summary: NATO tended to concentrate arty at division and would fulfill missions on an as needed basis. The Soviets put more arty at battalion and regiment for use by the unit commander and reserved div arty for strategic fires.

A Soviet MR bn would have a battery of 120mm mortars or vasilek (mid 80s)
At regimental level either a 2S1 (tacked) or D-30 (BTR) Bn.
As part of the Arty Bn would be Big Fred and PRP 3/4 which gives a counter bty capability.

Tally Ho!

Was there any perception on who would have more effective counterbattery fire? Or were they more or less evenly matched?

I'd put money on NATO. They had bigger guns, better computers, and better gunners.

The question would be how much the could devote to counter battery fire given the need to fire interdiction missions to slow the Soviet advance.

I don't know, the Sovs had a lot of artillery. I think the question comes down to could they bring it forward and more importantly, keep the ammo flowing?

Rather than NATO's pinpoint accuracy, the WarPac (most especially the Soviets) tended to use overwhelming saturation of an area in lieu of being precise with their accuracy. Big Fred, Small Fred, and Tall Mike were capable of extreme accuracy, but I think that the gunners were not. From my blog:

link

"Was there any perception on who would have more effective counterbattery fire? Or were they more or less evenly matched?"

NATO and the US in particular by far. The counter battery radar and computers we had when I was in, 1988-1994, would have rounds heading towards the firing battery before the ones they fired had hit the ground.

For an operational level game, essentially the differences are mass vs decentralisation. e.g. a BAOR armoured div would typically attach one dedicated battery out to each battlegroup and keep the heavier stuff in General Support.

Warpac divisions had their battalion mortars and regimental artillery battalions, but also their div artillery (and army/front artillery for key sectors).

Warpac was perfectly capable of CB fire, although more generally with higher level assets.

The level of artillery support available depended on the degree of preparation required, and although we like to wargame Warpac regiments frontally assault NATO battlegroups, ideally they went through the gaps in between and frontal assaults on entrenched positions were a last resort. Such positions would likely recieve prep fire of extremely heavy conventional artilery and/or a good dose of chem and nuclear weapons, depending on specific doctrine for that period. The sovs were a bit more gung ho about barrages of nukes in the 1970s.

Bob Forrest-Webbs 'Chieftan' has quite a good vision of what it is like to be on the wrong end of Warpac artillery at various levels of escalation.

I find a useful single volume guide to warpac doctrine is 'Spearhead of the Offensive: The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Manouvre' by David Glantz, which includes a series of handy 'how to do it chapters' on forcing a river crossing, taking a mountain pass, how to avoid your MRR being destroyed by nuclear weapons etc

Martin,

Thanks for the info. I will have to see if I can find either of those… and at an affordable price! I see a lot of books on the era that would require me to sell of one of my kids to obtain it.

Martin, you can always have another kid!

Allen Curtis wrote some useful posts on Soviet artillery a few years back (here and on Yahoo Groups). I've collected them below for convenience's sake:

pastebin.com/9NbKRRMZ

thanks, insightful