Red Thrust: Attack on the Central Front, Soviet Tactics and Capabilities in the 1990s

CHAPTER 2 Motor Rifle Attack: The Skirmish in the Hofzell Woods

Nineteen years old, eighteen months in the army, and off to war. Sergeant Stanislav Demchenko sat, crunched up and uncomfortable, inside his squad's BMP-2 Yozh infantry fighting vehicle.[9]

Well, it wasn't exactly "his" squad. It was the squad of Lt. Ivan Bobrov, the platoon commander. But when it came time to dismount and fight on foot, he would be in charge of the squad in the field.

Demchenko, better known to his buddies in the squad as Stashu, was the assistant squad leader. He was the son of farmers from a small kolkhoz (state-owned collective farm) east of the Lvov. Like many western Ukrainians, his family was Ukrainian Catholic, even though this church was suppressed by the state. Stashu was not particularly religious, but his family's background did little to help his career in Soviet society. One of his uncles had been an anti-Soviet Ukrainian insurgent in the late 1940s, a fact duly noted in his dossier. On the positive side, he had proved to be an able student at his polytechnic school, and was active in a local DOSAAF motorbike club.[10]

His enthusiasm for cross-country motorbikes had attracted the attention of the local DOSAAF military representative. He was impressed with Stashu's enthusiasm and skill, and when draft time came, he recommended that Demchenko be sent to an NCO (non-commissioned officer) academy after basic training. Demchenko's family background ruled out a posting to an officers' school or to any of the prestige services such as the Strategic Missile Force or Air Force. But he wasn't so suspect as to be dumped into a construction battalion. Demchenko's skill with motorbikes and other mechanical equipment led the ground forces selection board to post him to a BMP-2 motor rifle unit. The BMP-2 requires a good deal more care to operate than other infantry vehicles, and the ground forces were chronically short of technically skilled recruits.

The NCO academy in Sverdlovsk had not been particularly challenging for Demchenko. He was a very bright student and had no problems learning the elementary combat skills taught to new NCO candidates. Life in the academy was better than that in a regular unit. All of the candidates in his class were new recruits, so there wasn't the usual abuse and hazing from senior soldiers in the unit. There was enough abuse from the officers! After six months of training, Demchenko was posted to a motor rifle battalion of the 18th Guards Motor Rifle Division in Czechoslovakia. As a new junior sergeant, he was assigned to the BMP-2 of a platoon commander, Lt. Ivan Bobrov.

A Soviet motor rifle platoon consists of three BMP-2 armored infantry vehicles. One BMP is commanded by the platoon leader, a young lieutenant; the other two are commanded by sergeants. The BMP armored infantry vehicles had a squat, menacing look. Demchenko's company had started the war with a full complement of the newer BMP-2 Yozh. The Yozh had a 30mm autocannon, which spit out half-pound, armor-piercing shells at a rate of about two hundred fifty a minute. The troops called it the "woodpecker" due to its staccato sound. The woodpecker could penetrate light armored vehicles such as troop carriers. And, if you were lucky, it might penetrate the thin rear armor of a main battle tank. But it could not penetrate the thick frontal armor. To defeat tanks, it had a Konkurs antitank missile launcher mounted on the roof.[11]

This could burn out any of the older NATO tanks, such as the American M-60 or the German M48A5. But it wasn't powerful enough to deal with tanks with Chobham armor, such as the newer German Leopard 2 or the American M1 Abrams.

Each BMP contains an infantry squad. The BMP-2 carries nine soldiers. There are two crewmen, a driver, and a vehicle gunner who handles the woodpecker. The squad leader sits in the turret with the gunner to direct his troops. In the alleyway to the left of the turret and behind the driver is a seat for the squad sniper with an SVD sniper rifle. At the rear of the BMP-2 is seating for six soldiers — two bench seats, holding three soldiers each. Two of the soldiers are regular riflemen, armed with AKS-74 assault rifles. There is also an assistant squad leader (such as Demchenko) with an AKS-74 assault rifle, a grenadier with an RPG-16 antitank rocket launcher, and a squad machine gunner with a PKM light machine gun.

Demchenko's squad was typical of Soviet Ground Forces units. Over the past few years, more and more ethnic minorities were being drafted into combat units. In the old days, combat units were predominantly Slavic: Russian, Byelorussian, or Ukrainian, with a smattering of ethnic minorities. Most of the minority draftees were dumped into paramilitary construction battalions for the duration of their two years of duty. They would see a rifle for the first and last time while swearing their military oath. After that, all they'd see would be shovels and wheelbarrows. But these days, in the early 1990s, there just weren't enough Slavs to go atound anymore. The minorities had to make up the slack.

Demchenko's squad was a good example of this. The platoon commander, Lieutenant Bobrov, the squad machine gunner, Pvt. Nikolai Grachev, and the RPG-16 grenadier, Pvt. Fyodor Ignatov, were all Russians. The latter two were off collective farms and were not exactly university material. The BMP-2 driver, Pvt. Kurbanbay Irisbekov, was a Turkmen from Soviet Central Asia. His understanding of Russian was poor, and Demchenko had no idea why they had trained him as a driver.[12]

Admittedly, driving a BMP-2 was a good deal easier than driving a tank, but the driver was expected to assist in maintaining the vehicle. Irisbekov tried hard, but he just wasn't clever when it came to hardware. Demchenko was luckier with the vehicle gunner. He was a young Latvian,

Aleksander Zarins, a very bright kid, active in the Latvian DOSAAF rally car clubs. Like many Latvians, he was a bit standoffish from the Russians. But he and Stashu Demchenko got along well and kept the vehicle in shape. They usually assigned Irisbekov the simple tasks and the dirty jobs. He had little choice in the matter.

The squad's sniper was a young Armenian, Baginak Zakharian. He was an excellent rifleman, which was surprising since he came from the city of Yerevan. But coming from a major city, Zakharian had received a good education and spoke Russian reasonably well. The two squad riflemen were also from Central Asia — Sharifzian Kazanbayev, a Tatar, and Makhmet Latipov, a Beshari from Kazakhstan. Both spoke acceptable Russian, or at least knew enough to get along.

It was Soviet policy to mix the different ethnic groups because the army did not want ethnic cliques to form. They assumed that mixing the groups would force soldiers to speak Russian with one another. This worked to a point, but in the garrison, troops from similar backgrounds did hang around together whenever they had the chance. It was a relief to speak one's native tongue and reminisce about "the good old days" before army life.

And here they all were, bouncing down a forest road in West Germany, a polyglot Eurasian squad, off to do battle with NATO. Stashu Demchenko had managed to change the normal seating arrangement in the BMP. He preferred to sit in the forward seat behind the driver. At least this gave him some forward vision. When they dismounted, it was important for him to know the situation confronting them. From the back seats, it was difficult to get any sense of the battlefield.

His unit was riding down route E53 near Zweisel. The area was mountainous and wooded. Coming from the hill country near Lvov, Demchenko felt at home. The scenery was picturesque. But the rest of the squad was uneasy. To the young men from Central Asia, the forests seemed gloomy and foreboding. The damp, foggy weather combined with the terrain created an especially claustrophobic aura. On either side of the road were dark pine forests, the tops of the trees grazed by the low-hanging fog. The three Russians in the squad, all from the wide open steppes, found the countryside here particularly unappealing. The night before, the squad had spent time bragging of their martial skills and the fate of any German luckless enough to encounter this dangerous bunch. By morning, however, the cheap heroism had evaporated. Anxiety and uneasiness had taken its place.

Riding the BMP-2 into combat is no joy. The vehicle is very cramped inside, and its torsion bar suspension is stiff. When traveling over rough ground, you feel every bump and ditch. The fact that there is little padding on the seats doesn't help matters. And unless you are a dwarf, your head touches the roof. If the vehicle starts bouncing around during cross-country travel, your head will get slammed back and forth against the roof. Infantry helmets give damn little protection against this kind of abuse. Riding in BMPs is not for the squeamish or those prone to claustrophobia. Not only are you crammed in shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the squad, but you can't see anything. The vehicle is very dark inside, with only a halfhearted attempt at interior illumination. And in combat, gear and stowage piles up, and pretty soon the small electric lights are completely covered. Each rifleman has a small periscope to view the outside. But the periscope opening is only about two inches by four inches. If you try to look through it while the vehicle is in motion, you're inviting a bad case of motion sickness. You have to bend over to use the periscope, which makes you even more vulnerable to the pummeling from vehicle motion. Your head keeps bobbing up and down from the herky-jerky ride of the BMP, and the view outside seems to have the same sickening up-and-down motion. Riflemen soon learn to curb their curiosity and just sit back.

An even more disagreeable experience occurs when the squad tries to fire its weapons from the inside of the BMP. Demchenko and the 1st Squad had done this often enough on qualification training. Each rifleman has a small firing port in front of his seat. The AKS-74 assault rifle, the current version of the Kalashnikov AK-47, is designed to fit into this socket. So you fold up the stock on the rifle, and push the barrel into the plug. Actually firing the rifle requires some interesting contortions. You're supposed to aim the rifle using the periscope, but the receiver of the rifle is stuck into your chest, so it's hard to bend forward to peer through the periscope. The best way to do this is to let the gun rest under your armpit, but then it's hard to move the gun to either side. The worst moment comes when everybody fires. The noise of an AKS-74 is bad enough on the outside. From the inside, the noise is deafening. The rifles spew out cordite fumes, and the air becomes very difficult to breathe. You can't aim after a few bursts, because your eyes are watering from the fumes, and the sights are becoming fogged up from all the smoke. And try changing a rifle magazine while your gun is plugged into the socket!

As uncomfortable as the ride was, the squad's soldiers had other things on their minds. Like all soldiers in combat for the first time, they wondered what battle would be like. They worried about how they would act.

They wondered where the enemy was. When would the Germans start firing at them? Would some German tank come swinging out of the woods and blast their little BMP to bits? When would the fighting start? The claustrophobia of the dank interior of the BMP, combined with fears and anxieties about battle, made the riflemen of 1st Squad wish they could get out of the BMP and fight on foot. Then at least they could see their enemy.

The morning had been uneventful. The regiment had crossed the Czech-German border at 0600, after having heard thirty minutes of heavy artillery fire. Demchenko left bis hatch open for the first part of the ride. The terrain reminded him of his native region near Lvov. Then Lieutenant Bobrov told him to shut the hatch. It was against regulations to travel in combat areas with the hatch open, and Bobrov treated the rules very solemnly. They were several kilometers to the rear of the divisional vanguards. The roads through the forest were narrow, and the columns were warned not to bunch up. The first sounds of fighting came around 1000, when lead elements of the division ran into the first German prepared positions about ten kilometers over the border. The Bavarian forest was ill suited for any large-scale fighting with armored vehicles. Any fighting in the woods would have to be done on foot. Work for the infantry!

The first signs of combat came an hour later, when the squad drove past the site of the fighting they had heard earlier. Traffic had slowed due to rubbernecking by the later columns. On the right side of the road, Soviet riflemen guarded three or four NATO soldiers. They wore the old pattern U.S.-style steel helmet. From their gray-green uniform, Demchenko recognized them as German troops. They were a bit older than he expected, maybe reserve troops. On the left side of the road was a burned-out BRM. The BRM was a lot like a BMP-2, but had a different gun and was usually used for scouting. Something, probably a missile, had hit it on the turret front, and the left side of the turret was caved in. It also must have burned and suffered an internal explosion, since the hull was rent open at the seams. Farther over in the clearing were at least two burned-out BMP-2s and a burned-out T-80 tank. Apparently this was an advance guard that was ambushed by German antitank missile teams. A little LuAZ-967M ambulance was carrying away two badly burned tankers on stretchers.

There were other signs of war as well. Not all the civilians fleeing the area had escaped, and the artillery bombardment had killed soldiers and civilians indiscriminately. A small village farther down the road had been the scene of some fighting. Civilian vehicles were strewn around the burned-out buildings, some with dead passengers. Livestock was running tree, and many cows were lying dead or wounded in the fields. There were few signs of German military vehicles, but several dead soldiers lay near the ruins.

Around noon, the 2d Battalion of the 55th Guards Motor Rifle Regiment (MRR) was called forward to deal with German defenses. This was the battalion to which Demchenko's squad was attached. Stashu could hear Bobrov over the vehicle radio speaking with the battalion commander. The platoon was to move down the road about a kilometer, where it would be directed to its objective.

The platoon's assignment was straightforward. The road along which the 55th Guards MRR had to pass went through a large clearing. Some German troops were positioned in a small clump of buildings about 2,000 meters to the right of the road. The Germans had several Milan antitank missile launchers, and were firing on the columns from the 55th Guards MRR as they passed.[13]

The Germans had managed to sneak one missile team forward, and it had hit a few armored command vehicles, which were still burning. Gunfire from a BMP-2 had eliminated this team, but the regimental commander feared that his units would continue to be subjected to missile attack unless the German position was cleared. The regiment's 3d Company/2d Battalion, to which Bobrov's platoon belonged, was being assigned to eliminate the German missile positions in the buildings and deal with any other German forces in the clearing.

Normally, an attack like this would be supported by tanks. But since none were immediately available, and there was some urgency to overwhelm the enemy positions, the attack would be carried out by the BMP company alone. The company was to deploy at the edge of the road and dismount troops 1,500 meters from the building. The idea was to leave the BMP-2s back beyond missile range, but close enough to provide fire support from their 30mm autocannons. The Milan missiles would easily blow apart a BMP-2. The only additional fire support the company would have was a single 30mm AGS-17 Plamya grenade launcher, which would have to be carried forward into range by its crew.

The BMP company had three platoons, of which Lieutenant Bobrov's was one. Bobrov's platoon would be on the left flank of the attack, and the other two platoons to the right. In all, there would be ten BMPs in the attack: three in each of the three platoons, and the company commander's to the rear watching over the action. Lieutenant Bobrov instructed Private Irisbekov to place his BMP in the center, between Sergeant Fastov's BMP on the left and Sergeant Yennakov's on the right. Once the BMPs had been moved into position off the road, Lieutenant Bobrov called the neighboring two BMPs and explained the mission. Bobrov, Demchenko, and the squad leaders and assistant squad leaders of the two neighboring BMPs gathered behind Bobrov's BMP to get instructions.

"This will be a standard dismounted attack," explained Bobrov. "The enemy troops in those buildings in front of us are armed with antitank missiles. Our objective is to capture and hold those buildings and clear out any German troops in the area. On the radio, we will call the objective 'Oreshnik' [14]. We will advance in the BMPs to 1,500 meters from the objective. The squads will then dismount. Sergeants Fastov and Yermakov, you will stay with your vehicles and direct fire support. The assistant squad leaders will take the squads into action. You will advance at a walk to 300 meters. The platoon to our right has a Plamya grenade launcher and it will provide fire support on any observed enemy positions. Cover the last 100 meters in a run. We will give you fire from the 30mm guns. It is important for the squads to stay in radio contact with the BMP. Identify targets for us. Is everything clear?"

"Yes exactly so, Comrade Lieutenant," came the reply. It sounded like a school cheer, more appropriate to a playing field than a battlefield. But routine procedures like this distracted the soldiers from their anxieties, and made the battlefield seem a little more familiar. The platoon sergeants crawled back into the BMPs and awaited the company commander's signal.

At 1245, the company commander fired off a green flare. The engines of the ten BMPs were already warmed up, and the BMPs began their charge toward Objective Oreshnik. The BMPs were stretched out for half a kilometer, with about fifty meters of space between them. The Germans did not begin firing during the approach. The squads sat in the back of the BMPs, mute and anxious. Everyone took the opportunity to check his kit.

The equipment of the Soviet soldier is less elaborate than that of the average NATO soldier. The web gear is very simple, usually just a belt and a harness, which doubles as suspenders. On the soldier's right hip is an ammunition pouch, containing two additional banana magazines for the AKS-74 assault rifle. Each magazine holds thirty rounds, for a total of about ninety rounds of ammunition. Soldiers can be issued grenades, which are carried in the pockets of their uniform or in the gas mask bag on their left hip. On the back of their belt is a water canteen and an entrenching shovel, the most troublesome items. Soldiers can't wear the canteen or shovel while they're riding in the BMP, because they get in the way of sitting down. So they are either attached after dismounting from the vehicle, or left in the vehicle.

When the BMPs came to a halt a couple of minutes after the start signal, the squad commanders sounded a small klaxon as a signal to dismount. The two rear doors of the BMPs were thrown open and the squad piled out. Half the squad peeled to the left, the other half to the right. They formed a skirmish line in front of the vehicle. Demchenko was the last to leave the BMP, and he kept an eye out for any gear left behind. To keep in touch with Lieutenant Bobrov and the BMP, he had an R-126 radio. It was cumbersome, so he assigned Makhmet Latipov, one of the riflemen, to carry it for him. He signaled to Latipov to follow him. Demchenko formed up the squad in the usual skirmish line, with Latipov and him in the center. To their right was Nikolai Grachev, with the squad's PKM machine gun. To their left was Fyodor Ignatov, the squad grenadier, with his RPG-16 rocket launcher. At the extreme left was Baginak Zakharian with his SVD sniper rifle. Sergeant Fastov's squad was on their left, and Sergeant Yermakov's on their right. Although Stashu Demchenko was not the senior sergeant of the dismounted group, he took charge, since he led Lieutenant Bobrov's squad. Demchenko shouted, 'To battle. Move forward," and the three dismounted squads of 3d Platoon began advancing.

At first, it seemed like a parade ground. No fire came from Objective Oreshnik. Every soldier in the squad hoped that the Germans had fled! The objective was slightly uphill from their positions, and there was precious little cover between the squad and the buildings. There was no sign of movement from the German positions. It took about six minutes for the squad to cover the first 500 meters. The walk seemed interminable, with every soldier anxiously awaiting the sound of the first volley.

Makhmet Latipov halted for a second and listened intently to the radio. Demchenko walked over to him. "Comrade Sergeant, Lieutenant Bobrov wants to speak to you." Demchenko took the headset.

"Listen, Stashu," said Bobrov. "The company commander has changed his plans. He thinks the nyemtsi have abandoned the objective.[15]

He wants the 2d Platoon to mount back up and push forward to the objective. You keep moving forward on foot. Over."

Stashu replied, "Understood, over."

The BMPs to the right began moving forward and the squads got back aboard. In seconds they began racing toward the farm buildings. Demchenko looked to both sides, and said in a loud voice, "We're continuing on foot. Everybody keep an eye on the buildings."

Fyodor Ignatov chimed in, "Lucky slobs, they get to ride all the way."

Ignatov had hardly finished griping when from a small gully on the east side of the farm, there was a little flash of light. From their vantage point, they could barely see the slight flickers of rocket exhaust as a Milan antitank missile began bearing down on the BMPs from 2d Platoon.

The BMPs obviously did not see this. Their advance had brought them into range of the enemy missiles.

Demchenko raced over to Latipov and grabbed the headset to the R-126 radio. "Lieutenant Bobrov, to the right of the buildings. Enemy PTURS."[16]

There was no time for Bobrov to react. The first Milan struck the BMP on the right side. It exploded and the BMP came to a halt. The missile hit the front compartment, ripping into the diesel engine and splashing burning fuel all over the front of the vehicle. The rear doors swung open and the squad began to hurriedly dismount. As they were doing so, the ammunition in the BMP began cooking off. The fire quickly spread to the stored Konkurs missiles. The heat ignited their propellant, giving off a hellish whoosh as the fuel flashed and burned for a brief moment. A second Milan missile was launched from the opposite side of the form seconds after the first. It struck the BMP to the left, on the bow. The engine of the BMP absorbed most of the blast, and the crew was able to get out. This BMP did not suffer the horrible fire that had engulfed the other vehicle. The gunner or commander stayed with the vehicle, valiantly trying to seek out the missile team that had hit their vehicle.

The ground to the left of the farm buildings danced as the autocannons knocked big clumps of earth into the air. However, the BMP gunner had misjudged the location, and a second missile flew out. By now, Private Zarins, the gunner in Lieutenant Bobrov's BMP, had spotted the Milan team and began hammering away at it. Zarins fired high-explosive rounds, which hit the ground near the Milan team with fiery smacks. His aim was good. The missile lost guidance and plowed into the ground some distance from the BMPs. The 1st Platoon had brought the other Milan team under fire. The crew from the damaged BMP finally abandoned their vehicle as the fire worsened, and it too blew up when its ammunition cooked off. What remained of the 2d Platoon was a single BMP-2. Its commander had found a small gully, and the BMP rested there while awaiting further orders.

The two squads from the destroyed BMPs were pretty shaken up. They lay on the ground some distance from the burning vehicles. As Demchenko and the 3d Platoon moved abreast of them, Stashu and the other squad leaders motioned to them to advance. One of the squads moved forward. But the squad from the first BMP had lost both its commander and assistant squad leader. They stayed where they were, ignoring the signals from the neighboring platoons, content to hug the earth.

After losing two BMPs to the defenders, the company commander decided to engage in a little preventative fire support. The two remaining platoons of BMPs opened fire on the farm buildings. For the advancing squads, it should have been comforting to see the enemy positions hit by fire. But some of the squads were startled by the sound of the autocannon and machine gun rounds whizzing so close over their heads. Two of the squads instinctively hit the ground. The advancing line of riflemen became more ragged as squads dropped down.

It took Demchenko's squad nearly fifteen minutes from the time of dismounting to reach a point about 300 meters from the farm. So far the enemy had held back firing on the squads, for fear of attracting the unwanted attention of the BMPs. In the tradition of Russian infantry since the days of Marshal Suvorov and Napoleon, Demchenko shouted "Urra!"

His squad joined in the battle cry and began charging the enemy positions at a slow run. Neighboring squads followed suit. The Germans began opening fire on the charging Soviet soldiers.

So far, the range was too great for accuracy on either side. The BMPs responded to any sign of German small arms fire. The most effective fire support came from the sole surviving BMP of 2d Platoon. Not only was it closer than the other seven BMPs, but there was a big gap in the infantry in front of it due to the losses the 2d Platoon had suffered. It was easier to fire at the Germans without hitting any of the advancing Soviet riflemen.

As the squads advanced, they fired their AKS-74 assault rifles from the hip, as they had seen in Soviet training films. Unfortunately, it takes only a few seconds of firing to empty a thirty-round magazine and many of the charging soldiers ran out of ammunition before they were close to the German positions. Excited from the run, they didn't stop to reload but charged forward anyway. The Germans returned fire, but it wasn't very heavy. The 1st Platoon on the fer right of the charge took several well-aimed bursts. Demchenko and his platoon were spared the worst of it.

One of the Milan teams popped up again; it had survived the attempts of the BMPs to gun it down. The surviving BMP from the 2d Platoon tried to bring it under fire, but the gunner, concentrating on hitting the Milan team before it fired, failed to notice Sergeant Yermakov's squad. The hammering of the BMP's woodpecker autocannon began. Demchenko watched in horror as the tracer sprayed into the midst of Yermakov's squad, hitting several soldiers in the upper chest. The effect of a 30mm slug on a human is gruesome. The survivors in Yermakov's squad threw themselves to the ground and refused to move forward.

Before the other two squads of 3d Platoon got within grenade range, Sergeant Fastov's squad on the left began to take heavy fire from a small gully. Several German infantrymen were well dug in, and shielded by a small hill from BMP fire. They hit Sergeant Fastov and most of his men in a succession of quick volleys of rifle fire. Then they turned their attention to Demchenko's squad.

Demchenko shouted to his men to halt and hit the ground. Private Zakharian, the sniper, was the squad member nearest the Germans, and he was hit in the leg. The round had hit the bone itself, crumpling Zakharian. In extreme pain, he cried out for help. The other squad members ignored him, trying to bring the Germans under fire. Demchenko and his radioman hid behind a slight rise in the ground. He looked around for Nikolai Grachev, with the squad machine gun. Grachev was huddled behind a tree stump some distance away, seemingly frozen in place. The other rifleman, Kazanbayev, was out of ammunition and was furiously trying to reload.

The RPG gunner, Fyodor Ignatov, was trying to free himself of the backpack with spare rockets. These projected over his head, and if hit by rifle fire would explode, and him with them. Demchenko began firing at the Germans, but his single assault rifle alone was not enough. He was soon out of ammunition. To make matters worse, some other German infantry had noticed the plight of the 3d Platoon and seemed to be making their way toward them to finish them off. By now, the Soviet and German troops were in too close a proximity for the BMPs to offer much covering fire.

Demchenko shouted to Kazanbayev to throw him a banana magazine of ammunition. The little Tatar stared back at him, stupefied. In all the noise and excitement, Kazanbayev had forgotten what little Russian he knew. The source of the problem finally occurred to Demchenko, and he pointed to the open feed on his assault rifle, shouting "Hungry, hungry!" The two words that every Soviet soldier knows are "hungry" and "tired." Kazanbayev threw over a magazine, which struck Demchenko's helmet.

Demchenko ordered his radioman, Makhmet Latipov, to drop the radio and fetch the PKM machine gun. Latipov nodded and ran at a crouch over to Grachev's little haven behind the tree stump. Grachev had not frozen. He had been hit in the chest by rifle fire and was in shock. Latipov cocked the PKM and from a prone position began firing into the German position. Ignatov finally had managed to free himself of the harness, and aimed the RPG-16 rocket launcher at the Germans. To his horror, Demchenko noticed that the back end of the RPG was pointed at him. He managed to roll clear before Ignatov fired. Excited by the fighting, Ignatov had not realized that the end of the rocket launcher was perilously close to his own right leg. When he fired, he badly scorched the back of his leg. But the rocket grenade did the trick. The machine gun fire had killed two or three Germans, and the rocket grenade broke the nerve of the few other German infantrymen. Two or three Germans tried to make their way back toward the farm building.

Another group of Germans had worked its way into an irrigation ditch between Demchenko's squad and the survivors of Sergeant Yermakov's squad to the right. Yermakov's squad was having a hard time of it. Yermakov had been one of the soldiers inadvertently hit by BMP fire. The squad had repulsed an earlier German attack, but in the process had exhausted most of its ammunition. Like many inexperienced troops, the men had little fire discipline, and were prone to fire off long bursts. It didn't take long to exhaust three magazines. The squad PKM was already out of ammunition. The men were using grenades to fend off the Germans. They tried to radio for help, with no luck.

Demchenko could see the problem, and after collecting Latipov and Kazanbayev, began cautiously moving toward the Germans. Intent on wiping out Yermakov's squad, the Germans did not notice the approach of Demchenko and his riflemen. At a range of about thirty meters, Demchenko and the remnants of 3d Platoon began hitting the Germans from the side. Of the four of them, two were hit by a quick burst from the PKM, another was hit by Kazanbayev's rifle fire, and the fourth tried to run but Demchenko caught him with a single burst. The squad began to cautiously move forward toward the farm buildings.

There seemed to be little fire coming from the form buildings, which were small and made of orange brick. The faces of the buildings were badly gouged by cannon fire from the BMPs. Big chunks had been blown away by high-explosive rounds, and the armor-piercing rounds had made holes straight through the walls. The German infantry had abandoned the farmhouse when the roof had caught fire. The Milan team lay sprawled near their missile launcher, their bodies roughly mangled by the 30mm cannon fire from the BMP. Two or three German riflemen remained behind a stone wall at the rear of the farm. Demchenko, his two men, and the remnants of Yermakov's squad carefully made their way through the farmyard. The Germans opened fire as Latipov came around the corner of an outbuilding. Luckily, he was not hit. He fell backward on his rump, which knocked the wind out of him. Kazanbayev had picked up an AKS-74 with a BG-15 grenade launcher on it from a dead rifleman of the 3d Squad. He aimed it carefully at the wall, hitting it squarely with a 30mm grenade. The grenade shattered the wall, spraying the Germans behind it with sharp shards of fieldstone. With three out of four wounded, the Germans surrendered.

Demchenko and his men carefully inspected the remaining buildings for other German troops. It was done in the usual fashion: A grenade goes in first, then a stream of rifle fire. They found a few dead German soldiers, probably killed earlier in the battle. Some Soviet riflemen from the 1st Platoon could be seen on the other end of the farm, making their way through a stone barn. They seemed to have overcome the resistance there as well. By now, a BMP-2 from 2d Platoon had made its way to the outer entrance of the farm. It seemed sure that the farm was securely in Soviet hands.

The cost had been high. The company had lost two BMPs to missile fire. The dismounted infantry had suffered the worst. Of the fifty-four men who had begun the assault, nine had been killed and twenty-one wounded or injured. The Germans had lost two Milan launchers and about eighteen men. Four German soldiers had been captured.

Aleksander Zarins, the gunner on Bobrov's BMP, spoke a bit of German. He was sent forward for a quick interrogation. After a rough frisking, Zarins questioned the German prisoners. Not regulars, but reservists from a territorial brigade, they were unwilling to say how many other troops from their unit were in the area. In fact, they were quite obstinate, and Zarins could get little out of them even after a few smacks in the face with a gun butt. Bobrov radioed to battalion headquarters to send a jeep to pick them up for a proper questioning by the regimental staff.

Demchenko left the farmyard and returned to the spot where his men had been hit. Ignatov was sitting on the ground with his right trouser leg torn away. He had a nasty-looking burn on the back of his right leg and was trying to apply a cloth bandage. Private Zakharian was flat on his back, with a pool of blood under his shattered leg. Ignatov had already applied a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding. Both Ignatov and Zakharian would live. Nikolai Grachev was another matter. He had been hit twice in the upper chest. One rifle bullet had shattered his left shoulder; the other had smashed into his left lung. The power of modern assault rifle ammunition was appalling. Grachev was ashen and having difficulty breathing. Demchenko tried to get the attention of the company medic, but there were plenty of other wounded from the other squads. With the help of a soldier from Yermakov's squad, Demchenko brought Grachev to a BMP being used as a temporary aid station. After leaving word with the medic about Zakharian and Ignatov, Demchenko returned to his platoon. The Germans might counterattack, and they would have to be ready.

The average Soviet infantry squad differs in many respects from NATO infantry, especially from American infantry. The Soviet Army is a conscript force, not a volunteer force like the U.S. Army. But many NATO armies also use the draft, notably the West Germans. The differences are due to other reasons.

To begin with, the Soviet Army is the last of the great European imperial armies. It is made up of many nationalities, speaking many languages. There are well over a hundred different nationalities in the USSR, and more than a dozen major language groups. The Soviet Union is far more diverse than most other countries. Portions of the country, such as the Baltic republics and parts of European Russia, are not that different from Central Europe. Other areas, such as Azerbaijan or Turkestan, have more in common with Iran or Pakistan than with Europe. And in the Far East, the nomadic peoples of Siberia share kinship with the goatherders of Mongolia or the Eskimos of Alaska. The training and recruitment policies of the Soviet Army have more in common with the other old imperial armies, such as that of the Austro-Hungarian Army of World War I. Imagine, for a moment, if the United States conquered Mexico and Canada, and drafted Mexicans and French Canadians in large numbers into the army. This does not even begin to compare to the Soviet predicament, since the recruits speak dozens of alien languages.

Ironically, the Tsarist army did not have the recruitment problems faced by the modern Soviet Army. The Tsarist army recruited mainly from the major Slavic ethnic groups: the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the Byelorussians, which make up about 70 percent of the population. They didn't bother to recruit heavily from the Muslim peoples of Central Asia, nor from the nomadic tribes of the Far East. The languages spoken by the Ukrainians and Byelorussians are not identical to Russian, but they share the same roots. The other Slavic groups were culturally similar to the Russians. Most belonged to the Orthodox church, and most came from similar peasant backgrounds.

The Soviet Union has a different rationale for military recruitment. To begin with, it no longer has the luxury of exempting the ethnic minorities from military service. The large size of the Soviet armed forces demands a large annual intake of new recruits. But also, the Soviets view military service as a national duty, in the broad sense of the term. Army duty is intended to homogenize this polyglot and diverse country. Recruits are forced to use Russian. They are subjected to vigorous political indoctrination. And they learn very quickly who is boss in the USSR.

In spite of all the efforts at Russification, and education and political indoctrination in secondary schools, many recruits are barely literate in Russian. Many are barely literate in any language. And there are substantial cultural differences. Muslims now make up more than 25 percent of the annual intake of draftees, and the percentage is rising. The Soviet Army accepts its role in Russification to a point. It is not organizationally prepared for extensive language training. Recruits least able to get along in Russian are siphoned off into paramilitary construction battalions, since the army combat branches really don't want to bother with them.

There is a distinct pecking order among the five arms of the Soviet armed forces. Highest priority goes to the Strategic Missile Force, which controls Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles. Draftees are expected to be fluent in Russian. This is not the only criterion. The Strategic Missile Force also favors draftees with clean political records, since loyalty to the Soviet state is viewed as essential to this most sensitive service. The Strategic Missile Force tends to recruit out of the Slavic regions. Minorities are least common in this branch. Three other services are also technically demanding: the Air Defense Force, the Navy, and the Air Force. These forces also have a certain amount of priority in the recruitment of technically adept young men, and they also favor Slavs.

The Ground Forces, the largest element of the Soviet armed forces, tends to receive the highest number of recruits. On average, they are of mediocre quality compared to the other services. The reasons are quite simple. It is the assumption of the military leadership that motor rifle troops, and to a lesser extent tank, artillery, and other specialized troops, need not be as able as the troops going to the other more intellectually demanding services. Soviet Ground Forces training and weapon design are based on the assumption that the enlisted troops in its units will not be capable of sophisticated training or sophisticated maintenance. There is an old saying: "If a weapon is stupid, and it works, it isn't stupid." Soviet weapons have to be simple enough to be handled by troops who do not speak the native language of Russia, and whose grasp of technology may be closer to the seventeenth century than the twentieth century.

Recruitment and training are helped along by the pervasive militarization of Soviet society. The average Soviet citizen has more knowledge of the military than his American, or even European, counterpart. As Soviet children pass through the school system, they are encouraged to join state-sponsored youth groups. The state youth groups somewhat resemble Western organizations such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, but with a heavier dose of political indoctrination. At the age of nine, youth can join the "Young Pioneers, which tries to instill a sense of pride in the Soviet armed forces through films, comic books, and lectures. Heroic tales of the Great Patriotic War are a staple of this indoctrination. Memorialization of Russian sacrifices during the war is another example of the ties that are formed between youth groups and the military. Young Pioneers are selected to perform honorary guard duty at local war memorials, each youth in uniform and armed with an (unloaded) assault rifle. Although much of this can be dismissed as ordinary patriotic education, aspects of Young Pioneer activities are blatantly military. Summer youth camps frequently include junior league war games, in which the young boys are allowed to play alongside armored troop carriers, and inspect standard Soviet weapons.

The militarization of Soviet society is also rooted in the considerable pride that the country takes in its performance in World War n. The Communist party likes to boast about its considerable achievements in the economy, education, and health care. These boasts ring hollow in the ears of most Soviet citizens facing the daily reality of food and medical shortages. However, few will deny the accomplishments of the military, especially during the war. Military affairs is the only aspect of modern Soviet society where the USSR stands as an equal with the West.

At the age of fourteen, when teenagers are likely to enter secondary school, they can transition to the Komsomol. Like the Young Pioneers, the Komsomol has its paramilitary aspects; there are war games at summer camp, and heavy doses of political and promilitary propaganda. But Komsomol is more than a youth group. It is the first step toward Communist party membership, which is encouraged by school and community leaders for the most able students, gifted sportsmen, musicians, and other student leaders. Komsomol membership helps at recruitment time; members are more likely to be chosen for prestige services, for officer or NCO school, or for plum assignments. Komsomol membership is a sign of loyalty to the regime. Ambitious students flock to the Komsomol naturally; less enthusiastic students are subjected to a bit of societal pressure by school and community leaders. A teenager such as the fictional Demchenko is unlikely to be a Komsomol member because of his family background, but his commander, Lieutenant Bobrov, almost certainly would be in the Komsomol. The majority of young Soviet officers also belong to the organization.

By the time they reach secondary school, most Soviet students are becoming a bit cynical about the military. After years of indoctrination, the tales of heroism and valor begin to wear thin. Teenage rebellion is becoming as much a part of Soviet life as in the West. It's not that Soviet teenagers are unpatriotic. American teenagers become cynical toward television commercials without rejecting the nature of a consumer society. Soviet teenagers become cynical of the messages of the party, without rejecting allegiance to the society.

Although the Komsomol plays a role in preparing exceptional students for leadership in the army, the DOSAAF has a significant role in preparing the average Soviet student for the military. DOSAAF is a military-sponsored organization designed to drum up support for the armed forces outside the normal party or school system. In a totalitarian society like the USSR, there are no private sports or recreation groups. If you want to play on the local soccer team, you play on a DOSAAF-sponsored team. If you want to build model airplanes, you join a local DOSAAF hobby club. If you want to ride a motorbike, you join a DOSAAF motorbike club.

DOSAAF is sponsored by the military for a variety of reasons. In a country like the USSR where few people own private cars, the Army encourages young men to learn how to drive, and how to repair automobiles and trucks. It is better to train young men in basic automotive skills before they enter the military rather than during the two years they are under the colors. The other advantage DOSAAF enjoys is that it controls a lot of precious resources in a consumer-poor economy. This not only affects cars and motorbikes, but sporting and hobby equipment as well.

In the USSR, you can't simply visit a local shop to buy a snorkel or a tennis racket. DOSAAF has an extensive flying club network to teach basic aviation, and sponsors skydiving clubs as well. The DOSAAF leadership is made up mainly of retired military officers, and the training frequently has a military flavor to it. Boys not only learn how to drive Lada sedans, but ZiL-130 trucks (as used by the army), and even BTR-70 armored infantry transporters.

Since the mid-1960s, mandatory military training has been extended to secondary schools. And this applies to girls as well as boys. By the time they leave secondary school, Soviet girls as well as boys will know how to fleldstrip and use an assault rifle. The aim is to have the boys familiar with the basics of military service before they enter. This includes basic weapons training, basic drill, and familiarity with the organization of the armed forces. There is some difference in the training that young women receive. For example, there is more emphasis on medical training than on small arms, due in no small measure to the fact that women are not drafted, and very few women serve in the Soviet armed forces. But young Soviet women will be able to administer basic medical care in the event of chemical or nuclear contamination.

The Soviet Union may be a centrally planned, totalitarian society, but the quality of social services and government programs differs enormously across the vast country. The extent of preinduction training varies as well. Teenagers in the European regions of the USSR have a much greater chance of belonging to the more interesting DOSAAF clubs such as flying clubs or rally car clubs. The quality of secondary school military training is also better in these areas. Many schools in rural Central Asia have poor facilities, if any, for military training. And in some Muslim areas schools have even had to recruit women teachers for military training, which goes against the grain of these traditional societies. As a result, teenagers from European regions of the USSR enter the armed forces with distinct advantages over their Central Asian counterparts. They are more likely to speak Russian, to have had better preinduction training, and probably to have a usable skill that will steer them to the more desirable postings.

The draft inducts eighteen year olds in two waves. The first induction takes place in April and May, and the second in October and November, after the harvest. The Soviet Union is still an agricultural society, and the rhythms of the army have to give way to the rhythms of nature. About 75 percent of all eighteen year olds are inducted in any given year. Deferments come in three categories: education, family hardship, and health. A certain percentage of teenagers is exempted as physically or mentally unfit, and in rare circumstances, young men may be deferred due to family hardships. Educational deferments are not exemptions. In most cases, the student will be obliged to perform military duty after university. Only 12 percent of young men manage to escape military duty altogether. So for the vast majority of Soviet young men, army service is a normal aspect of growing up.

During the induction process, the recruits are assigned their combat unit or training unit. The complicated network of DOSAAF clubs, schools, and party organizations like the Komsomol has some impact on this process. Young men with a good record at a DOSAAF skydiving club have a better chance of entering the elite VDV Air Assault Force. A Russian student with good science grades, a clean political record, and Komsomol membership has a good chance of entering a prestige service such as the Strategic Missile Force. On the other hand, a young Azeri from a rural area of Azerbaijan, with a spotty record of school attendance and a poor grasp of Russian, will probably end up in a construction battalion for his two years of service.

For the average young Soviet citizen, chances are better than even that he will end up in the Ground Forces. Basic training is brief — usually four weeks. The texture of training differs considerably from the experience of most NATO soldiers, and more closely resembles that of a soldier from decades (if not a century) ago. Basic military skills are taught, including the wearing of and care for the uniform, saluting officers, and basic marching drills. Basic training also includes medical examinations and treatment. The USSR is so vast, and its health care system so spotty, that the army is obliged to pay careful attention to communicable diseases. The soldier receives a standard assortment of vaccines. Treatment, when needed, is brief and to the point. If problems are found during dental examinations, for example, the teeth are simply pulled (often without a painkiller!) to prevent further problems with them during the tour of duty.

One of the fundamental differences between the Soviet Ground Forces and most NATO armies is the hierarchy of command. The Soviet Army mirrors Soviet society. The Soviet style of command emphasizes rigid control from above. Orders to lower levels of command are in detail and give the subordinate officers less freedom in the way they execute the order. Lower layers of command have less autonomy than in NATO armies.

In the infantry, one of the more interesting structural differences between NATO and the Soviet Army is the matter of sergeants, better known in army parlance as noncommissioned officers (NCOs). In NATO armies, there is the traditional divide between officers and enlisted men. To bridge that gap, the NATO armies have an extensive professional NCO class. The NCOs are not simply technicians. They are leaders in their own right, entrusted with considerable responsibility by the officers to lead the men in their units. In the Soviet Army, there are sergeants, but they do not play the same role as in most NATO armies. The sergeants are not professional soldiers, simply draftees with more technical training. Soviet sergeants are not longterm professionals, and have little more experience in the army than the average draftee. The Soviets have done little to encourage a professional NCO class, and as a result, officers have to do many of the tasks that NCOs would perform in NATO armies.

The reasons for this situation are difficult to trace. The old prerevolutionary Tsarist army had an active and effective NCO class. It earned the resentment of many common soldiers and so was abolished. The Red Army also abolished many traditional aspects of officer distinctions, such as rank insignia and command prerogatives. But traditional officer practices returned in World War II to make the Red Army more combat effective. It is taking much longer to reconstitute the role of NCOs in the army.

The reasons why few soldiers remain in the Soviet Army as NCOs is simpler to explain: The pay is miserable and the life-style is grim. The pay is enough to buy cigarettes and snacks from the local canteen; it is not enough to support a family. There are no provisions for family housing for NCOs; there are simply no provisions for having a family. Life in the army is often brutal, the food is bad, and leave is infrequent. Until the 1970s, there was a single encouragement to stay in the army — the internal passport. All Soviet citizens must carry an identity card, which lists their hometown or city, and they are not allowed to travel freely about the country without an internal passport. Under the old system, a soldier was returned to his city of origin after army service. As a modest enticement to stay in the army for an additional three-year tour, sergeants received an internal passport, which allowed them to resettle away from their original homes. This may not seem like much, but for a farm boy from the rural regions of the USSR, this internal passport was a ticket to the big city, where industrial wages are far better than wages on a collective farm. An extra three years of drudgery in the army seemed like a reasonable price to many young soldiers. Only about 5 percent of the NCOs were long-term sergeants. This career was especially popular with rural Ukrainians, leading to the popular stereotype of the brutal Ukrainian sergeant major.

Since the war in Afghanistan, the NCO policy has been changing. The Soviet internal passport regulations were liberalized in the late 1970s to take into account the more mobile work force of the modern USSR. This reduced the main incentive for long-term sergeants. Afghanistan is probably the single greatest incentive within the military itself for change. The fighting there, even though on a much smaller scale than the U.S. commitment in Vietnam, revealed serious shortcomings in the command structure. It became clear that Soviet training and squad leadership was unsuitable to real combat conditions. The Soviet officer cannot handle all the assorted tasks that must be carried out on the modern battlefield. Some responsibility has to be given the NCOs.

The need for better-trained NCOs has also been prompted by changes in the technological level of equipment used by the modern Soviet Army. The situation faced by our fictional Sergeant Demchenko is a good example. Sergeants like Demchenko receive a special course, lasting about six months. At the end of it, they are given the rank of sergeant and posted to their unit. The course is more elaborate than that of the average recruit, and focuses on the typical tasks the sergeant will be expected to perform.

In contrast, the platoon officer, a lieutenant, receives about four years of training.

In the past, this system worked, because the lieutenant would always be around to direct his troops. But with new weapons like the BMP-2, this is no longer practical. The BMP-2 is complicated enough that the most senior member of the squad has to stay with it to direct its fire. The assistant squad leader, a man like Demchenko, is expected to lead the dismounted squad into battle. The experience in Afghanistan has shown that junior sergeants just do not have the experience or training for this demanding role.

The problem with draftee sergeants is that they have no military experience before they become sergeants. In NATO armies, sergeants generally rise through the ranks. They are given promotions on the basis of proven leadership abilities or other skills. By the time they reach the rank of sergeant, they have a clear understanding of the basic skills of soldiering. More importantly, they have a clear sense of what will be expected of them as leaders. Most Soviet draftee sergeants have no proven leadership skills beyond those judged by the draft board. Worst of all, they have no experience in the nature of army life. The Soviets have a system of rewarding outstanding enlisted men by giving them a rise in grade, but the majority of the sergeants remain one-term, draftee NCOs.

Furthermore, the Soviet Army is plagued with a tradition of hazing. Soldiers with two years of service bully soldiers with one and a half years, who bully those with only one year, and so on. Senior soldiers have the new recruits do the dirtiest jobs, and may even openly steal from them. This further dilutes the leadership role of sergeants. New sergeants are bullied by soldiers of lower rank who happen to have more service time. These hazing practices have been widely criticized in the Soviet press due to Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, but it will take years to end this tradition.

In a platoon like the one described in the fictional scenario, there is only a single professional soldier, the lieutenant. All of the sergeants are draftees. At the most, they will have almost two years of military service. In contrast, in a NATO platoon, several of the sergeants are likely to be long-term, professional soldiers. Because these sergeants have had experience and have shown proven leadership skills, the officers can entrust them with responsibilities far beyond those to which a Soviet sergeant would be assigned.

For example, in carrying out missions, Soviet combat leaders are much more explicit in their instructions than in NATO. The soldiers, including the NCOs, are expected to follow prescribed battle drill unless instructed otherwise. Soviet training does not encourage initiative on their part. In American and Western European society, there is an attitude that any actions not expressly forbidden are permissible. In Soviet society, due to the effects of Stalinism and police repression, the opposite is the case. What is not expressly permitted is forbidden. American society tends to be anarchic, with individuals taking it upon themselves to decide how they should act. Indeed, after World War II, a captured German officer is reported to have said: "War is chaos.

Americans are good at war since they practice chaos every day." Traditional Russian communalism, combined with the lingering effects of Stalinist repression, leads to more cautious behavior. There is an old Russian expression, 'The nail that sticks out will be hammered down." Soviet soldiers do not stick their necks out. They follow orders but go no further. If they lose their officers or leaders, or if an unusual situation crops up unexpectedly, they tend to lose momentum and wait for further instructions.

These traditions and attitudes lead to rigid command and control practices in the squad. For an NCO to pass his examinations, he has "tickets" to punch. These are tactical field exercises to determine whether the soldier has learned the basic NCO skills. The tests are very predictable, and the NCO cadet knows that many of the responses will be by rote learning. For example, one of the standard elements of the test is entitled "The Squad in the Offensive." There is a prescribed set of commands for the NCO to follow. These include the phrases "Squad, to the vehicle," "To your places," "Prepare for battle," "Start the engine," and "Move forward." This may seem remarkably elementary to most NATO soldiers. But to the Soviet Army, these basic drills are essential. It must be remembered that the cadet sergeant will probably be commanding a polyglot squad, several of whose members do not understand Russian very well. A limited number of key commands becomes familiar to the squad members, and they are expected to respond in a feshion every bit as rigid as the syllabus for cadet NCOs.

This is fine for a peacetime army. Everybody punches their tickets and displays the capability to perform their prescribed tasks. But real combat is chaos, and not reducible to simple training standards. Take, for example, fire discipline. Soviet troops are taught to fire their assault rifles from the hip during assaults. But the assaults in peacetime training cannot include the effects of fear and confusion on the part of the soldiers. As depicted in the scenario, the squads are likely to follow the training "by the book," with the result that by the end of the charge, they are running perilously low on ammunition without having really accomplished much by its expenditure. Soviet training norms assume that certain quantities of ammunition will be expended to eliminate certain types of targets, such as entrenched antitank missile launchers. But many of these norms are ridiculously low. The average Soviet soldier carries a very modest amount of ammunition. The tendency to follow rigid training procedures, combined with the uncertainties of real combat, can lead to disaster. This happened repeatedly in Afghanistan. There are numerous accounts in the Soviet press of squads being cornered by the mujihadeen after running low on, or running out of, ammunition and being forced to heroic extremes to escape.

The scenario depicted here presents the fictional Soviet squads with a straightforward objective. This is a "best-case" scenario. The Soviets considerably outnumber the Germans, and by sheer mass and firepower, they overcome the enemy. The young assistant squad leader is a competent individual with a certain amount of initiative. His troops perform well in their first battle in spite of their lack of experience. They run low on ammunition, but have enough to accomplish their task.

But this scenario could have been written in a very different fashion. Suppose the Germans had used light machine guns instead of assault rifles. How would a standard Soviet infantry attack hold up against that? Soviet training does not include realistic interplay between attackers and defenders. The standard training presumes that the infantry attack overruns the enemy positions without preparing the squad leaders for the possibility that they will endure such high losses that the mission will fail.

The configuration of Soviet infantry teams is also a bit odd. For example, the inclusion of a sniper in each platoon is curious. The sniper is a lingering aftereffect of Soviet experiences in World War II. The bulk of Soviet combat actions in this war were defensive, static holding actions. Snipers played an important role, since Soviet rifle training was often inadequate. The Soviets favored massed fire from submachine guns, which had considerable shock value and didn't require much marksmanship. This mentality still prevails. At long ranges, during static defensive operations, the snipers could provide much needed long-range firepower. But on a mechanized battlefield, it is hard to see how a sniper will fit in. The SVD sniper rifle does not have the rate of fire of the assault rifle, and the sniper seldom has a specialized role in assault tactics. The size of Soviet rifle squads continues to diminish, and the sniper seems to add less firepower to the platoon than an ordinary rifleman in many tactical settings.

Other Soviet infantry equipment is also curious. One of the most awkward examples is the matter of fire support from the BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicle. The BMP-2 is extremely low to the ground, so low, in fact, that the gun is not much higher than the height of an average soldier. This means there is a considerable risk that troops advancing in front of the BMP-2 can be hit by friendly fire unless the gunner is extremely careful; this was suggested in the unfortunate fate of Sergeant Yermakov's squad in the fictional account. This problem has led to peculiar Soviet infantry tactics that stress keeping open an avenue of fire for the BMP-2. This works well on training grounds where the targets can be carefully positioned, but on a fluid battlefield, this is likely to be a significant hindrance. Ironically, the American equivalent of the BMP, the M2 Bradley IFV, has been roundly criticized in the U.S. press for being too high! The press has never bothered to consider the effects of having an infantry vehicle with a gun positioned so low that it threatens its own dismounted troops.

The Afghanistan experience has forced Soviet tacticians out of their complacency. The Soviet Ground Forces are now beginning to examine what changes will be necessary to correct deficiencies found in the fighting. There has been considerable criticism of the fact that units, which passed their peacetime training exercises with flying colors, performed miserably in combat. There have been two tentative steps in reform over the past few years — more realistic training and more capable NCOs. The Soviets are experimenting with a less rigid and predictable training syllabus in an attempt to make training more realistic. It is unclear if these attempts can overcome deeply ingrained traits of Soviet military culture.

The current system has been configured over the years to favor a sort of "grade inflation." There is little risk that a unit will feil its major tests unless the squad, platoon, company, or battalion commanders are monumentally incompetent. Scoring is predicated on the assumption that the majority of units should pass. This complacent attitude to training is probably most strongly rooted in the desire of the officers to avoid embarrassing failures.

The Soviet military officer class is much like the rest of Soviet society. It is a bureaucratic institution, with a rigidly equalitarian frame of mind. There is little attempt to foster a competitive spirit among officers. The military culture fosters an amiable degree of complacent mediocrity. Difficult training tests for the troops carry the risk that an officer's performance will be called into question. It is more comfortable for all concerned to have a lax training norm so that most units will pass. War seems unlikely, so peacetime garrison duty may as well not be career threatening. This kind of corruption and decay is common in many peacetime armies. But it was found to be deeply wanting in Afghanistan.

Many of the new-generation Soviet Army leaders, such as Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov and Marshal Dmitri \azov, have decried these tendencies. Yazov made his reputation within the Ground Forces by introducing novel training techniques. Ogarkov made his reputation by insisting that the Soviet Army try to match the qualitative advantages of NATO. It has yet to be seen whether the criticisms of sloppy training that have become commonplace in Soviet military journals will actually result in fundamental changes in the nature of Soviet garrison life.

The same applies to the matter of improved sergeants. The real problem with the existing system is that sergeants remain in the Soviet armed forces for too short a period to develop any expertise. Unless the army plans to introduce radical reforms in matters such as pay and family support for NCOs, it is doubtful that the exhortations about improving NCO training will matter that much. The Soviet Army has begun tentative steps to address the problem through a program of warrant officers (praporshchik). But this is halfhearted at best, and not radical enough to provide sufficient qualified combat leaders. The creation of a large, skilled NCO class is unlikely for a variety of reasons. It would require a major infusion of rubles to pay for new base housing for professional NCOs and their families. It would place a large drain on the state defense budget, since it would require a major increase in pay for the professional NCOs. And it would deprive the civilian work force of a significant body of able men with leadership abilities.

So long as the Soviet armed forces maintain their bloated force structure, it will be difficult to enact substantial reforms of the command structure. The current effort appears to be aimed at giving sergeants greater responsibility and autonomy, but without a commensurate increase in pay or other inducements. It is the cheap approach to reform, expecting productivity growth without capital investment. And its chances for success are very limited.

The issues of infantry squad command are typical of the quality-versus-quantity debate in the Soviet Army, which tends to favor quantity over quality as compared to NATO armies. Even though squad for squad, the Soviet forces may be somewhat inferior, two or three Soviet squads will confront every single NATO squad.

This dilemma of quantity versus quality also affects infantry mechanization. The fictional account of the skirmish of Demchenko's platoon was a best-case scenario with a well-equipped unit. Not all Soviet motor rifle units are lucky enough to be equipped with the BMP-2 Yozh. The majority of units are equipped with the older BMP-1, or with wheeled infantry transporters such as the BTR-60, BTR-70, or BTR-80.

The BMP-1 has nearly the same chassis as the BMP-2, but has a different turret and one or two more squad members. The BMP-1 Korshun turret uses a 73 mm low-pressure gun instead of the 30mm autocannon of the BMP-2. This is a peculiar hybrid system, designed mainly to fight tanks. These days, however, the warhead is too small to be very effective against tanks. The real problem is that the system has a very poor effective range (700 meters), less than a common

NATO antitank missile such as the Milan, which is effective to about 1,500 meters. In the scenario, the BMP-2s were able to sit back, beyond Milan range, and provide fire support, since their 30mm autocannons were effective to about 2,000 meters in this role. In the case of the BMP-1, that would be impossible. The BMP-1s would have the option of either staying in the rear and not providing fire support, or moving forward behind the infantry and risking destruction by enemy antitank missiles.

The other disadvantage of the BMP-1 is the placement of the squad commander. In the BMP-2, the commander is in the turret next to the gunner. He has access to the powerful sighting equipment in the turret and so he can obtain a very good picture of the battlefield confronting his troops. In the BMP-1, the commander sits in the alleyway behind the driver. He has a simple periscopic sight, and does not have the field of view of a squad leader in a BMP-2. When the squad dismounts, the squad leader is apt to be less prepared than is the case with the BMP-2 squad. These problems stem from the fact that the BMP-1 was designed to fight on a different battlefield than the conventional battlefield depicted in the scenario. The BMP-1 was designed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Soviet doctrine presumed that tactical nuclear weapons would be used. It was assumed that infantry would have to fight on radioactively contaminated battlefields, mounted inside the vehicle. This was also in the days before the advent of highly accurate wire antitank guided missiles (ATGMs). It didn't matter that the gun could not outrange ATGMs, because they weren't very common, and it was expected that the infantry would be fighting from inside the vehicle anyway.

In the 1970s, it became apparent that the war might take place under purely conventional conditions. Under these circumstances and in the presence of ATGMs, mounted attack became very risky. Soviet tactical doctrine suggests that in the presence of ATGMs, as in the scenario here, the attack be conducted with the infantry dismounted and fighting on foot. The squad would attack from a mounted position only if the enemy was disorganized or not equipped with antitank weapons.

In spite of its limitations, the BMP-1 is superior to the other alternative, the wheeled armored infantry transporters. The BTRs are all very similar in appearance. They have eight wheels and a sharply angled hull. The wheeled suspension gives them better mobility on roads than BMPs, and they are a good deal faster. They are also less complicated than BMPs and are easy to maintain. But they have many drawbacks. They are more poorly armed than BMPs: Their only armament is a 14.5mm heavy machine gun, which is less destructive than either the 30mm autocannon or the 73 mm gun of the BMPs. They are more lightly armored. In Afghanistan, the mujihadeen found that they were vulnerable to close-range heavy machine gun fire against certain parts of the side. They are less mobile in rough country. They tend to get bogged down in deep mud or snow, and have a harder time traversing obstacles than tracked vehicles.

The older vehicles, like BTR-60PBs, were gasoline powered, which made them especially vulnerable to fires. Gasoline propulsion for combat vehicles is a bad idea. Once the fuel starts to burn, there is little chance to save the vehicle. Afghanistan is littered with their burned-out hulls. The BTR-60 was nicknamed the "wheeled coffin" by Soviet troops. The BTR-70 went to diesel fuel, but retained the peculiar two-engine configuration of the BTR-60, which causes a lot of maintenance headaches, since it means there are two transmissions to worry about. The reason for this layout is purely economic. The Soviet Union has a limited supply of large truck engines, and it was cheaper to use two cheap light truck engines than one scarce and expensive truck engine. The BTR-80 finally did away with both of these problems by adopting both a single engine and diesel propulsion.

The oddest feature of the BTRs is their hull shape. Exit and entrance are through side hull doors. It helps if you are an acrobat to get in and out of them. The BTR-60PB is the worst, but the BTR-70 and BTR-80 are only marginally better. This is not very important if the squad dismounts or loads on board outside the range of enemy fire. But it makes the process of exiting and entering the vehicle very dangerous if under enemy fire. The BTR-60 was viewed so skeptically by the Czechoslovak and Polish armies that they decided to develop their own BTR equivalent, the OT-64 SKOT, which has a single diesel engine and spacious rear doors for easy access.

Why is the BTR so bad a design? It has more to do with economics than technology. Soviet armored vehicle designers are talented, but were tightly constrained in the design of the BTRs. The Soviet Army wanted a top-of-the-line infantry vehicle for its forward deployed troops facing NATO. These units got the BMP. But the Soviets could not afford to equip all their divisions with that vehicle. The cost of wheeled infantry vehicles like the BTRs was about one-seventh that of a BMP, and the BTR was designed to be light, simple to manufacture, and cheap to maintain.

The BTR option is an example of the Soviet tendency for a high-low mix. The Soviets cannot afford to equip their whole army up to NATO standards. So they equip part of the army with top-notch hardware like the BMP, and the rest of the army with low-grade equipment like the BTR. This is not unknown in NATO. For example, the British Army has been adopting the Warrior, which is a counterpart to the U.S. Bradley and the Soviet BMP-2. But to flesh out other units, they are also adopting the Saxon, which is worse than the BTR-80 in many respects. But this is less common in NATO than in the Warsaw Pact. The U.S. Army is currently acquiring only the high-tech M2 Bradley, even though the older and simpler M113 APC remains in service as well.

Like the country from which it springs, the Soviet Army is very diverse. The motor rifle divisions in interior military districts such as the Urals are apt to be equipped with troop carriers, artillery, and small arms from the 1960s. They do not necessarily share much in common with the high-grade units in the Group of Soviet Forces-Germany or the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia. As a result, it is easy to misjudge the quality of the Soviet armed forces. An assessment that considers the "average" Soviet unit is apt to underestimate the quality of the Soviet forces opposite NATO. An assessment that acts as though all Soviet units are up to the standards of the units feeing NATO can exaggerate the overall quality of Soviet forces. An appreciation for the diversity of the Soviet Army is essential in making a balanced assessment of their effectiveness.