For any army, the full establishment is a theoretical ideal which is rarely if ever achieved in reality. Go back to Roman times and you find that while on paper a Legion had 5,000 men, by Julius Caesar’s time the actual number was more like 3,500. This assumes that every BTG is at 100% fighting strength, which has historically never been the case. But this 10,200 represents the likely bulk of Russian armor. There are some additional vehicles at higher command levels: artillery and air defense units plus a number of other units such as the irregular separatist forces. If all the BTGs were at full strength, then they would have a complement of 10,200 armored vehicles. The total typically comes to 57 unarmored vehicles. In addition to its armor, the BTG also has quite a support train, with 11 ammunition trucks, five tankers for fuel and lubricants, four battlefield ambulances and five maintenance and repair vehicles. The numbers may vary because some have self-propelled mortars and artillery while others have older weapons towed by trucks. The BTG also has its own air defense assets, in the form of three personnel carriers carrying teams with man-portable missiles, plus two batteries of three mobile surface-to-air missile launchers with their attendant radar and control vehicles.Īdd to this a reconnaissance platoon, a recovery unit with five tracked vehicles to tow broken-down armor, plus three command and headquarters vehicles, and the total number of armored vehicles in the BTG is around 85. Artillery, which Stalin termed the ‘God of war,’ is likely to inflict more casualties than the front-line troops. Behind them is a formidable array of artillery: typically three batteries of two 152mm self-propelled guns, two batteries of three multiple-launch rockets with reload vehicles, and two batteries of three 120mm heavy mortars.
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