Doctrine, Equipment and Organization for Reserve African Rifles in the Caribbean

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

If former Soviet vehicles can be had for pennies on the dollar and the new owners have lots of time and labor, the vehicles could be converted to something more suited for whatever uses the new owners need.

Examples - modify existing Land Rovers to take Soviet wheels and tires. Use a Soviet engine to get a ag tractor moving again. Build a total custom ATV that can deal with the mule friendly trails.

Bonus if the vehicles were not de-milled before the sale. A turret mount gun might make a decent pill box weapon. Any comm gear could be useful and provide an alternative to western gear. Some vehicles have limited Surface to Air defense and maybe even offense capabilities. Also, even older tanks can make a decent if short ranged 'shoot and scoot' artillery system.

During the fall of the Soviet Union, more than one base commander with no idea where their next paycheck would come from allowed arms dealers to buy all kinds of arms, helicopters, scout vehicles and tanks. Aside from bribing the necessary officials and the cost of transport, the equipment was basically free for the taking, for those arms dealers who were courageous, canny and quick.

As the billionaire setting up a secret counter-supernatural network from 1986 was already employing a number of grey market (at best) arms dealers with contacts in the less-than-legal sectors of the arms market, as soon as the Soviet Union fell, they contacted everyone they knew who had connections behind the 'Iron Curtain' and basically handed them wish lists of every piece of post-Soviet equipment that could be of any use to a network preparing to defend the Caribbean from supernatural incursions. This includes arms caches all over the Caribbean, but also a full complement of arms for the Commandos on the Commonwealth of Dominica, as they are the in-extremis military solution.

Everything needs to be airmobile or easy to ship, so tanks are not really useful. Not because of the expense, but because you couldn't get them to Hispaniola or the Virgin Islands if you needed to intervene in a major supernatural event. You couldn't even get them from Petite Soufriére Bay to the capital of Roseau, on Dominica, to defend it from coup attempts. I imagine that vehicles armoured against small arms and armed with weaponry that could decimate foreign mercenaries arriving by boat or plane would be more effective to defend Government House in Roseau, anyway, but wouldn't mind some artillery and anti-air guns to mount around the Prime Minister's house.

There will be no repeat of the 1990 hostage situation in Trinidad and Tobago on Dominica and Dame Eugenia Charles is prepared to lay down some defences around Government House, though her budget is tiny and she won't accept donations of money or equipment (but will allow loyal Dominicans, immigrants or no, to help find good deals on surplus gear, and to volunteer for military service, to be discharged by setting up defences and training the Commonwealth of Dominica Police Force Special Service Unit who'll be responsible for security of the ministers and president).

For vehicles supporting any foreign deployment of the Commandos, helicopters and armoured vehicles you can transport by helicopters are much more practical than actual tanks. If the Soviets had any decent roll-on, roll-off ferries, especially ones developed for amphibious assaults, that would be great, especially if such craft could be disguised as commercial ferries or other relatively inconspicious nautical craft. Of course, though it might be more expensive than taking advantage of the crisis and chaos in the former Soviet Union in 1990-1991, maybe they'll buy commercial ferries. Depends on what their friendly arms dealers find and whether any Soviet naval bases are subject to the same malaise as their warehouses, surplus storage and some military bases.

I don't know how much Soviet equipment helps with crossing jungle covered mountains. That demands extremely light vehicles and I'm not sure Soviet doctrine prioritized those much. Helicopters will do in a pinch, of course, and An-2 aircraft are good for island hopping with improvised air strips, but commercial ATVs are probably better at navigating a hiking trail that mules can barely cover than any Soviet vehicle. Though I'd be pleased to see suggestions of light, all-terrain Soviet military vehicles, as operations on most Caribbean islands might benefit from such vehicles to supply a military force.

[Farmer]

Possible options:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuAZ-967

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAZ-69

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAZ-469

Not as sophisticated as modern ATVs, but at the time might have been considered useful given their smaller profile. The LuAZ-967 in particular was amphibious and easily air transportable.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Possible options:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuAZ-967

The LuAZ-967 in particular was amphibious and easily air transportable.

Oh, the LuAZ-969M are adorable and they can be fitted with Ford Valencia engines, widely used in motorsports and still produced in the modern day to serve historical racing sport enthusiasts.

[DeadParrot]

You mentioned using a Il-76 cargo plane for transport of your equipment purchases. It can lift about 40 tons. A T-34 tank weights somewhat less then that. The T-34 wouldn't survive long on a 90's era battle field but could serve as an artillery platform with shoot and scoot capabilities. Or buy the tank, lift off and keep the turret,gun and loading mechanism, cut out the turret ring and use that as the basis for a pill box gun. Let the dealer resell the remains as scrap.

Also, pretty sure there were still some of the older style 'tramp' freighters sailing in the 90's. A lot of smaller ports weren't fitted with the giant container loading cranes. Such a ship would be a convenient way to transport a load of heavy equipment including the already mentioned helicopters. Helicopters are normally shipped to their bases unless it is a short flight. If you are hiring a ship for choppers, a few tanks and other heavy vehicles could catch a ride as well.

Or hire a ship for "one last voyage". When it arrives, beach it, cut it open and drive the stuff off, scrap the remains. The hull plates could be repurposed as cheap armor plate.

For your mountain hideaway, maybe an overhead cable car setup. Easy access during peace time. Blow the cables if an invasion happens. A motor and transmission from a tank or other heavy vehicle could provide the motive force. (For applications requiring larger diesel engines, surplus tanks and trucks could be cheaper then buying a stand alone engine)

Dirt bikes are also an alternative. Low cost, easy to ship, don't use much fuel and don't normally attract much attention from folks watching where military type equipment goes.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

You mentioned using a Il-76 cargo plane for transport of your equipment purchases. It can lift about 40 tons. A T-34 tank weights somewhat less then that. The T-34 wouldn't survive long on a 90's era battle field but could serve as an artillery platform with shoot and scoot capabilities. Or buy the tank, lift off and keep the turret,gun and loading mechanism, cut out the turret ring and use that as the basis for a pill box gun. Let the dealer resell the remains as scrap.

Ilyushin Il-76 can take off and land from fairly short fields given its size, but that is a far cry from the ability to be able to participate in a covert operation in the Dominican Republic, Haiti or Cuba, without the knowledge of the host government. You can land paratroopers, heliborne air assault troops or stealthy boat-borne commandos without having control of an air field or even coming close to any major population center. If you're going to land a huge cargo plane, that is no longer true, and you'd have to multiply your intervention force by a couple of orders of magnitude, in order to occupy the whole country. Which would complicate things a lot.

When projecting force by means of clandestine paradrop, black Zodiacs or helicopters, what is the ca 30 tons of T-34 tank adding to your capability? What threats do you want to counter with it?

TL8 anti-tank missiles that can take out such tanks weigh 7 lbs. Sure, those would not take them out from all angles, but missiles which do weigh like 30 lbs. If you want a vehicle to feel safe from werewolves or guerilla culebras in, at least an APC or IFV would weigh less, carry troops and be armed with something which you could use against supernatural threats.

It's actually kind of hard to think anything weighing 30 tons that is less useful than an outdated tank which wouldn't be very mobile through most wilderness areas on Caribbean islands. Bring 30 tons of fresh water and at least you'll be safe from some diseases.

More realistically, if you had the lift capability to bring 30 tons behind 'enemy' lines (ideally, you're hoping that the locals don't react fast enough to be anything but puzzled that somebody landed on their island, shot up a bunch of jungle and left), bring 30 tons of fuel and ordnance for helicopters, so you can set up a Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP) and have Mi-8/M-17 and Mi-24/Mi-35 support through the mission.

I'm going to have to recruit and equip a special unit to go ahead of everyone else and set up FARP for the helicopters involved in any operation. They'd need to be able to go by sea, air or land, but would need to transport a lot of fuel no matter how, so they'd probably go by unremarkable yachts and fishing boats a lot of the time. Or some sail, others parachute, with Zodiacs, while yet others fly in commercially and rent SUVs.

Such a team would need the skill sets of FARP team members from Army Special Operations Aviation on the 160th SOAR, the infiltration/exfiltration methods of Navy SEALs, local language and cultural expertise of Army Special Forces, recon and surveillance of the 75th Ranger Regimental Reconnaissance Company, meteorology and JTAC/Combat Control of Air Force Special Tactics Operators, and the ability to operate undetected among a hostile populace like JSOC Advanced Force Operations and OGA intelligence officers. Interestingly, though, they might not need to know for whom they were working or what objectives the helicopters they were supporting had.

I have some ideas on it, with more traditional mercenaries, less like family / household retainers. After all, ex-Soviet military equipment is not the only thing that was lying around useless in 1990-1991, with the old owners having gone poof. There were also a lot of former KGB and spetsnaz, as well as VDV and good soldiers from Guards units with attached helicopters. Later on, recruits familiar with Mi-8/Mi-17 and Mi-24/Mi-35 helicopters can come from other places, and the infiltration/extraction specialists, as well as the tradecraft experts, can be come from skilled operators who don't seem trustworthy enough to be brought into the operation where they will come to know all sort of things, but still seem like they would be professional enough as long as they were paid.

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

Also, pretty sure there were still some of the older style 'tramp' freighters sailing in the 90's. A lot of smaller ports weren't fitted with the giant container loading cranes. Such a ship would be a convenient way to transport a load of heavy equipment including the already mentioned helicopters. Helicopters are normally shipped to their bases unless it is a short flight. If you are hiring a ship for choppers, a few tanks and other heavy vehicles could catch a ride as well.

It isn't that there is no way in the world to get a T-34 tank to the Caribbean. It's that there is no conceivable use for one when doing covert airborne, light infantry or commando operations in the Caribbean. Once you have transported your T-34 from Russia to Dominica, it will forevermore live where you left it, because you can't transport it anywhere else in secret, because you are not going to be secretly capturing ports or air fields. When you seize ports or air fields, people notice, in a way that they don't necessarily notice when you insert thirty commandos into a jungle a long away from any settlement.

For that matter, you can't transport a tank to where your people live on the east coast of Dominica, because there is only one road there, and it is not rated for 30 tons. The tank, possibly named White Elephant or Dead Parrot's Folly, would just be stuck where you off-loaded it in the port, where none of your people live, but a lot of tourists pass through, meaning that you would be inviting questions you don't want.

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

Or hire a ship for "one last voyage". When it arrives, beach it, cut it open and drive the stuff off, scrap the remains. The hull plates could be repurposed as cheap armor plate.

This is surprisingly hard to do. Once you've 'beached' a traditional ship, it might be a long way from the actual beach, because it gets shallower and shallower the closer you get to an island. And while there are amphibious tanks and, especially, scout vehicles, T-34 tanks are not among them. They'd just roll into the surf and the engine would die before the crew would drown.

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

For your mountain hideaway, maybe an overhead cable car setup. Easy access during peace time. Blow the cables if an invasion happens. A motor and transmission from a tank or other heavy vehicle could provide the motive force. (For applications requiring larger diesel engines, surplus tanks and trucks could be cheaper then buying a stand alone engine)

The cable car risks tourists asking about it or wanting to ride it. The reason you don't want a road is that you don't want easy access in peacetime, so you avoid tourists. Hikers will always come through, but the amount of people who hike a couple of miles over a goat-trail crossing a mountain is going to be a lot less than those who'd drive the same distance over a road. And you're not doing anything explicitly illegal, you just really don't want tourists around your homes and training areas for supernatural jungle warfare.

Rosalie is a medium-sized town and has a fair amount of tourists, as do many areas of Dominica. So, you want to be able to get there quickly if you have to, but don't want any tourist stopping by in Rosalie to think that there is anything to explore up the east coast. So, the total lack of roads is a plus, from that point of view. But while you have both a doctor and some nurse practitioners in the kraal clinic, the medical centre in Rosalie is a lot larger and has more medical equipment and staff.

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

Dirt bikes are also an alternative. Low cost, easy to ship, don't use much fuel and don't normally attract much attention from folks watching where military type equipment goes.

Dirt bikes are good for transporting one person; much less so for transporting support weapons, ammo, fuel or an injured or sick person to the clinic in Rosalie.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Oh, the LuAZ-969M are adorable and they can be fitted with Ford Valencia engines, widely used in motorsports and still produced in the modern day to serve historical racing sport enthusiasts.

That's also a good option. Not amphibious, but a good size.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Farmer

That's also a good option. Not amphibious, but a good size.

Do you mean that they would not be amphibious if you switched out the engine for a new one, once the old one eventually died a natural death?

Because the LuAZ-969M was designed to be as amphibious as the 967, just produced in a more modern and efficient way.

This is a LuAZ-969M.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Do you mean that they would not be amphibious if you switched out the engine for a new one, once the old one eventually died a natural death?

Because the LuAZ-969M was designed to be as amphibious as the 967, just produced in a more modern and efficient way.

This is a LuAZ-969M.

Nah, that's the 967 which was specifically amphibious (using the normal wheels/tyres to propel it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-LSD0BmNGE ).

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Nah, that's the 967 which was specifically amphibious (using the normal wheels/tyres to propel it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-LSD0BmNGE ).

Then there's something up with the translation, as the 969A is described as a modernization of the 967, and the 969M as a further modernization of 969A. Nowhere does it mention that it removed a fundamental feature of the design. Ugh, there's a 967A and a 969A, plus a 967M and 969M, but no explanation of what the differences between the numbers represented. I figured it was a slightly longer body or bigger engine, maybe.

Well, if only LuAZ-967, LuAZ-967A and LuAZ-967M were amphibious, we just have to hope enough lasted fifteen years and more. As otherwise, by 1990-1991, there might be pretty few LuAZ-967 in existence. Fifteen years since the last one was made and four replacement models since then. Granted, USSR held on to cars and trucks longer than modern Western cultures, so there will be some, for sure, but attrition has likely reduced their numbers.

And who do you even bribe to get fifty of them? I wanted the LuAZ-969M as they were still being made. Cook up forged papers, bribe some top people at the factory to buy your story that you're from some Army front, needed fifty trucks, and had the right paperwork, and Robert's your father's brother. Problem with a truck that hasn't been made in fifteen years is that unlike armed vehicles, they're not so expensive to run that they get put into storage when not needed at the front, they'll likely be spread all over the former Soviet Union being driven by soldiers, officers, commissars and their drivers, a few per division, maybe. Sounds like quite a bit of trouble to amass them in numbers, likely find only a few.

[Icelander]

If it ever came down to it that the Commandos were deployed into actual battle against guerilla forces similar to Colombian FARC, Peruvian Sendero Luminoso, Mexican cartel forces or Haitian chimera, except under the influence of supernatural beings, how much mortar support would one Commando (company-sized) need?

As they might be infiltrated by sea or make a parachute jump or air assault, the three company-sized Commandos are lightly-armed. Well, in the tradition of elite shock troops everywhere, they'll carry heavy loads to ensure their section automatic weapons have lots of ammo, and they'll have plenty of grenades and grenade launchers, but how many 60mm mortars do you need to support a company of light infantry, hopefully fighting guerillas and not real soldiers?

The mortars are not organic to each Commando, they belong to the Support Commando, and mortar teams will be attached to a rifle Commando if and when needed, ideally with vehicles or at least open drop zones for resupply. I'm just considering how many I'll need and thus how many vehicles.

Does each Commando need organic Medium Machine Guns? I know MG3 machine guns are technically classed as GPMGs, but they are dramatically superior when used by experts as a MMG, and way too heavy and hard to control when used as a LMG when assaulting.

I'm seriously considering either just one Weapons Platoon per Commando, which will have expert machine gunners and plenty of RPGs, or concentrating the MG3 machine guns in Support Commando, while having the rifle Commandos just use RPDs and RPKs as LMGs and one of PKM, FN MAG or HK21A (or HK21E) as their GPMG (economy and simplicity says PKM).

One French innovation that I am considering, assuming that Rafael Villareal could influence the French establishment into selling their neighbours of Dominica and Saint Lucia their high-tech 52mm 'silent' commando mortars, is one such mini-mortar per section. It's almost as small as early grenade launchers, but with the newest SAFRAN laser-designation and trajectory calculation technology, it's pin-point accurate out to 600+ meters and the ordnance is actually heavy enough to do damage, unlike 20mm or 25mm grenade launchers.

There is something joyful in being armed only with efficiently economic ex-Soviet equipment, except when it comes to new capabilities that fundamentally change infantry capabilities. The side armed with AKM rifles and RPD light machine guns is not really at a disadvantage fighting in tropical jungle against enemies with M4 carbines and M249 SAWs. Being able to place a 52mm mortar round anywhere you can see, out to half a kilometer or more, that makes a difference, like snipers, but faster and with greater authority.

Another thing about mortars, are eight 60mm mortars better or worse than two 82mm mortars and four 60mm mortars?