Reform of the Airborne Forces in the light of the experience of fighting in Ukraine and previous wars
Soldiers of the Airborne Forces land on the airfield in Gostomel, photo from video cameras of external control
In the battles in Ukraine, as in other wars before, the Airborne Forces covered themselves with unfading glory. The landing on Gostomel is the first air assault operation in the world since the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, moreover, it was carried out against an enemy potentially much stronger than the Iraqis.
Acting as light mechanized units, the Airborne Forces are actively advancing on the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donbass.
Nevertheless, the fighting in Ukraine again raised the question of the optimal appearance of the Airborne Forces.
Let us briefly list the problems that arose in connection with the large-scale use of the Airborne Forces in military operations.
1. The seeming senselessness of these formations as paratroopers in a war against an enemy with a regular army, air defense and aviation.
It is worth recalling here that part of the forces that were planned to be dropped near Kyiv from the air (presumably also near Gostomel) were preparing specifically for parachute landing and were even photographed at the same time. Today, knowing the situation there and then, we can only be glad that this ejection did not happen.
Military transport aircraft loaded with parachute platforms with airborne equipment, prepared for landing on the Gostomel airfield. The parachute landing was later cancelled. Photo: Razvedos
A sub-item of this problem is doubts about the meaningfulness of parachute landings as such.
2. Low survivability of airborne armored vehicles at a huge price. It is known that the BMD-4 has a cost approximately at the level tank T-90M. At the same time, it can be destroyed with the help of small arms fire. weapons. Despite the very light body, the BMD uses a very advanced fire control system by Russian standards and uses powerful weapons - 100-mm and 30-mm guns.
BMD - thin aluminum "armor", near-zero survivability, but there is no alternative, the car must be dropped with a parachute. In the photo - BMD-2, photo of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
BMD-4. It is used in Ukraine and shows itself well (except for survivability). The downside is that only 2 can be dropped from an airplane, not 3. Photo: Vitaly Kuzmin3. Extremely unsuccessful states. The parachute squad is too small and weak to fight on foot, the Airborne Forces have few heavy weapons, tanks, large-caliber artillery in the states do not exist at all, however, now they began to attach it to the landing units or change the 122-mm D-30 guns to 152 mm "Msta-B" or others of the same caliber.
At the same time, the Airborne Forces, having weak strike capabilities and yielding to motorized rifles in defense, are a very expensive type of troops.
4. Post-Soviet inconsistency in technology. During Soviet times, the Airborne Forces could parachute not only their light armored vehicles and artillery, but also vehicles (GAZ-66 cars), and even multiple launch rocket systems. Now the Airborne Forces have a lot of vehicles that cannot be dropped by parachutes, there are tanks, but all light armored vehicles, namely parachuted, with weak armor. It is not clear how to rationally use all this.
In addition to these problems, we also list the traditional, widely known earlier.
5. Insufficient number of military transport aircraft for parachute landing of at least one division.
6. The lack of a clear concept of the combat use of troops, which require complete air supremacy over the areas of flight and landing, with the subsequent retention of such over the airborne combat area, and which are almost impossible to use against an enemy with at least some kind of air defense.
7. The need to keep in the Airborne Forces a very large number of selected personnel who are much better trained and more expensive than in the Ground Forces, whose potential cannot be fully realized due to the shortcomings described above.
8. The lack of airborne military air defense, despite the fact that they must act in isolation from the main forces.
Combined with all this, there is a deficit in the RF Armed Forces of infantry for operations in the mountains and in inaccessible terrain, as well as during the assault on cities.
Also, the RF Armed Forces lack airborne assault units and formations trained to operate in conjunction with helicopters and parachute from them.
All of the above factors have led to the fact that, as after every war in the past, the future of the Airborne Forces is now being called into question.
We will also call it into question, but at the same time it is necessary “not to throw out the baby with the water” and assess what of the existing potential of the Airborne Forces still needs and should be preserved.
Methodology
At the first stage, it is necessary to separate two different issues - the appearance of the Airborne Forces in general, and the form in which they are used in our wars. Let's explain.
The question of whether parachute landing in itself is outdated, as a way of bringing forces into battle or entering battle, is a question related to the appearance of the airborne forces in general. As well as the balance between paratroopers (if they are needed) and air assault troops on helicopters, the appearance of airborne combat vehicles, if they are needed, and so on.
But whether it is right to have these troops in such quantities as they are, and then use them as ordinary mechanized units, what to do when paratroopers need to be used as ordinary ground units, and so on - this is another question, and it will be considered from other positions.
Thus, starting from the questions listed above, we will form others, the answers to which will already allow us to determine exactly the shape of the future landing troops.
1. Is there any point in parachute landing at all? What forces? What is the composition of the landing troops? Where, why and under what circumstances? Is it possible to abandon it in favor of landing from helicopters?
2. After answering the first question - what should be the states of the Airborne Forces? Why?
3. After answering the second question - what should be the airborne armored vehicles? Why?
4. Does the Airborne Forces need non-landing equipment? What for?
5. How should the strength of the Airborne Forces and military transport aviation be related? An important question that theoreticians bypass: what comes first - the number of airborne forces or military transport?
6. Where and against what enemy should these troops be used? Under what conditions?
7. What weapon systems, in principle, should the landing force be armed with? Including air defenses?
8. How to divide human resources between the Airborne Forces and the SV?
Along the way, let's imagine how the subordination of airborne units should look in relation to other branches of the military and types of the Armed Forces.
Let's start with the first - the meaningfulness of parachute landing from aircraft as such.
To do this, we will first review how the practice of airborne assaults has evolved in the world.
Failed landings?
There are two myths related directly to parachute landing in war. First, it didn't justify itself. The second is a subspecies of the first, parachute landing, in principle, was sometimes meaningful in the past, but not in the performance of stupid scoops, which had only disasters.
Let us analyze both of them in their entirety, starting with the second, and from there we will come to the analysis of the first.
So, let us first list the main tactical parachute landings of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, indicating their outcome.
Landing at Teryaeva Sloboda, December 14, 1941, a detachment of I. Starchak from the 214th airborne brigade. Aviation was unable to ensure the release of all the planned forces, part of the forces landed under German fire (40 people) and died, the remaining 107 were engaged in sabotage activities for some time. Near-zero result, high losses, the reason is poor planning of the release.
Landing at the Arabat arrow (Vladislavovka), December 31, 1941, airborne battalion, commander Major Nyashin. The initial task was to capture the Vladislavovka airfield, during the landing process it was canceled and the task was set to blockade the Arabat Spit to prevent the Germans from retreating along it or the arrival of reinforcements along it. The landing was carried out in unsuitable conditions, with a dispersion of landing forces, part of the forces fell directly under fire upon landing.
It should also be noted that the battalion was only called that, in reality it was a detachment of about 100 people, who had to act in groups of 7-8 fighters.
Despite this, in chaotic battles with the Germans, the paratroopers managed to collect, advance to Ak-Monai (Kamenskoye), drive the enemy out of there and maintain control over the southern part of the Arabat Spit until other units approached. The task was completed.
Here it is necessary to make an important reservation, which, to one degree or another, was valid for all Soviet paratroopers - "task completed" does not mean that it was correctly set or meaningful. In the conditions of the USSR in the first half of the 40s, this was not always the case. But we answer the question of whether the parachute drop justified itself as a way to solve the task, that is, we proceed from the fact that the command wanted something useful, and we look at whether the paratroopers were able to provide something or not.
Landing at Gusevo, January 2, 1942, 1st battalion of the 201st airborne brigade, commander captain I. Surzhik. Task: cut the roads in the German rear. The battalion was supposed to operate as part of a single airborne operation, together with Major Starchak's battalion, to form the first echelon of airborne assault, the second in which was to be the 250th airborne regiment, landed on the airfield captured by Starchak's battalion. The task of all landing forces is to capture the bridge across the Shan River, cut the Medyn-Yukhnov highway together with other landing units, capture Myatlevo, cut the roads around Medyn and prevent the withdrawal of the 4th German army.
At the same time, it was assumed that the 43rd Army would enter the landing area on January 5th.
Due to the failure of the rest of the landing forces (landing in the Myatlevo area, see below), instead, the battalion drove the Germans out of the villages of Gribovo and Maslovo, the bridge had not to be held, but destroyed, after which the battalion held its positions for several days, repelling German counterattacks, then, by January 11, he retreated to the northeast, to Kremenskoye, and joined up with the advancing units of the 43rd Army. In general, it is impossible to call the battalion's actions a failure, but the operation in which it was supposed to act, simply did not take place in the intended form.
Landing in the area of Myatlevo, January 3, 1942, a battalion (detachment) of Major Starchak, the task is to capture the Bolshoye Fatyanovo airfield, receive the main forces of the landing force as part of the 250th airborne regiment, then, having acted together with Surzhik’s battalion (see. above) under the command of Major N. Soldatov, who commanded all the landing forces and at the same time the 250th regiment, to fulfill the above tasks of the landing units.
From the very beginning, Starchak's detachment was sent into battle with an incomplete squad. The detachment completed the task of capturing the airfield, but it turned out that intelligence underestimated the strength of the Germans in the airfield area, and the weather service could not make a correct weather forecast. The detachment fought for the airfield all day on January 4 and was unable to ensure the safe landing of the group, which was supposed to prepare the airfield to receive the 250th regiment. And on January 5, a strong snowstorm began. As a result, having captured the airfield on January 300 with 4 fighters, having fought the Germans all day before that, Starchak discovered that there would be no second echelon.
On the 43th, the detachment was ordered to act independently. Starchak left the airfield and sent paratroopers to raid the German rear. They took Myatlevo, destroying a train with tanks there, but since there were no reinforcements, and the XNUMXrd Army was advancing much more slowly than planned, nothing could be held.
After 17 days of intense heavy fighting in the German rear with superior enemy forces, the detachment went to join the 43rd Army. By that time, 87 people remained in it, I. Starchak himself received frostbite in his legs, which required partial amputation.
Analyzing the actions of the battalions of Captain Surzhik and Major Starchak, it must be said that the paratroopers completed their part of the task - parachute landing to the rear, capture of designated objects, access to designated areas.
The reasons that their success was not used were: insufficiently well-conducted reconnaissance in the Bolshoi Fatyanovo area, weak air support, failure to take into account the weather in planning, as a result for Starchak, the landing of the main landing forces was canceled. None of this indicates the failure of the concept of parachute landing as such.
Soviet paratroopers at TB-3. Photo by Semyon Fridlyand
Landing in the area of Znamenka, Luga, Zhelanya. January 18, 1942, paratroopers consisting of two battalions of the 201st Airborne Brigade, landing troops - 250th Airborne Forces, commander of the landing forces - Major Soldatov.
The task is to cut German communications behind Yukhnov, to help the advance of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps.
The problem was to be solved in three stages. On the first stage, the battalions of the 201st airborne brigade were to capture the German airfield in Znamenka, knocking out the enemy from there and taking up all-round defense. On the second, a group was supposed to land at the airfield, ensuring the reception of the main forces of the landing force. On the third, all the forces of the 250th regiment, together with Major Soldatov, were to be landed on the airfield, after which the combined airborne detachment was to begin the combat mission. All settlements in the district were occupied by the Germans, the enemy had a significant numerical superiority, but deep snow made it difficult to maneuver and mutual assistance for the German units, and the Soviet paratroopers had skis.
On the night of January 18, 1942, at 03:35, the aircraft with the landing force began to climb from the runway of the Vnukovo airfield. The landing, as usual, went wrong. The first wave of paratroopers of Major Surzhik, numbering 425 people, landed between Znamenka and Zhelanye at 9 am. The paratroopers waited for the reception of the second wave of paratroopers the next night, but due to bad weather they managed to land only 200 people, which brought the size of Captain Surzhik's group to 625 fighters and commanders.
By this time, the team that was supposed to ensure the reception of aircraft at Znamenka landed on a landing site controlled by the partisans.
And here, too, everything did not go according to plan, intelligence again made a mistake in assessing the enemy, and the Germans were able to detect the landing of Li-2. In addition, the planes did not have skis, and only one of the entire group was then able to take off.
Surzhik managed to ensure the collection of all landing forces under his command and attack Znamenka, but the Germans could not be driven out of the airfield.
On January 19, paratroopers, partisans and local residents managed to prepare a runway at a distance from the German positions, on which wheeled aircraft could land and from which they could take off. From January 20 to January 22, 1 people were landed on the runway. The Germans managed to shoot down three aircraft, in which 100 paratroopers were killed and 27 were wounded.
Deploying his forces on the ground, Soldatov began to act.
The paratroopers cut the Vyazma-Yukhnov highway and captured a German supply convoy. On January 20, Zhukov personally ordered Soldatov to attack the village of Klyuchi with part of his forces and from there go to join the 1st Guards. Cavalry Corps Belov. This order was given to Surzhik and the paratroopers of two battalions of the 201st brigade. This order was carried out by January 28, while the paratroopers defeated the small Wehrmacht garrisons in five small villages along the way.
The rest of Soldatov's forces attacked Znamenka, trying to dislodge the Germans from there, cut the Bryansk-Vyazma railway line, attacked the Ugra station and continued to fight the Germans along the Vyazma-Yukhnov highway, where the latter attacked with artillery support by the strength of two infantry companies.
The command of the front continuously set new tasks for the paratroopers, all the time expanding their combat area. Unfortunately, the paratroopers themselves failed to clear Znamenka - the enemy was too strong. By the end of January, all landing forces joined the combined arms formations of the Red Army, advancing in the direction of Vyazma.
It must be said that the paratroopers of the 1st brigade and the 201th regiment completed the task of helping the 250st Guards Cavalry Corps and cutting German communications - the fact that they failed to take Znamenka did not affect its success.
These successes had a price - landing losses were great, which is not surprising, given the conditions in which they had to operate. The 250th regiment was later disbanded without being reorganized into a linear rifle unit - there was no one to reorganize there.
The Soviet command, inspired by the fact that the parachute units are showing more and more successes, decided on an operational airborne assault - the landing of the 8th airborne brigade to cut German communications in the near rear of their defenses. It was supposed to be the first Soviet airborne landing of operational significance.
By the time the soldiers of Soldatov and Surzhik joined the infantry and cavalry, the Vyazemskaya airborne operation was already underway.
Before moving on to landings of operational significance, it is necessary to evaluate tactical landings.
As you can see, the vast majority of them cannot be called unsuccessful, although the tasks of the landing force were often not fully completed. At the same time, it cannot be said that they were always small in number, the same landing under Znamenka and Zhelanye was rather big by the standards of World War II.
The very introduction of paratroopers into battle by flying transport aircraft behind enemy lines and dropping personnel by parachute was successful in all cases, except for one - Teryaeva Sloboda.
The combined method of landing was successful, when the first echelon lands by parachute, and the main forces by the landing method.
Enemy air defenses often fired on aircraft, but failed to disrupt a single landing.
The presence or absence of air supremacy, which is considered mandatory today, in the first half of the forties was leveled by landings in the early morning, at dusk or in the evening, and also at night.
At the same time, all landings had chronic failures in planning, which were never corrected. Among them: poor reconnaissance, sometimes an unsuccessful choice of landing sites, almost zero interaction with strike aircraft, at best, before landing, a supporting air strike could be delivered somewhere, one-time, otherwise there was simply no interaction.
Worst of all, the insufficient allocation of transport aviation forces led to the fact that even the battalion's deployment could drag on for several days. This led to the loss of surprise and thwarted the possibility of a quick success by the landing force.
Another chronic mistake was the overestimation of the success of the corps and armies advancing on the ground, almost always much more time passed before connecting with them than it should have been.
All this, coupled with the objectively arising need to load the landing force with additional tasks and also the objectively available numerical and fire superiority of the enemy, led to heavy losses in the landing units and subunits.
But the worst of all turned out to be that, not having overcome these shortcomings, the command of the Red Army began to use airborne units on an operationally significant scale, only to discover that on a large scale, these same errors and shortcomings in planning have a completely different effect.
Another effect was the traditional disease of our army - poor communication. It is one thing to restore control of a battalion thrown out in a couple of days, against which no one really fights, another thing is a brigade thrown under the blow of reserve regiments or divisions, which is delivered in parts for many days in a row.
And it also affected on a critical scale.
Operational landings and the mechanism of disaster
The operational airborne operations of the Red Army include the landing of the 8th Airborne Brigade of the 4th Airborne Forces during the Vyazemsky airborne operation in January-February 1942, the landing of the remaining forces of the 4th Airborne Forces as part of the 2nd brigades (9th and 214th) during her own and the Dnieper landing of 1943. Unlike tactical landings, the tasks of which were still carried out for the most part (let us leave the question of the meaningfulness of these tasks beyond the scope of the study), operational ones ended in disaster.
The volume of the article does not make it possible to make a detailed analysis of all airborne operations, so it is necessary to briefly outline the mechanism of the disaster.
In a number of sources, one can find information that, in general, the plan for using the 4th Airborne Command corresponded to the situation, but the execution failed. This is not true.
In fact, the same scheme was proposed that was used in tactical landings - landing for unbroken the enemy's line of defense, actually surrounded.
Landing communications, but (attention) - significantly further from the front line than tactical landings did.
And what about in the depths of the enemy’s defense? He has operational reserves there. There is the ability to send not two infantry companies, but a division, into a counterattack. Sometimes not just one.
And the speed of the breakthrough of the advancing units of the Red Army was low, and this was obvious by that time. Any length of time could pass from the landing to joining it with the advancing units of the Red Army.
Thus, no matter how the paratroopers landed, they would have, firstly, to face numerous enemy reserves that surpass them both in firepower and in numbers, and secondly, all this with minimal chances of wait for the advancing armies on the ground.
It was an operational miscalculation, it could not be compensated by any tactical luck.
But there were no tactical successes, because the “birthmarks” of planning Soviet airborne assaults did not disappear anywhere.
And the lack of aircraft, which was also aggravated by German air strikes on airfields, and the inability or unwillingness to take into account the weather when planning a landing, and intelligence, unable to provide the necessary information about the enemy - these problems were added to the operational miscalculation. And they were superimposed on a missing connection.
One can only guess how it would have ended if the three brigades of the 4th Airborne Forces that had not been put into battle then went into battle as infantry in the offensive zone of one of the combined arms armies, and the aircraft were used to supply troops. But what happened happened.
On January 24, the ejection of the 8th brigade began. Past the designated target, with a huge clearance for tens of kilometers, the advanced battalion was landed, which took more than a day to collect and advance to the Ozerechny area, where they still had to fight with the German garrison. There was no communication with the corps, with the brigade, too.
Supplies were lost during the drop due to the scattering of soft containers with supplies for the battalion.
Nevertheless, Captain Karnaukhov, who commanded the landing units, managed to capture the area in which it was supposed to receive the main forces of the landing force and prepare to receive them.
Alas, the landing of the entire 8th brigade dragged on until February 1st.
The control of the forces of the 8th brigade was never restored, the commander of the brigade, Lieutenant Colonel A. Onufriev, who landed, could not fix anything. At the same time, the command continued to drop paratroopers "to nowhere." In fact, the brigade broke up into numerous detachments that had no connection either with the command or with each other, and of the entire brigade, only the 3rd battalion of Major Kobets completed the task, in fact, a detachment of 131 people, who immediately saddled both the railway and the road to west of Vyazma. The battalion managed to cut communications between Vyazma and Smolensk for three days in a row and force the Germans to involve large forces in clearing the roads. But soon Kobets had to join the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps.
The remaining detachments of the brigade were engaged in the destruction of small German garrisons and units, acting without a sane plan and leadership and without significant results.
Somewhere west of Moscow, January 1942, paratroopers watch a railroad blow up. Photo: Oleg Knorring, Red Star.
In early February, units of the 8th brigade were already mainly fighting together with the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps as light infantry, and the task assigned to the brigade of disrupting German communications and facilitating the offensive was not completed. Due to the superiority of the enemy in forces, the brigade suffered very heavy losses.
The landing of the 4th Airborne Command repeated the scheme - the corps landed behind an unbroken front line and very far from it. The suddenness of the use of landing units by that time had been lost, the strike force of the Soviet fronts too, the organization of the drop was common for the Red Army, and the landing could not have any strategic effect, although it was fettered by battles (together with the cavalry of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps and partisans) already 7 German divisions.
The paratroopers fought in the German rear until the summer, and these were precisely organized strikes and raids carried out together with other parts of the Red Army. Thousands of fighters and commanders of the 4th Airborne Forces subsequently broke out of the German encirclement along with other troops and partisans.
In general, it is impossible to say that the 4th Airborne Forces was defeated by the Germans, although the losses were huge. The very idea of the operation was simply unrealizable.
At the same time, the Germans were never able to prevent an amphibious landing or the airlift of supplies and reinforcements in an organized manner and with good results.
It makes no sense to analyze the Dnieper landing - the operation was planned so poorly that it could not end in success. Moreover, her miserable plan was executed horribly.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that in the original plan, some mistakes of the old landings were corrected, for example, interaction with strike aircraft was planned.
True, they could not implement it.
The Dnieper landing operation only proves that the more complex the operation plan, the more critical the quality of the officers in the headquarters responsible for its implementation. No more lessons can be learned from it, unlike previous operations.
Such a severe failure in the organization cannot be compensated by any heroism.
The landing of troops into the boilers to help the encircled troops deserves special mention. And the battalion of senior lieutenant Belotserkovsky (4th battalion of the 204th airborne brigade), thrown into the cauldron with units of the 29th army near the village of Okorokovo west of Rzhev on February 17, 1942, and the 4th battalion of the 23rd airborne brigade, dropped on assistance to the 4th Airborne Forces, on April 19, 1942, they completed their task.
This is especially true of the Belotserkovsky battalion, without which the remnants of the 29th Army simply would not have broken through the encirclement. The price was inevitably high losses, more than 2/3 of the landing personnel, but the landing force then sold its life really dearly, and the number of soldiers and commanders who left the boiler justified such sacrifices, no matter how cynical it sounds.
What conclusions can be drawn from the experience of the landings of the Great Patriotic War?
Firstly, the scheme “to throw troops behind an unbroken front line” works very poorly at the tactical level and does not work at all on the operational level. The depth at which the landing force operates should allow troops advancing along the ground to break through to it in time. The tactical landings of the Red Army were relatively successful, but bloody, because this requirement was poorly fulfilled. And for operatives - it was not carried out at all.
Together with the traditional Soviet "sins" such as the unorganized introduction of parachute units into battle in parts and the dispersion of troops in tens of kilometers, and others mentioned above, violation of this requirement reduced the effectiveness of airborne assaults.
The idea of using the Airborne Forces as a means of developing success after the front was hacked and mobile formations were introduced into the breakthrough had not yet been reached in those years. It remains only to guess what level of combat effectiveness the Airborne Forces would have reached if the Stavka had been developing them as stubbornly as the development of tank troops, which at first they also did not know how to use, from the word “generally”.
Western experience
Unlike our country, where the era of parachute landings in a real war ended with the Great Patriotic War, and landing from an airplane - in 1968, in the West the situation was different.
During the Second World War, Western countries and Japan widely used airborne assaults, landing troops by parachute, glider and landing method in different variations. There were many tactical landings, especially at the initial stage of World War II by the Germans, from the capture of Fort Eben-Emal to jumps over Denmark, Norway and Greece.
In all tactical landings, the German paratroopers performed well.
German paratroopers at the beginning of World War II
The first airborne operation on an operational scale was the capture of Crete by German paratroopers.
I must say that the heavy losses for the Wehrmacht, which forced Hitler to abandon the use of airborne troops for their intended purpose and in massive quantities, were actually acceptable, simply because the result was worth it.
The Cretan operation of the Germans without reservations must be called successful.
In the future, the allies raised the banner of airborne warfare.
The Americans parachuted into North Africa, their paratroopers fought in Sicily and New Guinea (503rd regiment), and during the landing in Normandy, two airborne divisions landed in the airborne assault - the 82nd and 101st, both of which are still still exist, however, the 101st is now air assault and operates from helicopters. The 82nd is still airborne.
Aircraft with the 503rd Infantry (Parachute) Regiment of the US Army during the drop on Nadzab, New Guinea. Pay attention to the smoke screens put up by strike aircraft to cover the landing.
The British did not lag behind, as did the Americans, they carried out airborne operations on a small scale in Africa, during the landings in Normandy they brought the 6th Airborne Division into battle, along with some other units acting as amphibious troops.
During the invasion of southern France, the British launched the 2nd Airborne Brigade into battle. At the same time, it was difficult for the British to organize landing operations, especially for the 6th Airborne Division, in which the proportion of personnel who did not participate in the combat mission due to losses and dispersion during landing sometimes reached 40%.
In the Pacific theater of operations, the British even acted with local units, for example, two battalions of Gurkhas landed by parachute near Yangon, and their actions were decisive for clearing the city from the Japanese (Operation Elephant Point).
Gurkha paratroopers before landing at Yangon
At the very end of the war in April 1945, the Americans and the British even managed to parachute along with the Italians who joined them (Operation Herring), also successfully.
In general, characterizing the Allied landings, it is worth saying that the vast majority of tactical landings were either completely successful or relatively successful. The overwhelming minority were failures, there were no catastrophic ones at all. Of the landings of operational importance, only the infamous Operation Market Garden failed - an attempt to capture the bridges across the Rhine by airborne assault.
A lot has been written about the failure of the British part of the operation, one can say that the Allies repeated the conceptual mistake of the Soviet planners - they threw the paratroopers too far beyond the unbroken front, where the landing force could be attacked by operational reserves. The bridge really turned out to be “too far away”.
Comparing the actions of the allies in the west with the paratroopers of the Red Army, it is easy to see the decisive trump card that the British and Americans had - a sufficient number of aircraft and a more favorable season in terms of climate (our season was suitable on the Dnieper, but we could not use it). Already these two factors radically facilitated the work of paratroopers, apart from everything else.
In general, it can be stated that during the Second World War, the parachute troops fully justified themselves. Another thing is that the headquarters that planned the operation as a whole did not always do their job as expected, which had an extremely dramatic effect on the landing units. At the same time, it also became clear that in airborne operations the cost of a mistake is always higher than in a conventional offensive.
No wonder that after the Second World War the practice of using airborne troops continued.
US Army 187th Parachute Regiment landing in Korea, 21 October 1950
The Dutch captured Indonesian cities with the help of paratroopers in 1949 (the saddest example is the Rengat massacre, where the Dutch killed, according to various estimates, from several hundred to 2 civilians, including mass executions of policemen), the Americans in Korea tried twice cut off the North Korean troops with a parachute landing of the combat group of the 000th parachute regiment of the 187st airborne division (October 101, 21 south of Pyongyang and March 1950, 23 during Operation Tomahawk), however, for the second time the enemy retreated by the time ejections. The Israelis and the British successfully used paratroopers during the 1951 war against Egypt. On February 1956, 22, during Operation Junction City in Vietnam, the Americans parachuted 1967 people from the 845nd Battalion, 2rd Parachute Regiment, 503rd Airborne Brigade.
The only US parachute drop in Vietnam, February 22, 1967
On May 4, 1978, 370 soldiers from the 44th Parachute Brigade of South Africa were dropped on Cassinga in Angola, crushing the opposing Cubans and Angolans.
During the invasion of Grenada on October 25, 1983, the Americans captured the Port Salinas airfield with the forces of two battalions of the 75th Ranger Regiment, subsequently ensuring the reception of reinforcements from the 82nd Airborne Division by landing method.
In 1990, during the invasion of Panama, the Americans parachuted 700 Rangers and 2 troops from the 179nd Airborne Division.
Paratroopers from the 82nd US Airborne Division in Panama, after landing at the airport
In 2001, one of the first American soldiers in Afghanistan were 200 Rangers parachuted out during Operation Reno on October 19, 2001. Its result was the capture of the airfield, where the Americans later created a military base.
Video taken during and before the landing.
The last time the Americans landed a large landing in Iraq, on March 26, 2003, the 173rd Airborne Brigade was thrown into the northern part of the country. True, this did not make much military sense, moreover, it was possible to do without parachute landings at all.
Naturally, this short analysis does not cover all post-war landings. Thus, the Rhodesians from the Sellus Scouts sometimes performed up to three combat drops per day. The French and other remnants of the colonialists jumped in Africa, the South Vietnamese soldiers used parachutes before the Americans provided them with helicopters in the right quantity, it is not possible to list all the parachute landings after World War II in this article.
At the same time, there is a multidirectional trend in Western countries. In all countries of the world, the number of parachute formations is continuously declining. But in the US it is increasing.
For a long time, the only major unit of the US Army in Alaska was the 173rd airborne brigade, the same one that jumped in Iraq.
We’ll talk about why the only formation of the American army in the Arctic is paratroopers a little later, but for now, the 173rd brigade is deployed into the 11th airborne (airborne) division, “Arctic”, also known as the “Arctic Angels” .
Sleeve patch of the 11th airborne divisionWork on the creation of the division is already underway, but it will be completely ready for landing in three or four years.
The Americans obviously know something, and we know that they know, moreover, we will return to this a bit later.
Helicopters, BMD and tactical nuclear weapons
Let us briefly consider what trends in the development of airborne units took place after the Second World War.
The first was the appearance of transport helicopters, from which troops could be landed.
Helicopters had a lot of advantages. The first and most important thing is to reduce ejection losses. Those who have jumped know that fractures, convergence of parachutes, non-opening and other emergencies on jumps happen, although not very often, but regularly. Periodically it ends with human casualties. In a combat situation, the landing force is almost immediately burdened with the wounded, since the landing takes place on approximately suitable sites, where the absence of pits, bumps and the like is not guaranteed, and therefore fractures of the limbs. It is far from always possible to evacuate the wounded at the range of military transport aviation, ambulance helicopters have a much shorter flight range than airplanes.
The second advantage of helicopters is the absence of problems with the collection of troops. In modern conditions, the problem of the spread of paratroopers is not as acute as in the 40s, when the spread in the Red Army was tens of kilometers.
Now everything is much simpler, but in any case, the landing strip is large, and it takes some time to collect and search for your commanders. In the case of helicopters, there is no such problem.
The third advantage of helicopters is the ability to hide from enemy radar stations in low-altitude flight. When approaching Gostomel, for example, our helicopters fell into Ukrainian ambushes - they were expected, and they had to go through dense volleys of man-portable anti-aircraft missile systems. Optoelectronic countermeasures systems were able to reduce losses to several helicopters, but both S-300s and Buks would have fired at the planes. Fortunately, the parachute landing was cancelled.
Fourth - the possibility of evacuating the wounded and the removal of troops, which aircraft a priori do not have.
All this has led to the fact that all over the world, except for modern Russia, the role and importance of helicopter landings is constantly growing, unlike parachute ones. In the USSR, it was the same, in the end, the ground forces even created their own airborne forces - airborne assault troops, in helicopters. The same United States in Iraq in 2003 used paratroopers in one conditional combat (actually not) landing, but the 101st Airborne Division was engaged in landings regularly.
In general, on the scale of wars and individual military operations, the use of helicopters for landing troops has long become a routine, while every parachute assault is an event.
The second trend was the Soviet one that existed in parallel - the transformation of the Airborne Forces into parachute mechanized troops capable of operating (in theory) when using tactical nuclear weapons.
In the 60s, the BMD-1 airborne combat vehicle was created in the USSR, theoretically allowing paratroopers to move through radioactively contaminated terrain and fight without dismounting. Later, the unified BTR-D and SAO 2S9 Nona appeared, and the Airborne Forces themselves were turned into light mechanized parachute troops, which conceptually sharply distinguished them from similar formations in other countries.
Prior to this, the Soviet paratroopers were almost a copy of the American ones - light infantry with airborne self-propelled guns (airborne ASU-57, airborne ASU-85) as a means of fire support.
ASU-57 on a parachute platform
Such an organization, in addition to greater survivability in a nuclear war, had another plus - these airborne forces could be used as a tool for developing the success of ground forces after reaching a breakthrough in enemy defenses.
Let us recall once again one of the troubles of the Soviet airborne units in the Great Patriotic War - it took too much time to connect with the breaking through units of the Red Army, by this moment the landing force was grinding away, and attempts to solve operational tasks by throwing large landing forces over an unbroken line of defense ended in disasters.
Here it was also possible to use landing forces after the collapse of the enemy’s defenses as mobile forces delivered to the offensive zone of the main mass of troops, but far ahead - as if a mechanized formation could go into a breakthrough with great speed.
A foot parachute landing cannot be used like that, it loses mobility after landing, a foot helicopter can, since helicopters can pick up soldiers, but it will not have heavy weapons. In addition, foot soldiers have insufficient survivability in radioactively contaminated areas.
The new look of the USSR Airborne Forces, born in the 70s, closed these questions.
But the new look had a price.
Firstly, if a foot assault can be loaded by an infantry company onto an aircraft, then a mechanized assault can be loaded into a platoon (now even less with BMD-4). This means that only one company needs three aircraft instead of one. And there were also rear areas with vehicles, artillery ... It was at this moment that the BTA's ability to drop the airborne troops dramatically weakened, although the BTA had a considerable number.
Secondly, the appearance in the Airborne Forces of mechanized artillery, trucks and MLRS dropped by parachute required a large amount of fuel that had to be taken somewhere - given the small number of units and subunits in comparison with combined arms and small displacement engines, it can be assumed that we are talking about less than 1 tons per day per division, but it is still a lot. And you also need ammo. The ability to supply airborne units by air during mass landings turned out to be a big question.
Thirdly, specific states (weak squad, imbalance in numbers between infantry and armored vehicle crews) and very light armored vehicles eventually led to the problems that are now rising again in Ukraine, as they used to be in Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Fourthly, those tasks that looked solvable at the beginning of the 60s, when the contours of the new image of the Airborne Forces were being devised, by the end of the 70s were already unsolvable. And the anti-tank capabilities of the BMD were no longer satisfactory, and the capabilities of the air forces of Western countries turned out to be completely different from those 15 years before, which put the very idea of overflight of transport aircraft into question.
A nuclear war never happened. But even if it happened ... During the West-77 KShU, where the war in Europe was practiced with massive (600 special ammunition from our side and 200 from the western) use of tactical nuclear weapons, there was work for only one division of the Airborne Forces and aside from the direction of concentration of the main efforts - the capture of the island of Zelda in the Baltic.
However, as mentioned above, with the available staff and equipment of the Airborne Forces, one division was close to the limit of the capabilities of transport aviation.
In the United States, the ideas of full mechanization of the parachute troops were not implemented, although the American paratroopers could consistently rely on the M56 self-propelled guns delivered by the landing method, the M41 light tank, then, from the 60s, the M551 Sheridan light airborne tank, with which they remained until 1996 Methods for dropping Sheridans with parachutes:
The M8 combat vehicle planned to be replaced, actually a parachute tank with a 105-mm cannon, despite successful tests, was not accepted into service, which left the Americans without heavy weapons to be landed.
In addition to tanks, the Americans are dropping M998 Humvees by parachute and are considering heavy weapons and vehicles for paratroopers as optionally possible - they may or may not be dropped, and the infantry, with or without air support, will act on its own.
But even in the 82nd US Airborne Division, purely ground-based components are being developed. So, it has helicopters, and as a heavy weapon, the US Army is considering a light tank created under the Mobile protected firepower program, which can only be delivered by landing.
This is how the experience and foreign prospects of parachute units look like.
In addition to paratroopers, it is worth mentioning such a method as landing landing from aircraft.
Landing landing
The first combat landing in history was a landing, it was carried out by a Soviet detachment in Central Asia during the fight against the Basmachi in 1928.
In the future, landing landing was used both from gliders and from aircraft within the framework of two fundamental approaches: the first is the use of landing landing in the first wave, without parachute.
Interestingly, this method has a rich history. So, it was the glider landing, which landed without parachutes, by landing method, that took the Belgian fort Eben-Emal.
Part of the first wave of German landing on Crete was landed from gliders.
Standard German landing glider DFS-230 from World War II, photo taken in Africa in 1942
The Red Army landed dozens of landing troops on the airfields of Manchuria in 1945.
The famous Israeli raid on Entebbe was carried out by landing method, the group that ensured the evacuation of the hostages landed from the transport "Hercules".
But the main method of using landing troops was the landing of the second echelon at the airfield captured by paratroopers. This is how the German paratroopers acted in Crete, the Soviet paratroopers in 1942, the Americans in Grenada and Panama ... And this method is still relevant - it allows you to deliver heavy weapons to the airfield captured by paratroopers that cannot be dropped by parachute, for example tanks.
Yes, and infantry without parachutes fit more on the plane.
Remember this.
And now, having a real understanding of past experience, and not various propaganda clichés, let's move on to determining the appearance of future landing troops, looking back both at our own experience and at the achievements of the Americans. And on their future views, which they do not voice, but which are quite understandable, based on what they do.
In addition to experience, we will build on the appearance that the Airborne Forces have now, since we will need some of the capabilities of these troops in the future.
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