Steel Soviet Union

The main matter of selecting the two brigade commanders has been settled, and the selection of the remaining three regiment commanders is quite easy.

The original battalion commander of the ISU152 self-propelled artillery battalion was promoted to the regimental commander, and then he found a suitable battalion commander from Varosha and was promoted to the commander of the newly formed infantry regiment. Finally, he was under Kulbalov. A battalion commander who did well and performed well became the commander of the new tank regiment.

For the purpose of forming a new unit, Varosha received the newly formed infantry regiment. As his old subordinate, the regiment leader was familiar with it and could use it easily, which facilitated the troops to quickly form combat effectiveness.

On the other hand, in addition to his old unit, which is the main tank regiment of the leader division, Kulbalov also has a newly formed tank regiment with the lowest combat power and a degree of unit coordination that needs to be improved. allocated to him.

With the combination of two tank regiments, one old and one new, plus the old infantry regiment brought out by Varosha to hold the battle, the combat effectiveness of the First Heavy Combined Brigade under Kulbalov is guaranteed.

The situation in Varosha was similar. With a wave of his hand, Malashenko assigned the 2nd and 3rd tank regiments, which were also veteran troops, to him. The combat effectiveness of these two regiments is worse than that of the old regiment under Kulbalov, but the level of hardware and equipment is consistent with that of the old regiment. At most, it is the experience of the army and the veterans and elite soldiers. A little bit worse.

Like Kulbalov, Varosha is not only a veteran-qualified unit, but also has the task of quickly tempering the new unit entrusted by Malashenko. It is his important responsibility to bring up the combat effectiveness of the corps.

"Your troop distribution plan is very good. Both Kurbalov and Varosha carry their own burdens. One needs to quickly improve the combat effectiveness of a tank regiment, and the other needs to quickly improve the combat effectiveness of an infantry regiment. In terms of combat effectiveness, both regiments are newly formed, and they just happen to correspond to their respective areas of expertise, so they are really doing well. "

After the meeting, Malashenko stayed at the division headquarters to continue discussing matters with the political commissar. It could be seen that the political commissar still agreed highly with Malashenko's troop distribution plan, but our old Comrade Ma was too much at the moment. Somewhat regretful.

"Actually, I would like to push the synthesis down one level, to the regiment level. There is no distinction between tank regiments and infantry regiments, and it is not impossible to directly form a combined regiment, or even a combined battalion."

"It's a pity that time is too tight, and the Germans will not leave us enough training time to break up the troops and reorganize them. Judging from the current situation, the synthesis level is already the limit to the brigade, and then it is broken down. Reorganizing the troops will affect combat effectiveness."

"So now, at least we have to fight in brigades as units to ensure the effectiveness of combat. If we further dismantle individual regiments and put them into the battlefield and disperse the operations, the synthesis will be meaningless. The troops cannot take advantage of the integrated system at all, and the division headquarters must pay special attention to this when formulating operational plans in the future.”

The more the matter of synthesis is pushed down and spreads to the lower levels, the difficulty of troop integration and training, equipment configuration, tactical application, and formation of combat effectiveness will suddenly emerge. The difficulty can be said to be soaring.

This is not an easy task. To do it well requires a considerable amount of time to put in efforts, practice and revise through continuous exploration, and demonstrate the theory. All of this takes a long time to accomplish.

But right now, what Malashenko lacks is precisely time.

The Red Army's overall counterattack strategy will not follow a unit like the Leader's Division. Instead, Malashenko needs to optimize arrangements for the reorganization and expansion of his own troops based on the Red Army's overall strategy.

Therefore, given the current time urgency, the limit of integration to the brigade level is already reached. From then on, the nature and main combat tasks of the troops will still be determined by regiments.

If Malashenko really wants to say it, this synthesis is nothing but half-assed. It has no choice but to do this. However, Comrade Political Commissar has another opinion on this.

"Let's take it step by step. The exploration of integration at the brigade level has just begun. We still have many unfamiliar areas and lack of experience. If we take too big a step, there may be too many problems to solve, whether in peacetime or in war. Times are the same, you don’t have to be too eager for success, everything has to go through a process, right?”

Malashenko, who was not surprised when he heard what Comrade Political Commissar said, just smiled.

"I have figured it out. I can only think about half of things, and you need to supplement the remaining half. This was the case in the past, and it is still the same now."

Although there is some regret, the matter of integrating the troops has come to an end, at least it has a preliminary result.

The true combat power of the newly upgraded and reorganized synthetic leader division has indeed not been tested in actual combat. It is too early to say how awesome it is now.

But in terms of hardware equipment and total troop strength, the current level of the Leader's Division is indeed frighteningly high.

As for the main force, after the addition of a new regiment, there are a total of four tank regiments, with a full strength of 296 tanks of various types.

It started as a leader division of heavy tank troops. Even after the completion of this round of upgrades and expansions, it still maintains its traditional characteristics. Heavy tanks account for up to 75% of the total number of tanks, which means that the proportion of heavy tanks and medium tanks is 3:1.

This is not only the main combat mission responsible for the leading division, it is basically either a battering ram vanguard to attack the city or a battlefield fire brigade to encircle and suppress the German counterattack forces that have made a breakthrough.

Both of these combat missions require extremely powerful attack energy to complete. The former targets the core area where the German army focuses on defense on the frontal battlefield, while the latter needs to compete with the armored units that the German army relies on for counterattack.

It is too reluctant to simply use medium tanks that do not have strong advantages to complete these two tasks. Even if they can be completed, there is a high probability that they will suffer huge casualties, resulting in a sharp reduction in the combat power of the leader division and a significant drop in attack energy. It is difficult to devote to the next battle.

Whether it is fighting against the Germans' solid defense line or playing with the tiger and leopard zoo, the Stalin series of heavy tanks that have established a strong advantage against the enemy are the best choice.

Therefore, the proportion of heavy tanks in the Leader Division is not only a characteristic inheritance, but also an optimal configuration based on actual combat needs. It contains powerful offensive energy that no Guards tank unit of the same level has.