The 1991 Persian Gulf War

Tables of Organization: Introduction

by David Nilsen and Greg Novak

The following is presented in alphabetical order by country involved in the GulfWar, and includes Morale and Experience ratings. Due to a lack of space, information on those countries which sent troops to the Gulf for defensive purposes, i.e. Pakistan, Morocco, Senegal, is not included.

Note: There will naturally be readers looking at this list who are not Command Decision (CD) players or are new to the rules. The TO&Es below are not in "real world" terms, but are translated into the terms of the Command Decision miniatures rules, which uses a single "stand"of infantry to represent a platoon, and a single vehicle model to represent from four to six vehicles. This obviously will obscure some real world details. One of the most jarring is the initial impress ion that companies are a platoon short. This is the case bec ause CD groups the company headquarters with one of the maneuver platoons into a single stand. Not only would a command tank or two not warrant an entire stand to itself, but such vehicles typically operate with the tactical elements. For example, in the case of a US Army M1 company which contains three platoons of four tanks each plus two command tanks, CD represents this as two M1 stands (each representing a four-tank platoon) and one command M1 stand (die third platoon plus the two command tanks).

Furthermore, because of the range of vehicles (4-6) represented by a model, there are some additional effects. Old US artillery organizations have battalions consisting of three batteries each of six guns. CD represents each of these six-gun batteries by one stand. The new organization has three batteries of eight guns each, which CD represents as two stands. In the Gulf War, the US deployed both old and new organizations, with the result that the OB below shows the new organization to be 100% more powerful in CD terms, where in reality it is only 33% more powerful. This will always happen along dividing lines in simulations rules.

In other cases, organizations are slightly changed to "save" units that would otherwise disappear. For example, each US Armored Cavalry Troop has a mortar section of two M106 SP mortars. These two vehicles do not warrant their own stand under the CD rules, but in order to avoid losing them altogether, the mortar sections from each of the three armored cav troops are grouped together into a single (sixvehicle) stand which is placed with the squadron headquarters. Thus the mortars are portrayed at an echelon higher than they really are, but the troop as a whole does get to keep its stand of mortars, to which it is entitled. In addition, some specialized units (OH-58Ds, AH-64s, and Firefinder radars) are handled as special cases because of the important way they were used on the battlefield.

Furthermore, because of its intended focus, fast-moving tactical cornbat Command Decision gives short shrift to supply units. For example, division and brigade organizations below do not show the support battalions and supply trains which actually would be present, as their influence is only abstractly felt on this tactical level (besides which, in real life, support vehicles would radically outnumber the "shooters," which would not be to the liking, nor within the budget, of most gamers). This also shows up in the organizations of the aviation units below, which only detail the actual helicopters in the unit.Their numerous support trucks and vans are abstracted away in the same way as the division supply trains above.

Finally, the US and UK battalions below are shown with their historical task organizations. However, this detail only extends to their infantry and armor components, and not to their air defense artillery and engineer components. There are two reasons for this. First, when these units are divided and subdivided down to a battalion's slice, they have a tendency to disappear beneath the threshold where the CD scale can recognize them. Second, I had to draw a line somewhere on how far to take the fiddly details. Although such details are valid in the context of a four-day ground campaign, in a war of more "normal" length, these task organizations would change, as in fact they did during the pre-ground campaign phases of Desert Storm. ADA and engineer assets are shown at the brigade level, where CD players can make the decisions on how to allocate them for their own purposes.

Similarly, task organizations are only shown down to the battalion, task force level, and not to the company team level. Not only is this information not uniformly available, but even where it is, the detail only becomes problematic given the unit scale in Command Decision, and prohibitive in terms of space.

For those who use Command Decision 2d Edition rules rather than Combined Arms, the TOCs (Tactical Operations Centers) below are identical to staff radio stands.

More Tables of Organization

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© Copyright 1994 by Greg Novak.
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