Difference between Airborne and Air Assault Divisions?

I have noticed that the current Russian Airborne Forces consist of 98th and 106th Airborne Division and 7th and 76th (Commando) Air Assault Divisions and 31st Indep Commando Air Assault Brigade. Can anyone tell me what the main differences are between the two especially in organisation and equipment especially again at Battalion level

cheers
Steve

GarryB is right with his description about the difference between air assault and airborne.

airborne insertions are to my experience always for strategic high-value targets. they are indeed lightly armed as they can take only what they can carry. but they do not need to win wars, they need to delay or deny the enemy something long enough on a point thats strategically critical so that the enemy cant interfere or use it for the force following the airborne.

i respectfully disagree with your description Garryb about air assault deployments, even light armour and vehicles requires a larger deployment of air assets and the problem of airborne dropping of vehicles is that a rather high-altitude is required and the slowing down of aircraft and maintaining course for the drop. large aircraft will need to set flaps for lift and slow down and thus reducing maneuverability and make themselves a rather easy target for AA and detection by slowing down of course. the west mainly uses air assaults in area's that are secured already by friendly assets or as suprise to enemy operations that is only equipped to deal with present troops. and especially not with an air assault contingent that dropped in and starts operations against them as well.

its the same for me in the past with air assaults. it does look mighty sexy when they make final approach and deploy in the drop zone , but if the landing point is not secure those chinooks and Super-Puma's are easy prey for the most basic recruit as they slow down with their heavy loads for landing. and each time the bullets where registered by the SAAB training laser sytem to be aimed for engines and pilots. no amount of AA defense will do them good. discount gunship support too, we tried it out and its a myth. it only works if you send them ahead 10 to 15 minutes in advance to sterilise the area and that is if they have enough fuel, ammo and the enemy does not have a suprise in the form of a heavy weapon or MANPAD. no matter what you enemy is they will first go for what is the easiest and vulnerable to hit and that's the transports holding the hardware and troops.


and Garryb you where right about the stinger deployment in Afghanistan, the MI-24's, MI-8's and the airborne units where highly successful.

i am not familiar with vdv air assault operations that includes vehicle droppings that include armoured vehicles. so im really curious how the tactics work for deploying them with the large aircraft involved and subsequent ground operations. the "heaviest" vehicle's we deploy are armed jeeps with various weapons, towed mortars and medical jeeps. and they are flown in by helicopters that fly relatively low.

but it sounds unlogical to me to deploy like 100 KM off their targets. it would take hours to get there, there is rarely a highway that nicely leads to the objective if you know what i mean . not to mention the high chance of detection by the enemy. or engagements on the way, you go rather fast trough ammunition in real life. you might reach the target zone with insufficient ammo to make the actual attack.

well, lightly equipped. the problem with every airborne action is that what you can carry is what you have to use. and without vehicles you got to decide what to bring depending on a lot of factors. but my country "had" a decent load out for airborne and air assault actions. modern up to date stingers, Gil (spike) AT-missile. PZF-3 Tandem-warheads and bunker buster models, 81MM mortars, sniper rifles. good NVG and IR optics.

anyway, what "we" do in the west with air assaults is deploy and quickly attack near the direct area of insertion and hold a certain objective and dig in or quickly extract.
its possible the VDV operates in a similar style with operations with deploying close to their targets, but all i can say is "respect" then to take such large aircraft into enemy territory with possible contested airspace. and the nerves of steel the pilots must have. of course there will be specops teams scouting out threats to aircraft beforehand but in war there are never guarantees.

nah i know what a BMD is, i payed attention during my service what might appear on the field of the other team. more in the sense tough im interrested in what others have. and not in the sense i expected to be at war with them. and i know you mean well Garryb but ive been doing western airborne work for years. no offense intended of course.

and the use of the heavy aircraft is why im so curious about because of the flight characteristics of such planes. yes, they can indeed fly over Manpad range but thats their cruise altitude most of the time. they need to decent to for a safe drop that i imagine for a combat drop with vehicles and troops is somewhere around 3000 meters maximum. higher than that your jumpers start to suffer from hypoxia and generally does not tend to be good for their health. not to mention you just might get spread all over the place instead as desired land in a nice tight group. that aircraft might make a steep decent but its not as maneuverable with such payloads as lighter aircraft the west uses.  

the west posses the stinger block 1, it can engage targets about 4500 meters away. they would definitely come inside Manpad range. of course such drops with vehicles is best done at night in blackout conditions and make it a little harder for man pad teams to acquire their targets. its why im curious how the VDV does its heavy drops in operations. one possibility might be to simply smash holes in enemy lines on the frontlines by being able to drop quickly close to the front and bolster an attacking force or operate on its own and engage a damaged enemy force or otherwise favourable odds.

i agree with you the addition of armoured vehicles certainly aids combat potential and mobility, and the west has no similar counterpart for that. but again, to go for a 100 or 50 KM drive for that matter in enemy territory without accurate intelligence is asking for trouble. you just might as well blindfold and attempt to cross a minefield. of course they might do recon themselves while advancing, but careful recon requires time and air assault/airborne actions are mostly a race against time.

...yeah, the joy of nuclear power plants in war. if both sides are smart they dont go mess around with nuclear power plants. a meltdown or leak will not favour either the attacker or defender. but other strategic targets are viable of course. creating beachheads like you pointed out on airfields, command and control centers or sever logistical lines to the front.

Airbornewolf what do you think about the possibility of smaller airdrop operations; tactical insertions, special ops teams, etc...
They can be done with 1-2 aircraft and it would be a lot easier for them to slip through the net as it were, and enemy MANPAD troops might not be alerted to their presence before its too late.

The use of vehicles like BMDs would drastically augment their firepower, and this is definitely somewhere where the VDV or Spetsnaz have a big advantage over their Western counterparts, due to their employment of such specialized hardware.

one or two aircraft indeed would be better in the sense of setting off alarm bells, after all Russia has a habit of sending out decoy bombers and they could be easily mistaken for those on radar and if they "fly" like bombers or recon aircraft. and if they do a HALO jump for special forces they can pretty much maintain attain cruise altitude and no one would notice and deviation in their flying behavior at all....that means obviously no armor or vehicles tough. i think those will show up on radar nowadays if they are dropped from such altitudes. at high altitudes manpads pose no threat, and if done at night it makes visual detection a lot harder.

i understand your optimism Flamming python. but if you where holding a Manpad on gaurd duty, and you hear something like a heavy aircraft. wouldnt you get up and look for the chance to turn it into a raging ball of fire falling from the sky?. i certainly would, its one of those things then where you just get one chance for in your life if you know what i mean. it might be friendly but thats why you first get a PID before firing.

that said, of course Stingers/manpads do not exactly lie around by the thousands in armoury's so they are strategically deployed. its more or less a game of chess where you put manpads thinking they are going to be needed.

i do not doubt the armoured vehicles weaponry value of course. and its appearant value. but engagements rarely happen on flat open fields. to have such vehicles can of course be an advantage but definitely has its vulnerability's. most AT-weapons of today can be fired from confined spaces like buildings or improvised fortifications so ambushing them became more easy. same for western armour by the way. the Merkava did not fare too well either against this kind of warfare in Gaza.

i honestly feel the BMD is a good field asset for the vdv without western counterpart in terms of firepower and mobility. but its certainly not a ticket to victory. it would need to be well protected by dismounted infantry and not get too close to enemy positions.

i can not seem to get these quotes right, so ill just go bit by bit what you replied on GarryB.

you did not come over as offensive no worries, its me actually made a mistake with interpretation. apologies from my end.

true, and thinking of my country alone i know several suitable drop zones for them. some very close to airbases and mobilization bases. or in other country's i saw for that matter. im beginning to see the difference now between VDV's organisation and tasks and ours.  both are Para's and primary task is to drop behind enemy lines for strategic missions.

the VDV seems more for brute force as a main drop force with a spetznaz element screening the main drop, and propably make sure manpads and other nasty threats for aircraft either get identified and eliminated.  overwhelm the enemy and having them running around behind your lines making your life miserable is not a pleasure. not to mention most of the russian weaponry can fire NATO ammo but not the other way around. a well armed and motivated force with vehicles that indeed makes short work of reservists in the West.

West para's seem more focussed on infiltrating and making their way to their targets undetected, also like vdv hit strategic targets and what i notice is what seems different is that our task was to deploy to germany at the start of an cold war invasion to city's and towns in Germany and make the PACT "work" for it. the problem the west was concerned about was the massive number of tanks the russians had. the idea was to either kill or drive away russian armour from city's so they where in the open making it available for aircraft to hit them, or we would deal with them in urban area's. we where equipped with other grenades than regular forces. we used grenades that do not use shrapnell to kill (defensive) but offensive grenades that use pressure to kill. throw them in the room, wait for bang and storm in. excellent for urban warfare. and especially actions at night, we where equipped with night vision in the cold war and most of what i remember of my training at the time is doing night operations.

i joined up after the cold war of course, but my army has a tendency to base its airborne boot camp training still on the training handbook fighting russians instead of all these "less-pleasant" sandboxes we nowaday run around in. thats why i know and i know how ridiculous outdated that sounded.

a cruise missile in an european reactor? . you saw the russians sending in wave after wave with Tsjernobyl to plug the gap right?. i doubt no officer in their right mind would blow up a nuclear reactor. besides the nuclear contamination of making the country and those around it poisonous for years to come and the rest of the world enjoying the nuclear fallout the world propably would turn immediately on the one that blew it up. if anything i think they just plant some small controlled demolitions on its transformers or take out substations. no power but the facility can still control its cooling independently. or at least after my physics classes that seems the most logical but i prefer not to mess with nuclear-anything alltogether. i think Fukushima demonstrated again nuclear power is something we barely can control if some systems get damaged.

i personally would never either attack a nuclear facility or launch an nuclear ICBM for that matter. you would not believe the discussion i had in Arizona's Titan missile museum. lets just put it my views where not really appreciated. but thats another story.

and third world country's barely have a thing that could be called "air force". but your point is correct, they propably will be priority targets to achieve air superiority and ground forces have the ability to receive air support. outdated air force or not when you are standing on the ground you do not want to see any kind of aircraft making a strafing-run or bombing run. rotor wing aircraft might be a problem tough because of their limited range, they are far more dangerous than their fixed-wing partners as they can descern targets themselves because they fly low and relatively slow with dedicated ground attack weapons, but that is if they can reach the deployment zone of VDV.  and fixed wing aircraft propably have limited time available for attacking before they need to return to make it back to their base, but even 15 minutes on station for a SU-25 with rocket pods or simmilar ground attack weaponry might make a huge difference. you can imagine tough this CAS with its limited time brings some stress with the command and control group on the ground tough. 15 to 20 minutes propably gives you 4 targets and thats working fast for the FAC guy on the ground. in the west we usually got 1 FAC- soldier per platoon, im not sure how the VDV has it tough.

Some points on the subject in debate :


1) Airborne Force's Mobility (meaning with this both the freedom of movement in the morphological elements of the operational area and the average speed in/off road) , is a parameter very hugely influencing : the chances of achieving tactical surprise , the overall offensive efficiency , the survivability to enemy defensive assets , capability to stress/elude enemy's ISR systems .

To realize what just said is sufficient to remind a truly elementary fact often overlooked in shallow analysis of the difference between Russian and Western Airborne Forces composition : the "potential" operation area of attack/dispersion/camouflage-ambush/defensive entrenchment etc.. of an Airborne force, after the delivery, is the product of the square function of the median speed of the slower element of such a force.

Let put that the speed of a purely dismounted airborne force at 6 km/h and that of a mechanized airborne one at 36 Km/h (1:6 ratio) you have that the potential area of operation (and obviously all the potential targets endangered in this area.....) in a single hour for those two forces are respectively 113.04 Km2 and 4069.44 km2 (1:36 ratio).

That ,naturally, also mean that the second force (the mechanized one) exert a pressure and a "stress" over the enemy defensive and ISR element 36 times greater because you need 36 times the number of defensive structures , 36 times the number of vehicles and manpower and 36 times the number of sensor elements in order to obtain the same density/coverage in comparison with the area covered by the dismounted force .




 
2) The mechanized component of Russian VDV not only provide the force with an immensely higher operational tempo (capable in itself to deny any chance to react to the enemy's command ) and the capability to split momentarily the forces to allow the destruction/neutralization of secondary targets in the area before converging toward a main objective, but also and above all to hit from stand-off range those primary and secondary targets .
This stand-off not only render very difficult for the enemy to track the position of the attacking VDV (an airfield ,its hangars, its fuel storage sites, parked aircraft, ammunition storage and personnel buildings could be destroyed in a matter of minutes by such a VDVB force, firing from 2 -3 different points from 12-14 km of distance, without surrending the position of the attacking contingent) but allow also to disperse or remain close to local elements useful at defeat a possible enemy threat  (at example remaining close to a tunnel, a group of close buildings, an underground car park, a water course etc... in order to waste ,at example, an incoming attack from enemy artillery, or fixed wing aircraft employing JDAM, SDB, Paveway III/IV ,and so on).
This factor ,combined with the possibility to bring with the force also specialized ECM vehicles and radar/IR decoys ,increase enormously the survivability of such a VDV force also in the chance of a detection.








3) The kind of equipment, weaponry and the amount of ammunition and supply that a VDV regiment's troop can bring with itself is on a completely different level ; not less important, this equipment can be moved without any limit dictated by body tiredness.  
ATGM and air defense systems allow to often gain total superiority over the forces present in the enemy rear area so to proceed quickly from a target to target.
In particular ,lately, the air defense complement against the most dangerous enemy flyers for an highly mobile force like Russian VDV - high persistence low flyers such as UAVs, capable to provide positional correction for the ammunitions delivered by fixed wing aircraft and obviously enemy combat and reconnaissance helicopters- has been increased with induction of Strela10-M3 and improved IGLA MANPADS.


In this video is possible to identify the amount and variety of equipment at disposal of a VDV battalion (from buggy, to hang-gliders, to field tripod thermal sights ,to UAV)



At 6:37 you can see one of the latest training of engagement of a simulated UAV directly from a BMD.




In summary is totally unfair to attempt a comparison between Western and Russian Airborne divisions, because the former is a bit more than a point infiltration force with almost not–existent fighting/persistence value ,while the latter can literally open wide holes in the enemy deep and ,from them, proceed at disorganize its same structure destroying or taking control of an objective after the other within a very compressed time frame and maintaining, contextually a very high combat value against enemy forces diverted from other area to attempt to stop them.

Always enjoy your posts Mindstorm; outstanding.

Indeed great post like always.

Hehe, now that I think of it you can conquer my country- philippines with the VDV. We literally dont have any anti-armor aside from a few occasional RPG-7s aa guns and bazooka. Perhaps we can buy those BMDs if the russians replace them with airdroppable kurgs.
disclaimer tho a lot of the people here could make RPG-7 with ith the ammo if left with tools and the internet 

steve501 wrote: I have noticed that the current Russian Airborne Forces consist of 98th and 106th Airborne Division and 7th and 76th (Commando) Air Assault Divisions and 31st Indep Commando Air Assault Brigade. Can anyone tell me what the main differences are between the two especially in organisation and equipment especially again at Battalion level

cheers
Steve

Actually, Airborne Division are fully capable for airborne deployment (e.g. with combat vehicles), and Air Assault Divisions has only one airborne battalion in a regiment (e.g. equipped with BMD vehicle family), other battalions are only air-lifted (e.g. armed with common ground combat vehicles such as BMPs), but all personel is still trained in airbourne deployment on foot if needed. Main tactics of air assaul division (regiment tactical group of a such division) is to seize control over an enemy airfield with airborne battalion(s) in order to deploy it's main forces or just deploy it's forces like a lighter version of regular ground division (something similar to a Stryker brigade).
All of the divisions is equally able to conduct helicopter operations, often called "tactical desant" (e.g. tactical-lever airborne operation) in Russian, if needed (like in Afghanistan and Chechnia).