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Soviet Cold War era radio communication procedures (question)


Gpig

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Hi,

I'm curious if the Soviets called their companies "alpha" "Bravo" "Charlie" etc.. Or was it a numbers only type set-up.

On the radio nets, did they use the Soviet equivalent of the Alphanumeric alphabet?  

Were call-signs and radio procedure similar to use in NATO countries?  "Charlie Foxtrot One, this is Alpha Two, OVER"  (but in Russian, of course).

Cheers,
Gpig

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For most line units during the soviet era it was pretty much completely numeric IIRC. 

It depended on the commander of the higher unit, but the numbers on the side of the vehicles were the callsign for that squad + vehicle (especially because the squad's radio was the vehicle). 

One way I've seen it was XYZ, where X was the battalion number, Y the company in the battalion, and Z the squad/vehicle in the company.

So 346 would be 3rd battalion, 4th company, 6th squad/vehicle. Soviet companies were usually 10 strong, with XX0  being the company commander, XX1 through XX3 1st platoon, XX4 through XX6 2nd platoon, XX7 through XX9 third platoon. The 1, 4, and 7 callsigns would be the platoon leaders for their platoons.

Because the vehicles were their main radio source, I believe most units simply stayed and communicated on their respective company net. 

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51 minutes ago, Gpig said:

Hi,

I'm curious if the Soviets called their companies "alpha" "Bravo" "Charlie" etc.. Or was it a numbers only type set-up.

On the radio nets, did they use the Soviet equivalent of the Alphanumeric alphabet?  

Were call-signs and radio procedure similar to use in NATO countries?  "Charlie Foxtrot One, this is Alpha Two, OVER"  (but in Russian, of course).

Cheers,
Gpig

Manual is in russian, I think you can skip through google translit.  😃

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I translated a document explaining FAC procedures a while ago, perhaps this might be interesting as well?

https://www.mediafire.com/file/z2i597vp4zfdkab/Soviet_FAC_procedures.pdf/file

According to this, specific entities might be given a callsign in aviation, typically the brigade combat management group (HAT [kaska] in this case) and the actual forward controller (VOLLEY-21 [zalp-21] in this case).  The aircraft is given the numeric callsign, however.

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