Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!att!cbnews!military
From: eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Glory, strange tactics.
Message-ID: <15390@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 10 Apr 90 02:02:27 GMT
References: <15221@cbnews.ATT.COM> <15267@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: eric@snark.uu.net (Eric S. Raymond)

In <15267@cbnews.ATT.COM> David Emery wrote:
> One of the more controversial policies during the Civil War was that
> regiments were treated as "non-renewable resources".  Rather than
> refilling a depleted regiment (black or white) with new soldiers, the
> Union Army instead replaced the entire regiment with a new one
> (usually green), and they got predictable results.

Soviet operational doctrine does things this way; they burn up whole
formations, dissolve them and use the few survivors for cadre or repple-depple.
By contrast, U.S. and NATO doctrine is (when possible) to rotate a formation
out when it's taken 40%-60% casualities and rebuild it.

My source for this was an article on the armies of Europe in an S&T years back. 
They didn't speculate on the reasoning behind the Soviet policy, but my guess
is that it reflects 1) the higher cost of transport, and 2) Soviet need to
minimize command-and-control complexity due to the relatively poor quality
of their troops and officers.
-- 
      Eric S. Raymond = eric@snark.uu.net    (mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews)