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What’s a Division?
Divisions or Divs, as I am going to refer to them in the future, are a form of military organisation. They are the highest form of unit capable of committing independent operations. Corps, above divisions, can move as a combined arms unit but are also often administrative. Brigades and Regiments often lack proper support elements like air defence of artillery. Divisions range in size from between 10,000 personnel and 25,000 personnel.
A Division is constructed of a number of military structures below it. The basis of a Division is normally a number of Brigades (NATO) or a Regiments (Soviet), with attached support battalions. For instance the Russian 19th Motor Rifle Division consists of 5 regiments and 8 battalions. These Brigades and Regiments can operate independently too, but by rating them as part of the Division we can get a better idea of large-scale military operations.
I mean, I could say that 2500 battalions and Doom has 1250 but, then, why not go down? Why not say that I have 3,000,000 soldiers and he 1,500,000? (these numbers purely theoretical.) Which leads us on to the next point.
Why Divisions?
Not only are Divisions the lowest formation capable of proper combined arms, apart from large Brigade Combat Teams, but they approximate an amount of troops that is most readily measurable. Military analysis of Army Orders of Battle are normally conducted in Divisions or Brigades, but since we have especially large armies in SMS[note]SMS, or Statesmanship, was a NS RP spin-off of Haven, Gholgoth, and Greater Dienstad[note], we look towards Divisions and not Brigades, although in real life the trend is moving towards Brigades.
It gives a good analysis of national combat capacity. Not every soldier in an Army is a front-line combatant, but Divisions are frontline combat formations. If I say I have 100,000 troops and 2 divisions, the latter gives a better indication of my ability to wage war than the former. Because of the importance of the combat:support ratio, and because of varying division sizes, total number of troops is best used to see how well divisions are supported.
Secondarily, although Divisions may not be maneouvre units in your Army, they are almost certainly administrative, especially if there are no administrative Corps. That is to say Divisions are used to process the smooth running of Brigades and Regiments in peacetime and facilitate them for deployment in wartime where they’ll be attached to ad-hoc formations (i.e. UK, Germany.) In that case the Division is still useful as a measure, although the Brigade more so.
So how many Divisions should I have?
Of course, that alone is not the only indicator of capacity. Russia has 23 divisions (in 2009, before reformed to Brigades) and Germany 5, but this is not a true measure of their combat capacity. Russia has more troops, but Germany arguably has better trained and equipped troops. So we should look, at an overall analysis, of the cost of a division. This is VERY hard information to find. Temu is trying to find me more, but as it stands, we have three approximate figures in 2010 dollars.
Cost to maintain an armoured division in 2010 dollars:
Cost of a US Armoured Division: Approx $2.5bn
Cost of a Soviet Armoured Division: Approx $800mn
Cost of a Syrian Armoured Division: Approx $150mn
So how much should your division cost? The answer is simply a varying sum between this. While this is extremely simple, if your divisions are western-quality they should cost the same as western quality (no wanky reasons why not, plz). But the scaling figure of cost between 150mn-2.5bn takes into account training, equipment, and all the factors necessary to consider the quality of a division. So if you spend $1bn on your army and I spend the same, you could have 1 division and I could theoretically have 10 but the quality would be the important thing.
So make sure to state roughly how much you spend per division. It is important for us to imagine equipment quality, training, quality of maintenance, etc etc.
So how many divisions should you have?
Some approximate (active) division counts:
China: 75
Germany: 5
India: 37
Pakistan: 29
Russia: 23
Singapore: 3
South Korea: 32
UK: 2
USA: 14
These numbers of course do reflect the cost of divisions (although they are of course not scaled only by division numbers since some countries spend more than others.) The question of how many divisions you should have, however, should be solved by your Army budget. You do need to leave overheads for things like procurement, formation-creation, non-combat personnel etc, as the numbers I gave earlier are for yearly maintenance, and are not one-off costs. You will need to shell out about 2.5 billion a year for a US armoured division; because it includes things like training, looking after munitions, paying personnel, maintaining vehicles, etc.
As well as this, divisions are supported by brigades and battalions that may be independent of divisional control. Ultimately the number of divisions you have will reflect how militarised your country is and how capable your divisions are. There is no precise formula.
I am still looking for information on the cost of formations, especially motorised infantry, so if anyone can help me, that would be good.
Sumer’s Commentary[note]Sumer is Dostanuot Loj of Greater Dienstad[note]
I’ve got numbers somewhere, and when I have time I may pick this apart. There’s a fair amount that’s pretty basic, to the point of potentially being wrong. But it’s not life or death.
Your review of western units abandons a few very crucial organizational elements at these levels. Specifically in Germany, where the Division forms the core of broad maneuver formations, there are a large number of Battalions (And one or two Brigades) which are organized outside of the divisional structure for very important reasons. Namely, to act within the idea of kampfgroups. Likewise, unlike the US, German divisions are very loose, and essentially administrative only. Combat formations are ad-hoc, and form as needed from available units, which can be from any division. This flexibility is something inherent in the battalion-based doctrine of the Heer, as they build everything around the flexible kampfgroup. Israel had a similar approach (Kinda lost it too), and it was the foundation of Tal’s implications on armoured warfare. Especially as in Israel the idea was to mass forces rapidly on one border like in the six day war.
We can dig even deeper, for example to historic units over the last century. Specifically WW2, which would likely be the best analog to SMS.
US Divisions are kept as divisions for one main reason these days, aviation. When the USAAC split off and took aviation elements from the army (And later had this ratified into law) the USArmy was left with helicopters, which are poor strategic elements, but excellent operational elements. The division format as we see it today is the minimum size able to support the aviation elements (Helicopters) a US division has, and is structurally centered around this. There’s a lot of reasons for doing this (And none of them because it was better). But the short of it is, the USArmy had helicopters it could count on, and wanted them in the fight against the Soviets. The switch to the BCT is taking place now (As opposed to the 1960s when it was first introduced) because army aviation elements are becoming less and less an operational force, and more and more a strategic force with the hard move to almost exclusive LIC. In a conventional fight (HIC), that flips.
My point being, divisions are not actually the core element you often see it done up as. It’s quite the matter of doctrine. A Soviet division, for example, is a brigade in all but name, from employment to equipment to command. German and UK divisions are almost entirely administrative.
The three places you see a divergence (Or hold-back) would the India, Pakistan, and the Koreas. All of which are held on institutionally rather then doctrinally.India being more of a Soviet-style structure anyway, just bloated with personnel. China is an odd case, as Chinese divisions are quite ineffective, and they know it. Their force is so bloated at this point however that their switch to better units for their use is taking time, if it will ever be completed.
Maneuver in which level? Strategic maneuver where supply is the prime dictator, or operational maneuver where the object is to bring force upon the enemy? Divisions fall into the former, but have not been employed in the latter for decades in the West. And the latter is what is considered when we speak of maneuver in the military sense. Divisions are excellent maneuver elements of logistics, much as Corps are, but as an operational element they are as bulky and inefficient as Brigades are at the tactical level.
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