Eagle, I don't want to form an alliance anymore.

A Makarov PM pistol, a standard Soviet military and police sidearm; the serial number on the gun is worn and blurred but still legible.

The alley was quiet for about three seconds.

"Cyka blyat!" The accomplice who was smoking took the cigarette out of his mouth, and the drunk one also sobered up a bit.

"People who can carry guns out aren't ordinary people." "Yevgeny, I think maybe we should—"

“Shut up,” the leather jacket interrupted him, carefully placing the gun on the ground before turning back to continue searching Slava.

In his right inner pocket, his fingers touched another identification clip, thicker than his officer's ID, with a cover made of that distinctive, hard leather. He took it out and opened it.

A bright red cover with gold lettering.

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

National Security Council

The inner pages of the document contain the holder's information—name, photo, full name of the organization, and a standard authorization statement:

“The certificate holder shall perform the duties assigned to him by the National Security Commission in accordance with the law, and all agencies, organizations and citizens shall cooperate with him.”

Damn, this guy's a KGB guy.

The leather jacket's hand holding the red booklet began to tremble.

"What's wrong, Yevgeny?" the man with the cigarette in his mouth asked as he leaned closer.

The man in the leather jacket didn't speak, but opened the red booklet and turned the line of text on the cover towards his accomplice. The man with the cigarette in his mouth looked at it for two seconds in the dim light filtering in from the alleyway. The cigarette that hadn't been lit until now actually fell to the ground.

"gram--"

"Don't fucking yell!" The leather jacket shoved a hand over his mouth. The thug next to Slava with the knife had already let go, and the other guy controlling him was about to pee.

As for killing and running away? Don't be ridiculous, the KGB is laughing now, they're finished.

Slava watched the show with his arms crossed.

"Are you going to flip through it or not?" he asked.

“Flip it,” the leather jacket gritted his teeth; he was ready to give up. So he took the envelope out of his bag and opened it.

The envelope was stamped with an oval red official seal, and he recognized the words on it—General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. The envelope wasn't sealed—he had opened it and verified it when he went to the General Staff, and on his way back, Slava had casually stuffed it back into his bag and forgotten to put it at home.

The man in the leather jacket hesitated for a moment before pulling out the letter.

The drunken accomplice—who was now fully sober—stood up from behind his shoulder, muttering words in the darkness:

"Hereby... Comrade Velikoslav Ivanovich Ivanov... is dispatched to the General Staff in Moscow on the instructions of KGB Chairman Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov... The unit shall provide full cooperation and... necessary facilitation..."

His voice trailed off as he read the last few words, almost uttering the words "convenience conditions" in a whisper. Silence fell over the alley.

"Still looking, bro?" Slava took the gun back. The three thugs were trembling uncontrollably, and two of them were helping Slava pack his things. The drunken accomplice finally uttered what everyone was thinking in a mournful tone.

"We're doomed."

Before the words had even finished, the screech of brakes came from the alleyway entrance. Two black Volga cars came to a stop almost simultaneously, their doors slamming open, and at least six people jumped out.

"Don't move!" A deep voice came from behind the bright beam of a flashlight. The beam swept across everyone in the alley, finally stopping on Slava, who was sitting against the wall. "Velikoslav Ivanovich? Are you alright?"

"It's nothing, just a few petty thieves."

The KGB men were quick; Leather Jacket and his three accomplices were immediately pinned to the wall and the ground.

"Are you hurt?" "I'm fine, it was just a regular armed robbery. Is the security situation in Leningrad really that bad?"

The KGB shrugged.

"These bastards are really unlucky. Of all people to rob, they robbed you—Leningrad's security has definitely deteriorated a lot in the last two years, with more and more street robberies."

As Slava walked away, he looked at the leather jacket lying on the ground and the more he looked, the more familiar the man seemed.

"What's your name?"

"Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozin".

Chapter 15 Combined Arms Battalions and Informationized Warfare

"Wow, Chao, the cook!"

Slava immediately remembered who this street thug was, but after thinking about the man's experience of enlightenment in Longchang, he decided to let the Soviet prison reform him properly, and then pull him out of prison to work after he had been reformed enough.

His grand plan wouldn't be complete without mercenaries.

“Ivanovich, come back to base with us first. These people will be handled by specialists—what if they are Western spies?” one of the agents said.

“Alright, but what do you plan to do with him? This young man doesn’t seem like a spy to me; I quite admire the ruthlessness in his eyes.” Slava looked at Prigozin, who was handcuffed, and nodded slightly to him.

Prigozin just stared at him without saying a word, and it was unclear what he was thinking.

"If it's not espionage, this would be a civil case. Street robbery is too common for locals. They usually get two or three years of hard labor, depending on whether they have a prior record—the ringleader seems to have one, he committed the crime while on probation, so the sentence will probably be more severe. According to the law, he should get ten years."

The person from the base who came to pick him up added, "But this has caused you trouble. After the higher-ups found out, they specifically instructed us to make arrangements for your safety—someone will accompany you when you go out from now on."

Slava wanted to say "it's not that bad," but then he remembered that he had been sneaked around by a few thugs, which would be a disgrace to the KGB, so he swallowed his words.

...

As the frontline military district facing Northern Europe, the Leningrad Military District had well-maintained barracks and facilities. Slava was assigned to a single room in a two-story officers' dormitory building, with heating and hot water. On the table was a stack of documents sent in advance by Ogarkov's office—the initial organizational chart of the Blue Army battalion, a summary of the overall plan for the Western 81 exercise, and a Russian translation of a NATO tactics manual marked as confidential.

After taking a shower and changing into clean clothes, Slava sat down at the table and began flipping through the documents.

The initial organizational chart of the Blue Army battalion was drafted by the General Staff Operations Department according to the template of a conventional motorized infantry battalion: three motorized infantry companies, one mortar platoon, one communications platoon, and one logistics unit, with a total strength of 420 people, equipped with several BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles, several GAZ-66 transport trucks, and standard battalion-level communication equipment.

In other words, it was a standard Soviet motorized infantry battalion, no different from the other thousands of motorized infantry battalions in the entire army.

If the Blue Army is at this level, then the Western Exercise 81 is more like a simulation of the Soviet Civil War. Therefore, it should be that Marshal Ogarkov allowed Slava to freely adapt and reorganize this battalion.

Slava stared at the table for about ten minutes, then turned it over and placed it face down on the table. He then took out a piece of white paper and a pencil from the drawer and began to draw his own plan.

The first drafting discussion meeting was held on the third day after Slava arrived at the base.

The meeting room was on the second floor of the camp's command building. It was a long, narrow room with a large-scale topographic map of Belarus on one wall and identification charts of NATO branches of service and a blackboard on the other. The tables were arranged in a U-shape, with a simple sand table in the middle—a typical East European plain in Belarus, with rivers, roads, and villages marked with colored labels.

The number of attendees was small, but their presence was significant. Major Fedorov sat in a corner taking notes, flanked by two engineers from the communications project team who had come from Moscow. On the other side of the U-shaped table sat three officers—these were handpicked by Ogarkov from various units of the Leningrad Military District, responsible for the actual command and training of the Blue Army battalion.

Sitting on the far left was the Blue Army battalion commander, a captain named Sokolov, about thirty-five or thirty-six years old, with an old shrapnel scar on the back of his hand—a veteran from the Afghan war, who had fought in the Panjshir Valley near Kabul. The two officers next to him were the deputy battalion commander and the operations staff officer, both of whom appeared to be experienced in combat.

When Slava laid out the plan he had drawn up over three days on the table, Sokolov looked at it for about half a minute before his rough brows furrowed.

"What kind of organizational structure is this?" He pointed to a box on the blueprint.

“I prefer to call it a combined arms battalion,” Slava said. “I broke up the traditional three-company system and reorganized it into four combat detachments, a directly subordinate reconnaissance platoon, and an information center. Each of the four detachments includes infantry, anti-tank firepower, and mobile vehicles, and can operate independently or in coordination. The reconnaissance platoon is responsible for forward search and target location, while the information center is responsible for compiling all reconnaissance data and distributing it to the detachments in real time.”

"The mortar platoon was dismantled too?"

"A dispersed deployment means each platoon carries a mortar and a two-man gun crew, plus an anti-tank missile gunner. Each platoon has independent indirect fire and anti-armor capabilities. The traditional concentrated use of mortar platoons has an advantage in positional defense, but our mission is not positional defense—"

No matter how much reinforcements were made, a single battalion could not possibly survive the Red Army's overwhelming force and relentless aerial bombardment. Our battalion was not meant to be cannon fodder, so it naturally didn't need to be organized as cannon fodder.

"And what are your thoughts?" the deputy battalion commander—a captain named Chernov—interjected, somewhat displeased that Slava, a civilian officer, had referred to their troops as cannon fodder.

"Our operational philosophy is to be dispersed, flexible, and able to make incursions everywhere, but not to engage in direct confrontation," Slava gestured on the sand table. "What are the Red Army's advantages? The number of armored vehicles, the density of artillery, and the ability to launch large-scale assaults. Isn't the purpose of this exercise to intimidate the Europeans? A deep-penetration assault that could take several weeks to reach the English Channel. As for whether this tactic will succeed, we'll leave that aside for now."

First, for one of our battalions of over four hundred men to engage in a direct confrontation would be suicidal; even in simulated exercises, they would be wiped out in a minute. However, if we disperse into four or five independent combat groups, utilizing the terrain for concealment and maneuver, constantly creating trouble on the Red Army's flanks and rear—hitting and running, harassing supply lines, and guiding friendly fire after reconnaissance—one battalion could tie down the attention of an entire division.

“Isn’t this just guerrilla warfare?” Sokolov leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, looking at him. “We fought in Afghanistan too, but against a large-scale offensive—is it really feasible?”

“Strictly speaking, it’s not guerrilla warfare.” Slava walked to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk and began to draw—he drew a large circle to represent the Red Army’s armored group, and five smaller circles around it to represent the Blue Army’s four detachments plus a reconnaissance platoon. Each small circle was connected by a dotted line, and the dotted lines converged on a square marked the Information Center.

"What is the core problem of guerrilla warfare? The lack of coordination between the various guerrilla units means they fight their own battles and cannot form a cohesive force. But if each unit can know the location of other units, the movement of the Red Army, and the intentions of the command in real time through a data sharing terminal, then it is no longer guerrilla warfare, but a systematic decentralized coordinated operation."

He drew an eye symbol next to the box in the information center.

"The key to this whole system lies in reconnaissance. We need to see their location and movements before the Red Army does. If we can do that, four hundred men will not just be four hundred men—four hundred men plus information superiority equals the battlefield effectiveness of four thousand men."

Besides, the Blue Army isn't just our battalion; they also have main force units and artillery groups. Our information advantage can help the main force achieve a better kill ratio.

Sokolov didn't respond immediately, but stared at the diagram on the blackboard for a while. As someone who had fought in Afghanistan, he was no stranger to the tactics of "dispersed, flexible, and hit-and-run"—in fact, this was the very tactic that had caused them so much suffering in the Panjshir Valley.

But the problems for the Afghans are also obvious: they lack communication equipment, and the various guerrilla groups often do not know what the other is doing, resulting in very low efficiency in coordination.

“I understand what you’re saying,” Sokolov finally spoke, “but Comrade Ivanov, please tell me—do those information centers and data sharing terminals you mentioned exist now? Are they usable?”

“The communications project team has already produced a prototype,” Slava said, pointing to two engineers sitting in the corner. “Five sets of terminal equipment are already on their way from Moscow, and Marshal Ogarkov has approved the transfer. Each unit will be assigned one set, and the fifth set will be placed in the information center. The terminals are connected via radio data links and can transmit text messages, coordinate data, and simple situation plots. Although it cannot transmit images yet, it is sufficient for battalion-level operations.”

What is the communication distance?

"Thirty kilometers in a straight line, and fifty kilometers with relays—more than enough to cover the operational depth of a battalion."

Sokolov thought for a moment, then asked a few more questions about the equipment's reliability and operational difficulty. Slava answered them one by one, providing answers to those he could and having the engineers supplement the answers to those he couldn't. At this point in the discussion, Deputy Battalion Commander Chernov couldn't hold back any longer.

“I have a different opinion,” he stood up and walked to the sand table, pointing to several locations on the terrain with a baton. “Your plan is based on the premise that we can discover the Red Army’s location and movements before they do. But have you considered this—how will we conduct reconnaissance? The reconnaissance platoon only has about twenty people. How will they search for the Red Army’s main force in an area of ​​several hundred square kilometers? By running? By looking?”

This is exactly the problem that Slava has been thinking about, and it's also his biggest headache.

“A drone,” he said.

There was a two-second silence in the meeting room, then Chernov gave him a look that said, "Are you kidding me?"

“Drone?” he repeated the word, as if Slava had just said UFO.

“What’s wrong with unmanned reconnaissance aircraft? You know nothing about NATO’s technological advancements.” Slava walked to the wall with NATO equipment identification charts and pointed to a blurry photo of an Israeli Scout drone—an illustration from a NATO military journal translated by the General Staff Intelligence Department.

"The Israelis are already developing this kind of small tactical drone, which can be equipped with a camera and transmit video signals in real time. Operators at the ground station can see the footage captured by the drone. If we had this, one drone would be equivalent to ten reconnaissance soldiers!"

In fact, the resounding success of this Israeli drone during the 1982 Israeli-Syrian war greatly spurred the United States. By 1986, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps had procured more than 20 Israeli RQ-2 drones. These drones provided frontline commanders with real-time reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, and damage assessment information, and were remotely controlled by ground operators within a range of 185 kilometers. The RQ-2 later distinguished itself in the 1991 Gulf War.

“The problem is that we don’t necessarily have what the Israelis have,” Sokolov said. “What do we have?”

This problem cornered Slava, because he had already spent a week looking for the answer.

---

The search for the drone began the day after he arrived at the base.

He first asked Fedorov to help contact the General Staff Equipment Department and the relevant departments of the Air Force, and asked a question that sounded simple but actually made everyone scratch their heads: Does the coalition army have any small unmanned reconnaissance aircraft that can transmit video signals in real time?

The answers are gradually returning:

The first thing presented to him was the Tu-141 "Swift"—this thing is over fourteen meters long, weighs more than five tons at takeoff, is powered by a turbojet engine, is launched from a trailer using solid rocket boosters, and is recovered by a tail parachute upon landing.

Kids, this isn't a drone, it's a cruise missile that can fly back.

Slava glanced at the photo in the technical manual—a thing about the size of a small fighter jet perched on a special transport vehicle—and silently crossed it off the list. The most crucial problem was that it couldn't transmit video in real time. It carried a film camera and an infrared imager; after flying the preset route, it would parachute to land, and the film would be manually retrieved for analysis. By the time you finished analyzing it, it was too late—meaningless for a battalion-level tactical unit.

Then there's the Tu-143 "Flight"—a scaled-down version of the Tu-141, eight meters long, with a takeoff weight of 1,200 kilograms and a combat range of 60-70 kilometers.

The good news is that later models are indeed equipped with TV cameras and data links, giving them preliminary real-time video transmission capabilities; the bad news is that the word "preliminary" needs to be emphasized – the image quality is extremely poor, the transmission is unstable, and this thing is still launched from a trailer using a booster rocket. The entire launch and recovery system requires a dedicated support team to operate, and several transport vehicles are needed just for the relocation.

But at least it can see the image in real time, even if the image is a blurry mosaic.

Slava circled the name of the Tu-143 on the technical specifications table and wrote two words next to it: "Improved".

What he really wanted was the Shmel-1 "Hornet"—a lightweight tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) powered by a piston engine, much smaller than the Tupolev series, designed for tactical reconnaissance and artillery fire correction within a range of 45 to 60 kilometers. It was equipped with a daytime camera and could also jam enemy radar and radio communications. Technically, this was almost the original version of his ideal battalion-level reconnaissance UAV.

But the Shmel-1 won't officially enter service until 1983; it's still in the experimental phase, undergoing flight tests at a research institute in Tula. Each flight requires filling out a ton of approval forms, having a bunch of researchers swarming around it, and a bunch of cameras capturing data. You think you can just take this thing to the fields of Belarus for the West 81 exercise two months from now? Those researchers will fight you to the death.

Slava studied the technical documents for the Shmel-1 for a long time, and finally decided to let the directing staff give the Blue Army a boost, treating them as if they already had the drone. So he sent a message to the director in Moscow, instructing her to submit a formal application through KGB channels to the General Staff and the Air Force Equipment Department—to equip the Blue Army battalion with a lightweight tactical unmanned reconnaissance aircraft capable of real-time video transmission.

Director Nian replied quickly: "Do you think they will approve it?"

"I don't know, but let's put the need on the table first. Even if it's not needed this time, at least let the military know that this gap exists—that in itself is meaningful."

"Okay, I'll handle it. You can use the Tu-143 to cover your side for now."

---

So when Sokolov asked us what we had at the meeting, Slava's answer was very honest.

"Tu-143 upgrade, the kind with a TV camera. The General Staff has already approved two sets for us, and they'll be transferred from Kiev next week."

"That piece of junk?" Chernov's expression showed that he had used or at least seen such a thing. It had indeed appeared on the battlefield in Afghanistan. "The picture is as blurry as underwater photography, the signal drops if the wind is strong, and it takes more than an hour to prepare for each launch—you plan to use this for reconnaissance?"

“I know it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we can get right now,” Slava said. “I’ve already applied to the General Staff for this kind of high-end equipment. Although we don’t have it, we are the opposing Blue Force. At worst, we can ask the directing staff to give us a cheat code. Anyway, our high-altitude reconnaissance planes will be flying in the sky during the exercise, and the directing staff will know everything—probably.”

"So... you're asking us to take a half-finished communication system and a dozen drones to fight against the Red Army's tank division?"

“Plus, there are seven hundred people, a belly full of discontent, and a head full of new ideas,” Slava laughed. “These are the conditions. Marshal Ogarkov once said, ‘Conditions are created by people, and if you can’t create them, you have to accept them.’”

Sokolov stared at him for a few seconds.

For any professional soldier, it would be an offense to have an unranked KGB civilian officer come into the army and instruct them on how to fight. But there was something about this short man that made Sokolov take him seriously—he wasn't a theorist making empty promises, but rather someone who had figured out what he was doing and was willing to take the consequences.

Afghanistan taught Sokolov one thing: on the battlefield, the person you should trust most is often not the one with the highest rank, but the one with the clearest mind.

Actually, he was out of options and was just trying anything.

“Alright,” he said, taking his hands off his chest and resting them on the table, leaning forward slightly. “Go on—how exactly do you plan to organize this combined arms battalion?”