Russian Chemical Troops

Moon Pine · #1 March 25th, 2009, 01:11 PM

Just curious
What`s the Russian Chemical Troop in Real World?

In game, they carry no nerve gas or herbicide, but RPG and Flame RPG ^^ Also, they wear no chemical suit or gas mask from the photo.

So why they called like this?

Imp · #2 March 25th, 2009, 01:26 PM

Probably because what causes the flames is chemicals nasty mix of, just guessing

Marek_Tucan · #3 March 25th, 2009, 02:37 PM

AFAIK FT troops were originally in Russia formed from chemical corps and flame weapons were(and are) called "chemical" (for example T-26 based flame tanks were often called "Chemical tanks").

Similar example is US "Chemical mortar", ie. 4.2 inch mortar, originally designed for chemical corps to disperse gas or lay smoke, HE capability was added later on when it was found there are even non-WMD scenarios in the warfare.

Moon Pine · #4 March 25th, 2009, 08:18 PM

Thanks.

PlasmaKrab · #5 March 27th, 2009, 03:56 PM

Offensive chemical troops generally date back to WW1 and have in time included a lot of "non-conventional" weapons outside outright WMDs, i.e. pretty much anything that doesn't fire solid shells.
As far as I have understood Russian/Soviet doctrine on this, all flame weapons are managed by chemical units (generally at division level even now) and get task-allocated to battalions as needed. Includes everything from flamethrowers to modern TOS MRL.
This sounds strange now that I think about it, since it means that you have to have specialized personnel to fire even a disposable RPO-Z, while e.g. the US M-202 could be (doctrinally) handed over to squad-level AT specialists instead of the Dragon. Oh well.

For reference, smoke generators are also still handled by "chemical" units in the US Army. So there