What is East Wind’s target time period?

I have been asked this same question many times now in various forms.
To keep me from having to answer this on an individual basis and to help guide those looking to get the “spot on” look, I will explain this here.

East Wind is based on a “what if” scenario. What if the Berlin Wall did not come down and the Soviet Union was still in existence? For East Wind the target time period is 1988-1994 basically.
The actual game scenarios will change from year to year but the basis of the event will not.

For the NATO troops this is not too big of a deal really since NATO did not change much as a direct result of the fall of the Warsaw pact and Soviet Union.

For the East Bloc guys this causes a bit of a problem. The problem is that we do not have a definitive snapshot of what the East German or Soviet uniform or equipment would have been in 1992 for instance.

The problem comes in the fact that East Germany ceased to exist and with it the East German military. The Soviet Army was in existence for a few more years until the USSR ceased to exist in 1991. But between 1989 and 1991 the Soviet army was basically frozen in time. No new developments in uniforms or equipment and much of the work in process sort of stopped.

Because of this we cannot directly see what would have been if circumstances were different. We are forced to make assumptions based on the state of things in 1989 and forecast what would have been if things had kept going in the same direction.

Some examples of this are the use of the VSR “Dubok” pattern. This pattern was in development at the end of the USSR but was not officially issued until after the fall of the USSR. It was issued as the first official pattern of the Russian Federation Forces. Because of this – it is an approved East Wind pattern.

Along with this assumption comes the allowing of gear and uniforms that were issued in 1994 or later. The thought there is that if they had not had the freezing of development and the subsequent economic problems the development may have resulted in an earlier release of some items.

An example of this would be the “M94” Sapogi (jackboots). These are the newer style with the strap and buckle at the top to allow for larger calves and a better fit. While these were never issued at the same time as Afghanka and TTSKO in real life – they may have been if things had been different – so they are acceptable at East Wind.

Another example is allowing Grad-2 rigs to be worn. The Grad-2 is basically a rig based on the combining of the US LBV-88 and the ChiCom style of chest rig. The Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan made their own chest rigs or picked up ChiCom chest rigs for their use. The Soviet command realized the usefulness of the chest rig enough to produce two variants of their own at least as early as 1988 for the “type 2”. This showed a progression towards a change from the standard Y-strap load bearing gear used since at least the GPW (WW2). The basic style of the GRAD-2 is still used as the Russian Army issue vest 6sh92. Allowing for the fact that the GRAD-2 is made of cotton cloth instead of the polyester used in other current gear makes it a logical predecessor that might have been around in the early 1990’s if things had progressed untouched.

Some will say that this is stretching things. We do not see it like that. There has to be some thought into the “what if” portion of this. We are not doing a reenactment of a documented time period but actually doing a simulation of a period that could have been.

This is a very slippery slope though. What we strive to do is keep this “pre-westernization”. This means before all the Tac vests and Blackhawk style gear. Before Molle and its numerous variants. Before the wide-spread overuse of cordura. We are trying to simulate the Soviet Army – not the Russian Army of today that is barely distinguishable from any other 1st World army.

Hopefully this will help explain things a little better for what we are going for.

If I did not explain something clearly, please post questions and we will do our best to clear it up more.