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Polish Army Aviation Scenarios for Flightplans

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JNDVirtual

Polish Army Aviation Scenarios for Flightplans

Post by JNDVirtual »

If anyone has knowledge of the working of the aviation branch of the Polish Land Forces, I'd appreciate a message letting me know. The following are completely hypothetical scenarios.

I'm working on a project to represent the entire Polish military aviation structure in FSX. The Land Forces have had quite the restructuring in the last few years, so I'm trying to see the best way to represent unit movement in my project.

Right now, Polish Army Aviation looks like this (with some nomenclature changed to better represent unit size for U.S. eyes):

1st Aviation Brigade
- 49th Air Base, Inowroclaw (Mi-24s, Mi-2s)
- 56th Air Base, Pruszcz Gdanski (Mi-24s)
- Reconnaissance Battalion, Miroslaviec (UAVs)

25th Air Cavalry Brigade
- 1st Battalion, Leczyca (Mi-8/17s)
- 7th Battalion, Nowy Glinnik (W-3s)

FlightGlobal's World Air Forces 2014 shows the Polish Army operating:
  • 43 Mi-2 Hops
  • 26 Mi-8/17 Hips
  • 29 Mi-24/35 Hinds
  • 39 W-3 Sokols
As an aside, the Polish Air Force operates five C-130E Hercules transports and 16 C-295 transports to move army stuff.

Polish Army bases host a specific type of helicopter (with the exception of a couple of special-purpose aircraft at each base, only Inowroclaw hosts two types of helicopter). With the Polish Army returning from Afghanistan, I'm trying to find something for these helicopters to do in FSX, and, once I find that out, how to deploy them.

In contrast, the U.S. Army organizes its active-duty helicopters into nine Full Spectrum Combat Aviation Brigades at each base (except for four of heavy CABs that remain). For the sake of this thread, to equate this to U.S. Army Aviation, Mi-2s correspond to Hueys, Mi-17s to Chinooks, Mi-24s to Apaches, and W-3s to Blackhawks. Here's how a Full Spectrum Combat Aviation Brigade looks:
  • An attack reconnaissance battalion of 24 AH-64 Apaches
  • An attack reconnaissance battalion of 21 OH-58 Kiowas (National Guard units use the UH-72 Lakota)
  • An assault battalion of 30 UH-60 Black Hawks
  • A general support battalion of four UH-60s, 4 EUH-60s, 12 CH-47 Chinooks, and 12 HH-60 Black Hawk MEDEVACs
  • An unmanned aerial systems company of 12 MQ-1 Gray Eagles
Now obviously the Polish Army is not as large as the U.S. one, so I'm thinking that perhaps I can move these units around (both to training ranges and to deployments outside of Poland, such as the European Union Force in Kosovo) using an expeditionary battalion approach drawing units from all the bases:

Each expeditionary battalion would consist of the following:
  • An attack reconnaissance company of six Mi-24s
  • An assault company of eight W-3s
  • A support company of six Mi-17s
  • A medevac company of eight Mi-2s
I use the term "expeditionary battalion" in the sense that many organizational charts show the 49th and 56th air bases as regiment-sized units (I understand that the term regiment has a bit different meaning in the United States and in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations), so if someone could suggest a better name, that'll work, too.

What say you? Is this on par with how NATO army aviation branches move? Any suggestions or feedback?
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