Antonov An-12 Cub/Soviet VDV Airborne Operations
By the 1980s there were seven airborne divisions in the VDV (including one training) and several independent brigades, regiments and battalions although only two divisions were capable of being deployed for combat operations in the first wave against NATO employing assets of the Transport Aviation of the Military Air Forces and the Aeroflot.
There was also a mistaken Western belief, either intentional Soviet deception or stemming from confusion in the West, that an Airborne Division, reported as the 6th, was being maintained in the Far East in the 1980s.[11] This maskirovka division was then 'disbanded' later in the 1980s, causing comment within Western professional journals that another division was likely to be reformed so that the Far East had an airborne presence.[12] The division was not listed in V.I. Feskov et al.'s The Soviet Army during the period of the Cold War, (2004) and the nearest division ever active, the 99th Guards Airborne Svirsk Red Banner Division based at Ussuriysk, was broken up to form separate air assault brigades (parts of the 11th, 13th, and 83rd Brigades) in 1973.
