Some nice ideas about dealing with the FoW beyond the adjoining provinces, though I can see problems with this is if the radar/SigInt is a static installation. Will Germany lose all ability to see beyond the frontline once it advances beyond the range of radar installations in Barbarossa? You can see in Switzerland that Germany has no information beyond the border provinces, because these provinces are all out of range of the radar/SigInt in the Frankfurt area. Once it advances through the Ardennes beyond Sedan will a German Army lose its intel about possible positions of the Allied units? Or will it need to capture French/Belgian installations?
Given the technical differences between the early radar types used in each country, and the significant expert human resources required to interpret radio intel data, I can't see how an advancing army can just take control and start using another country's radar/SigInt. But even if we accept this abstraction, with the limitation that it drops to 0% on capture and takes several days/weeks to regain 100%, what will happen when you advance into an area where there are no radar/SigInt installations to capture?
I think it would be better to have an expensive Signals Bde that can be attached to the higher command HQs and travel with the army when it advances. There was definitely such a unit with the DAK in North Africa, which did important intel work for the Axis forces along the lines Johan has described in identifying the approximate locations/strengths of Allied units. The Allies had nothing similar, instead relying on intel from decryption of strategic radio interceptions from having broken the Enigma code. I assume there were similar units which travelled with the German Armies in Barbarossa, but the books I've read don't mention them.
Incidentally, this sort of ability doesn't really work as a single static installation anyway. The relevance of the radio chatter might all be intrepreted at one site, but you need to triangulate the source to get a possible location, and that means having two radio aerials picking up the signals with a fairly wide separation. That doesn't mean having them both in a single province several miles apart - not if you are going to try to locate an Army Corps in Antwerp over 500km from Frankfurt.
Of course, both sides used this sort of technical intel to supplement standard aerial reconnaisance. Johan said, "people’s intelligence picture wasn’t just limited to the front line and where aircraft
happen to be flying they did know bits and pieces of what was happening else where." This sounds like HOI2 where we could gain "intel" from where our bomber units happened to be flying. But IRL there was no "happen" about it - Armies used systematic air recon to try to identify positions/strengths of enemy forces. IMO a recon air unit at the airbase near Luxemburg might provide just as much intel, or possibly even more, than radar/SigInts, especially in 1936 when the technology was still emerging. Air recon units, consisting mainly of small light aircraft, were very flexible and could keep up with the advance of quickly moving ground units, by operating from temporary airfields. Obviously, they might be interdicted in a war, especially if the enemy has air superiority, but I think you could abstract their benefits to a large extent, pretty much as we see with this Dev Diary, without having single air recon planes flying around the map or anything else too micro. The benefit of air recon units would be particularly important for minors, which shouldn't have any of the fancy technology.
Nevertheless I just love the screenshot for giving us that bit clearer indication about the sort of army organisation we will have. To see that the units with HQ Bde's are indeed Corps HQ, and that the Divs they command are spread over a geographical area. It looks to me like they are nearly always in an adjoining province, which is what I envisaged. The main thing is that a Corps HQ with two Divs definitely is not a stack of three units in one province.
I would have loved to see an Army HQ somewhere, just to complete the OOB, and see that Army HQ's have the ability to command Corps over a big geographical area. But hey, this is 8 Jan 1936, Germany still hasn't re-occupied the Rhineland and maybe hasn't created any Army/Army Group formations yet. Now that we have Johan talking about Patton commanding US 1st Army Group we can have no doubt they have given us exactly what I hoped for in terms of OOB. But then I've been confidently predicting this for a couple of months now. Thanks Johan for the unexpected DD
