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Warsaw Pact vs NATO (1985)

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posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 08:12 AM
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So many have looked back at the Cold War thinking how close was the world to total destruction. it was very close but if there was a war without nuclear weapons or any kind of WOMD, who would win? Would the Warsaw Pact overwhelm NATO forces with their armour and sink the US navy, or would NATO be able to hold them back and bomb then to the stone age with effective Naval and airforce capabilities?



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 10:30 AM
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NO if they didn't defeat the soviet advances with fire and maneuver ,as the Nazies did with their blitzkrieg/elastic defence-counterattack , they would never have the time to bomb them back to the stonage.

Best bombing of the Nazies took months and months to have effect and that was after the allies had defeated the Luftwaffe. How long do we seriously think it would take the NATO alliance to win the war in the air. It could take weeks .

If you can argue that the bombing of the 1980s was orders of magnitude more accurate than bomber command in the 1940s, then you can achieve the destruction with much less tonnage, but then you have much fewer bombers than in WW-II, so destruction rate may not be any faster. Therefore it doesn't follow that 'bombing them back to the stonage would be much faster either. This would not be like Iraq, and it would probably take weeks if not months to achieve that objective.

Meanwhile the armies would have to fight the Warpact to a standstill, and hold them off for months . How they supposed to do that with only one months ammo supply


[edit on 7-6-2004 by psteel]



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 11:05 AM
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read red strom rising tom clancy deals with this question
both sides come to a stand still at berlin

[edit on 7-6-2004 by devilwasp]



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 07:58 PM
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Interesting post. Good one.

A retired U.S. Air Force Colonel who was stationed at Bitburg Air Base in the early 1980s once told me and a group of CAP cadets that the reality was that we would've never won World War III. The Soviets would win by a rout just on sheer numbers and devestating firepower.

He also told us something rather scary. If there was an invasion, nobody would know about it until it happened. So forces in NATO were at the mercy of the Soviet aggression until reinforcements arrived, which was highly unlikely. He also said that air superiority would be non-existant, because NATO fighters would be outnumbered 10-1 in every situation. Furthermore, their supply of radar-guided missiles would last just a little over 21 days, just three weeks, their IR-guided missiles would hold out a little while longer, but with less effectiveness. By then, the squadron commanders would tell their pilots to "rig bayonets," in other words, they were using guns only. Outnumbered 10-1, heavily reliant on missiles, less proficient with guns, facing a nimbler enemy that lives off of guns, you can kind of guess who'd win. After NATO's air forces are decimated and their territory overrun, the U.S. would have only three choices: surrender, fight to the death, or nuke them.

It's scary because it was a complete lose-lose situation. NATO had no way to win. So those military build-ups and all that training meant nothing, because in the end, they were preparing to lose.



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 08:00 PM
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Originally posted by devilwasp
read red strom rising tom clancy deals with this question
both sides come to a stand still at berlin


Are you serious?

Dude, Tom Clancy doesn't know as much as he claims. So many of the scenarios he presents in Red Storm Rising and other books are so biased and inaccurate, and highly unlikely.

Do not trust Tom Clancy about anything. He knows as much as the average gung-ho military buff: nothing.



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 08:08 PM
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Come on we all know what would have happened. MAD. Pure and simple both sides would have used their nukes and the human race would have ended.

~Astral



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 10:36 PM
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Originally posted by The Astral City
Come on we all know what would have happened. MAD. Pure and simple both sides would have used their nukes and the human race would have ended.

~Astral


That was a possibility. Which makes me even happier that things happened the way it did.

Interesting, I think the people of the 1980s and the Cold War were more than willing to put it all on the line. I think they were more than willing to go to nuclear war if they needed to. Nowadays, it's very different. People nowadays are hardly willing to even exercise!



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 10:52 PM
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Everyone who says the Soviets would win is pretty stupid, the "success" of Soviet Strategy was soundly defeated in the Iraq war.

The First Gulf War showed the US's new military doctrine (Air-Land Battle 2000) was far superior to anything the Soviets would have, as the doctrine was designed purely to fight the Soviets in Eastern Europe. This of course led the Soviets to completely re-draw their military doctrine from scratch in 1990s and caused them to immediately restructure their entire Army.

Source: "The World's Armies edited by Chris Westhorp by Military Press and Salamander Books Ltd copywrite 1991."

"The latest pressure, however, arises from the recent campaign in Kuwait and Iraq, where the Iraqi Army, which was equipped with Soviet weaponry and trained according to Soviet doctrines, was totally smashed in just 100 hours. While it was the Iraqis who took the major strategic decisions, the generals are thought to feel serious disquiet both because their weaponry showed up so badly and also because the US Army's "Air-Land Battle 2000" doctrine worked so extremely effectively. The Soviet General Staff and its especially effective Military History Bureau will analyze the war in minute detail with a view to developing a Soviet counter-strategy." p 102

"The question is often asked: Just how good is the Red Army? The US Army has fought three major campaigns since 194, the first in Korea, the second in Vietnam and the third, albeit a very brief one, in the Gulf. It was successful in the first, unsuccessful in the second, and spectacularly successful in the third. In contrast the Soviet Army has only had one major external campaign - in Afghanistan - and that proved to be only just short of a disaster." p 105

That's just some snipits that caught my eye. If you look at the major political pressures leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of them was the sudden realization that their Army was now completely useless, all that money they spent to try and keep up with the Americans in the 80s proved to have been wasted and now if they wanted to keep up with the Americans again they'd have to start from scratch which would be even more costly than before.



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 10:57 PM
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[edit on 7-6-2004 by Facefirst]



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 10:59 PM
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Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo

Originally posted by devilwasp
read red strom rising tom clancy deals with this question
both sides come to a stand still at berlin


Are you serious?

Dude, Tom Clancy doesn't know as much as he claims. So many of the scenarios he presents in Red Storm Rising and other books are so biased and inaccurate, and highly unlikely.

Do not trust Tom Clancy about anything. He knows as much as the average gung-ho military buff: nothing.


I beg to differ, Tom Clancy wrote about Arab Terrorists using a plane as a missile to try and kill the president...on 9/11 that was pretty much proven true in one form or another. His book "Sum of all Fears" isn't about Neo-Nazis and is far better than the movie.

While he does write fiction, he also writes fact get the books:

"Airborne"

"10th Mountain"

"Armored Cav"

And so forth.

They are indepth interviews with the former commanders of the 101st//82nd the 10th and the 4th Armored I think for the Armored Cav.

They are in depth research in all de-classified materials about those divisions and their roles in modern warfare.

He even goes over the specifics of how Abrams are made as far as he can without going into classified material such as compositions of the composite armors that are used.

Your knowledge of Tom Clancy is about as much as that of a military buff: nothing.

As for Astral...MAD does not = global death...it'd be impossible to kill everyone on the planet with nukes, Soviet Union estimated they'd only lose about 20 million if there were a nuclear war, the US's estimate wasn't that far from theirs.

The idea that MAD means the world...is stupid, and something only the uneducated populous that receives all their information from Hollywood think.

The Soviets would have fought a Nuclear War had they felt threatend, and they believed they could win. Analysts today don't really see any way that they wouldn't have except that we'd probably have been more successful in targeting and so possibly subdued them before they subdued us.

MAD is really...propoganda, nothing more.



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 11:09 PM
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Originally posted by CoMrAdE_IvAn
So many have looked back at the Cold War thinking how close was the world to total destruction. it was very close but if there was a war without nuclear weapons or any kind of WOMD, who would win? Would the Warsaw Pact overwhelm NATO forces with their armour and sink the US navy, or would NATO be able to hold them back and bomb then to the stone age with effective Naval and airforce capabilities?



its quality vs quantity. read red storm rising by tom clancy. very good read. its about the same thing.



posted on Jun, 7 2004 @ 11:10 PM
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Originally posted by sweatmonicaIdo

Originally posted by devilwasp
read red strom rising tom clancy deals with this question
both sides come to a stand still at berlin



Do not trust Tom Clancy about anything. He knows as much as the average gung-ho military buff: nothing.




is that why he breifed severl US presidents?



posted on Jun, 8 2004 @ 03:26 AM
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I think putting Iraq into supporting an arguement is dumb. It was set in 1990 and the Iraqi's had concripts that were hopeless and US,Chinese and Russian armour (Not many T-72's). The equipment of the Iraq was plain crap.



posted on Jun, 8 2004 @ 09:43 AM
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Originally posted by CoMrAdE_IvAn
I think putting Iraq into supporting an arguement is dumb. It was set in 1990 and the Iraqi's had concripts that were hopeless and US,Chinese and Russian armour (Not many T-72's). The equipment of the Iraq was plain crap.



I agree. If it were a real opponent like the Soviets,do we really believe they would sit back for 6 months and let the allies just build up sufficent forces to overwhelm us? Having said that would the sovs have just sat while the 5 weeks of airwar pounded them into dust or would they have attacked right away?



posted on Jun, 8 2004 @ 07:53 PM
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I think there is an important thing that we may be missing, logistics.
In short the Soviets would win because of logistics they would be more able to bring more arms to the front then NATO, quality be what it may the Soviets have overwhelmed quality before and they would do it again. I don't think they'd be able to do much about the Navy though, perhaps a protracted campain of air strikes against the navy, but even then it would be challanging.



posted on Jun, 8 2004 @ 08:29 PM
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FreeMason,

Civilians, ESPECIALLY Tom Clancy, are not the best sources of information. Civilians and warfare simply don't mix. Look at Iraq. But let's not get into that!

Tom Clancy actually gets a lot of things wrong in his non-fiction books, believe it or not. While he usually knows what he is tlaking about, it's mostly from the technical side of things. Technicalities are very different from actual execution of warfare.

In Red Storm Rising, Clancy really spin-doctors the scenario by using the oil situation. Only because of the oil situation is NATO prepared for the counter-offensive. Even in a counter-offensive, the sheer firepower and numbers of Soviet forces would've been overwhelming. Clancy shows NATO forces as being extremely resourceful, able to make the best out of every piece of equipment and supplies they have. It's really logic, if the enemy's momentum (pressure on you) is overwhelming, how can you possibly be resourceful? A central idea of this "blitzkrieg" warfare against an equally hone enemy such as NATO is to force you to make mistakes. Sometimes, overpowering simply means you have been forced by the enemy to take drastic and risky measures to ensure survival. In a way, you are defeated before the enemy reaches you. Yet Clancy, in his usual extremely biased pro-USA style, makes NATO pull off a miracle (mostly because the Soviets are shown as literally retards holding weapons).

It's rather simple, if you are overwhelmed, you make more mistakes as well.

[edit on 8-6-2004 by sweatmonicaIdo]



posted on Jun, 8 2004 @ 08:47 PM
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FreeMason,

Iraq is totally irrelevant. We are talking 1985, not 1990. And Iraq is not the Soviet Union. Whether you like it or not, the Soviet Union was a military force of unprecendented power. My father, after all these years, is still in awe at what the Soviet Union packed.

One thing you ignored was that the Soviet Union would be invading West Germany blitzkrieg style, right onto the tarmacs of NATO combat aircraft and parking lots for NATO tanks. Iraq invaded a totally defenseless country of Kuwait, and met like NO opposition. Their invasion was as simple as they get. U.S. forces were not attacked in the invasion of Kuwait.

Given that, if the Soviet Union invaded West Germany, the sheer number of artillery shells falling on targets pre-registered since 1945 would cause some insane damage. Followed by the largest armored assault ever. The Soviet Union, at it's height, had more tanks than all of the NATO countries had combined. Supported by Frontal Aviation and V-VS, they would've wreaked some major havoc.

Eventually, it all comes down to supplies. NATO had lots of supplies in Germany, but in the midst of a blitzkrieg, they have no choice but to literally empty the stockpiles (see above post on air warfare). Otherwise, they wouldn't survive. Survival depends completely on the arrival of reinforcements and more supplies from the United States, mostly through ships, since airlifts can carry only a little. These ships in turn, can be protected with the entire U.S. Navy, but would still be in grave danger of Soviet submarines, long-range cruise missiles from surface vessels, and long-range V-VS and AV-MF bombers. Much like the U-boats of the early World War II days, success of the convoys getting to Europe is very sketchy. Even if they arrived unscathed, that would mean, they would have to take a very long time. Speed is on the essence, because NATO forces are being wrecked by the minute. It's non-stop warfare in Central Europe.

At the least, it would take a month before significant numbers of reinforcements arrive. But within a month, NATO would've completely lost air superiority since they would've run out of missiles, and their ground forces would be in worse shape. The forces condemned to their fate in Central Europe really have only two choices: evacuate and concede their territory, or fight to the death. It's a lose-lose situation. If they give the Soviet forces even the slightest leverage, they take full advantage. That's why numbers and firepower is that effective.

If you want more info, meet with any U.S. Army or U.S. Air Force personnel (enlisted or officer) who was stationed in West Germany anywhere from 1981 - 1991. Not Tom Clancy. Warfare is understood fully by men wearing camoflauge.



posted on Jun, 8 2004 @ 10:48 PM
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Mind you even in the face of such superiority in numbers victory for the Red forces would be far from guarranteed. I was reading an account of an exercise conducted in 1980 between a simulated Soviet shock army [ 5 heavly reinforced motorized divisions ] and a simulated USA corps [ two heavly reinforced mechanized divisions].

I've seen results of such computer simulations where the blue forces are compelled to mount Nuke attacks to twart the Red penetrations and thus prevent destruction.

This operation was conducted quite differently. They invited two ex Wehrmackt officers [ Von Mellinthin and Balch] to wargame the USA corps, to show the Americans how germans would defend in such a mission.

In the course of several days these two germans completely reorganised the Korps into two echelons with all mech battalions up front forming a 'FLOT' backed up by ALL the KOrps arty [So any battalion setupon could count on 3 Arty battalions firing in support]. Any enemy break through was tagged and shaddowed by Cavalry battalions/squadrons.

They maneuvered all the tank battalions into two brigade groups and channeled the soviets into a breakthrough sector. At a predetermined line they unleashed the tank brigades in a counter stroke and mascarred the soviet offensive in a series of flank counter penetrations.Very reminicent of Mansteins "Back handed blow" in Kharkow in the spring of 1943.


Ever one was shocked how easy it seemed for these two german officers, and all concluded the 'Soviet shock army' would have been soundly defeated and sent retreating back to the 'intergerman boarder'.


Winning by fire and maneuver without special tech! It can be done cause in the end its soldiers that fight wars not weapons.



posted on Jun, 8 2004 @ 11:08 PM
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If the Germans couldn't beat Russia, the world doesn't stand a chance.



posted on Jun, 9 2004 @ 02:34 AM
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Its good to see some educated opinions in this issue
.

The germans were great at defence. No matter what, The Germans had many tricks up their sleeves to deal with overwhelming numbers. However i believe the sheer fire power of the warsaw pact forces would simply crush any NATO aggression unless they used tactical nuclear weapons. Soviets are experts at ground warfare when using mass attacks.

Also i believe the Soviet Navy would be able to cripple the American navy with its submarines, but they won't be able to face the american navy head on or they'll be crushed big time. As for airforce, i think the Soviets would dominate europe but i think the mainland of the USSR would be under serious threat from US bombardment.



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