If a (mainly conventional, no nukes please) WWIII were to break out in the 80's, how would armored warfare evolve? We know that NATO's strategy in regards to armor was defensive and the WP's strategy is offensive, but when they clash, their strategies are bound to change and evolve with time and experience. Consider how armored warfare evolved during and after WWII, the same thing might happen with WWIII.
Armored Warfare during and after a 1980's WWIII?
- Thread starter KuboCaskett
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TheSpectacledCloth
Gone Fishin'
Armor would generally advance to a revolutionary level if WWIII actually happened, barring ultimate destruction due to nuclear warfare.
The MBT is an offensive weapon and armoured units while they are capable of being effective on the defence are when all is said and done offensive units
While the NATO Grand strategy might have been defensive - i.e trade ground and inflict casualties - at the individual Brigade and Division 'Tactical' level this might not be the case.
Local units would be more than capable of counter attacking and launching spoiling attacks of their own.
I can imagine that given the large number of T72s appearing from the early 80s and the large number of NATO tanks still armed at the time with the L7/M68 105mm which included the Early M1 Abrams (The M1A1 with the bigger gun was from 1986), Leopard 1, M60, M48, Later series Centurion and the AMX 30 which used a similar gun - I can imagine that the expected 3 km lethal engagement range previously expected vs T55 equipped units (which would still be up to about half the Pact tanks) was not going to work any more and those tank when facing the T72 equipped units was going to have to get closer due to its laminate armour and rely on first round hits or try to flank the Russian units (or create an L shape battlefield to ensure that some NATO Tanks got a flank)
The L11 120mm equipped Chieftains and 120mm Smoothbore armed Leo2's are going to have less of an issue but they make up a smaller fraction of the tanks (except in the British units where the Chieftain is the only tank)
What is in the NATO units favor is the plethora of man packed ATGW - such as the MILAN and Dragon systems and heavier systems like HOT and TOW - these can all knock out pretty much any MBT at the time
So I think that we would see an increasing reluctance of most NATO tank units to go head to head with the better Russian units and rely on Air assets, Artillery and ATGW to first blunt and degrade a given unit before launching limited armoured counter attacks designed to 'finish' off Russian units that had been mauled before 'retiring' back behind the Infantry and ATGW screen.
For the Russians - who did have a fairly rigid mission system - (I am not suggesting they were robots but from most accounts they would have been very 'wooden' tactically) I can see the survivors and their commanders of any unit becoming more and more reluctant to advance into what is possibly a hail of ATGW and air strikes and rely on heavy artillery to 'prepare' the Battlefield first thus slowing the speed of any desired advance.
The other issue I imagine would impact the Pact forces is that I expect NATO to own the air for much of the time given that the NATO forces where operating under an umbrella of Awacs directed F15s many of them driven by Vietnam vets.
And lets face it the Eagle has 100% cleaned the clocks of any opponent since its introduction - I would expect them to do well in a 1980s conventional WW3 scenario.
So....I would expect that like the Germans in Normandy, day light movement of PACT formations would soon find themselves being subjected to near constant air attack. So again PACT formations would try to do as much movement by night and/or ensure that they did not outrun their SAM/AAA systems.
While the NATO Grand strategy might have been defensive - i.e trade ground and inflict casualties - at the individual Brigade and Division 'Tactical' level this might not be the case.
Local units would be more than capable of counter attacking and launching spoiling attacks of their own.
I can imagine that given the large number of T72s appearing from the early 80s and the large number of NATO tanks still armed at the time with the L7/M68 105mm which included the Early M1 Abrams (The M1A1 with the bigger gun was from 1986), Leopard 1, M60, M48, Later series Centurion and the AMX 30 which used a similar gun - I can imagine that the expected 3 km lethal engagement range previously expected vs T55 equipped units (which would still be up to about half the Pact tanks) was not going to work any more and those tank when facing the T72 equipped units was going to have to get closer due to its laminate armour and rely on first round hits or try to flank the Russian units (or create an L shape battlefield to ensure that some NATO Tanks got a flank)
The L11 120mm equipped Chieftains and 120mm Smoothbore armed Leo2's are going to have less of an issue but they make up a smaller fraction of the tanks (except in the British units where the Chieftain is the only tank)
What is in the NATO units favor is the plethora of man packed ATGW - such as the MILAN and Dragon systems and heavier systems like HOT and TOW - these can all knock out pretty much any MBT at the time
So I think that we would see an increasing reluctance of most NATO tank units to go head to head with the better Russian units and rely on Air assets, Artillery and ATGW to first blunt and degrade a given unit before launching limited armoured counter attacks designed to 'finish' off Russian units that had been mauled before 'retiring' back behind the Infantry and ATGW screen.
For the Russians - who did have a fairly rigid mission system - (I am not suggesting they were robots but from most accounts they would have been very 'wooden' tactically) I can see the survivors and their commanders of any unit becoming more and more reluctant to advance into what is possibly a hail of ATGW and air strikes and rely on heavy artillery to 'prepare' the Battlefield first thus slowing the speed of any desired advance.
The other issue I imagine would impact the Pact forces is that I expect NATO to own the air for much of the time given that the NATO forces where operating under an umbrella of Awacs directed F15s many of them driven by Vietnam vets.
And lets face it the Eagle has 100% cleaned the clocks of any opponent since its introduction - I would expect them to do well in a 1980s conventional WW3 scenario.
So....I would expect that like the Germans in Normandy, day light movement of PACT formations would soon find themselves being subjected to near constant air attack. So again PACT formations would try to do as much movement by night and/or ensure that they did not outrun their SAM/AAA systems.
Interesting, so the WP might develop some AA weaponry to install on their tanks or at least get more AA vehicles around to swat them air forces out of the sky, along with developing anti missile devices as well.
Come to think of it, both sides had their non-export versions that not only have more sophisticated computer systems but are more costly to produce than their export counterparts; if a war broke out, I can imagine both sides either trying to make mass production models that are closer to the pre-war export models in terms of sophistication or a middleman of sorts in terms of quality. That and invent and test some new vehicle types like multi-pedal tanks and tanks that can be "platformed".
Viktor Suvorov sugested exactly that. That export modely would be now norms however...
Economics of scacle would change.
Plus new systems would emerge the whole system of systems would emerge earleir and earleir and more complete.
Whole platforms capable of switching modules on spot. Those modules being interchangeble etween navy and army sharing same standards etc...
Economics of scacle would change.
Plus new systems would emerge the whole system of systems would emerge earleir and earleir and more complete.
Whole platforms capable of switching modules on spot. Those modules being interchangeble etween navy and army sharing same standards etc...
He did? I guess I'm not the only one thinking that way; though I can imagine the non-export model would either be reserved for a leader unit or an elite unit.
marathag
Banned
Warsaw Pact Plans had tacnukes and Chem warheads from H-Hour onwards. No way to keep an '80s conflict from going full exchange, as even Chem would result in US nuke release. WMDs are WMDs. By the '80s, the US had withdrawn the Nerve gases from stockpile, so would reply with Nukes
3 km engagements will likely be rare, given how the terrain in Central Germany will break up line of sight. We can expect most of them to occur within a half-kilometer to 1 kilometer distances.
Not likely. Airpower needs breathing space to be really effective. Allied airpower in Normandy in 1944 pinned the Germans down, but it did so at the end of a long campaign spanning years to pound German industry, cripple their transportation networks, and destroy their air force.
When the rebuilt Red Air Force clashed with the Luftwaffe over Kursk, the air battles were titanic, but the two air forces largely canceled each other out. As a result, neither side's air power played much of a part in the decisive ground battles.
In a WWIII scenario, both sides would start with vast air forces, and extensive air defense networks. There would have been no long campaign before the land war in which the air forces could slowly soften up the defenses, and whittle away the threat - it would have been an immediate dive into a colossal air battle. By the time NATO had managed to win this, if it won this, the ground war might well be over.
That's the entire reason for the old joke: "Two Soviet generals meet in Paris after the end of WWIII. One turns to the other and says, 'So tell me Sergei, who won the air war?'"
In actual battles, the Eagle has never gone up against a enemy air force manned by competent pilots. In exercises where it has, like the Indian Air Force flying Soviet MiGs and Sukhois, the results were much more even... sometimes even in the Indians favor.
They already were. The Soviets concentrated their SAM and AAA assets forward, making air attacks on the armored spearheads themselves very dangerous. CAS would still have been conducted, but losses would have been high and (given the scale of the battle) unlikely to be decisive, particularly given the effort that would have been required to sustain them in the face of the Soviet SAM threat.
NATO air really planned to conduct most of its strikes against the Soviet rear areas, to destroy command and control assets, logistics nodes, and to disrupt and delay follow on echelons. That was all part of the extended battlefield of AirLand Battle. However, in these areas, Soviet camouflage and decoys would be exceptionally useful in foiling NATO interdiction attempts.
By the 1980s, Soviet nuclear doctrine had long since shifted away from viewing nukes as a normal part of warfare and starting out with nukes from the start only featured in a portion of their war plans. The Soviets by this point mainly viewed nukes as a means to assist and safeguard their conventional superiority, and preempt NATO use of nuclear weapons to reverse battlefield defeats.
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Faced with WarPac's overwhelming numerical superiority, NATO's strategic doctrine in Germany was fundamentally defensive. However, at the tactical level, NATO field officers were trained to keep WarPac off balance by disrupting their precisely choreographed attacks with general craftiness, like brigade- and battalion-strength spoiling attacks to disrupt carefully designed tactical formations and ambushes of all sizes everywhere. A victory by either side would be seen as a validation of that side's tactical doctrine. I personally think NATO would've been able to win a war in the mid-to-late 1980s, so I think we would've seen a significantly amplified version of the response to Soviet doctrine we saw after the Iraqi forces were easily taken apart in Desert Storm.
http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/the_war_that_never_was.htm This is a link to a really good article talking about differences between the tightly controlled WarPac armies and the more tactically independent NATO forces.
Your objection doesn't matter because OP specified no nukes. Bringing this up is of no assistance to our discussion of armored warfare doctrine. There was a very short period, from 1984 to 1986 or 1987, where both sides thought they could win without a massive initial nuclear and chemical bombardment.
http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/the_war_that_never_was.htm This is a link to a really good article talking about differences between the tightly controlled WarPac armies and the more tactically independent NATO forces.
Your objection doesn't matter because OP specified no nukes. Bringing this up is of no assistance to our discussion of armored warfare doctrine. There was a very short period, from 1984 to 1986 or 1987, where both sides thought they could win without a massive initial nuclear and chemical bombardment.
Soviet emphasis at the tactical level was not on "precisely choreographed attacks" (it's at the operational level they placed emphasis that kind of thing) but on moving as fast as possible so as to take the enemy by storm. They intended to use speed and shock to move faster then NATO could react and get inside their command loop. It is true that the Soviets broke their larger maneuvers down into very rigid (but rapid) tactical drills which could be completed quickly and efficiently by conscript soldiers. These drills then became the building blocks for all the larger maneuvers, in which they could be combined in different configurations and sequences. That meant that at and below the battalion level, the Soviets had very little flexibility, but at the operational level a commander would be able to put these blocks together in a number of ways, allowing him to maneuver more quickly and decisively then his NATO counterparts.
Since the Soviets believed that war was won not at the tactical level, but at the operational and strategic levels (a view that has history on its side) this was seen as an acceptable trade off.
It should be further noted that at the regimental/brigade and divisional levels, the Soviets were not remotely tactically inferior to NATO and probably in some cases actually superior. This was because Soviet officers at this level generally had spent basically their lifetime in a relentlessly professional system, with a strong theoretical base. Thus, at this level they developed some very flexible concepts, fully utilizing the professional skill of their officers. For example, their plan for divisional attack from the march was more fluid than NATOs semi-equivalent, the "hasty attack" (and a lot more comprehensive as well).
The real theoretical downside to the tactical drills is not their rigid execution (western militaries don't like to admit it, but speed and shock can defeat artistry as the Soviets repeatedly proved against the Germans), but that they were based on a lot of assumptions about how a war would pan out - what the Soviets called "norms." Norms were an entire (very large) field of military study in Soviet academies, and were represented by a wealth of intricate mathematical equations. Of course, when its been decades since theory has been put into practice, its hard to know if your assumptions sill match reality. And when you've constructed reams of mathematical equations based on those norms for commanders to use to calculate attack frontages, ammunition usage, rate of advance, medical requirements, etc, if those assumptions are seriously wrong then you've got an entire establishment to reform and new drills to teach - kinda hard to do in the middle of a shooting war.
In NATO's case, if NATO's pre-war assumptions had been badly wrong they would have had less resistance when the time came to throw them out (since a lot of their officers didn't pay much attention to official doctrine anyway) and they could have just turned to their junior commanders and told them to improvise in the interim.
Mid-80s is a coin toss, with the main question being whether NATO's inexperience in coordinating Air and Land forces on the required scale and the politically necessarily but militarily poor forward deployment would have been more of a hindrance than the WARPACs inferior sub-unit tactics. It is a question that will never be answered by now, obviously.
It should be pointed out that NATO's critique of strong central control during the Cold War stemmed mainly from the fact NATO didn't have much of it (in part because NATO didn't consider Operational Art to be a thing for much of the Cold War, something which only began to change towards the end). They made said lack of strong operational command into a virtue. This was probably wishful thinking because once you move away from small tactically focused battles and start to conduct larger, more complex operations with multiple elements and formations moving together as part of a greater whole you require strong central command. You can't just wing it on mission verbs and personal initiative.
The Late-80s probably favors NATO, as by that time the rot in the Warsaw Pact is really bad.
Using Desert Storm as a guide to a 1980s WW3 situation is really, really bad idea since the Soviets in the Cold War, even at their worst, were never remotely as incompetent as the Iraqis.
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marathag
Banned
But is just the same as saying 'No Airpower in WWIII'
Sorry, no nukes after WWIII starts is near ASB stuff.
Well in WWII, people thought that when the bombers got through it was supposed to be all over but it wasn't; mainly that bomber used conventional bombs (including firebombs) and nothing else (except for the two atomic bombings on Japan though). There was a big cache of chemical weapons that could have used in WWII of which can be counted as the nukes of their day but thankfully they weren't used (mainly due to Hitler of all people being the most hesitant to use them), so if at least one person's not willing to use chemical weapons in WWII, then it's safe to expect a good chance of nukes not being used in WWIII after at least two weeks.
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The Same Soviet air force who's pilots got schooled by the Israelis in the war of attrition and who had a quarter of the flight time annually of their NATO counter parts? A countries who's aircraft didn't have modern electronics, fly by wire, air to air refueling, meaningful AWACS or mid range missile with less reliability in 2000 then the US sparrows had in Vietnam? There is a lot uncertain in War but who was going to win the air war wasn't. In the age of Smart weapons that was important especially when you look at what air power could do to command and control.
The Soviet Air Force never fought the Israelis directly. Using the performance of Syrian pilots as an attempt to measure hypothetical Soviet pilot performance is just as terrible an idea as using Desert Storm to see how the war. The Syrians historically haven't managed to be quite as bad as the Iraqis but they are comfortably within the same ballpark of incompetence. One might as well use the performance of European armies in 19th century colonial wars as a guide to their performance against each other in WWI.
The amount of annual flight training Soviet pilots received varied by the regiment your looking at. Most of them are in the 200 hour range... about the same as their NATO counterparts, depending on which country your looking at.
Soviet Su-27s and MiG-29s did feature modern (for the 1980s) electronics and fly by wire. The Soviets had been fielding aircraft since the 1970s which had air-air-air refueling capability. Soviet AWACS was inferior to their NATO counterpart, but it was still meaningful and sufficient for Soviet needs when coupled with their much more thorough ground based radar systems. And Russian issues with their mid-range missiles around the turn of the millennium had less to do with the missiles themselves then the poor maintenance they received during the 1990s, when the post-Soviet states couldn't even afford money to feed their soldiers much less maintain their advanced weapons systems.
Which isn't anywhere near as much as air power romanticists like to fantasize about. In Vietnam, the VPA remained in the field for years despite massive American airstrikes. Those airstrikes were certainly invaluable in assisting ground forces and preventing them from being overrun, but they could not, on their own, destroy the enemy. Much is made of the massive air strikes that eventually halted the NVA's Easter Offensive in 1972 - yet it is often forgotten that this halting took over a month, and was then followed by six more months of bloody stalemate where the South was unable to roll back Northern gains. Although a few key cities were eventually retaken, half of the four northern provinces was permanently lost to the Communists, and would prove a "dagger to the heart of the South" in 1975.
In 1991, the Iraqi army largely survived the month long Coalition air blitz. Effectiveness had been reduced, but the army was very much still in the field and combat capable. The largest losses were actually from desertion, with many poorly motivated Shi'ite conscripts simply ditching their weapons and slipping away. Best assessments are that after a month of airstrikes between 20-30% Iraqi of heavy equipment in the Kuwait Theatre of Operations had been destroyed. This is actually a very good showing for airpower against a dug in enemy, but its still not the "destruction of standing forces in a matter of weeks" and this despite the Iraqis managing to somehow be a textbook example of how not to run a air defense effort.
Kosovo in 1999 was a far, far worse showing. For seven weeks of airstrikes, the best that NATO could show for it was the destruction of two dozen armored vehicles. Much greater damage was done to Serb strategic infrastructure, but the Serb army in Kosovo was essentially unscathed. And the Serbs would continue their operations against the KLA up to the day they surrendered. And not just on the ground, but also in the air. They even flew hundreds of CAS sorties into Kosovo, despite NATO air superiority, by hugging the valleys. Although NATO shot down six MiG-29 fighters, they failed to intercept any of these CAS aircraft. And this was the might of the NATO alliance against a tiny nation of 7 million people defended by a couple dozen 1960 vintage SAMs. Not a vast empire and its satellites of over 350,000,000, with thousands of fighter planes and tens of thousands of SAM systems. Even smart weapons require good targeting, which the Soviet emphasis in decoys and deception at all levels would have complicated immensely...
The war would be decided by the troops on the ground, not the war in the air. Well, it would probably have been decided by nukes, ultimately, but until that point the air war would have been a distant third place behind the ground war and the REFORGER sealift effort.
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They sure did fight directly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Rimon_20
The US has Vietnam Iraq and Serbia, not exactly the best but who had the soviets fought?
And yet their short range missiles preformed well. Mig-29 had no fly by wire, its something that was added in more recent version which is a shame it was a better plane then the flanker. The soviets have something like 85 air to air refueling aircraft NATO had hundreds. i'll look up flight time later.
Vietnam was the Era before smart munitions and that was supporting a South Vietnam that was near totally useless on the ground. Iraq, wasn't totally destroyed on the ground... good for them? I would say they where drastically weakened and its not as if NATO has to beat the Soviets solely in the air, simply weaken them enough on the ground to tib the scales. as for Kosovo, what about it? A limit NATO intervention with strict rules of engagement which by the way managed to force the Serbians out. Maybe it would be more impressive is the Serbians had done anything other then preserve their army and fight back? its like the Bonecrusher Smith-Tyson fight, just focusing on survival rather then actually winning. Are the Soviets just gunna focus on keeping their heads down while they get pushed out of germany?
I think you are underestimating things just a bit here.
First, what PGMs and allied air power did to Iraq in 1991 was so significant that it caused China to scrap its entire military doctrine. Firepower and maneuver could now overcome superior numbers, even when vastly superior. F-15s providing air cover while A-10s and Apaches go after Soviet tanks is a powerful combination. Even if the outright casualties are not huge, their ability to blunt Soviet attacks would likely have been significant. The issue is, when did this threshold get crossed?
Second, also evidenced in 1991, American ability to interdict supply lines and distrupt C3 would have been material, particularly against an army based around centralized planning. Those Cat A units would have been chewed up and Soviet success would have been dependent upon getting the Bs and Cs up to the front quickly enough to maintain the tempo of operations. Soviet armor reinforcements wont do much if its stuck behind a blown up bridge on the wrong side of the Oder river or if its supply train has been blown to bits.
Finally, as to Kosovo, as I understand it, there was a lot of Vietnam-like micromanaging that undermined the air campaign. A freer hand with less political meddling would have likely yielded better results.
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I would really love to know your sources for this. While Soviet military science emphasized the belief that a nuclear battlefield was expected, I have never read anything that suggested it was essential anymore than NATO's policy of flexible response mandated the use of nuclear weapons.
marathag
Banned
But as I said, Pact Forces were going to use Frogs and Scuds with chem and tacnukes on day one.
marathag
Banned
All the Warsaw Pact war plans released, or leaked, to the public after the Cold War feature the liberal use of nuclear weapons. According to documents unearthed in the Czech Republic, Soviet generals “fully expected Western ‘imperialists’ to make the first nuclear strike.” The Soviets and their allies determined they should stage preemptive atomic attacks if war were imminent.
The Polish maps make it clear just how many nukes the Soviets would have dropped. Large-yield nuclear weapons would have wipe out economic and political targets. The West German cities of Hamburg and Hanover and the ports of Wilhemshaven and Bremerhaven all would have been nuked.
https://warisboring.com/this-is-how-the-world-could-have-ended-1ecd1db17ff2#.qx6f9b2xz