Damages of a Sino-Soviet War '69

[Plumber]

I had a rather dystopian dream last night where this happened, but it was vague and ASB (involved Charlemagne I think too ).
If you guys don't know, the Soviets were going to nuke China until Nixon told them to sod off.

Outline (complete sentences are so postpostmodern):

• Different/incompetent/whatever POTUS doesn't care as long as it's not nuclear
• The Soviets abide by this until a losing Mao pushes the button
• The Soviets, under pressure from the US, only retaliate on major military bases or where the Chinese nukes are (I don't know where they are)

Basically, how much damage would be done to China, the USSR, Mongolia and the far East in terms of millions killed, infastructure damage, radiation, etc.? I've heard that US fears that Korea and Japan would be damaged by radiation wouldn't happen if the USSR mainly concentrated on major military bases. The Soviets are restraining themselves not to kill too many civilians in China (which from an amoral realist perspective they should since now China is going to hate them forever). I'm not a military expert AT ALL, so I don't really know where to begin finding out about this.

 

[Gridley]

FYI for all, though bear in mind it is Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino–Soviet_border_conflict

I wouldn't think Mao would use his (very) few nukes unless the core of China was threatened, which would have been a non-trivial logistic exercise on the USSR's part. A lot of what's in between the population centers of China and the USSR was desert and tall mountains with very few roads and only a couple of rail lines. In other words, bad ground for large mechanized forces (Red Army) to attack infantry forces (PLA).

If Mao pushed the button first in 1969 I doubt the US would nuke the USSR. Ten years later, maybe, but not then. Frankly if we're postulating an apathetic and/or incompetent POTUS I doubt the US would intervene in any meaningful way in the conflict. "Let the Reds destroy each other! Good riddance!"

Remember in 1969 the US had been fighting the Chinese less than two decades prior (Korea), and the Sino-Soviet split was poorly understood and generally under-emphasized even in the circles that should have figured it out.

While 'experts' at the time might very well have advised leaders otherwise, the practical effects on Korea or Japan from a limited tactical exchange on the Sino/Soviet border would be mild to nil. If the Soviets decide to lay waste to China (can't think why they would, but hey...) there would be notable long-term effects but not much in the short term. 1969 nuclear arsenals were still relatively small, and the USSR wouldn't expend everything it had because that would leave it at a disadvantage relative to the US until they could rebuild their stockpile.

 

[f1b0nacc1]

Gotta disagree

The Soviets wanted to nuke the Chinese, and they were asking Nixon to go in on it with them, not simply 'give permission' for a conventional war. The Soviets have long considered China the 'real' enemy (they continue to in many ways, current tactical rapproachment notwithstanding), and are seriously concerned regarding the vulnerability of their exposed Siberian posessions, which the Chinese regard as stolen in the 18th century (see Treaty of Nanking). With this in mind, any Soviet attack on China would have probably included a healthy (or unhealthy, depending upon your point of view) first strike on Chinese nuclear assets (limited), as well as a substantial conventional offensive, largely against Manchuria - with a special emphasis on siezing Harbin - the core of Chinese industrial production at the time, and a key logistics point. Whether they would have included Chinese C3I assets (including Mao, though he was hardly an asset by this time) is another matter, but it is fairly likely given what we know of Soviet doctrine.

This would have led to destruction (nuclear, conventional war - including gas, which would almost certainly have been employed en masse - is unlikely to do much more than kill a whole lot of Chinese, though not so many in terms of their overall population) of a relatively limited number of targets (airbases, Lop Nor, the IRBM/MRBM missile sites, and a few other key bases) as well as several Chinese cities and a few leadership bunkers. Prompt fatalities (nuclear only) would have been about 7-12 million, with another 10-40 million depending upon how far the Chinese society breaks down in the post-attack environment. If the PLA breaks into warring factions following the destruction of the leadership core, look for the high end of those casualty numbers....

Korea is actually reasonably close to several of the targets, so the DPRK will suffer somewhat from fallout and civil unrest following the predictable wave of refugees. Keep in mind that the DPRK was far less of a basket case than it is now, and the PRC far less healthy economically. The ROK will have an easier time of it, but still is likely to catch at least some fallout, though probably not enough to cause too many deaths. Ditto for Japan, though if the Chinese get off any 'spasm' IRBMs that aren't pointed at the Soviets (unlikely, to be sure) Japan is just loaded with targets for them.

As for the Soviets, they aren't likely to lose too much. I would suggest that Vladivastok and Irkutsk both have about a 20% chance of being nuked (they are certainly prime targets, but there would be a real question of how much of the Chinese C3I network would survive a Soviet first strike), and there is always the chance of various points along the TransSiberean railway being hit as well, but the real targets would be Red Army armored columns, which would (by defnition) be inside China at the time. Yes there might be some attempt (possibly a 'dead hand' sort of arrangement) tak attack one or two high-priority targets in European Russia, via either IRBMs or one of the few Tu-16s that the PLAAF had at the time, but I would place those in the 'unlikely' category.

Forgive the somewhat breezy approach to the whole thing, we are talking about a catastrophe really, but given who the primary losers would be (the USSR and the PRC circa 1969), I have a hard time working up too much empathy

 

[Gridley]

A Soviet invasion towards Harbin would for all intents and purposes be ENTIRELY reliant on the Trans-Siberian railroad for logistical support. Mechanized formations eat supplies at an amazing rate, doubly so in combat. Railroads are wonderful for moving supplies, but there's only so much you can push down a single line.

Its also a LONG line (~9,000km, depending on how you measure) - effectively impossible to defend the whole length. Even the PLA in 1969 should be able to raid the line on a regular basis. Sure, the Soviets can repair it - but every hour lost to repairs is an hour supplies aren't flowing east, and every carload of replacement rails, ties, and roadbed isn't a carload of food, fuel, or ammo.

 

[DuQuense]

is unlikely to do much more than kill a whole lot of Chinese, though not so many in terms of their overall population) of a relatively limited number of targets (airbases, Lop Nor, the IRBM/MRBM missile sites, and a few other key bases) as well as several Chinese cities and a few leadership bunkers. Prompt fatalities (nuclear only) would have been about 7-12 million, with another 10-40 million depending upon how far the Chinese society breaks down in the post-attack environment. If the PLA breaks into warring factions following the destruction of the leadership core, look for the high end of those casualty numbers....

I read somewhere about a 1970's meeting between US & Chinese Military People.
One of the Chinese started with the old chestnut --Wipe out half of Us, and whe still have half a billion.
One of the Americans pulled out a Population Map, and his Cookie Cutter*, and started drawing Circles.
A couple minutes later He announces 90% - and thats just the first 100 bombs.

Supposedly all the Nuclear Powers, have stated that they don't do Population Targeting. However.....

 

[f1b0nacc1]

Soviet planning...

Gridley,

You are absolutely correct regarding the supply issues that the Red Army would face striking towards Harbin, but they had truly colossal quantities of supplies already in theatre (note that they could also resupply through Vladivastok), and Soviet mech formations tended to run till burnt out, not sustain themselves in the field with resupply/reinforcement. Neither of these factors (the prepositioned supplies nor the 'one-shot' approach) is going to obviate the issues you mention (the vulnerability of the TSRR), but the Red Army planners were of the opinion that it was doable. This wasn't suppose to be a long campaign, and after the Chinese were dealt with, it was presumed that clearing the TSRR and keeping it open would be fairly straightfoward. I had a fascinating lunch with one of the staff officers who was responsible for some of this planning just after the end of the Cold War (when such things were discussed more freely), and which even end of the horse you think he represented, he believed it, and was confident that his peers at the time believed it too.

The 1969 PLA was almost entirely an infantry army, lacked significant antivehicle and antiair support, and their airforce was valuable primarily for killing Chinese pilots. The Soviets had many of their best units in the Far East, and they were quite prepared to use pretty much every weapon in the arsenal to take care of business. Whether it would have worked or not is certainly debateable (and to be honest, I think that the PLA - lousy though it was - would have handed the Red Army its balls on a platter), but there seems very little doubt that the Soviets thought that they could do it. Had Nixon not made it clear that the US wasn't going along with the idea, and would find the whole plan problematic at best scared the Soviets badly, and put them off the notion pretty much permanently.

DuQuense,

I have heard a fw stories similar to the one that you related, and absolutely agree with your assessment. The here though is that 100 bombs would probably kill about 300-400 million chinese outright IF THEY WERE TARGETED ON POPULATION CENTERS, which in the case of a Soviet attack in 1969 would not have been the case. Yes, it is likely the Bejing would have been taken out, and possibly one or two other critical political nodes or vital logistics points, but the bulk of the nukes used in a Soviet attack were likely to be focused on military or support targets, without an emphasis on generating mass casualities. Note, this isn't some suggestion of a 'surgical strike', most of the Soviet theatre weapons were big F*(kers, and their accuracy was debateable at best, but the American in the story you are referring to was talking about using airburts with the intention of generating mass casualties. The real question is how many chinese die post-attack from non-prompt effects, and I will concede that (lacking any really useful test data - thank God!) estimates could be off by as much as an order of magnitude. My guess is probably low, but I based it on two factors...1) most of the targets are nowhere near population centers, and in fact are fairly isolated in general; and 2) those targets that are not, are clustered fairly close together. It's going to be ugly in the north of China, but most of the southern part of the country isn't even going to know what happened for quite some time.

 

[basileus]

I think the Soviets would never use the nukes first, unless on a tactical level and only if a veritable horde of Chinese menaced a principal hub of communications. Of the Chinese I'm less sure, with such hardliners as Lin Biao (would he betray, by the way?) and Mao himself, but they had few weapons and I think they woouldn'y use them before thinking thrice.
All in all, it can be assumed that we would see a brutal attrition conflict, fought à la Iran-Iraq, likely with abundant use of chemical weapons (in which the Soviets had a distinct advantage).
The US, at first perfectly neutral, would probably try to exploit the war to force (North) Vietnam to terms and recognize once and for all the puppet regime in the south. Later, if the war goes on, it's difficult to say what would happen. Nioxon OTL is famous for his Chinese diplomacy, but he was also on very good personal terms with Brezhnev, who considered him a friend, more than a rival. I'd say that a cautious neutrality and eventually an offer to mediate a reasonable peace would be the American position - and it would give prestige to the Stars and Stripes.

 

[GBurch]

I think f1b0nacc1's discussion is pretty accurate in military terms. Although the PLA was using terrain as much as possible to protect their small nuke force, it would have been extremely vulnerable to a first/surgical-strike at the time (which, of course, is why the topic came up in US-Soviet discussions). It's also true, as has been pointed out above, that the level of understanding of the Sino-Soviet split in US military and policy circles was abysmally low in those days. We'd basically lobotomized ourselves in the 50s in terms of a deep and broad grasp of China in the 1950s, and opportunities to replace the lost expertise had been very limited since then.

That last point leads to something I can't stress enough in term of the official and academic US conception of China in the 1960s and first half of the 1970s: Even the best informed American policy-makers didn't have much of a clue about what was going on in China and, to the extent they DID get information, it was sporadic and consistently misinterpreted. The biggest element of this was a complete lack of understanding of how debilitating the GPCR was to the Chinese state and to Chinese society. Given what we now know about how fragmented China's political society was in 1969, it's very conceivable that even a very slight push from the Soviets at that time would have had massive effects of further destabilization. (Of course, it could have had the opposite effect, too ...)

Given the lack of a broad-based understanding of China in policy-making circles, the Kissinger-Nixon initiative is all the more impressive as a bold move in what was largely an unknown environment.

 

[Urban fox]

Gridley,

You are absolutely correct regarding the supply issues that the Red Army would face striking towards Harbin, but they had truly colossal quantities of supplies already in theatre (note that they could also resupply through Vladivastok), and Soviet mech formations tended to run till burnt out, not sustain themselves in the field with resupply/reinforcement. Neither of these factors (the prepositioned supplies nor the 'one-shot' approach) is going to obviate the issues you mention (the vulnerability of the TSRR), but the Red Army planners were of the opinion that it was doable. This wasn't suppose to be a long campaign, and after the Chinese were dealt with, it was presumed that clearing the TSRR and keeping it open would be fairly straightfoward. I had a fascinating lunch with one of the staff officers who was responsible for some of this planning just after the end of the Cold War (when such things were discussed more freely), and which even end of the horse you think he represented, he believed it, and was confident that his peers at the time believed it too.

The 1969 PLA was almost entirely an infantry army, lacked significant antivehicle and antiair support, and their airforce was valuable primarily for killing Chinese pilots. The Soviets had many of their best units in the Far East, and they were quite prepared to use pretty much every weapon in the arsenal to take care of business. Whether it would have worked or not is certainly debateable (and to be honest, I think that the PLA - lousy though it was - would have handed the Red Army its balls on a platter), but there seems very little doubt that the Soviets thought that they could do it. Had Nixon not made it clear that the US wasn't going along with the idea, and would find the whole plan problematic at best scared the Soviets badly, and put them off the notion pretty much permanently.

DuQuense,

I have heard a fw stories similar to the one that you related, and absolutely agree with your assessment. The here though is that 100 bombs would probably kill about 300-400 million chinese outright IF THEY WERE TARGETED ON POPULATION CENTERS, which in the case of a Soviet attack in 1969 would not have been the case. Yes, it is likely the Bejing would have been taken out, and possibly one or two other critical political nodes or vital logistics points, but the bulk of the nukes used in a Soviet attack were likely to be focused on military or support targets, without an emphasis on generating mass casualities. Note, this isn't some suggestion of a 'surgical strike', most of the Soviet theatre weapons were big F*(kers, and their accuracy was debateable at best, but the American in the story you are referring to was talking about using airburts with the intention of generating mass casualties. The real question is how many chinese die post-attack from non-prompt effects, and I will concede that (lacking any really useful test data - thank God!) estimates could be off by as much as an order of magnitude. My guess is probably low, but I based it on two factors...1) most of the targets are nowhere near population centers, and in fact are fairly isolated in general; and 2) those targets that are not, are clustered fairly close together. It's going to be ugly in the north of China, but most of the southern part of the country isn't even going to know what happened for quite some time.

A post-guerrilla infantry army with an inept/psychotic leadership cadre which disregarded losses and was relaying on morale and mass-numbers to compensate for equipment/logistic weakness.

The Red Army used to call such a force the IJA and spanked it soundly with far inferior equipment and air-support. In a major conventional war in the 1960’s/70’s China is utterly screwed. Even if it isn’t nuked.

The people who suffer worst are the North Vietnamese as outside supplies of weaponry dry up. I’m shocked none of our US posters noticed that small detail.

 

[Ward]

I noticed that earlier and just shook my head at that for how long would it take for the US to get involved in this war .

 

[chris N]

To be realistic the PLA only acquired the Mig 21 and somewhat modern tanks and Surface to Air Missiles by stealing them from supplies being sent to North Vietnam. They then reverse engineered them and produced them in China . If a war breaks out in 1969 the Chinese might have some copies of the T-54 but most of their weapon would be from WWII and the Korean War Era. That would mean that the Russians would be able to dominate the skies and would have superior armor.
I would expect the Russians to start the war in an attempt to decapitate the Chinese Nuclear threat and to use tactical nuclear, Chemical and biological weapons. Destruction of Chinese manufacturing and its electric power system would also be goal. Russia would have to use its superior mobility and fire power in order to avoid a slugging match with the Chinese masses.

 

[f1b0nacc1]

Contempt for one's enemies is often dangerous...

Urban,

I tend to agree with you that the PLA was no match for the Far East divisions that the Soviets had in place, but ANYTHING that large deserves at least some degree of respect. The Red Army is at the end of a very long strategic tether, and for it to actually 'win' a victory of any significance (remember, the goal here isn't to pile up 'victory points' killing Chinese, as viscerally satisfying as that might be for planners) they are going to have to do more than just run tanks over infantry formations. The Chinese demonstrated a very effective resistance capacity against the Japanese in WWII, and this time around they will have significantly improved preparations for that sort of war.

Keep in mind that Soviet tanks (for Far East divisions in 1969, we are talking about T-62s, for the most part, with early-gen BMPs and BTR-60s) had substantially difficulties that weren't discovered until much later (though the Six-Day war in 1967 should have been a good hint...pity the Soviets pretty much ignored it), and the effectiveness of mass conscripts in this sort of war would be quesitonable at best. For the most part, Chinese resistance from inside of towns and villages (where RPGs and grenades would make effective, if not optimal anti-vehicle weapons, not to mention recoilless rifles, which the PLA had aplenty) would make combat expensive for the Soviets, and they wouldn't have the option of simply bypassing all points of resistance. Without Harbin at the very least, no war with the Chinese is going to be worth the cost, and Harbin would be an extremely difficult proposition, and an expensive one even if they get there and seize it. All of this includes the risk of one or two Chinese nukes 'getting through' and taking out a critical target (Vladivastok and Irkutsk are both possibilities, and neither are trivial in terms of their impact on the battlefield, much less the overall strategic position of the USSR post-war), not to mention the (remote, I concede) chance that a Chinese IRBM hits something valuable in European Russia, which could have all sorts of long-term effects that the Soviets wouldn't find worth it.

Not to say that the Soviets wouldn't try it, not to say that they wouldn't THINK that they could win, not to say that they wouldn't win, even win big time. BUT...and it is a very big but....there are some serious risks, and to simply brush off an army of that size fighting on its home turf with adequate (not great) preparation...holding them in contempt is a mark of very poor planning, and very, very dangeorus indeed.

Finally, the NVA would certainly suffer badly from the results of any sort of Sino-Soviet war, but the US would be very unlikely to do much to take advantage of it. The war wasn't popular at that point, and it is more likely that Nixon would use this as an opportunity to force peace on American terms. The VC were a spent force (Tet finished them as anything other than a mask for NVA activity), and without sufficient supplies, the North might very well have considered making peace with an eye towards rebuilding to fight another day.

Ward,

There is little doubt that the hardware available to the Chinese would have been significantly inferior to what the Soviets would have been fielding (remember, the Far East military was often better equipped than even the Red Army's 'European' forces), but this really doesn't mean all that much. The T-62s and Mig21s (and now Mig-23s and various Sukhois for ground attack) weren't all that good to start with, and while much of the equipment available to the PLA was in fact Korean-war vintage, that particular vintage aged well. The PLA would have been outclassed tactically, but they could trade space (and lives) for time, something that the Soviets simply could not do. A very bloody war, particularly one without a decisive finish, would have been a serious problem for the Soviets, and this doesn't even begin to take into account the possibility of a nuclear strike.

You rather blandly suggest that the Soviets would have chosen to use nukes right off the bat, and you might be correct about this. Certainly they would have used chemicals, they had never made any secret about that, and chems would be ideal to use against a largely infantry force like the PLA. With that said, nukes offer a big risk, as there is no guarantee that the Chinese would not 'get lucky' and hit a high value target inside the USSR such as Vladivastok or Irkutsk, either of which would seriously complicate the war effort. This ignores the (admittedly remote) possibility that something much worse (a Chinese IRBM hitting Moscow, or some other Soviet slum) which could be catastrophic no matter what the outcome of the war. I don't say that the Soviets would categorically reject leading off with nukes, but it would certainly have been a very tough call...

 

[Gridley]

Gridley,

You are absolutely correct regarding the supply issues that the Red Army would face striking towards Harbin, but they had truly colossal quantities of supplies already in theatre (note that they could also resupply through Vladivastok), and Soviet mech formations tended to run till burnt out, not sustain themselves in the field with resupply/reinforcement. Neither of these factors (the prepositioned supplies nor the 'one-shot' approach) is going to obviate the issues you mention (the vulnerability of the TSRR), but the Red Army planners were of the opinion that it was doable.

I'm sure that quite a lot of senior (and junior) folks in the Red Army at the time thought it was doable. I'm not even sure they were wrong - but logistics will be as big a problem for them as the PLA will be.

Resupply via Vladivostok - from where? Murmansk? Leningrad? That's a longer supply line than the Trans-Siberian, and unless you make a huge detour it runs right up the Chinese coast and through several natural chokepoints that are closer to China than the USSR. The PLA(N) is still pretty much a brown-water navy today, but even in 1969 they should be able to savage Soviet merchant ships trying to make that run. Note for example what Somali pirates manage against merchant ships today. Escorts would help, but based out of where? The Soviet Navy's surface forces weren't exactly a solid blue-water force in 1969 themselves.

Running until burned out was indeed Soviet doctrine (hence how 'toothy' their battalions and regiments were compared to other nation's mechanized forces), but they still have more softskin vehicles than armored - for reference, in 1989 for a tank division the ratio at division level was ~3:2 softskin to armored, even including in the 'armored' category things like SP artillery and scout cars that would be highly vulnerable to RPGs and such. Less than an eighth of the division's vehicles were actual tanks. (Sorry, I don't have summary tables for 1969.)

Logistic challenges can be overcome, of course, and the Soviets need look no further than their own history 24 years prior for an extremely good and relevant example in the same theater of operations.

 

[Wendell]

A Soviet-Chinese war could have destroyed both countries as well as their alliance systems.

 

[sloreck]

IMHO the early use of chemicals would have been a big advantage to the USSR. Persistent nerve agents used on airfields and logistic hubs, in combination with conventional HE would mean the Chinese would lose air support (whatever they might have) and have problems supplying bullets. Non-persistent nerve agents in advance of USSR troops on "urban" targets would make taking such places that could not be bypassed easier (and persistent agents on bypassed centers would help keep those neutralized). At the FEBA, choking agents or mustard would be effective against the PLA troops who had very poor chem gear and training & would cause the least hassle for USSR troops.

Against troops with good chem training and gear even the nastiest of these agents are primarily a royal pain in the ass, but against troops with limited training/gear, and basically unprotected civilians (like RR workers, truck drivers, human "mules") chem is devastating.

The Russians might very well use a few smallish tac nukes against some C3I nodes, and the Chinese nuclear research and production facilities - which is the major point of the exercise. Once the Soviets have knocked the Chinese military & nuclear infrastructure back a long long ways, don't expect them to stay around...maybe grab some territory along some borders to provide some ore "space" - but they'll let China have some serious chaos, trying (probably without success) to ensure a new and "friendly" regime.

A question to all - assuming there is a Chinese collapse with things flying apart, any chance on the ROC attempting to carve out a coastal enclave, or maybe taking Hainan?

 

[DireSituation]

A question to all - assuming there is a Chinese collapse with things flying apart, any chance on the ROC attempting to carve out a coastal enclave, or maybe taking Hainan?

If they were to take an provinces, it would likely be Fujian (large Hokkein population as well as being the closest mainland province), and Hainan.

 

[Matt Wiser]

Concur with the NVN cutting a deal and hoping to fight another day. No supplies from either the Soviets or ChiComs, and the North Vietnamese will have no choice but to agree to whatever deal Nixon puts on the table.

The Soviets had the combat power to take Manchuria; whether they could "pacify" it is another matter. Chinese MRBMs are a threat, but at this time they take 4-6 hours to fuel and mate the warhead (similar to the SS-4 MRBM the Soviets had), and one may assume that known MRBM sites will be hit extensively with conventional and chemical weapons, and nukes if Brezhnev and Kosygin go for that. The Chinese bomber bases will be priority-one targets for Soviet bombers and tac air as well.

 

[thekingsguard]

Ahhh, one of the most underlooked POD's of the 20th century. One of my favorite timelines is based on it, the Urrisai River War, back on othertimelines.com. Give it a look, its damned good.

 

[f1b0nacc1]

Attacks on MRBMs

Matt,

you make an interesting suggestion regarding attacks on MRBMs by the Soviets (conventional or nuclear), but I wonder if this would only act to encourage an early use by the PRC, precisely the scenario that the Soviets most fear. In an conventional fight, the Red Army is going to mop the floor with the PLA (in the short term at least), albeit with some nasty casualties, but if nukes get into the picture, the losses that the Soviets could conceivably suffer would far, far outweigh any potential gains short of total collapse of the PRC, which would have its own problems for the Soviets to cope with. Instilling a 'use it or lose it' mindset in the PRC leadership might also infect their thinking regarding their IRBMs....

Gridley,

As for resupply by sea, the Soviets circa 1969 had a whacking huge merchant fleet, and more than enough light ships to provide sufficient escort to deal with what little the PLAN could throw at them. Would they suffer some losses, likely, but would those losses be (over the course of what would be a fairly short campaign) excessive...unlikely. Leaving aside the problems inherent in finding the merchant shipping (sensors in 1969 being somewhat deficient by today's standards), the PLAN simply doesn't have anything heavy enough to stay on station and do a lot of damage. The Soviets could 'preload' the merchant pipeline, so ships would be reaching Vladivastok (and several smaller ports along the Kamchatka penninsula) to give them a constant flow of supplies in the (likely) event that the TSR was interrupted. The PLA and PLAN simply don't have sufficient reach to interrupt this without the use of nukes.

Regarding the soft/hard skin ratio (my understanding, which is dated, is that the overall ratio in 1969 was closer to 5:1, though this was probably closer to 3:1 in the Far East, as those units were given very high priority for modernization and mechanization), there is no question that there were plenty of soft vehicles as targets for guerilla forces and light infantry, but those same light infantry were likely to be drenched by Soviet artillery and air power, and thus be somewhat less effective. This was their doctrine for Europe, little reason to assume that they would have done differently here, where it was likely to have worked better. Now fighting in built-up areas (like Harbin....smile...) would have been another matter entirely, but the Far Eastern MD had a truly enormous combat engineer component that was tasked with precisely this sort of thing in mind.

Lets all be grateful that it never happened

 

[Riain]

I read somewhere about a 1970's meeting between US & Chinese Military People.
One of the Chinese started with the old chestnut --Wipe out half of Us, and whe still have half a billion.
One of the Americans pulled out a Population Map, and his Cookie Cutter*, and started drawing Circles.
A couple minutes later He announces 90% - and thats just the first 100 bombs.

Supposedly all the Nuclear Powers, have stated that they don't do Population Targeting. However.....

I don't kow if that story is true, but it's certainly cool!