How did the Soviet military compare to NATO in the 1980s?

In the 1980s how did the Soviet military compare to NATO in terms of quality, competence, tactics and equipment?

If NATO forces (US, West Germany, UK etc) were a perfect 10 overall where would the Soviet military rank on the same scale?
 
What you want is a pair of war games I can't remember the name of right now. But which I'm sure I've linked here before. Drop me a PM in case I forget to come back to this thread.

Done by the USA and allies, it was the first major western war game IIRC to assume a conventional start to the war and go from there.

Knowing what we know now vs 1980s intelligence, one could tilt the results of said war games towards NATO by a fair bit.

But like a number? No idea.
 

Deleted member 97083

What you want is a pair of war games I can't remember the name of right now. But which I'm sure I've linked here before. Drop me a PM in case I forget to come back to this thread.

Done by the USA and allies, it was the first major western war game IIRC to assume a conventional start to the war and go from there.

Knowing what we know now vs 1980s intelligence, one could tilt the results of said war games towards NATO by a fair bit.

But like a number? No idea.
Able Archer 1983?
 

Redbeard

Banned
I was active in the RDA (Royal Danish Army) in the 1980s and this was pretty much what everybody talked and wondered about then. From my experience then and what has been brought forward later my personal opinion is that NATO by 1980 was in a weak position. The massive nuclear response had long since been given up, but very little had been done to effectively replace this with the practical means with which to resists an attack without going total nuclear.

When Reagan took over in 1981 this started to change however, and by mid 80's I would claim that NATO was in a very favourable position to decisively crush any Soviet attack without going nuclear. Not only was the practical capacity to reinforce NATO across the Atlantic massively increased but the European NATO members also became much more focussed on the threat. The Army I joined in 1979 was a de facto WWII relic but changed tremendously through the 1980s - not only equipment but perhaps more so in doctrines.

I of course can't speak for all NATO countries but I did spend a lot of time with US, Canadian, British and German units and got the same general impression. I was not at least impressed by how the Bundeswehr developed its doctrines and equipment to stop massive armoured attacks.

BTW I took part in Able Archer in 1983, but I didn't fire any nukes :cool:
 
Depends which part of the 80s your talking about. To make things short, I'd say inferior in the early, roughly equal in the middle, and superior in the late.
 
Depends which part of the 80s your talking about. To make things short, I'd say inferior in the early, roughly equal in the middle, and superior in the late.
Before the Abrams/LeoII/Challenger introduced Chobham-type armour and guns better than the L7, I'd say with the exception of 120mm rifled Chieftain, NATO was at a disadvantage in MBTs. It's not that the 105mm armed M-60 and Leopard weren't better than the T-72, T-64 and T-62, but they weren't sufficiently better to offset the significant Soviet advantage of numbers.

Same with aircraft, until the F-15 and F-16 entered service, much of NATO depended on the F-4 Phantom II, F-104 Starfighter and other 1950s designs. Again, not to say the MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-27, etc, were better, but there's a lot more of them, so NATO needs to be MUCH better than the Soviets.
 
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AFAIK, the Soviet forces had an edge over NATO in terms of military power in the early to mid 80's then afterwards until the end of the Cold War started to falter when NATO introduced a bunch of new equipment to compensate for the lack of sheer numbers.
 
Depends which part of the 80s your talking about. To make things short, I'd say inferior in the early, roughly equal in the middle, and superior in the late.
Yes that sounds reasonable
In the 1980s how did the Soviet military compare to NATO in terms of quality, competence, tactics and equipment?

If NATO forces (US, West Germany, UK etc) were a perfect 10 overall where would the Soviet military rank on the same scale?
I more or less agree with the comments made by others about the gains made by NATO during the 1980's in terms of quality, competence, tactics and equipment.

I do have some nagging doubts about the strategy (or perhaps strategies ?) that NATO might have actually used in a late 1980's conflict. IMHO NATO could still have lost a conventional conflict if they made enough mistakes. In particular if political considerations pushed NATO to refuse to yield ground when militarily necessary or if NATO decided to try to push a relief force towards Berlin I could see things ending badly for NATO.
 
In my view, we must look at NATO for this, since NATO changed more during this time. It was when Air Land Battle replaced the heavily flawed 1976 Active Defense and all sorts of new toys were coming out.
 

Redbeard

Banned
Before the Abrams/LeoII/Challenger introduced Chobham-type armour and guns better than the L7, I'd say with the exception of 120mm rifled Chieftain, NATO was at a disadvantage in MBTs. It's not that the 105mm armed M-60 and Leopard weren't better than the T-72, T-64 and T-62, but they weren't sufficiently better to offset the significant Soviet advantage of numbers.

Same with aircraft, until the F-15 and F-16 entered service, much of NATO depended on the F-4 Phantom II, F-104 Starfighter and other 1950s designs. Again, not to say the MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-27, etc, were better, but there's a lot more of them, so NATO needs to be MUCH better than the Soviets.
The equipment you mention certainly boosted NATO combat value but the 105 mm L7 still was sufficient if not superior to the bulk of Soviet armour in the early to mid 80's of T55 and T62. Even the British 20 pdr. still packed a punch good enough to knock out most opponents (each of the four coastal defence groups (Bde size) on Zealand had a squadron of 20 pdr. Centurions to be used as tank destroyers, but the enemy armour would likely not be worse than T55. The two mechanised Bdes on Zealand had 105 mm armed Centurions).

Most important in the "improved NATO" was IMHO however the focused doctrines, where all arms co-operated to channel armoured columns into "killing fields" and where tanks were only one of several weapon systems. The new ways to instantly lay minefields ahead of enemy columns and improved artillery ammunition (and Fire Control) not at least impressed me (I was an artillery man, so that of course took my attention). As I rose in rank I got the opportunity to see it not only from the ground but also from staffs and it is clearly my impression, that by mid 80s NATO had become very effective. Not only tactically and operationally but the logistic side was in another universe as well and backed up by substantial investments in infrastructure.
 
The equipment you mention certainly boosted NATO combat value but the 105 mm L7 still was sufficient if not superior to the bulk of Soviet armour in the early to mid 80's of T55 and T62.
I've read somewhere that post Cold War trials determined that the 105 mm L7 was not nearly as effective as it was believed at the time.
 
I was active in the RDA (Royal Danish Army) in the 1980s and this was pretty much what everybody talked and wondered about then. From my experience then and what has been brought forward later my personal opinion is that NATO by 1980 was in a weak position. The massive nuclear response had long since been given up, but very little had been done to effectively replace this with the practical means with which to resists an attack without going total nuclear.

When Reagan took over in 1981 this started to change however, and by mid 80's I would claim that NATO was in a very favourable position to decisively crush any Soviet attack without going nuclear. Not only was the practical capacity to reinforce NATO across the Atlantic massively increased but the European NATO members also became much more focussed on the threat. The Army I joined in 1979 was a de facto WWII relic but changed tremendously through the 1980s - not only equipment but perhaps more so in doctrines.

I of course can't speak for all NATO countries but I did spend a lot of time with US, Canadian, British and German units and got the same general impression. I was not at least impressed by how the Bundeswehr developed its doctrines and equipment to stop massive armoured attacks.

BTW I took part in Able Archer in 1983, but I didn't fire any nukes :cool:

YOU SIR

are a legend!
 

GarethC

Donor
An almost-entirely-apocryphal summary rule-of-thumb that was arrived at in the early 90s with the help of enough bitter to float a Type 22 frigate was:

1980 - 3rd Shock Army rolls across the norddeutscheplein and only stops for McDonalds before reaching the North Sea; it all ends in fire when the Soviets cross the Rhine and the French push the button.

1983 - 3rd Shock Army grinds brutally into the Netherlands; it all ends in a ceasefire-in-place when the Soviets reach the Rhine but have wrecked most of their Cat A formations and expended their forward caches of fuel and ammunition to get there, and NATO air superiority constrains resupply so much that they don't try to cross it. Equally, the REFORGER convoys have taken significant losses and much of the prepositioned equipment has been destroyed by air strikes or overrun before it can be used.

1986 - 3rd Shock Army wonders whether there's something wrong with their bloody tanks; it all ends in fire when NATO crosses the Vistula and the Soviets push the button.

The RKKA was a conscript army on a 2-year stint. NATO strategists thought that this would adversely affect the duration of its decision loop and its ability to display initiative and respond to changing field conditions. Soviet strategists thought that this wouldn't matter because a) quantity has a quality all its own and b) the career officer corps would manage the initiative thing for long enough that they would be in Paris before it became an issue anyway.
 
What was driving the improvements to NATO's effectiveness?

Was it recovery of the US from Vietnam? Was it connected to Afghanistan? Was it just the right time for ideas to mature and technology to become available?

fasquardon
 

Ifor

Donor
I was one of the lucky(?)ones to be serving during the 80s. I always found it difficult to understand, that whenever a new piece of soviet equipment was introduced, it was always so much more capable than the equivalent in Nato. I still believe that, to a certain extent had we as good, if not better(in certain areas) equipment. One of the biggest differences would have been in training, I think we were vastly more competent. Irrespective of all of that the main issue would have been numerical superiority, and a political system geared to accept heavy losses which was not the case in the west.
I think the same applies now, we invest so much in a piece of equipment that it's loss becomes an issue (an example is the F35). This is especially the case for countries with smaller unit numbers.
Anyway, the doctor has arrived and it time for my medication.
 
I'm remember my surprise that the Leopard had armour safe only against small arms.

Handler.ashx


Looking the total lack of belly armour I have to feel sorry for the Canadians who took these into Afghanistan against IEDs.

 
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GarethC

Donor
What was driving the improvements to NATO's effectiveness?

Was it recovery of the US from Vietnam? Was it connected to Afghanistan? Was it just the right time for ideas to mature and technology to become available?

fasquardon
Reagan (and to a lesser extent, Thatcher post-1982) spent a lot of money on the military. That translated to new equipment much of which was tailored to respond to Soviet 70's TOE - Apaches, A-10s, F-14/15/16/18, Abrams/Challenger/Leo2, Bradley/Warrior, E-3, HARM, etc. At the same time, the Soviet Union was feeling a significant money drain in Afghanistan that hampered its ability to maintain its technological progression.

Additionally, the US in particular amended its doctrines after Vietnam - the whole Red Flag and Top Gun fighter mafia changes to air-to-air doctrine, a lot of ground warfare operational theory in AirLand Battle (which despite its general name, is "how to fight Group of Soviet Forces Germany trying to conduct Deep Operations with tank armies in the Central European Plain when they've got you totally outnumbered - and win anyway"). That in particular matured over the 80s as the equipment to deliver on it bedded in.

Edit - Smith, you ninja!
 
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