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

In no small part due to failure of the Iraqi recon elements covering the approaches to the main body to alert this main body of the US advance.

That you even think the Iraqis were competent enough to have posted a recon element to cover the approaches shows how much you overestimate them.

Pollack says something about them not using the 'computing sights'. I see no where where they explain how they reached this conclusion (especially for the Tawakalna divison) or where it says that Iraqis didn't know these things existed.

Gee, maybe you should check the citations page...

There are news articles saying how Soviet military experts were training the Iraqis even after Kuwait.

Well someone had to deliver that technical advice after all. But once the Soviet military experts had imparted that to their Iraqis counterparts, it was down to the Iraqis to disseminate the information to their subordinates. This they comprehensively failed to do so.

This wasn't even against the M1A1 that they were losing ~70 T-72s at a time, however, painting the Syrian army with a broad brush and saying every battle failing was due to exactly this reason. That is unconvincing without circumstantial evidence with a overall view Battle by battle. It is plausible that we cannot find one instance where the users of the T-72 have been able to unlock the technological opportunity for battlefield success because on every occasion they were totally unprepared. It is also possible there was no technological opportunity to begin with.

Pollack's book is labelled "Arabs at War" and not "Iraqis at War" for a reason. The Iraqis are but one case study. The failings among Iraqis personnel can be found among all the Arab armies to one degree or another. Even the very best army of the Arab states, the Jordanians, face many of the same problems that plagued the other armies: poor unit cohesion, poor inter unit co-operation, nonexistant inter-service co-operation, poor mechanical aptitude, poor passage of information, poor intelligence analysis, hoarding of logistics elements and poor support to field units, and limited strategic foresight. To name just a few. This is why you have the Iraqis massive mechanized forces struggling to overcome Iranian foot infantry despite outnumbering them and outgunning them. It's why Libyan armor lost to militia in pick-up trucks. It's why the Syrians and Egyptians repeatedly fell apart, to varying degrees, against the Israelis despite at times having every possible advantage. The Iraqi problems are systemic to all Arab militaries, throughout the entirety of the post WW2-era.

Because these were not the same forces that were only a couple years back in the Soviet military under arms, I am not seeing how training would be the issue.

I guess you never actually studied the Iraqis seriously, because they failed at tasks as basic as posting sentries...

Okay, you know what, let's look at the example of the Tawakalna 'alla Allah tank division. The Tawakalna was simply put the best division in the entire Iraqi military. The best in the Republican Guard, and significantly better than any regular army formation. It was the only formation in the Iraqis military which proved capable of proper tactical combined arms operations (see below). It was the core of the IRGC force the Iraqis committed to delay the Coalition advance and it did it's job: it delayed the VII Corps with the most viscious fighting of the war for just long enough for the rest of the army to escape. Yet even, it still fought with far less skill than any western formation. While the infantry and tanks were deployed and fought together, their positions were usually poorly thought out, and haphazard. While the Tawakalna did aggressively counter attack rather than sitting stationary in its defensive positions like any other Iraqis formation would, the counter attacks were just head on charges into the teeth of American firepower and showed no sophistication, nor higher co-ordination, generally being conducted as spastic, desperate company level efforts rather than a coordinated battalion or regiment/brigade level effort.

Now consider this was literally the best the Iraqis could do. Everyone else they had was worse. Only then will you begin to grasp how little the fact that the Iraqis were driving T-72s and the Americans were driving M1A1s mattered.

EDIT: Just remembered that this was in response to stuff about the Russians in Chechnya. In which case I have to say that no, these forces were not remotely as well trained and motivated as they had been before the Soviet collapse. If you are incapable of comprehending just how bad the post-Soviet collapse spiral hit the Russian army in the 90s, then you are sipping some serious kook-aid.

And what combined arms will the USSR have? I don't think they will have the advantage of air to land Battle like the US will in destroying recon forces etc. Nor will they not have the terrible reality of Apache helicopters working for them rather than against them.

I don't know what faff you are talking about here. That the USSR practiced combined arms conventional warfare as a matter of course can be seen through the fact they practiced it in World War II, the initial invasion of Afghanistan (when the whole thing was still a conventional conflict), and in relentless and repeated maneuvers throughout the Cold War. The Iraqis, for their part, never demonstrated the ability to conduct proper combined arms aside from the exception pf the Tawakalna mentioned above. Whenever their leadership tried, they just wouldn't do it: each of the arms would just divide into their distinct elements and conduct operations separately from one another. In almost every battle of the '91 Gulf War, the Coalition observed Iraqi artillery, tanks, and infantry operating individually, sometimes tanks with artillery, or infantry with artillery, but most of the time just one element on its own and never all three at once.

True, exactly as the Soviets learned during WWII when they entered Germany.

"When they entered Germany"? Try throughout the entire war in Europe. The average tank engagement ranges on the Eastern Front occurred between 500-800 meters, according to Soviet studies.

Yours doesn't even make sense. 800 casualties is less than the number of vehicles you said were destroyed.

I guess because you didn't actually read what I wrote. Here, I'll single it out for you, with some emphasis on a particularly relevant point:

Total vehicles neutralized are said to have been between 1,500 and 2,000 and almost all of them were commandeered civilian cars, trucks and buses for the infantry divisions... and most were not destroyed at all, but abandoned

And as to the Iraqis. Moral and training is not itself the complete explanation if you take that argument.

No, it's pretty comprehensive an explanation. After the Gul War, a number of Schwarzkopf's staffers observed that you could have swapped the equipment around and there wouldn't have been much difference in the result. In the end skilled and well led troops can and will transcend whatever junk you give them to fight with while poor troops badly led will fail no matter what fancy toys they are given. In the immortal words of Chuck Yeager: "It's the man, not the machine."

I'd argue that the Soviets would also have struggled to neutralize the threat posed by F111's and Tornados. A single Tornado or F111 could do significant damage to high value target with PGM's.

If the targets were important enough I could see NATO being prepared to accept signifant losses so long as high value targets were being destroyed. (Ie. 4 aircraft take off, 2 or 3 come back after each mission that destroys a high value target.) By most standards inflicting 25 to 50 percent attrition would be an outstanding performance for an air defence system but when a single aircraft can destroy a target it isn't really good enough in my view.

If it's that high priority a target, then doubtless the Soviets will go through with a maximum effort to protect it through not just active measures, but passive ones as well. PGMs which blows up a highly visible decoy while the real target sits nice and camouflaged nearby is of no use at all. Even worse is if you dismantle the decoys and gussy up the real thing to look like it's been taken out so as to dupe BDA.

The same issue goes for the F-117s. They are fundamentally reliant on the same targeting apparatus as the rest of NATOs strike assets and we know that Soviet techniques ultimately proved very effective at duping that apparatus in a even more advanced form in the 90s, in the Balkans.
 
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Presumably NATO aircraft could also decoy Soviet IR AAMs with flares?

How easily decoyed was the AIM-7? I somehow doubt a Soviet pilot knowing one was incoming wouldn't be sitting in his cockpit thinking about how piss easy the next minute or so was going to be...

Fully agree about the soviet missiles, my point was though that things would not have gone the way US/ NATO thought it would.

Decoying the AIM-7M is based on anecdotal evidence from DS, in the famous dogfight with the MiG-25s some AIM-7s fired missed, in another instance F-15s fired TEN missiles at some MiG-25s including AIM-7Ms and all missed, and yet another fight against some low level Su-24s had seven AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles all miss. Also the 1979 example of israeli F-15s missing some MiG-21s with AIM-7Fs, who didn't even had chaff&flare dispensers.

For DS have read that the claimed (not actual, as the US claimed 35 kills but the iraqis claim 23 aircraft lost - me i'd rather believe the iraqi figures, they should know better what they lost) US kills were made with a total of 71 AIM-7M and 76-86 AIM-9M ,even if taking at face value the 20-30 "uncommanded" AIM-9 launches, that still leaves rather low PK ratio against an opponent that was light years BEHIND the soviet capability and competence in the eighties.

A few points

-My understanding is that the CIA had obtained technical data about (at least some of ?) the newer Soviet Aircraft radars so I suspect NATO ECM would have been initially quite effective in negating the Soviet BVR capabilities.

-I suspect in practice BVR engagements would have been of limited use for either side over the central front and the maneuverability of the F16 and similar air craft would have been usefull. My gut is also telling me that in close in combat that the NATO radars and ECM systems would probably have the edge over their Warsaw Pact counter parts. Details such as (at least some) NATO radar systems having close range modes for precise aiming of air to air gun fire with pulse to pulse frequency agility, combined with the information the CIA had (apparently ?) obtained about (at least some of ?) their Soviet counter parts would likely have given NATO the edge in my view.

Pilot training may also have played a role.

Presumably, you are refering to Tolkachev? That might be true, although what exactly he siphoned out is not clear, have read he gave details and potentially compromised on S-300, MiG-31 and maybe other radars for Su-27, MiG-29 etc. On the other hand, have read that the F-15 was compromised in 1978 by a czech spy, so it's not all one sided.

As to close combat, certainly planes like MiG-23MLD and MiG-29 also had dogfight modes, and like i pointed earlier HMS slaved missiles would have been a nasty surprise.

I see you just made the same point I did, only in greater detail.

And it's a telling point. The fact that the Soviets were apparently consistently more willing to sell the latest fighter jets in their inventory to more distant (and less formally allied) states like India than they were East European allies makes it hard to avoid the conclusion that they were reluctant to have militaries on their border with weapon systems that were too advanced. Of course, the result, as you say, was that overall Warsaw Pact air defenses were weakened as a result. But given what we now know about Warsaw Pact war plans, it seems what Moscow mainly wanted out of other WP armies was something in the vein of auxilliary forces, which would primarily take care of rear area defenses.



I don't think F-117's would have been completely invulnerable. But I do think the Soviet air defenses would have struggled to neutralize them.

Well in regards to WP i think it's more complex than just what the soviets wanted, after all the more they sold to other WP countries the more revenue they get. It was a whole complicated dance with the various regimes in the WP countries, which had various economical conditions and having various interests. I'm romanian and have read some interesting anecdotes regarding Romania-USSR arms deals, f.e. Ceausescu wanted all the licences he could get, while the soviets of course didn't wanted that. A lot of romanian resources were also invested in local programs like IAR-93, rather than buy the latest available soviet equivalents like MiG-23BN or Su-22.
 
A situation where the minor Warsaw Pact members were spending similar portions of their national budgets on the military as NATO would be an interesting one. Not only is the WP more formidable, but it is also far less Soviet-dominated.

fasquardon

Well, if you are ever going to do a topic or timeline on it, i'm all ears. Wanking USSR and WP militaries is a favourite subject of mine. While this may drift a bit from the current topic, what occured to me thinking of all this, if the cold war continued for more would USSR air forces actually start having a technological EDGE against US/NATO in the second half of the nineties? They would have started introducing in numbers by then the MiG-29M, Su-27M, Su-27IB, Yak-41, many Tu-160s etc., plus upgrades for the existings birds, latest radars and missiles which imo would be in no way inferior to the best the americans and NATO have, which we largely know of as their development did not stopped except in a few cases. The F-22 even with much more money thrown at it can't enter service before 2000, same with Typhoon, A-12 etc. Some also say building more F-117 and B-2s would have been a waste as they were one trick ponies.
 
Well, if you are ever going to do a topic or timeline on it, i'm all ears. Wanking USSR and WP militaries is a favourite subject of mine.

Hmm. I have no idea what a good PoD would be...

Everything I can think of that might lead to higher WP military spending would have other effects that would be even larger.

if the cold war continued for more would USSR air forces actually start having a technological EDGE against US/NATO in the second half of the nineties

Well, the Soviets were converging with the US in terms of what their technological base was capable of.

On the other hand, I am not sure that the Soviets could continue to devote so much of their resources and scientific manpower to military R&D - civilian R&D was suffering.

On the third hand, the US couldn't sustain their 1980s military and military R&D expenditure either. At least not without tax hikes - which the US could afford, but I am not sure the US would find politically acceptable, so I think cuts would come in the 90s, but not deep cuts like we saw in OTL.

The deep cuts in OTL really messed up the tempo of US research, and it's possible that programs like the F-22 would be cheaper with less interruptions. On the other hand, it's clear that the sorts of trouble US programs have today were happening in the 70s and 80s and the consolidation of the US military industrial manufacturers was an ongoing process that might have been slowed with an extended cold war, but not stopped.

So on both sides, I suspect military technology would advance more slowly than the 70s and 80s, but more quickly than the OTL 90s and 00s.

As to what that would mean in practice, what weapons systems both sides would have at different years an their capabilities... That's a fascinating question that I'd love to know the answer to - certainly I don't have the knowledge to answer it yet.

I do think that overall, both sides would continue to have the military capability to make any war utterly ruinous for the other side.

fasquardon
 
Is Operation Allied Force a reasonable reference point? While the Serbian military emerged relatively unscathed they weren't trying to conduct a massive, lightening fast armoured thrust across the Central European Plain.
 
In terms of gun stabilization, the T-72B can indeed fire while on the move with a 2E42-2 stabilizer, accurate to within 0.5 mil on the vertical axis and 0.9 mil on the horizontal axis while moving. It's not quite accurate enough to hit individual people, but it can definitely hit a tank in the open while moving at moderate ranges.

I know those Syrian T-72s definitely have stabilization (and customizations like Italian Madrid fire control systems). I see one on YouTube doing donuts, and the turret stays in the exact same position, and the gun is clearly stabilized in an exact place viewed from a GoPro while movin over uneven terrain

The odd thing is this 30 minute video of Cold War footage of Soviet T-72s, and I see absolutely no evidence of stabilization of the main gun. They definitely shoot their guns while moving (with unknown accuracy) but they just don't appear to have that line of sight stabilization like the Syrian T-72 clearly has. I don't think it is solely restricted to this footage either, but I check manuals and they very clearly indicate stabilization of the gun in the vertical and horizontal plane, so i don't know what to make of it.

The T-72B had a 1200m thermal range when in active thermal mode (I.E. with IR illuminator) and an 800m image intensification range in passive mode. I'm not sure what the M1's range was. Of course, that's only the thermal range, in regular daytime sights the range is 4,000 meters with the Svir missile, easily as much if not greater than an M1's gun range.

For the thermal range it can depend. It can be reduced to 1500 meters in sand and rain storms, but can be effective even in those billowing black plumes that came from the Kuwaiti oil wells. They were upgraded with DRs Technologies GEN II TIS had 35 meters Circular Error Of Probability at 8,000 meters

ATGM are effective tank killers so I agree with last bit except that tank battles can be over in the 10s of seconds, so that is why the tank gun is can be a better tank dueling weapon, but again, Soviet T-72s have that ERA that complicates things a bit.

That you even think the Iraqis were competent enough to have posted a recon element to cover the approaches shows how much you overestimate them.

That is not what Stephen Bourque had to say on the matter whose relevant book is littered with examples of Iraqi reconnaissance, and for the Tawakalna, Medina, etc. (and forward security elements got taken down hard for these Republican Guard units but they were there)

Gee, maybe you should check the citations page...

If I were to describe the Soviet training deficiency regarding artillery adjustment as historically verifiable that would be irrefutable evidence, this not so much as I will explain below

Well someone had to deliver that technical advice after all. But once the Soviet military experts had imparted that to their Iraqis counterparts, it was down to the Iraqis to disseminate the information to their subordinates. This they comprehensively failed to do so.

Shared Chauhan in War on Iraq says that during the Iran/Iraq war he Iranian army suffered "over 4000 documented eye casualties... A laser device associated with Iraqi tanks, reportedly caused the injuries, described as retinal burns and haemorrhages... Laser eye injuries probably occurred as a result of the use of tank mounted laser ranger finders..."

Pollack's book is labelled "Arabs at War" and not "Iraqis at War" for a reason. The Iraqis are but one case study. The failings among Iraqis personnel can be found among all the Arab armies to one degree or another. Even the very best army of the Arab states, the Jordanians, face many of the same problems that plagued the other armies: poor unit cohesion, poor inter unit co-operation, nonexistant inter-service co-operation, poor mechanical aptitude, poor passage of information, poor intelligence analysis, hoarding of logistics elements and poor support to field units, and limited strategic foresight. To name just a few. This is why you have the Iraqis massive mechanized forces struggling to overcome Iranian foot infantry despite outnumbering them and outgunning them. It's why Libyan armor lost to militia in pick-up trucks. It's why the Syrians and Egyptians repeatedly fell apart, to varying degrees, against the Israelis despite at times having every possible advantage. The Iraqi problems are systemic to all Arab militaries, throughout the entirety of the post WW2-era.

And why the modern day Iraqi army is losing US exported tanks to militias yet again. Antitank weapons and artillery are no joke. I think even the Israelis found that out by the way, as did Russia at Grozny. Now, Pollacks sources McLaurin and Staudenmaier, neither of which support the claim. McLaurin does say the 'Iraqi Army' had difficulties with night-vision and computerized aiming devices. They do not say the Republican Guard. It is also said that this pertains to fighting at Khorramshahr like a decade before the Gulf War. I mean I have seen video of Iraqis abandoning their tank for some reasons unknown but in the biggest tank battle of the Iran-Iraq war Iran lost 4x the tanks Iraq did.

Intelligence analysis is not poor, but the victim of an elaborate misdirection campaign by the US

The US has this thing called digitization of information and decision making, their units were networked, which goes back to tech superiority and the decision making stuff we mentioned earlier. It does not mean the Iraqis were poor in this regard, merely Soviet equipment was found wanting. The Iraqi failure to respond (cooperation) and their ultimate defeat is most certainly tied to this idea.

Unit cohesion is some term invented by the US to describe something resembling moral. Iraqi moral was subjected to attack by US artillery and air attack, and the Republican Guard still did not have catastropic collapse of morale.

Cooperation is something that appears frequently in the Soviet field service regulations circa but such notions fly out the window when American precision strike MRLS and Apache helicopters start attacking your field artillery day and night as was done to Iraqi artillery, and logistical nodes

I guess you never actually studied the Iraqis seriously, because they failed at tasks as basic as posting sentries...

I wonder if the T-72 finds itself in a situation where it is clearly outranged, how skill fixes that issue

Okay, you know what, let's look at the example of the Tawakalna 'alla Allah tank division. The Tawakalna was simply put the best division in the entire Iraqi military. The best in the Republican Guard, and significantly better than any regular army formation. It was the only formation in the Iraqis military which proved capable of proper tactical combined arms operations (see below). It was the core of the IRGC force the Iraqis committed to delay the Coalition advance and it did it's job: it delayed the VII Corps with the most viscious fighting of the war for just long enough for the rest of the army to escape. Yet even, it still fought with far less skill than any western formation. While the infantry and tanks were deployed and fought together, their positions were usually poorly thought out, and haphazard. While the Tawakalna did aggressively counter attack rather than sitting stationary in its defensive positions like any other Iraqis formation would, the counter attacks were just head on charges into the teeth of American firepower and showed no sophistication, nor higher co-ordination, generally being conducted as spastic, desperate company level efforts rather than a coordinated battalion or regiment/brigade level effort.

That is because the Tawakalna, Medina, Hammurabi, etc. were the behind the regular army and charged with the actual task of counterattacking, the regular army wasn't. The Soviets under Gorbachev considered this to be completely valid by the way

There are examples of battalions and brigades being used in the events in and surrounding 73 Eastings with again my source being Stephen Bourque. In the case of recon itself at least, not brigades for the Iraqis, so I am not sure what you saying with this bit about companies of Iraqis.

Now consider this was literally the best the Iraqis could do. Everyone else they had was worse. Only then will you begin to grasp how little the fact that the Iraqis were driving T-72s and the Americans were driving M1A1s mattered.

There was a study done by the US Army which showed if the Iraqis had acted militarily perfectly (and I do mean perfectly) they could have inflicted heavy casualties on the US. The 73 Easting Project. There is a good deal of validity in what you are saying, sure, but it is highly reductionist what you are doing

EDIT: Just remembered that this was in response to stuff about the Russians in Chechnya. In which case I have to say that no, these forces were not remotely as well trained and motivated as they had been before the Soviet collapse. If you are incapable of comprehending just how bad the post-Soviet collapse spiral hit the Russian army in the 90s, then you are sipping some serious kook-aid.

And your evidence?

I don't know what faff you are talking about here. That the USSR practiced combined arms conventional warfare as a matter of course can be seen through the fact they practiced it in World War II, the initial invasion of Afghanistan (when the whole thing was still a conventional conflict), and in relentless and repeated maneuvers throughout the Cold War. The Iraqis, for their part, never demonstrated the ability to conduct proper combined arms aside from the exception pf the Tawakalna mentioned above. Whenever their leadership tried, they just wouldn't do it: each of the arms would just divide into their distinct elements and conduct operations separately from one another. In almost every battle of the '91 Gulf War, the Coalition observed Iraqi artillery, tanks, and infantry operating individually, sometimes tanks with artillery, or infantry with artillery, but most of the time just one element on its own and never all three at once.

Combined arms didn't exactly help the Soviets from bungling (every?) tank battle in WWII. Other weapons besides T-72s would help the Iraqis I guess, like artillery, but it was absolutely not a prerequisite for success in battle for example 73 Eastings, or most any tank battle

"When they entered Germany"? Try throughout the entire war in Europe. The average tank engagement ranges on the Eastern Front occurred between 500-800 meters, according to Soviet studies.

There is this US tank procedures book that shows hypothetical scenarios, in Germany, at ranges far greater than this as the rule rather than the exception. However, I thank you for producing the effecticenrange of the T-34 but Soviet T-72 operation manuals make it sound like 500 meters would be very peculiar, unless maybe it was in a urban environment which is outside the norm.

No, it's pretty comprehensive an explanation. After the Gul War, a number of Schwarzkopf's staffers observed that you could have swapped the equipment around and there wouldn't have been much difference in the result. In the end skilled and well led troops can and will transcend whatever junk you give them to fight with while poor troops badly led will fail no matter what fancy toys they are given. In the immortal words of Chuck Yeager: "It's the man, not the machine."
While I would cede to their expertise, I question the sincerity in academic terms of Schwarzkopf's staffers as there sounds like there was not actual analysis in the matter on their part.
 
What about infantry? Who had the best Infantry, Marine forces, Special forces and small arms in the 1980's?
 
The odd thing is this 30 minute video of Cold War footage of Soviet T-72s, and I see absolutely no evidence of stabilization of the main gun.

Is there supposed to be some sort of link here?

That is not what Stephen Bourque had to say on the matter whose relevant book is littered with examples of Iraqi reconnaissance, and for the Tawakalna, Medina, etc. (and forward security elements got taken down hard for these Republican Guard units but they were there

Stephen Bourque

If I were to describe the Soviet training deficiency regarding artillery adjustment as historically verifiable that would be irrefutable evidence, this not so much as I will explain below

Which would be nice if the Iraqis were using Soviet artillery doctrine. They were not. In fact, Pollack made it clear they actually used British doctrine. Poorly...

Shared Chauhan in War on Iraq says that during the Iran/Iraq war he Iranian army suffered "over 4000 documented eye casualties... A laser device associated with Iraqi tanks, reportedly caused the injuries, described as retinal burns and haemorrhages... Laser eye injuries probably occurred as a result of the use of tank mounted laser ranger finders..."

A claim for which he gives no citation...

And why the modern day Iraqi army is losing US exported tanks to militias yet again.

Yes, actually. Despite the American imposition of a completely different military system, the problems afflicting the modern Iraqi force are the same as those that crippled Saddam's troops: rampant deception up the chain of command, an unwillingness to take action or use initiative all the way up to the division level and beyond, a complete inability to deal with surprise, and a lack of tactical ability to use the capability of the weapons provided.

Now, Pollacks sources McLaurin and Staudenmaier, neither of which support the claim.

Probably because you made that up. This is the citation for the first time he brings up Arab ineptitude with their ability to fully use their weapons:

"17: See, for example, Al-Haytham al-Ayoubi, "The Strategies of the Fourth Campaign," trans. Edmud Ghareeb, in Middle East Crucible: Studies on the Arab Israeli War of October 1973, ed. Naseer H. Aruri AAUG Monograph Series, No. 6 (Wilmette 11.: Medina University Press, 1975)."

As you can see, neither the name "McLaurin" or "Staudenmaier" appear in that sentence. Being more specific, when I flipped through the citations pages for his chapter on the Iraqis I only saw Staudenmeier's name appear twice, in notations that had little relation to how well the Iraqis handled their equipment, and McLaurin doesn't appear at all.

Intelligence analysis is not poor, but the victim of an elaborate misdirection campaign by the US

Unit cohesion is some term invented by the US to describe something resembling moral. Iraqi moral was subjected to attack by US artillery and air attack, and the Republican Guard still did not have catastropic collapse of morale.

Cooperation is something that appears frequently in the Soviet field service regulations circa but such notions fly out the window when American precision strike MRLS and Apache helicopters start attacking your field artillery day and night as was done to Iraqi artillery, and logistical nodes

None of which were factors when all of these same problems also materialized in the Iraqi army when they were fighting Iran. Or among the other Arab armies when they were fighting other opponents. And many of those wars occurred at times when the technology you are describing didn't even exist yet.

I wonder if the T-72 finds itself in a situation where it is clearly outranged, how skill fixes that issue

Use of terrain to close with the enemy.

That is because the Tawakalna, Medina, Hammurabi, etc. were the behind the regular army and charged with the actual task of counterattacking, the regular army wasn't. The Soviets under Gorbachev considered this to be completely valid by the way

Yeah, they were Iraq's strategic reserve. Everybody considered the idea of the strategic reserve to be completely valid. It's a concept which dates back several centuries. I see little relevance as to what it says about Iraqi tactical-operational failures.

There are examples of battalions and brigades being used in the events in and surrounding 73 Eastings with again my source being Stephen Bourque.

Not only was '73 Eastings a completely different event from the one I described, but that Bourque says "this or that battalion or brigade" was involved in the battle is not the same thing as him saying that "this or that battalion or brigade launcher a battalion or brigade sized attack in the battle". In any case,

There was a study done by the US Army which showed if the Iraqis had acted militarily perfectly (and I do mean perfectly) they could have inflicted heavy casualties on the US.

Yeah, and the Iraqis performance was not remotely perfect. It was the opposite of perfect. It was horrible. That's my point: their poor performance mattered a lot more then what they were armed with.

There is a good deal of validity in what you are saying, sure, but it is highly reductionist what you are doing

I don't think you realize what reductionism means, because if you did you would realize that your being a lot more reductionist then I am. There is nothing more simplistic then saying "the Iraqis lost so crushingly because their weapons were inferior" as opposed to "the Iraqis lost so crushingly because they were poorly trained and led as a result of a awful military system".

And your evidence?

Are you seriously that unaware of the state of conditions in the Russian Federation in the 1990s?

Combined arms didn't exactly help the Soviets from bungling (every?) tank battle in WWII.

What are you talking about? The Soviets won their tank battles crushingly in the 1944-45 period and weren't too shabby in the '43 period either. In '41-'42, they exihibited many of the same problems the Iraqis did but, rather unlike the Iraqis, they improved radically and by 1944 were basically like an entirely different army. That the Iraqis were unable to pull off a similar transformation in an even longer war (the Iran-Iraq War) speaks for everything how deep their problems ran.

Other weapons besides T-72s would help the Iraqis I guess, like artillery, but it was absolutely not a prerequisite for success in battle for example 73 Eastings, or most any tank battle

Wouldn't have mattered if you equipped the Iraqis with M1A2s... or T-14s, if we wish to stick with the same nation

There is this US tank procedures book that shows hypothetical scenarios, in Germany, at ranges far greater than this as the rule rather than the exception.

Again, I see no link.

However, I thank you for producing the effecticenrange of the T-34

The T-34s gun could effectively engage German armor from over twice that distance. The reason most battles occurred at that distance had nothing to do with how far each side could shoot and everything to do with how the terrain tended to break up line of sight. You can't shoot at the enemy if you don't know he's there and the most likely way you will know he is there is when you see him. Foilage and terrain deformations (that is, hills, valleys, and other such irregularities) tend to break up line of sight quite effectively.
 
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The T-72B had a 1200m thermal range when in active thermal mode (I.E. with IR illuminator) and an 800m image intensification range in passive mode. I'm not sure what the M1's range was. Of course, that's only the thermal range, in regular daytime sights the range is 4,000 meters with the Svir missile, easily as much if not greater than an M1's gun range.

In terms of gun stabilization, the T-72B can indeed fire while on the move with a 2E42-2 stabilizer, accurate to within 0.5 mil on the vertical axis and 0.9 mil on the horizontal axis while moving. It's not quite accurate enough to hit individual people, but it can definitely hit a tank in the open while moving at moderate ranges.

Here are some specs compiled from various technical manuals, in meters

T-72M
TPN1-49-23
, 1000-1100
TPD-K1, 500 to 3000 m

T-72A
TPNZ-49
, 2,000
TPD-K1
TPNZ-49
(thermal),
active, 1,300
passive, 500

T-72B
1K13
,
day, 5000
passive night, 500
active night, 1200
1A40-1, 50-3,000/4,000
9K120, 100-4000

At under 2,000 meters for an M1A1, the sabot from the main gun would be basically indiscernible/instantaneous to the human observer from firing to the target, and the main gun range of the T-72 is basically that of the 9M119 ATGM, but the Israelis learned first hand how dangerous ATGM can be

Stephen Bourque

Stephen Bourque, JAYHAWK!: The VII Corps in the Persian Gulf War. Bourque says for evidence for Iraqi units trying to coordinate

At 1343 elements of the 4th Aviation Squadron, always searching to the front and flanks of the regiment, located the lead battalion of the Iraqi 37th Armored Brigade that had been following the 50th Armored Brigade. Troop G, 2d Squadron, quickly began a firefight with an MT-LB company and destroyed it in fifteen minutes. In the open desert, with few limitations on target acquisition and few features to conceal the enemy, the Bradley overmatched the MT-LB in every respect. At 1650 Troop L captured a BMP. It was the first indication that the Republican Guard might be in the sector. This vehicle was probably part of the Tawakalna reconnaissance element moving forward to coordinate its activities with those of the 50th Armored Brigade.



Which would be nice if the Iraqis were using Soviet artillery doctrine. They were not. In fact, Pollack made it clear they actually used British doctrine. Poorly...

The Iraqis didn't use formations of artillery at or above regimental level like the USSR, but their were similarities as they used the ACRV M1974/1, incidentally, they had complained about Soviet fire control and targeting acquisition systems, but the Iraqi army targeted fixed locations with no attempt at artillery adjustment, like the problem the Soviet ground forces had during the Afghanistan war

53% of Iraqi artillery was taken out in the lead up with artillery raids by the US, and forward observers were destroyed, and the fire control net itself was rendered ineffective likely

A claim for which he gives no citation...

It is a declassified document titled Iraqi Anti-personnel Lasers

http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/cia/19970825/970613_092596_ui_txt_0001.html

Yes, actually. Despite the American imposition of a completely different military system, the problems afflicting the modern Iraqi force are the same as those that crippled Saddam's troops: rampant deception up the chain of command, an unwillingness to take action or use initiative all the way up to the division level and beyond, a complete inability to deal with surprise, and a lack of tactical ability to use the capability of the weapons provided.

Saddam was mostly to blame for any macro level issues, but as soon as he let the Army do what needed to be done they evolved where as the Iranians did not do so

Probably because you made that up. This is the citation for the first time he brings up Arab ineptitude with their ability to fully use their weapons:

"17: See, for example, Al-Haytham al-Ayoubi, "The Strategies of the Fourth Campaign," trans. Edmud Ghareeb, in Middle East Crucible: Studies on the Arab Israeli War of October 1973, ed. Naseer H. Aruri AAUG Monograph Series, No. 6 (Wilmette 11.: Medina University Press, 1975)."

As you can see, neither the name "McLaurin" or "Staudenmaier" appear in that sentence. Being more specific, when I flipped through the citations pages for his chapter on the Iraqis I only saw Staudenmeier's name appear twice, in notations that had little relation to how well the Iraqis handled their equipment, and McLaurin doesn't appear at all.

There is no relevant passage for Middle East Crucible: Studies on the Arab Israeli War of October 1973

McLaurin says exactly the same thing as Pollack does about night vision and sights

None of which were factors when all of these same problems also materialized in the Iraqi army when they were fighting Iran. Or among the other Arab armies when they were fighting other opponents. And many of those wars occurred at times when the technology you are describing didn't even exist yet.

New Iraqi army recruits were given training as part of combined arms formations, helicopters were used with artillery observation as a solitary example of this

Use of terrain to close with the enemy.

The reason that US tanks were so effective is probably for the precision revolution which was the same reason the artillery was so effective, combined with the digital revolution and networkcentric war. It is pretty clear that technology changes the landscape of war, it has been demonstrated time after time. And it could not have been more evident at Rumaila where it was the oft described 'turkey shoot' style battle.

Yeah, they were Iraq's strategic reserve. Everybody considered the idea of the strategic reserve to be completely valid. It's a concept which dates back several centuries. I see little relevance as to what it says about Iraqi tactical-operational failures.

It is something that was perfected in the Iran-Iraq war

Not only was '73 Eastings a completely different event from the one I described, but that Bourque says "this or that battalion or brigade" was involved in the battle is not the same thing as him saying that "this or that battalion or brigade launcher a battalion or brigade sized attack in the battle". In any case,

73 Eastings was itself a brigade level event by the 29th Brigade of the Iraqi Tawakalna division. However, a example is where Bourque says

The Scots next encountered the brigade headquarters located at a desert watering hole. The squadron surprised several companies of T-55s and MT-LBs and destroyed them as they tried to move out of their hiding positiions. Far from being defeated, the Iraqis counterattack directly into the sights of the waiting scots' Challengers, but British gunners destroyed them all.



Yeah, and the Iraqis performance was not remotely perfect. It was the opposite of perfect. It was horrible. That's my point: their poor performance mattered a lot more then what they were armed with.

However, the issue is that not making the mistakes they made would be difficult perhaps even unattainable for all but the most prodigiously skilled tank forces.

Taken from http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3070311/ns/world_news/t/iraqs-t---tanks-fare-poorly/#.WNdqKaJOnIU

“These tanks have to be used with lot of skill to survive attack from the new technology tanks,” an Army spokesman said. “They are irrelevant because of their speed and they are less likely to hit their targets the first time.”

I don't think you realize what reductionism means, because if you did you would realize that your being a lot more reductionist then I am. There is nothing more simplistic then saying "the Iraqis lost so crushingly because their weapons were inferior" as opposed to "the Iraqis lost so crushingly because they were poorly trained and led as a result of a awful military system".

They repelled the Israelis during the 1973 war according to Middle East Crucible: Studies on the Arab Israeli War of October 1973

Are you seriously that unaware of the state of conditions in the Russian Federation in the 1990s?

From https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00587R000300390004-1.pdf

Alcoholism and drug abuse, corruption and black marketeering, brutality toward subordinates, ethnic tensions, and the general harshness of living conditions are evident in Soviet military units from East Germany to the Soviet Far East.



What are you talking about? The Soviets won their tank battles crushingly in the 1944-45 period and weren't too shabby in the '43 period either. In '41-'42, they exihibited many of the same problems the Iraqis did but, rather unlike the Iraqis, they improved radically and by 1944 were basically like an entirely different army. That the Iraqis were unable to pull off a similar transformation in an even longer war (the Iran-Iraq War) speaks for everything how deep their problems ran.

The Iraqis were highly experienced, and had lots of practice firing their weapons, they fired their weapons more than NATO countries did, and in actual battle. Iraq would often expend in a day what the US Army would expend in a week according to Anthony Cordesman in The Lessons Of Modern War, Vol. 2: The Iran-Iraq War.

Wouldn't have mattered if you equipped the Iraqis with M1A2s... or T-14s, if we wish to stick with the same nation

Iraqis were actually firing but they couldn't hit the M1A1 tank 2,000 meters out, they were missing

Again, I see no link.

Examples of a lack of attention given to ambush style methods of Chechnya is found in

Fire Commands for the M1 Tank, ARI Field Unit at Fort Knox, Kentucky Training Research Laboratory

M1 Tank Degraded Mode Gunnery, ARI Field Unit at Fort Knox, Kentucky Training Research Laboratory

The T-34s gun could effectively engage German armor from over twice that distance. The reason most battles occurred at that distance had nothing to do with how far each side could shoot and everything to do with how the terrain tended to break up line of sight. You can't shoot at the enemy if you don't know he's there and the most likely way you will know he is there is when you see him. Foilage and terrain deformations (that is, hills, valleys, and other such irregularities) tend to break up line of sight quite effectively.

The North German Plain isn't the bocage of Normandy, they were probably taking pot shots at anything greater than that, at the battle of Kursk there were disproportionate numbers of German tanks that were merely damage which probably indicates the Soviet ground forces were missing a lot

Is there supposed to be some sort of link here?

T-72 stabilized gunnery footage is difficult to find for anything earlier than the fall

Tenk T-72, part 1/2 and Tenk T-72, part 2/2 by PalubaInfo from YouTube is one example that is somewhat earlier
 
[QUOTE="ObssesedNuker, post



If it's that high priority a target, then doubtless the Soviets will go through with a maximum effort to protect it through not just active measures, but passive ones as well. PGMs which blows up a highly visible decoy while the real target sits nice and camouflaged nearby is of no use at all. Even worse is if you dismantle the decoys and gussy up the real thing to look like it's been taken out so as to dupe BDA.

The same issue goes for the F-117s. They are fundamentally reliant on the same targeting apparatus as the rest of NATOs strike assets and we know that Soviet techniques ultimately proved very effective at duping that apparatus in a even more advanced form in the 90s, in the Balkans.[/QUOTE]

A few points:

-I'm skeptical that deception would have been effective in preventing NATO aircraft from striking targets such as major road and railway bridges that were being used to funnel the needed supplies and reniforcements needed for the Warsaw Pact to sustain an offensive in face of NATO resistance. Granted deception measures may have resulted in some (perhaps lots) of wasted sorties and munitions but so long as the real targets are being destroyed, in my opinion NATO would have had little choice but to absorb the wastage and keep going, until they "won," decided to use nuclear weapons or asked for terms ?

Granted munitions used destroying decoys couldn't have been used to destroy real targets and the munitions supply is finite but one way or another certain critical targets would have been hit.

-In a WW3 situation I'd also expect NATO to be prepared to engage in risky but potentially highly effective reconnaissance actions such as putting special forces teams on the ground to find real targets and conduct bomb damage assessments.

-The force multiplier aspect of PGM's would also help facilitate an approach of simply hitting real and suspected targets without knowing for sure if they were real targets or decoys. If care was used in target selection (ie. focus on critical transportation bottle necks and key Sam defences to facilitate follow on air strikes) then in my view the NATO air forces stil had a reasonable chance of inflicting significant damage on the Warsaw Pact.

The concept of decoys and camouflage was by no means unknown in the west. (For example I recall seeing dummy fighter aircraft on display in the 1990's in Canada.) Presumably the NATO airforces during the Cold War made some allowances for the use of deception measures by the Warsaw Pact ?
 
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I won't get into the tech sides of things, as there are bigger experts on this site and thread, but if we're talking morale and training, the Soviets were way, way worse than the West. Don't believe the hype. Being a democratic open society we are given to more self reflective criticism and also as anyone with corporate experience will tell you whatever company you work at seems messier and more disorganized than the other guys. The Soviets were a basket case in terms of logistics and organization by the '70s. The aging senior staff of those who had WWII experience were ossifying and the middle management field grades were by and large terrible. Company and battalion commanders were a mixed bag. NCOs were, however, a sh*tshow. It would take a slide show deck and a sad history lesson to explain but by the mid 70s they were dreck. This all made the actual combat effectiveness of the Army highly suspect. Scuttlebutt has it that in the early 80s there was a serious giant exercise by the Army to field test the feasibility of their ability to lend "fraternal assistance" to a country in "need" such as oh Poland. The exercise went bad and very badly. Units lost and loss of order. It made the Army rethink the whole feasibility of an actual large scale war operation.
 
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