Red Storm Rising – WWIII in 1986 - vignettes

Jotun

Right. There was an oblique reference to the West German and Danish fast missile craft having "beaten up hard on" a joint Redfleet/Volksmarine amphibious landing aimed at seizing the Baltic Approaches.

I could expand on this two-liner and - somewhat more realistically - include shore-based ASM batteries (land-based Harpoon, which the Danes had), MFG1 and 2 flying a combined HARM/Kormoran 2 attack supported by Danish F-16s running fighter interference, some cleverly-laid minefields and of course the little, feared-by-everybody-even-the-USN Type 206 coastal subs.
 
Last edited:

Archibald

Banned
Jotun said:
Right. There was an oblique reference to the West German and Danish fast missile craft having "beaten up hard on" a joint Redfleet/Volksmarine amphibious landing aimed at seizing the Baltic Approaches.

I could expand on this two-liner and - somewhat more realistically - include shore-based ASM batteries (land-based Harpoon, which the Danes had), MFG1 and 2 flying a combined HARM/Kormoran 2 attack supported by Danish F-16s running fighter interference, some cleverly-laid minefields and of course the little, feared-by-everybody-even-the-USN Type 206 coastal subs.
Click to expand...

A type 205 submarine from Norway, the Kobben, sinks the Kirov nuclear cruiser with 4*mk37 torpedoes.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Yeah. That's one of the major problems with the US's 'expensive fighter that can take out multiple opponents'. All your opponent has to do is put up more targets (say cheap MiG 23s) than the US has expensive missiles for its F15s and ... Oops. Soviet victory.
 

Jotun

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
Yeah. That's one of the major problems with the US's 'expensive fighter that can take out multiple opponents'. All your opponent has to do is put up more targets (say cheap MiG 23s) than the US has expensive missiles for its F15s and ... Oops. Soviet victory.
Click to expand...

Urmmm. There were 21,000 AIM-9L produced (let's say 15,000 until 1985), 65,000 AIM-7 (all versions until 2001, not including Sea Sparrow, let's say 35,000 or so until 1985), 2505 AIM-54. Oh, and more than 100,000 AIM-9 B-E missiles I do not have the numbers for the G,H and J. That's the air-to-air missiles relevant to the time frame I could look up in about five minutes. I will not look up GBAD missile numbers or AAMs produced by France and GB. I do not think even the USSR could crank out that many planes.

You are aware that those "expensive" missiles are comparatively cheap? A modern, latest generation AIM-9X costs roughly 450,000 dollars a pop. So, you can basically crank them out by the thousands while even the cheap-ass USSR jets of the mid-80s were more expensive by at least an order of magnitude and took weeks, not days, to build.

Your argument holds water. Like a sieve.
 

urielventis

Jotun said:
Urmmm. There were 21,000 AIM-9L produced (let's say 15,000 until 1985), 65,000 AIM-7 (all versions until 2001, not including Sea Sparrow, let's say 35,000 or so until 1985), 2505 AIM-54. Oh, and more than 100,000 AIM-9 B-E missiles I do not have the numbers for the G,H and J. That's the air-to-air missiles relevant to the time frame I could look up in about five minutes. I will not look up GBAD missile numbers or AAMs produced by France and GB. I do not think even the USSR could crank out that many planes.
Click to expand...
But could they place all their missile airborne ? The problem is not how many in the storage, but how many on the plane at the time of the attack.
Mirage F1 carry two R530 and two Magic, F15 4 AIM-7 and 4 AIM9... If one F15 fight 10 Mig23, even with a 100% success rate, he still have too shoot down two migs with gun.

Good work Archibald !
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Jotun said:
Urmmm. There were 21,000 AIM-9L produced (let's say 15,000 until 1985), 65,000 AIM-7 (all versions until 2001, not including Sea Sparrow, let's say 35,000 or so until 1985), 2505 AIM-54. Oh, and more than 100,000 AIM-9 B-E missiles I do not have the numbers for the G,H and J. That's the air-to-air missiles relevant to the time frame I could look up in about five minutes. I will not look up GBAD missile numbers or AAMs produced by France and GB. I do not think even the USSR could crank out that many planes.

You are aware that those "expensive" missiles are comparatively cheap? A modern, latest generation AIM-9X costs roughly 450,000 dollars a pop. So, you can basically crank them out by the thousands while even the cheap-ass USSR jets of the mid-80s were more expensive by at least an order of magnitude and took weeks, not days, to build.

Your argument holds water. Like a sieve.
Click to expand...
Not really, see below

urielventis said:
But could they place all their missile airborne ? The problem is not how many in the storage, but how many on the plane at the time of the attack.
Mirage F1 carry two R530 and two Magic, F15 4 AIM-7 and 4 AIM9... If one F15 fight 10 Mig23, even with a 100% success rate, he still have too shoot down two migs with gun.

Good work Archibald !
Click to expand...
Exactly.
 

Archibald

Banned
Thank you all !

I did some research and got surprised that by 1986 main Soviet fighter force would be Mig-23MLD and Mig-25PD (the latter with very unfortunate initials, at least in French: PD = pédé which is slang for "queer")
The Soviet upgraded 560 Mig-23s to the MLD standard, and they share their Saphir radar with the Mig-25 and they had both look-down-shoot-down capability.
http://www.airvectors.net/avmig23.html
Mig-29 was barely in service (1983-84) , and Su-27 was not or little (1986).
I was equally horrified that all those 348 F-16s had no Sparrow capability. I assumed that replacing Sparrow-Phantoms they too had Sparrow.
 

The Congressman

For the Soviet surface Navy, while not nearly as strong as the NATO navies, I'd like to see a vignette about what the Kiev-class and Kirov-class ships were up to
 

Archibald

Banned
With a June 1986 WWIII

- fleet carriers are long gone

- Hermes has already been sold to India and turned into Viraat
(wrong ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hermes_(R12)
Hermes served with the Royal Navy until 12 April 1984. She was paid off in 1985. In April 1986 Hermes was towed from Portsmouth Dockyard to Devonport Dockyard to be refitted, re activated and sold to India, recommissioning and sailing as INS Viraat in 1987.
Click to expand...

- Invincible is in service
- Illustrious is mentionned in the book
- I thought Ark Royal had not been commissioned, but I was wrong - just in time - November 1, 1985

On the Soviet side...
All of them with crappy Yak-36 Forger. Hunt for Red October could help there.
Interestingly enough, the Yak-41 Freestyle prototype flew in spring 1987
http://www.airvectors.net/avredvt.html
Soviet-Russian design philosophy also incorporates the notion of "crawl walk run". The Yak-36 was the crawling step, the Yak-38 was the walking step; although the Yak-38 walked very poorly, the Yakovlev OKB believed they could learn from their mistakes, and move on to the running step.

The OKB began with a 1983 proposal for an improved derivative of the Yak-38M designated the "Yak-39", with the same general configuration but further refined engines; a wider-span composite wing, with flaps and leading-edge slats, along with a total of six stores pylons; and radar. It was an improvement on the Yak-38M, but not enough of one, and it was shot down before it got out of the paper stage. It was clearly only seen as an interim type, since the OKB was already working on a much better design.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:

Newcavanman

Archibald said:
Thank you all !

I did some research and got surprised that by 1986 main Soviet fighter force would be Mig-23MLD and Mig-25PD (the latter with very unfortunate initials, at least in French: PD = pédé which is slang for "queer")
The Soviet upgraded 560 Mig-23s to the MLD standard, and they share their Saphir radar with the Mig-25 and they had both look-down-shoot-down capability.
http://www.airvectors.net/avmig23.html
Mig-29 was barely in service (1983-84) , and Su-27 was not or little (1986).
I was equally horrified that all those 348 F-16s had no Sparrow capability. I assumed that replacing Sparrow-Phantoms they too had Sparrow.
Click to expand...
Those Norwegian, Belgian, Dutch, Danish F-16as replaced F-104G Which had no Sparrow capability. They later received it when they went through the MLU in the early 2000s
 

Jotun

Before everybody gets a collective orgasm about the awesomeness that the MiG-23 allegedly was, keep in mind that until its later upgrades, it was very fast, yes, but not very agile, there were problems with the wing sweep which was extremely finicky and had to be adjusted by hand and of course the engines. It also had shitty visibility to the rear quadrant (the one where enemy fighters tend to turn up).

During the Cold War, in the DDR alone, there were more WP planes lost in training accidents than in all of NATO combined. WP pilots only got a fraction of their western counterparts' training flight time.

The readiness of much of the tank force in storage even in the GSFG was abysmal, thought to be around fifty percent by the end of the Cold War (which '86 definitely counts as).

IOTL, the WP had actually shifted to a defensive stance by 1985.

The 80's Revolution in Military Affairs led to a reappraisal by the USSR to reappraise their ability to keep pace with Western military developments.
http://www.alternatewars.com/WW3/the_war_that_never_was.htm

There were only two Kirovs in service in 1986. Frunze, the second one, was with the Soviet Pacific Fleet. There were also only two Slavas available.


Gentlemen, in short: Don't overstimate the alleged awesomeness of everything the USSR ever built and did but also do not underestimate NATO.
 

Archibald

Banned
Urmmm. There were 21,000 AIM-9L produced (let's say 15,000 until 1985), 65,000 AIM-7 (all versions until 2001, not including Sea Sparrow, let's say 35,000 or so until 1985), 2505 AIM-54. Oh, and more than 100,000 AIM-9 B-E missiles I do not have the numbers for the G,H and J. That's the air-to-air missiles relevant to the time frame I could look up in about five minutes. I will not look up GBAD missile numbers or AAMs produced by France and GB. I do not think even the USSR could crank out that many planes.
Click to expand...

For the record around 5000 "Matra 530" were build, most of them R.530 that were good for nothing, the super 530 being much better (AIM-7 B to E difference)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top