What if: Strike back

Lonewolf

Banned
I would like to ask a question:
Why do Nations (like Serbia in the war against NATO) do not strike back?
I found the article about how US Marine General Paul van Ripen in "Millenium Challenge '02" sank two thirds of the US Navy in the Gulf in unconventional warfare.
I will use the war against Serbia as base for my questions.
Everybody knows that every code can be cracked but General van Ripen used motorcycles to send messages. So why did the Serbs did not make a fuss about a very secret base in a certain area in transmissions. And there is a lot of sensitive material stored.
Now if I had been the CO of the Serbs I would have put bunkers and remotely controlled weapon stations in the valley by the thousands.
And when NATO planes appear to bomb then they meet SAM alley. I would not fire one or two SAMs at a plane - I would fire forty. Then I would wait for the inevitable rescue mission and bag me some more pilots. Remember: forty SAMs per plane.
Then I would have a very good bargaining chip for peace talks.
And if no planes come?
Send transmissions that nuclear materials are turned into a dirty bomb in this valley. This would draw NATO fighters faster than you can say "Hello". They would do anything to stop it from happening. Or you can say you have them. And then its a whole new game. Just remember: When North Korea announced their possession of nuclear devices nobody asked if dirty or functioning. Since then everybody, including the mighty USA mollycoddles the North Koreans.
The second step involves the "Tu quoque" defense of World War 2. When a german Admiral was acused of warcrimes because of unrestricted submarine warfare. it was Admiral Nimitz who stated that the US was using the same type of warfare against Japan from the first second of the war.
So, if NATO is bombing power stations of Serbia, Serbia is free to bomb power stations in any NATO state.
If I had been the CO of Serbia I would have sent entire companies of troops to every NATO state, disguised as refugees. And once there they would in full uniform attack any power station, power line, freeway and so on. Uniforms you can buy in any so called NATO / military surplus shop. And weapons: If I remember my time in the army, you could walk into a german army base at saturdays and walk off with the weapons without much problem.
And before anybody accuses me of butchery: I would order my troops to engage in phony war. If they fire at civilians they should fire blanks. And one or two snipers should fire real bullets but make sure nobody is hit but all are forced into cover.
And if an attack is directed at a nuclear power station they would be ordered to break off once the system is shut down. You see, I expect as a security measure that every nuclear power station is equipped with a very fast shutdown system to prevent nuclear material falling into the hands of madmen/terrorists. And once this system is used you need weeks and heavy machinery to access the nuclear material, let alone producing power again.
This would make live difficult in Europe.
The third step would be used mainly against my own home country: Germany
The reasons:
Germany had its spine removed after WWII (Remember JCS 1067?)
In Germany the armed forces can not make an oath taking ceremony without heavy police protection (thanks to the anti fascists), should not wear their uniforms outside the base and may not be used as police force (the spectre of the SS). Not to mention: Since WWII the germans do not want to go to war, "No Blood for Oil" remember?
The germans have no longer the fighting spirit of their ancestors. Their willpower is brittle. Just mention the warcrimes and germans will cower.
And I do not think that the german police or former Border police (now the Federal police) are a match for a fully equipped military force.
And: both are combatants and according to the rules of warfare my forces may engage them without commiting a war crime.
You remember "The A-Team"? They always fired their rifles, made some holes in the wall but nobody gets hurt. Do the same.
Storm a building, assemble all people in one place. Meanwhile my expert would prepare the area and then the people are moved to the right place. A salvo of blanks over their heads and then tell them that this will end when Germany withdraws from the war and no NATO country may use its facilities in Germany. An then my troops would disappear to repeat it a few days later somewhere else.
Done a couple of times and at the same time the German government would be told that if they let slip that blanks were used then next time real bullets will be used should do it.
 
So let me get this right.

To beat NATO all you need to do is prepare a killing ground with dozens of bunkers and thousands of SAMs and wait for them to attack you over and over again with low level jets ( I assume low level as you'll need to use IR SAMS as otherwise the radars would be toast before the attack).

US has always looked to use Tomahawks to soften up heavily defended targets first

Then Serbia's great idea is to parade captured pilots in front of the press and use them as bargaining chips. Hmmmm.....worked great for Saddam in Gulf War I, didn't it???

Then, entire companies of Sebian infantry (mostly conscripts if I recall correctly) will infiltrate the West and walk into army bases and steal weapons. I don't know what part of the German army you were assigned to but that doesn't work for any base in the UK.

Then they are goinfg to use blanks to stop killing civilians - so 90%+ of their troops are now decoys and only a couple have live weapons. Against dozens of armed police at critical installations.

SCRAMs usually take a couple of days to recover from. So Serbia just lost a company of its troops for inconviencing the German consumers at tea-time?
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
It is generally a REALLY bad idea to base operational planning on The A Team. In real life if go into somewhere full rock and roll people get killed. You use blanks YOU get killed.

Setting up a SAM trap with thousands of missiles requires, well, thousands of missiles, something the Serbs really didn't have. It also requies setting up th launchers and do it is oo that they are invisible to satellite observation, to electronic snooping and to IR scanning. If you fire 40 SAMs at the same time they will as likely as not kill each other (targets are targets) unless you have an exceptionally capable battle management system. The only place you find that sort of battle management system is at seaon REALLY high end AA destroyers and cruisers (like AGEIS). Plus, if you put all your SAMs in one place you leave everything else defenseless.

The reason that countries don't do what worked in that one war game is that it was a war game. Real life works very differently.
 

Lonewolf

Banned
Hello,
do you really think that thr US would send a Tomahawk into an installation risking that nuclear material is spilled?

I would not send conscripts but elite forces into the other european countries.

And for the SAMs. They are not bigger than a bazooka. And if i remember the weight: Either carry an SAM or your backpack. The weight is the same.

And parading captured troops: I can not remember that the US bombed an installation that was human protected. And besides I would not use them in such a capacity. I would find a person who can imitate a voice and analyze the way of speech of the captured troops. Then they would be sent to a secure facility. But the voice guy... I would put him in front of a micro.. Remember Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw Haw. And that is the nice version.

And to the question of my unit: one of the two units equipped with Pershing nuclear missiles. We had the missiles, the US had the warheads.

Both units do no longer exist, but you can visit their bases. A nightmare to defend against infiltrators and a blessing for the enemy.

And for your other question. Against civilians blanks would be used. But police, Border Guard are something else. And besides: My units should engage police forces only if not avoidable. They should strike, terrify the people and disappear. Guerilla warfare.

And besides: I know my plan has holes but what would be the result?
 
Hello,
do you really think that thr US would send a Tomahawk into an installation risking that nuclear material is spilled?

I would not send conscripts but elite forces into the other european countries.

And for the SAMs. They are not bigger than a bazooka. And if i remember the weight: Either carry an SAM or your backpack. The weight is the same.

And parading captured troops: I can not remember that the US bombed an installation that was human protected. And besides I would not use them in such a capacity. I would find a person who can imitate a voice and analyze the way of speech of the captured troops. Then they would be sent to a secure facility. But the voice guy... I would put him in front of a micro.. Remember Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw Haw. And that is the nice version.

And to the question of my unit: one of the two units equipped with Pershing nuclear missiles. We had the missiles, the US had the warheads.

Both units do no longer exist, but you can visit their bases. A nightmare to defend against infiltrators and a blessing for the enemy.

And for your other question. Against civilians blanks would be used. But police, Border Guard are something else. And besides: My units should engage police forces only if not avoidable. They should strike, terrify the people and disappear. Guerilla warfare.

And besides: I know my plan has holes but what would be the result?

A serbian nuclear program????

IAEA dismissed that out of hand at the time

http://www.fas.org/news/serbia/fbis-eeu-1999-0419.htm

Americans would not believe it.

How many "A-teams" do you think Serbia has? And how many guys do you think will be looking for them.

I realise how big / heavy a man-portable SAM is. Do you realise how ineffective they would be after the first plane was downed to mass Strela attacks? Why wouldn't NATO switch to hi altitude or smart bomb attacks?

Plus Serbia had around a thousand SAMs with about 2/3 IR guided, not enough for thousands

The fake Lord Haw Haw - what good would that do. Even if the world believed he was an American pilot they would assume he was brainwashed / drugged

I assume your unit had side arms and I assume it is these weapons which would be freely available to anyone infiltrating the base to supply your A-team. So now they have pistols and some live ammo. They now have to find blank ammo for your plan to work and then the snipers have to find weapons for themselves. Too complicated.

Guerilla warfare has to inspire fear. A group of serbian cowboys shooting blanks would inspire laughter.

But lets say that Serbia shoots down 6 American planes and launches terrorist attacks on the West. Do you think that the West is going to surrender? Or does the war on terror start two years earlier and Russia washes their hands of their deviant allies, just like they did with Saddam.
 
You know the good SAM"s like a Patriot missile is about 6 metres in length and mounted on theb ack of a truck. A stinger is a lot smaller(like 2 metres) but very hard to down a jet fighter with.

If you use stingers you probably gonna need 42 before getting a kill against a MIG or F-15 while a Patriot missile should get a good kill after 1 or 2.
 
Okay, first off, I find the tone with which you talk about the effects of Germany losing WWII rather disconcerting. Also, as I recall, East Germany had no problem adopting some of the trappings of Nazi Germany after the war, like a brutal secret police force.

Anyway, forget about shoulder launch SAMs, they are good against low flying aircraft performing CAS, like gunships and ground attack planes(I think a stinger only has like a 5000 or 8000 max altitude). A flight of B-52's will get a nice fireworks show to look at below them as they drop thousands of pounds of bombs on those bunkers.

Conducting a terrorist campaign against western europe will not serve to scare off NATO, rather it will almost certainly ensure that the war goes beyond a simple air campaign and turn into a full scale land invasion. Granted, after some years of dealing with an insurgency as they attempt to occupy Serbia, it may cause NATO to tire of the conflict, but it wouldn't do the folks running the show in Belgrade much good, since they will have been removed from power years before that happens.
 
Some parts of the original post are somewhat puerile, especially the "advise" "I would not fire one SAM at a plane - I would fire forty."

This is almost like telling a member of the German Volkssturm "don't fire one Panzerfaust at a T-34, fire forty." In order to do that you must have forty Panzerfäuste and live long enough to fire them, a thing that the Soviet tank crew is not likely to allow you to do.

If the Serbian anti-aircraft defences fired forty missiles at one plane, they could not do this for a long time. And missile and RADAR sites are themselves priority targets.

The plan to have Serbian guerrileros attack power stations and power lines at first looks somewhat realistic. The reason why such a plan was never implemented may be the fact that a lot of Serbians (probably hundreds of thousands) were living (and continue to live) in Germany. Once it became known that Serbia was behind the attacks, these Serbian workers would probably be deported to Serbia or interned in Germany. The Serbian economy would miss the remittances they send to their homes in any case. If they are deported to Serbia, Serbia might have a problem feeding and housing them. If they are interned, they are a much bigger "bargaining chip" than the few pilots Serbia might manage to shoot down.

It may or may not be news to you that there was a leftist terrorist movement in Germany in the Nineteen-Seventies and Eighties. In conjunction with Palestinian terrorists they tried to blackmail the German government into releasing their imprisoned comrades. In all but one instance they totally failed to do so, and also failed to reach any political goal whatsoever. What makes you so sure that the German government will give in to Serbian guerrileros, when its predecessor did not give in to German terrorists? (Especially if the Serbians fire blanks at civilians, which the German terrorists did not bother to do?)
 

Lonewolf

Banned
The plan to have Serbian guerrileros attack power stations and power lines at first looks somewhat realistic. The reason why such a plan was never implemented may be the fact that a lot of Serbians (probably hundreds of thousands) were living (and continue to live) in Germany. Once it became known that Serbia was behind the attacks, these Serbian workers would probably be deported to Serbia or interned in Germany.

It may or may not be news to you that there was a leftist terrorist movement in Germany in the Nineteen-Seventies and Eighties. In conjunction with Palestinian terrorists they tried to blackmail the German government into releasing their imprisoned comrades. In all but one instance they totally failed to do so, and also failed to reach any political goal whatsoever. What makes you so sure that the German government will give in to Serbian guerrileros, when its predecessor did not give in to German terrorists? (Especially if the Serbians fire blanks at civilians, which the German terrorists did not bother to do?)

I do not think that Germany would have deported them. Remember World War 2? One propaganda campaign telling the world that Germany is doing it again, deporting people and putting them into camps. Once you hear this, yes, you think of WWII and concentration camps. This is the best deterrent against such tactic. How will you counter this? Just look at television. Everyday there is at least one movie about the 3. Reich. And do not forget the anti-fascists. This will be THE thing to show them that Germany is still nazi. Remember Cologne a few years ago with Pro Koeln or Dresden with the memorial march? The destruction made by the anti-fascists? This will be worse.

And yes, i lived through these times (I live in Germany). but the reason the RAF (Red Army Fraction) failed is: they were 9 to 5 terrorists and only one group.
Yes, they had hostages but when the Federal Police tried to find them, the RAF did nothing. There was no attempt whatsoever by the RAF to throw Mr Herold of the BKA off track. There was no attack on the BKA compound, no nothing to throw Germany into chaos to hinder Mr Herold.

Now think that 30 or more groups of RAF size are running around in Germany. Today three strike in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. Tomorrow they strike in Darmstadt, Kleve andTraunstein. The day after they strike in... . Imagine they would destroy certain key areas, like Kamener Kreuz (one of the chokepoints of the german freeway system), trees are dropped on railway lines and so on.
If this would be done by elite forces you could take the capitol of the enemy but there would be no masterplan where these forces strike.

To conmbat them you would institute martial law, stop all traffic, deploy your entire army as hunters. Now think of the size of the german Bundeswehr. Would they be able to clean all of Germany in one day?
I say no. Only a few units are trained in this type of warfare and they could maybe clean one federal state like Hessen or Bavaria at a time, but the rest of Germany would be left on its own. And now release such troops all over Europe.
 
Lonestar does manage to bring the point home as to why we still have NATO. Although the big scary Soviet Bear is gone, the French, Poles, Dutch, Belgians, Danes, and Norwegians, not to mention the Czechs and even the British do have another reason to ensure that American and Canadian troops stay in Europe.

It is to make sure that the North Americans stay committed to Europe, as the Europeans do not have a good track record of peaceful coexistance with each other, especially the central Europeans.

Otherwise Lonestar, you do need to research a lot more carefully. Start with reading about the Red Army Faction in Italy, or Baadar-Meinhoff in West Germany in the 1980s. They failed... utterly, because like most nihilistic groups they offered nothing but damage. Effective counterinsurgency is a lot like police work -- careful intelligence, painstaking attention to details and patterns and finally precision removal of the threat. The Western nations have become very good at this, because the West has been attacked by terrorists routinely and often for two generations... all the way back to the 1960s.

If what you are saying was remotely possible, then it would have been done. It isn't, so that is why it wasn't or hasn't been.

40 SAMs by the way would be 40 Launchers. An average air defense brigade only has around 36 launchers, plus associated radar, signals and other personnel. In otherwords, you are going to use an entire air defense brigade to target a single aircraft. The average SAM isn't cheap by the way, nor is an air defense brigade.
 
I do not think that Germany would have deported them. Remember World War 2? One propaganda campaign telling the world that Germany is doing it again, deporting people and putting them into camps. Once you hear this, yes, you think of WWII and concentration camps. This is the best deterrent against such tactic. How will you counter this?
German authorities, like the authorities in many, many other countries regularly deport people they consider as illegal aliens, for example people who have applied for political asylum who have not been granted this right.
To the best of my limited knowledge it is a perfectly legitimate move either to intern civilians from an "enemy" nation in wartime, or to deport them to their home countries. If it is, other nations would start doing the same thing to the Serbs, at the very latest, when they start a guerilla in these other nations. Quite possibly earlier, if they hear of this activity of Serbian guerilleros in Germany. The comparison to the atrocities Germans committed under Nazi rule would be seen as the propaganda ploy that it is. After all this would come from a Serbian government in the act of massive ethnic cleansing.


To conmbat them you would institute martial law, stop all traffic, deploy your entire army as hunters. Now think of the size of the german Bundeswehr. Would they be able to clean all of Germany in one day?
I say no. Only a few units are trained in this type of warfare and they could maybe clean one federal state like Hessen or Bavaria at a time, but the rest of Germany would be left on its own. And now release such troops all over Europe.
There is no such thing as martial law in the German constitution, but, yes, there are the Notstandsgesetze (=emergency laws). They have never been invoked so far, not even at the times of terrorist attacks in the Seventies or Eighties. I doubt very, very much that they would have been invoked in the case of Serbian guerilla attacks.

Police forces and the German territorial army would guard many key sites such as bridges or power stations, but admittedly they could not guard them all. So, yes, Serbian guerilleros just might do some damage to German and other European infrastructure, but not on a scale that is even vaguely comparable to the damage that Serbia had to endure from NATO air strikes. Meanwhile, Germany and any other country that Serbia might choose to attack would
A Continue to function as countries with people going about their daily businesses.
B Continue to function as military powers.

Obviously, a Serbian guerrilla in Germany and other did not happen. One more important reason that has not been mentioned so far is that would have to be planned in advance to be feasible. You need people trained in the use of weapons and explosives preferably already inside the countries you want to attack and the same is true for their equipment and weapons, too. It would be quite surprising if Serbia had planned in advance for a war where it stood alone against the whole of NATO.
 

Clipper747

Banned
To have scared off NATO would've required two things:

Yeltsin gone/Putin in charge

Basing Russian fighters at Belgrade Surcin and Russian paras in southern Serbia.



Result= No NATO bombing
 
Serbia did strike out technologically at Western targets.
One thing that NATO did to Serbia that could have inspired a form of retaliation was the bombing of Radio Television Serbia.
Serbia could have three choices:
1. Do nothing, which it mostly did.
2. Go to the UN and call out NATO. (Did not happen- though a few journalists in various places were upset.)
3. Get someone, somehow to retaliate. (Imagine if broadcasting networks in NATO countries had bombs set off nearby.)
 

Lonewolf

Banned
Hello,

first, I made a mistake. If I look at this forum I see a lot of threads that go: Imagine the CSA would have won the Civil war, how long would the CSA have existed or how would it continue.
I made the mistake of asking a question like this and in the same article mentioning a plan down to the smallest screw.

AMF,
you are right. People get deported every day. But we are not talking about a few hundred people. We are talking about between 112.000 and 652.000 people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbs_in_Germany

First of all: It is against the law. Only a very tiny minority would be guilty of waging a guerilla war. And if you imprison all Serbians, the German court would tell you something that only guilty people may be imprisoned.

And (thats why I selected Germany) ever heard of Sippenhaft? To imprison all would be smelling of that.
The german parliament (Bundestag) made a few decisions, one among them that all verdicts of the 3. Reich regarding Sippenhaft are unconstitutional.

And lets not forget the german moral compass: The central council of jews in Germany. The CEO at that time was Ignatz Bubis, a holocaust survivor, a victim of deportation and mass imprisonment himself.
I dare to say that if anything would even come close to resemble even in the tiniest instance something from the 3. Reich (and mass imprisonment and deportation do certainly do so) that Mr Bubis would take a very dim view of it. (When Germany changed its asylum laws to be tougher he was one of the main opponents.)

At the least he would demand that everything is done to the highest moral standards with checks and balances controlled and counterchecked by other countries or even done by other countries with no German involved.

But the main question remaining:
Where do you put them?

There is no installation in Germany where you can put this many people. And if you just put some logs in the ground, connect them by barbed wire, the courts will let them go faster then you can arrest them. You have to give them human standards of living. Not to forget that the anti-fascists will rise against the police.

And now to another point: Every country has a Chief of Staff. And like the USA had their Warplan Red, Yellow and so on it should be done with guerilla warfare and how to get enough material to the other country.

Derek Pullem
The fake Lord Haw Haw - what good would that do. Even if the world believed he was an American pilot they would assume he was brainwashed / drugged
Guerilla warfare has to inspire fear. A group of serbian cowboys shooting blanks would inspire laughter.

Have you forgotten My Lai? There would always be the doubt that it could be no lie.
And lets not forget two books just published in Germany. In WWII german soldiers were put into POW camps with microphones. As the german soldiers (from private to Fieldmarshall) did not suspect anything they talked freely about warcrimes. Just look "Soldaten: Protokolle vom Kämpfen, Töten und Sterben" (my translation: Soldiers: Protocols of fighting, Killing and dying) by Sönke Neitzel and Harald Welzer and "Abgehört: Deutsche Generäle in britischer Kriegsgefangenschaft 1942-1945" (my translation: Tapped: German generals in british captivity 1942-1945) by Sönke Neitzel.
These books and the facts behind them could be used to cast more doubt on the methods used by the coalition.

Laughter you say?
OK, lets assume for five minutes you are a fighter pilot returning from a mission over Serbia. After rebriefing and the other things you call home. But its not your wife taking the phone, its her sister. She tells you, no, your wife and child are unhurt, but serbian terrorists shot up the local supermarket, but by the grace of god nobody had to be hospitalized, only cuts and bruises. And in the background your little daughter is crying for daddy to come home to protect her from the evil men.

Do you really think that if armed guys storm into the local supermarket even one person would try to play Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone or Schwarzenegger? No, they would all cower and run. Nobody would care to look if its are blanks fired over their heads or life ammo. They would hear shots and run.
 

Macragge1

Banned
Do you really think that if armed guys storm into the local supermarket even one person would try to play Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone or Schwarzenegger? No, they would all cower and run. Nobody would care to look if its are blanks fired over their heads or life ammo. They would hear shots and run.

What about the police, dude?
 

Lonewolf

Banned
What about the police, dude?

You are right. The police would find it out quick, but please read the last line of my first post:
"at the same time the German government would be told that if they let slip that blanks were used then next time real bullets will be used should do it."

The government will be out into a situation of "Damned if we do, damned if we dont."
It is the duty of a government to keep the people safe, so I would say it is safe to assume that the german police will be given the order that enough traces of bullets used were found. And considering the alternative I think that the german press will follow.
 
@Lonewolf
Now if I had been the CO of the Serbs I would have put bunkers and remotely controlled weapon stations in the valley by the thousands.
And when NATO planes appear to bomb then they meet SAM alley. I would not fire one or two SAMs at a plane - I would fire forty. Then I would wait for the inevitable rescue mission and bag me some more pilots. Remember: forty SAMs per plane.
As Derek Pullam wrote: MANPADs are only suited for very short range air defense. NATO aircraft would simply operate at higher altitudes.

If I had been the CO of Serbia I would have sent entire companies of troops to every NATO state, disguised as refugees.
And how do you plan to get these guys there, you need a large enough network on the ground and this network would quite possibly be under surveillance by German intelligence agencies and the police. Then there are one giant problem: all asylum seekers are first interned and then screened. Your guys require good fake IDs, legends and the necessary training not to raise suspicion among the German personnel.

And once there they would in full uniform attack any power station, power line, freeway and so on.
And that's something you need quite a lot of explosives.

Uniforms you can buy in any so called NATO / military surplus shop. And weapons: If I remember my time in the army, you could walk into a german army base at saturdays and walk off with the weapons without much problem.
Getting on a military base is one thing, actually entering guarded areas like weapon or ammunition storage sites is something completely different. Besides as far as I know all German military bases were at hightened alert during the Kosovo War.

Germany had its spine removed after WWII (Remember JCS 1067?)
Ja, aber sicher.

Not to mention: Since WWII the germans do not want to go to war, "No Blood for Oil" remember?
You do realize that the Iraq War was illegal?

The germans have no longer the fighting spirit of their ancestors. Their willpower is brittle. Just mention the warcrimes and germans will cower.
I seriously doubt that. Besides in 1999 the Serbs were the bad guys. They had massacred thousands at Sebrenica just a few years ago.

And I do not think that the german police or former Border police (now the Federal police) are a match for a fully equipped military force.
Readiness police forces are.

And: both are combatants and according to the rules of warfare my forces may engage them without commiting a war crime.
The Border Guard lost its combatant status in 1994.

You remember "The A-Team"? They always fired their rifles, made some holes in the wall but nobody gets hurt. Do the same.
Seriously, the A-Team?

Storm a building, assemble all people in one place. Meanwhile my expert would prepare the area and then the people are moved to the right place. A salvo of blanks over their heads and then tell them that this will end when Germany withdraws from the war and no NATO country may use its facilities in Germany. An then my troops would disappear to repeat it a few days later somewhere else.
If they aren't picked up by our intelligence agencies or police.

Done a couple of times and at the same time the German government would be told that if they let slip that blanks were used then next time real bullets will be used should do it.
Didn't work with the RAF.

And if an attack is directed at a nuclear power station they would be ordered to break off once the system is shut down. You see, I expect as a security measure that every nuclear power station is equipped with a very fast shutdown system to prevent nuclear material falling into the hands of madmen/terrorists. And once this system is used you need weeks and heavy machinery to access the nuclear material, let alone producing power again.
Good luck trying to attack a nuclear power station. The area surrounding the plant is under heavy surveillance and there's a reaction force on standby.

And yes, i lived through these times (I live in Germany). but the reason the RAF (Red Army Fraction) failed is: they were 9 to 5 terrorists and only one group.
What the fuck? The Red Army Faction consisted of several cells and was more than just a dozen people.

Yes, they had hostages but when the Federal Police tried to find them, the RAF did nothing. There was no attempt whatsoever by the RAF to throw Mr Herold of the BKA off track. There was no attack on the BKA compound, no nothing to throw Germany into chaos to hinder Mr Herold.
Maybe because attacking the BKA headquarters would have been suicide?

Now think that 30 or more groups of RAF size are running around in Germany. Today three strike in Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. Tomorrow they strike in Darmstadt, Kleve andTraunstein. The day after they strike in... . Imagine they would destroy certain key areas, like Kamener Kreuz (one of the chokepoints of the german freeway system), trees are dropped on railway lines and so on.
As I said, these guys would be picked up at some point and high value targets would be under police or military protection. Railway lines would be cleared either by DB, local fire departments or the THW. Happens almost every week.

To conmbat them you would institute martial law, stop all traffic, deploy your entire army as hunters. Now think of the size of the german Bundeswehr. Would they be able to clean all of Germany in one day?
How about reserves?

I say no. Only a few units are trained in this type of warfare and they could maybe clean one federal state like Hessen or Bavaria at a time, but the rest of Germany would be left on its own. And now release such troops all over Europe.
What about the Heimatschutzbataillone and the reserves in general?
 
Top