Who would win in a 1980s air war: NATO or the Warsaw Pact?

Who would win in a 1980s air war?

  • NATO

    Votes: 222 92.1%
  • Warsaw Pact

    Votes: 19 7.9%

  • Total voters
    241

Archibald

Banned
You mean that thing ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)
Frak. Smells like Terminator's skynet. Even with the human control gone, the automated thing fires every single ICBM, just in case. I didn't knew about that thing. Another level of madness in the MAD foolish big bluff game.

Seriously, I wonder how didn't those fuckers blew the entire world by accident. Makes 1983 even more scarier. Far more scarier than 1962.

 
Why 3 to 5?

Those are the most common numbers I've seen as to how many gets the call in the event Perimtr is activated and, by extension, triggered. The discrepancy stems mainly because a number of specific procedures surrounding the system are still as secret as the Russians can make 'em, but those are the most cited numbers.

What are the chances that some of them refuse to launch?

Unknown. There's some discrepancy about whether there it's some form of collective decision or whether just one of them saying "yes" is enough for the system to begin broadcasting the launch orders.

You mean that thing ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)
Frak. Smells like Terminator's skynet. Even with the human control gone, the automated thing fires every single ICBM, just in case. I didn't knew about that thing. Another level of madness in the MAD foolish big bluff game.

Seriously, I wonder how didn't those fuckers blew the entire world by accident. Makes 1983 even more scarier. Far more scarier than 1962.


It's not fully automated, the Soviets contemplated that option and came to the conclusion that they were brushing with too much crazy with just a semi-automated system as it was, but yeah it's as close as we've gotten so far to Kahn's Doomsday Machine.
 
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So my copy of the French novel is lost somewhere on this planet, so everything is based on 30 year old memories - IIRC, there is no Reagan buildup of forces. Soviets gain massive conventional and strategic superiority in Europe (especially after reconciliation with China). After testing NATO's reaction with various false alarms, they start an all-out attack including the use of chemical weapons. The US is unable/unwilling to send forces (I think the Atlantic is essentially blocked by the Red Fleet). NATO forces are overrun quickly, when approaching the Rhine the SU launches a nuclear attack on Aachen to successfully intimidate the remaining NATO governments. The French have started to mobilize, but so far were relatively passive due to a socialist/communist coalition. The decision is to use the Force the Frappe tactically to take out the first wave of WP and hope for the best. At the same time, massive speznaz/terrorist etc. attacks take place which massively hinder the mobilization effort. Finally the communists take over in a coup, and the Red Army enters France mainly uncontested. It ends with elements of the army regroup in central/southern France to start a resistance movement.

reminds me of some of the Invasion Fiction that some American and British writers wrote in the last 19th (Battle of Dorking being the most famous example for the British, Valor of Ignorance being the American example) and early 20th Century.

Sounds like the writer wanted to scare the crap out of French readers. Sounds like fun though.

(for modern examples watch the 80s version of "Red Dawn" and the Australian movie "Tomorrow when the War Began", both of which are relatively watchable as films)
 
What are the chances that some of them refuse to launch?
What choice does the USSR have at that point?
Fire just at France (1), fire at everybody (2) or not fire (3)?

1= USA (+surviving allies) wins cold war
2= (almost?) Everybody dies
3= as 1

So the only choice is whether to accept losing the cold war to USA in return for saving much of rural Soviet population?
 
French nuclear deterrent would depend on why the Soviets want to invade France in the first place. If they think there's a serious chance of the US, UK, and France building up a large force there if given the time, which would then campaign to liberate West Germany and possibly launch a strategic offensive into the Soviet bloc, that's one thing, but if they're just doing invade France, that's another. If they have a good reason to invade (like France rejecting an offer to of neutrality), and can accomplish it with conventional forces, then even if France dumps their nuclear stockpile, the damage will be at least partly mitigated by the prospects of stripping western Europe to aid rebuilding, and will probably be less than the damage of a successful NATO counteroffensive that reunites Germany and topples the Soviet bloc. If all of NATO joins in with their strategic arsenals, then yeah, the whole northern hemisphere is going to be scoured of human life, but if it's just France, and NATO hasn't accepted the WP gunpoint-peace, then a conventional invasion might still be feasible.
 
Do we know that it (Permetr) actually existed? I have seen it in fiction only.

Yes. The head of the Russian SRF admitted it's existence in 2011, as well as it's continued... "service" I suppose is the word to call it in it's deactivated state? Even before then enough details were consistent enough for the thing to be regarded as real.
 
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Yes. The head of the Russian SRF admitted it's existence in 2011, as well as it's continued... "service" I suppose is the word to call it in it's deactivated state? Even before then the details were consistent enough as to a number many of the details.

Let's hope not (regarding its existence) and hope so (regarding its deactivation if it did exist).. Apparently Yeltsin was woken up in the middle of the night because a scientific launch from Norway in the 1990s. The same Russia that gassed a theater to knock out terrorists and killed nearly all of the hostages. A certain nervousness regarding Russian technology is always called for.

While Cherynobyl was during the exact period of time we are discussing in this thread.
 
Let's hope not (regarding its existence) and hope so (regarding its deactivation if it did exist)...

I think you misunderstand. The system is deactive by default. Even during the Cold War this was the case. It's to be activated specifically during a time of crisis. It still can be, according to the Russian SRF. Rumors are that it was activated during the Norwegian rocket incident you mentioned, but the Russians aren't saying anything. It would make sense... guarding against a decapitation strike was what the system designed for.
 
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How much warning time would be required to turn on Perimetr in the event of a crisis?

Unknown. If it was activated during the Norwegian Incident, then that indicates it can be done pretty fast. But they've got to select the guys who are to make the decision if the system triggers (you might note that I'm making a distinction between the system being activated and it being triggered) and get them to a secure command post. I'm speculating here, but I'd imagine there's probably a short list of personnel that are already vetted and selected based on availability. I imagine it couldn't take any longer then a few days.
 
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It's not fully automated, the Soviets contemplated that option and came to the conclusion that they were brushing with too much crazy making it semi-automated as it was, but yeah it's as close as we've gotten so far to Kahn's Doomsday Machine.

Of course... the whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost... IF YOU KEEP IT A SECRET! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL THE WORLD, EH?!

 
Of course... the whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost... IF YOU KEEP IT A SECRET! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL THE WORLD, EH?!


And that's what makes this the most terrifying thing, in my opinion, about Perimtr: not because the Russians built this thing, but because they built this thing and then didn't tell the world. Official acknowledgement of it's existence didn't even occur when the Cold War ended... it took another two decades for the Russians to admit it was indeed something they had, after all.

But when you go into the story of why Perimetr was built, at according to some of the people who helped design it (it was from them the west first learned of it), it makes sense. In the early-80s, the Soviets hotheads were hyperventilating over the prospect of a American decapitation strike and this led to a lot of jumping at shadows. It was under these conditions that Perimetr first started being contemplated and designed. Then all the paranoia reached it's culminating point with Able Archer '83 and after that the Soviet leadership basically went "Okay, that's it. We're building this bloody machine before one of our overimaginative morons gets us all killed." So the Soviets built the system not as a deterrent at all but as a reassurance to their own hardliners that even if NATO launches a decapitation strike, then that's okay because Perimetr ensures the SRF won't be left sitting dumb after losing the head. But that the system could also be used as a deterrent against the foreign foes as well doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone in the Soviet Union.

And that's what makes it terrifying to me because of the glaring hole it raises in Western nuclear deterrence theory. Namely, that western nuclear theorists assume the theories their producing are 100% global and that everyone accepts them. The story behind the construction of Perimetr and the Russian secrecy surrounding even something as simple as it's existence up until 2011 is the biggest piece of proof in history that this is not the case, that the other guys might not be working entirely on the same page, or even possibly the same book, of deterrence theory as we are in our decision making. Take a moment to sit back and think of the potential for the misunderstandings that could result for that when we're facing the prospect of future nuclear confrontations between the west and North Korea, China, a resurgent Russia, and/or maybe even Iran... it almost makes you want to invest in a fallout shelter, doesn't it?
 
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Was the US not as susceptible to a decapitation strike?

In some ways yes, and in others no. Theoretically, it would be much faster for a Soviet boomer to sneak up on the American coastline and blot out Washington faster then the US could do so to Moscow in the USSR. At such short ranges, it takes ~5 minutes for a missile to reach from the Barents Sea to Moscow. It takes 1/5th that for one to go from the immediate American Eastern coastline to Washington. However, the US was much more flexible in inherently devolving launch authority because the US, quite simply, trusted their men. The Soviets didn't trust their personnel remotely as much so they had a much greater issue with devolving responsibility. In fact, there are persistent rumors that there are mechanisms in place that the Soviet/Russian leadership can remote launch ready-to-fire missiles in the event the personnel of a rocket unit disobeys orders to fire, so given such suspicions it would make sense they made devolving launch authority a much less flexible affair. Perimetr helped side-step this by introducing a machine that was incorporated into the decision making cycle as a decision maker itself, instead of merely collecting or distributing information for the decision makers. Machines don't have loyalties, they simply take inputs and turn them into outputs.

Perimetr devolves authority to those aforementioned mid-level officers only if triggered and Perimetr could only be triggered if four conditions were met: (1) it has been activated, (2) it has detected signs of a nuclear detonation on Soviet soil, (3) it has lost contact with the Soviet General Staff, and (4) contact remains lost for a certain amount of time (how much time is still not clear). If all criteria is fulfilled Perimetr then contacts the 3-5 officers, informs them that a probable nuclear detonation on Soviet soil has been detected, that contact has been lost with High Command, that therefore launch responsibility has devolved to them, and finally it requests permission to launch a retaliatory strike. If the officers reject the request, the system lapses back into it's pre-trigger state. If they approve, it broadcasts launch orders according to a pre-programmed strike plan.

The Soviets did consider cutting out the human element completely but... well, I'll just quote that quote from the wiki article up there...

"Now, the Soviets had once thought about creating a fully automatic system. Sort of a machine, a doomsday machine, that would launch without any human action at all. When they drew that blueprint up and looked at it, they thought, you know, this is absolutely crazy."
 
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Was the US not as susceptible to a decapitation strike?
Not really in my view...

During the latter part of the Cold War the U.S. put a lot of emphasis on being able to absorb a bolt out of the blue first strike and be able to launch some form of counter strike. I recall reading a quote from one USAF General that basically said the looking glass air craft (mission) was the single most important task the USAF performed and every other program would be cut if needed to keep that mission going. (Looking glass referred to air borne command posts that were in the air 7x24 and reportedly could order the launch of nuclear weapons.)
 
The Iraqi net was deployed to protect Baghdad and other major cities, and the Allies used F-117 for these types of high-density targets. On at least one occasion they tried conventional jets and the results were not good, (lost 2 x F-16's in one raid, I think).

I know this isn't the point of the thread, but this really brings home how much the West expects to be unchallenged in combat: we're talking about attacking targets in the middle of a national air-defense network, and losing two aircraft while doing so is considered a poor result. Are we really so sure that the Soviets couldn't do better than that?
 

Archibald

Banned
Not really in my view...

During the latter part of the Cold War the U.S. put a lot of emphasis on being able to absorb a bolt out of the blue first strike and be able to launch some form of counter strike. I recall reading a quote from one USAF General that basically said the looking glass air craft (mission) was the single most important task the USAF performed and every other program would be cut if needed to keep that mission going. (Looking glass referred to air borne command posts that were in the air 7x24 and reportedly could order the launch of nuclear weapons.)

The E-4B modified 747s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4

such is the importance of that mission, in my space TL I went a step farther and got Looking Glass no longer on a 747 but aboard a military space station, with the president launched into space from a Titan II silo (since Titan II carried Gemini).
 
The E-4B modified 747s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_E-4

such is the importance of that mission, in my space TL I went a step farther and got Looking Glass no longer on a 747 but aboard a military space station, with the president launched into space from a Titan II silo (since Titan II carried Gemini).

That... actually is worse. Considerably so. A space stations location is easily located and tracked, and thus by extension deliberately attacked, from the Earth's surface as they are extremely visible and locked into a predictable orbit. A aircraft could only be found by going out and getting into relatively close proximity, which could be anywhere in North American air space, and can change course at will.
 
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