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
I am not talking about some sort of kill ratio based on bogus body counts. If the WP air forces have 2.5x the number of aircraft the NATO forces do and they lose aircraft at 3x (or greater) rate than NATO does, the NATO air forces are the last man standing. Likewise with tanks, soldiers etc. This is the whole essence of the quality versus quantity argument. The whole concept of NATO conventional defense was the ability to have a kill ratio such that the Soviets would not end up winning by sheer numbers and make using nukes a necessity - NATO had a use nukes quickly strategy early on but over time tried to be able to do well enough to avoid nukes.

You can argue that, in this specific example, that NATO air forces would not be able to put enough WP aircraft out of action (shot down, trashed on the ground, stuck on bases with trashed runways, or even grounded due to lack of fuel/munitions) to overcome the numerical advantage that the WP had. Saying that "kill ratios", as defined here, are not relevant is incorrect.

Let me emphasize that while the term "kill ratio" is used, this is somewhat inaccurate as troops that are captured, or troops isolated where they do no good (like Japanese garrisons on various islands in WWII), troops wounded or equipment severely damaged so as to be out of the fight either permanently or for a very long period of time are functionally "killed". This is important - just think of early on in Barbarossa where hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops were captured and functionally "dead" as far as any use to the USSR, or the large number of British/Commonwealth troops taken at Singapore, or US forces in the PI. In these cases the ratio of actual dead is less impressive, but add in the number of forces permanently removed from the battlefield and the ratio is more impressive.
 
The last time the American military put stock in kill ratios meaning anything to such a degree was Vietnam. That war taught the American military a harsh lesson in doing so.

And yet you don't realize there is a difference between hunting your enemy in a jungle in a counter-insurgency campaign and tank warfare Western Europe to Ratio in the Vietnam war was 58000 US troops to something to the tune of a million Vietnamese this isn't factoring in ARVN losses but the Soviets couldn't sustain that.
 
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I have always been curious how long the two air forces would have been able to keep the tempo of operations going. Not only are parts relatively limited, but so are munitions. If chemical weapons are used, casualties at airfields would be severe (if nukes are used there are no airbases). But even without weapons of mass destruction the intense operations tempo would rough on air and ground crews, not to mention the highly complex aircraft of the 1970s and later have a high component failure rate even in peacetime.
 
The biggest problem for NATO is that an F15 can shoot down about as many MiGs as it has missiles (well, OK, probably half as many). But if the USSR has more planes than that, the Eagle's in trouble.

Suppose an Eagle has 8 missiles. Shoots down 4 MiGs, but is now out of missiles. If there are 3 MiGs left that haven't fired yet, the Eagle is probably toast.

Also. Sure the Eagle can land and rearm and refuel. As long as the supplies hold out. Which in this kind of warfare, might not be very long.
Eagles have 20mm guns. I have no doubt in the kind of desperate fighting we're talking about, there would be more than a few gun kills by Eagle drivers. They aren't going home just because they're out of Sidewinders.
 
A lot of times aircraft are grounded/deadlined for gripes or systems failures that would not prevent from being effective, if even not 100%, in combat. IMHO depending on how desperate things are, as long as the aircraft would fly, could carry and use ordnance, and had a working radio and IFF it would be used. Obviously the more systems that are up the better, but...

A brief note on chemicals. Basically on airfields, transport nodes, or supply dumps that your forces won't be overrunning for some time, persistent agents are best. If you expect to overrun those places in the not too distant future, nonpersistent agents are the ticket. Offensive use of chemicals on and around the front lines is actually the least useful employment if your foe has well equipped and trained troops - using slime on/near the front lines means your troops have to deal with it which slows you down. Being in full chem gear slows everything and everybody down, so this means you actually slow your advance if they are used too widely along the front lines. Also, Soviet chem gear was more cumbersome than NATO gear.
 
If conventional war broke out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the 1980s, who would win the air war (assuming nuclear war doesn't break out of course)?

Which side had the more competent/superior air force?


My vote as to who would win would be "Neither." I suspect both sides would have retained the ability to launch moderately successful air strikes against each other (albiet likely with heavy losses) while also likely being able to inflict high losses on the other sides strikes. I suspect the war would have been decided via other means before either side could claim victory in the air. If one side thought they were in danger of loosing the air war I suspect they would have dialed down their tempo of strike missions to keep something in reserve, but still would have flown enough missions to force the other side to keep air craft tasked with air defence missions.
 
A lot of times aircraft are grounded/deadlined for gripes or systems failures that would not prevent from being effective, if even not 100%, in combat. IMHO depending on how desperate things are, as long as the aircraft would fly, could carry and use ordnance, and had a working radio and IFF it would be used. Obviously the more systems that are up the better, but...
I read about some training that some USAF ground crew were given on war time emergency repairs. They practiced on aircraft going to the wreckers because these repairs would never be accepted during peace time.
 
I read about some training that some USAF ground crew were given on war time emergency repairs. They practiced on aircraft going to the wreckers because these repairs would never be accepted during peace time.
Decades ago I seem to recall reading something written by one of the NATO airforces that discussed flying air craft in combat that had various maintenance issues. It basically said if a given mission could be plausibly flown with a given aircraft despite it not being perfect, then it would probably be flown in a ww3 setting.
 
The biggest problem for NATO is that an F15 can shoot down about as many MiGs as it has missiles (well, OK, probably half as many). But if the USSR has more planes than that, the Eagle's in trouble.

Suppose an Eagle has 8 missiles. Shoots down 4 MiGs, but is now out of missiles. If there are 3 MiGs left that haven't fired yet, the Eagle is probably toast.

Also. Sure the Eagle can land and rearm and refuel. As long as the supplies hold out. Which in this kind of warfare, might not be very long.

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Plus. How the frip do you keep the war 'conventional' and 'in the air'? If the Soviets start losing, they'll loose their nukes. Heck, they probably STARTED by firing nukes.


I don't see running out of AAM's as a huge issue in many missions. Say squadron of 12 to 16 SU24's is intercepted by a flight of 4 F15 Eagles. If hypothetically the Eagles salvo their 16 Aim 7's say in two volleys and shoot down say 3 to 6 Su 24's and then disengage without loss I suspect NATO would consider that a good outcome if the Eagles can live to fight another day.
 
How many Soviet AAM had a proper frontal aspect capability in the early as opposed to late 1980's . We know how effective the AIM-9L was from the Falklands . The AA-8 or R 60 was not as effective in frontal aspect . It was a better dogfight AAm in my very unprofessional opinion however the frontal aspect really makes a difference in the early 80's .
 

SsgtC

Banned
Here's something else to consider as well. In Sept, 91 the USAF deployed the AIM-120 AMRAAM. HOWEVER, it had scored it's first air-to-air kill in 1982 during testing. If tensions are rising, development could reasonably be accelerated to get the AMRAAM into service by the mid to late 80s. That would give NATOa huge edge on air-to-air combat
 
re: "Less than perfect"

In combat you make do with what you can make work. I had the personal experience in a field hospital during the first Gulf War where we had no orthopaedic power tools in the prepositioned sets, and having a power drill is better and faster than a hand drill (which we had). So we sent some SeaBees down to Abdul's Ace Hardware in the closest big town and got some rechargeable battery power drills (Black & Decker type). They could be sterilized without the battery attached, and you could put a sterile glove over the battery when it was attached. We knew they'd eventually be killed by the sterilization procedure but they could be replaced and they worked just fine - personally used them during surgery more than once.

Point of this "sea story" is in wartime/combat you accept equipment situations and much more you'd never do in peacetime to accomplish the mission. For those who have never been in the military especially in a combat zone, accomplishing the mission is everything. You don't take foolish risks you can avoid, but if making do means more risk but can get it done so be it. As we used to say, "that's why you get combat pay".
 
Your source for the capabilities of the Soviet Air Force in the 1980s is to look at the Russian Air Force circa 2008? That's like trying to use the Napoleonic Wars to predict French performance in the Crimean War...

To be fair, you said air combat operations at Kursk were somehow still a relevant model for fighting in the 1980s despite there having been much more tech change in that time period then between 1980 and 2008. That's not even getting into key differences between the Luftwaffe of '43 and the NATO forces of '83.
 
Here's something else to consider as well. In Sept, 91 the USAF deployed the AIM-120 AMRAAM. HOWEVER, it had scored it's first air-to-air kill in 1982 during testing. If tensions are rising, development could reasonably be accelerated to get the AMRAAM into service by the mid to late 80s. That would give NATOa huge edge on air-to-air combat

The Nighthawks would be very interesting as well, and there are 2 squadrons of them in 1981. The Soviets would have literally no answer to them other than concentrated AAA fire and they would be routed to avoid the worst of those areas.
 
To be fair, you said air combat operations at Kursk were somehow still a relevant model for fighting in the 1980s despite there having been much more tech change in that time period then between 1980 and 2008. That's not even getting into key differences between the Luftwaffe of '43 and the NATO forces of '83.

the best we have in terms of comparison are what happened over North Vietnam, in the Middle East and in the Gulf War. The Christmas Bombing of Hanoi was in 1972, the 73 and 82 Wars in the Middle East, to a small extent what happened between the Iranians and Iraqis, and Falklands has some bearing with the Gulf War being a full scale demonstration of high intensity NATO air defense suppression (and Lebanon in 1982 being a smaller scale example).

It should be noted that while Soviet high density air defense systems could at times inflict serious losses, they never stopped a full scale assault, not even in 1973 over Syria and Egypt. We have no idea how well the NATO Hawk and various other systems would have done, but they would have had AWACs support and a lot more radar systems with better reliability, and much better data processing (which matters in the 1980s). NATO air defenses would likely not have stopped a full scale assault either, but of course we will never know (thank goodness). Certainly the HAWK system seems to have a higher kill rate than the Soviet SAMs and the Patriot was better still (although very late in this scenario)
 
What are Nighthawks?

The official name is the F117A Night Hawk, known as Nighthawks by their crews, and Stealth Fighters by the public. They weren't fighters, there were tactical bombers but only one was ever lost in combat, and in part that was due to overconfidence. More likely in a Central Front Air Battle they would be used like they were over Iraq in the Gulf War where they suffered no losses.
 
To be fair, you said air combat operations at Kursk were somehow still a relevant model for fighting in the 1980s despite there having been much more tech change in that time period then between 1980 and 2008. That's not even getting into key differences between the Luftwaffe of '43 and the NATO forces of '83.

There's a difference between examining the capabilities of a single nations armed forces and the dynamics of a segment of combat as a whole. The latter is much more static then the former and despite the technological changes and differences in changes, the best evidence is that the fundamentals I described remain the same.
 
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