The bulk of the fighting is in West Germany (Hartz Mountains and hills around Fulda plus Bavaria)
Only part of it. The main Soviet thrust was to be across the North German/European Plain. The Soviets planned Fulda mainly as a pinning thrust, to keep the Americans and West Germany from interfering with the North German Plain thrust. For a variety of reasons, they didn't expect the Fulda Gap assault to make much headway. I find it odd that a lot of Americans tend to gall at this, as if they believe it means the Soviets didn't take them seriously, when in fact one of the reasons for the Soviets placing their main thrust so far north is precisely because they took the Americans so seriously...
but East Germany, where the bulk of transport takes place, is all plains, particularly where the highways and railroads are.
As with West Germany, East Germany's terrain is quite mixed. The region north of Berlin is indeed part of the North European Plain, albeit a bit more broken up by lakes, but south of Berlin is really heavily forested and even swampy in places. Once one moves south of the Dresden-Leipzig line, the terrain also gets increasingly hilly and then mountainous until you outright hit an actual mountain range around the East German/Czech border.
Besides, that sort of stuff doesn't matter with bridges. Because it's a freakin bridge... it's whole purpose is to go
over terrain, not through it. Tunnels are another matter, but you aren't gonna see many tunnels on flat land...
Actually, if the Soviets are as effective as the Iraqis I would be surprised. The Iraqis actually had combat experience fighting the Iranians, who used ballistic missiles and tactical strike aircraft for the entire duration of their war.
If the Soviets are as effective as the Iraqis, I too would be surprised. The Iranians were effectively little more then a light infantry army throughout the Iran-Iraq War and the few Iranian ballistic missiles and tactical strike aircraft were massively outweighed quantitatively and qualitatively by the Iraqis own, as they were likewise outweighed in terms of heavy armor and artillery. The Iraqis even actually had the advantage in manpower, contrary to popular myth. Their logistics chain was basically fully outsourced to both Superpowers while the Iranians had to scrounge off the black market and backroom deals. That the whole thing still devolved into stalemate is basically a function of Iraqis incompetence rather then
One should also be careful not to overstate the effects Coalition air campaign had on the Iraqis. For an air campaign, it certainly inflicted a lot of damage upon the Iraqis army and it's capabilities. It is very much the best showing air power has ever demonstrated. But inflicted damage is all it did. It did not
destroy the Iraqis army and it's capabilities and at the end of the day, Iraqis logistics and C3 infrastructure was still functional if battered. It was the ground assault which actually delivered the blow that outright destroyed it. Had the Iraqis army had a witt of competence, it could have still inflicted hefty casualties upon the Coalition in spite of the damage they had taken by the NATO air campaign. That it did not chiefly boils down, once again, to that tragi-comic Iraqis incompetence.
No one has attacked the Soviets since World War II, and the last full scale test of one of their air defense systems was against the Israelis in Lebanon (where it failed badly).
Eh, the Syrians badly mishandled their equipment yet again and made no attempt at applying Soviet
maskirovka-principles (the closest any Arab state has ever come was in the preparations for '73 and even then their attempt falls woefully short in matching
maskirovka's ambitions), so it's still a failure of execution rather then concept. We do have a more recent example of the Soviets executing a conventional invasion (Afghanistan in 1979) which went extremely well (even if the guerrilla war that followed didn't) but the Afghans didn't even put up a token effort in the air so it's a nonstarter in terms of seeing how Soviet air defense efforts work out so meh...
The Iraqis also had French radars and weapons too, something the Soviets did not have.
Which, tellingly, faired no better then the Soviet equipment. Once again, in the immortal words of Chuck Yeager, "It's the man, not the machine."
The bulk of Soviet immediate stocks are in eastern Europe. They are attacking into Central Europe.
The bulk of Soviet stocks for their first echelon is in East Germany, which is generally regarded to be in Central Europe... although these geographic terms do get rather arbitrary. The Poles like to insist their in Central Europe, but a number of Geographers like to put them in Eastern Europe.
That is hundreds of miles of transportation distance,
Not really. East Germany as a whole is less then two hundred miles across. The distance from the Soviet main depots to Fulda are generally between 100-200 miles. To the Rhine, generally 200-300.
and most of their reserves are actually in the Soviet Union, which is much further away.
No it isn't. All of GSFG's depots are right there in East Germany.
Their fuel production is further away still and has to be moved forward by vehicles once it reaches the forward area.
I really don't get why we're talking about fuel production at all. The war simply isn't going to last enough for new production in anything to matter, on either side.
The Soviets would have to move thousands of tons of fuel forward daily.
Okay, and? I mean, you have to remember the context in which all the techniques I have described were developed: it was WW2, in 1942-43, when the Soviets had to move thousands of tons of fuel daily from their railheads usually two-three times the distances described above, to their armored spearheads over the Eurasian steppe (which makes the North European plain look fulsome), frequently having to traverse multiple rivers, in the face of concerted German air interdiction attempts. Compared to that, the distances and terrain. Only the opposition is tougher... but then, so are the means with which the Soviets have to apply against the opposition.
A scale that makes the Serbian effort the same as comparing a motorcycle to a tractor trailer in scale.
But the scale of the resources the Soviets have to put into their
Maskirovka-techniques is likewise massively different then Serbia. It's the same as comparing a two man camping tent with a main circus tent. You can't use the greater scale of the problem to dismiss Soviet techniques without also considering the equally (if not more so) greater resources the Soviets have to use in implementing those techniques.
A dispirited conscript in the 1990s is little different from a dispirited conscript from the 1980s and the issues of training did not change from that time frame. The big problems were lack of money for parts and fuel, which the collapse of the Soviet Union did markedly wreck.
That presumes that the Soviet conscripts in the 1980s Soviet Union was as dispirited in the 90s, which is not actually in evidence. And the issue of training very much did change, in that the Soviets in the 80s had the funds to do it (although, again, this was less-and-less the case as the decade wore on) while the Russians in the 90s did not have the funds to even feed and house their troops, much less train them. Some of the issues consequently did not exist, while others were merely not as severe (but, yet again, got more and more severe as the Soviet Union neared it's death bed). Were they still severe enough? Best I can say is "maybe". But on this point it isn't how sound the Soviets concepts are that we're debating, but how well the Soviets can execute them. I should note that I agree that the failing training standards
could undermine Soviet attempts at implementing their doctrine. It's effectively what I said here a few pages back:
Me said:
These techniques worked almost perfectly for the Serbs in the 90s despite being employed against a even more overwhelming and sophisticated NATO force then what existed at any point in the 1980s so we do have a pretty good idea of how they'd work out in the 80s... assuming, of course, the falling Soviet standards don't undermine their attempts to employ them. If Private Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov fucks up setting up the camonetting and/or decoys because he hasn't been trained properly, or he just doesn't give a shit, then it doesn't really matter how much potential maskirovka has.
The difference is that I do not assume this
inevitably would happen because, quite frankly, the only way to prove that would have been for the Soviets to actually go and do it. And we should be probably thankful they didn't regardless of how this aspect of things went. So while I do accept the possibility, and in the case of the late-80s even the probability, of you being right on this point (in which case things would very much go as you say), but I don't think the evidence is solid enough that we could say you are
guaranteed to be right on this point. I will say this though: the later in the 80s the war occurs, the greater the odds you are right are.
Slight difference between book knowledge/theory and an actual test run of enemy capabilities.
You would have a point if the Iraqis had done anything that gave the Serbs insight into how to counter NATO capabilities. But they didn't. So while the Serbs went in with an actual test of NATO's capabilities in running an air campaign, all they had in terms of actually
countering that campaign was still the very same book knowledge/theory that the Soviets had in the 80s which you are deriding.
He's an Obsessed Nuker who commands 10 million men, be glad he's only marching the debate terms.
The world shall fear my might!

