World War III Scenarios

[AMBOMB]

Actually, NATO would be lucky to survive a Soviet attack. Most probably, the Soviets would attack during a very inconvenient time for the NATO powers, say, a mass bank holiday, crowding the roads with refugees, etc. They wouldn't be able to respond in West Germany. Even if that didn't happen, the NATO powers would be very hard-pressed to stop a Soviet advance in West Germany, although their qualitative advantage would make up for their quantitative disadvantage. IMO, a bloody stalemate, tactical nuclear exchanges, and no more Germany is the most likely result.

As for France, it probably depends on earlier PODs, but if the Soviets are stopped before reaching France and it isn't too badly damaged, and the US goes for armed neutrality afterwards, France is going to be the major power in Europe.

Of course, massive size of the Soviet armored forces and their sheer mass or not (I also think that if the Soviets managed to prevent their logistical networks from damage, which could potentially be doable, although not with NATO air superiority...) they'd have problems of their own just as NATO would.

So, most likely scenario is a stalemate.

You gotta be kidding. Airpower's the name of the game in modern war. Massive Soviet armored forces would've equaled mass targets for A-10's. Look what we did to the Iraqis in the Gulf War. They were using predominantly Soviet made equipment. By the late 80's, we had the F-117. The F-15 and F-16 were superior to any fighter the Russians could put in the air. We had smart bombs. Had we decided to use them tactically, both the B-1B and the B-52 had bigger bomb loads than anything the Russians could put in the air. We also had the Apache helicopter. If you want to talk about ground forces, we had the MLRS and the M-1A1. Of course, once the tactical nukes start falling, both sides are going to be taking tremendous losses. But, because of air superiority, we were going to be able to drop tactical nukes behind their front lines. So, they're going to be taking out a lot of our combat forces. But, we're going to be taking out combat, forward support and rear support.

 

[MerryPrankster]

The Iraqi military units the US faced in 1991 were poorly commanded and weren't the best of the best--Soviet export tanks lacked the most modern sensors, gunnery, etc.

I would expect the actual Soviet military to do much better than the Iraqis did.

And airpower is not omnipotent. We lost a bunch of Apaches in Iraq and that country didn't even really have an air force. The Sovs had air power that, though perhaps not as technically good as ours, was still very good, and they had lots of AA stuff.

 

[Max Sinister]

The Red Army, despite using tactics that the United States never even dreamed of employing in 'Nam OR in Iraq, couldn't handle the Afghans or the Chechens

You mean with tactics that they were more brutal, since they hadn't to care what to press would say or how the voters might think? I don't know whether that would help... I'd rather say that you only achieve with this tactic that two new partisans rise for each one you kill.

 

[Iñaki]

One interesting stuff that I find about a Third World War and its development is a paper from Naval War College.

He details the wargames of 1984-88. The most interesting thing of the paper is that the wargames of 1985-88 are all connected and is a whole world war III simulation (in the paper is a great chronology and explication of the different events and fronts of this World War III simulation).

I think this paper could be very interesting for this thread.

The paper is believe me wonderful , in the chapters that explains the World War III is like a History book about a World War III.

It is very cool

I add a link http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/npapers/np20/NP20.pdf