Red Army = most effective force !

[narwan]

Smersh said:
how quickly could all this be carried out if an attack came as a suprise? on a random sunday morning in the 70s-80s.

soviet doctrine of combined arms offensive also calls for paratroopers to land in key areas, to hold roads, bridges etc. in addition to the forward elements Marcello brought up.

What surprise? If an attack was launched from the barracks many, maybe even most, WP units already in theatre wouldn't even reach the border on day 1, assuming that all units were combat ready. The limited access to the border again being a very big problem. A surprise attack like you suggest is usually a lot more disruptive for the attacker than it is for the defender.
Personally I do not think that the WP would have been able to pull off a suprise attack. If only for the simple reason that far too few of their units were with some consistency combat ready. Bringing a sufficient number to readiness is not something which goes unnoticed. It's quite a big deal. The WP simply was not capable of pulling off such a surprise attack.

And NATO defensive plans called for countless security units and defense in depth, not to mention an extensive anti-aircraft screen to counter the well-known soviet doctrine. Again, a massive paratroop and airlanding operation is not something you can just pull out of a hat. It takes a lot of preparation. It is not compatible with the concept of a surpise attack. Either yo have a suprise attack, which means few forces available to begin with and nowhere near enough for serious paratype operations or you take your time to preapre in which case a surprise attack is no longer in the cards. Can't have it both ways.
Your scenario does read well and quite a few novels have been written around that idea, but I find it far fetched and unrealistic. It too ignores the massive logistic preparation needed BEFORE you can even contemplate launching an attack. That is not something which would have gone unnoticed (and which takes weeks at least, probably longer).

The whole assumption that the WP could pull off a quick surprise attack with anywhere near the troops needed for success and get them there on time is in my opinion inherently flawed.


Narwan

[Marek_Tucan]

There were for example about four major roads between Czechoslovakia and West Germany. By the 1980's moreover the borders were subject to patrols of SLAR equipped aircrafts - hard to hide tank columns from them.

[Marcello]

"Drains, covered sewer entrances and culverts can be packed with explosives to disrupt paved surfaces if you don't have time to pierce the surface."

Sewer entrances are available only inside cities. Culverts and such will not be conveniently sited in the best places for demolition. You need to plan in advance for identifying the locations and which demolition team must go where, they must be reasonably accessible in order to emplace charges (not filled with water or too small to enter etc.) and when all it is said and done it will be a limited damage that engineers can repair quickly. I have no idea if it was even taken in consideration.

"There was also the debate that certain NATO forces had stockpiles of arms that would have been released to the German population in major cities, arming hundreds of thousands of civilians."

It sounds pretty useless to me.Most of the people will either be fleeing towards NATO lines (from what I have heard, NATO planners considered it a big problem, as they would have created traffic problems for NATO columns plus those civilians had to be fed and sheltered putting further strains on logistics), hunkering down or otherwise too shocked to mount anything resembling a guerrilla campaign in the first few days when it will matter most.

"You don't have to drill through the tarmac if you can just go through the side through the packed earth. Highways are quick, but hard to get on and off, especially if the off-ramps are taken out. Units on it will be sitting ducks with very little cover or escape options."

There are others places that highways can be entered or left, especially for the combat vehicles. Service areas may have connections with the road network, there are often dirt roads within reach of highway in cultivated areas etc.. This quite beside the fact that taking out a significant numbers of off-ramps is quite a lot of work.
It is not like drilling thought the tarmac is the only problem. Even in the earth you still need to dig a lot of deep holes, or otherwise the damage will not be sufficient.The practical experience with bombing runways that I am aware of has shown that paved surfaces are more difficult to damage and quicker to repair than many (included myself before I found out) imagine.

"digging of deep trenches to block trucks"

If you have ever seen digging trenches in paved roads, you would realize that is not very practical.

"blowing up (high) buildings next to roads"

Outside urban centers that would be a pretty rare option.

"and then we're not even mentioning the use of nuclear demolitions or persistent chemical agents"

Nukes, well you are opening the pandora box. Using chemical weapons would be the best Christmas present you could give to the soviets. You can then sit back and enjoy the show of soviet chemical warheads missiles falling on NATO airbases,with the effect of massively cutting down NATO air forces sortie rate. This was a substantial concern for NATO planners back in the days.

"The road range is problematic the moment you have to go off-road. Even more problematic the moment you have to fight, as that includes lots of dashes to the nearest cover, reversing etc"

I got the impression that when the soviets specified design ranges for their vehicles, they did so with certain key objectives in mind. Yes, those 600 something km might be cut down to 400 something practice but I think this was aknowledged. If anybody has a map with NATO airbases at hand I think we might find something interesting.

[Marcello]

I also doubt that a surprise attack was feasible. A short notice attack was probably all they could hope for even under the best circumstances.

[Marek_Tucan]

There are others places that highways can be entered or left, especially for the combat vehicles. Service areas may have connections with the road network, there are often dirt roads within reach of highway in cultivated areas etc.. This quite beside the fact that taking out a significant numbers of off-ramps is quite a lot of work.

Tell that to British XXX. corps veterans from op Market-Garden And also the argument isn't it would stop combat troops. But what would mechanised spearheads do wtihout fuel and ammo? Plus of course any traffic jam among supply vehicles caused by road disruptions would be a very juicy target for NATO aircrafts. Let's spray the jam with cluster bombs and Gators...

I got the impression that when the soviets specified design ranges for their vehicles, they did so with certain key objectives in mind. Yes, those 600 something km might be cut down to 400 something practice but I think this was aknowledged. If anybody has a map with NATO airbases at hand I think we might find something interesting.

VT-55 recovery tank has a road range of 270km, off-rorad range 100km in straight line (and it has lower consumption than basic T-55 as it is lighter).
In combat, I'd expect the fuel last for 200-300 kilometers in T-55 with fuel drums and a road range of 600km. If you take into account the combat consists not only from movements forward, but also sideways and back, it would cut down the real range of penetration into NATO lines further. And the advance would slow down again when field commanders find out the number of supply trucks coming to them is so low.

[Marcello]

The problem with the road disruptions methods which have been listed here is that:
A) they are often substantially time consuming;
B) require a certain amount of advance planning to be effective;
C) they are often quick to repair.
For some you will have the additional problem of denying road use to your own side earlier than desiderable. Were they contemplated or are these just ideas that are being tossed around?
Again I have been taken aback by how little disruptive and easily fixed the damage caused by runways bombing was in many cases.

[Marcello]

"Tell that to British XXX. corps veterans from op Market-Garden"

I am not aware of the specific configuration of that area but from what I have seen of the Netherlands when I was there, I would suspect that going off road may be a somewhat trickier proposition than in the rest of Europe. Plus driving around antitank guns isn't like driving around a blown up culvert.

[PlasmaKrab]

Marcello, I think we can write off the advance planning argument in the Cold-War-Germany scenario, don't you? If we are assuming a fixed NATO forward defence against a Soviet push, then the NATO demolition/obstacle work would have taken place on friendly ground.
Granted, after the attack alert it wouldn't probably have remained friendly for very long, but remember that engineer units on both sides had literally decades to think up and plot contingency plans including what to blow up, where and when. I don't think charges were planted in advance (though the shelf life of modern explosives would certainly have allowed it), but possibly some emplacements had already been drilled and readied.
Come to think of it, and given the defense policy and the political climate in FRG, I wouldn't rule out that some strategic infrastructure was designed with the task of permanently blocking them in mind.

[narwan]

Marcello said:

There are others places that highways can be entered or left, especially for the combat vehicles. Service areas may have connections with the road network, there are often dirt roads within reach of highway in cultivated areas etc.. This quite beside the fact that taking out a significant numbers of off-ramps is quite a lot of work.
It is not like drilling thought the tarmac is the only problem. Even in the earth you still need to dig a lot of deep holes, or otherwise the damage will not be sufficient.The practical experience with bombing runways that I am aware of has shown that paved surfaces are more difficult to damage and quicker to repair than many (included myself before I found out) imagine.

"digging of deep trenches to block trucks"

If you have ever seen digging trenches in paved roads, you would realize that is not very practical.

If you reread my post you'll see I said digging deep trenches (easily done even with commercial diggers) to block trucks driving around blocked roads not in order to block the roads. So that'd be next to roads and in fields, not the roads themselves. Also a good and very quick way to make those exit points a lot harder to make work.

Marcello said:
"blowing up (high) buildings next to roads"

Outside urban centers that would be a pretty rare option.

But since there are plenty of those not rare at all. The large number of roads and urban centres are being used as advantages to the WP so also take into account the drawbacks. Devastated towns are hard to advance through.

On the whole your argument seems to be that it would be hard for NATO to demolish things effectively while it would be fairly easy for the WP forces to overcome them. I think you've got it the wrong way around. It is much, much easier to demolish and block than it is to clear and circumvent.
It's also being stated that the WP had prepared and developed for this, etc. Well so did NATO, the germans in particular.

Another point is the opening of hostilities itself, the assumption is, I assume, that firing will be initiated by the WP with the comencement of the cross border attack and/or preparatory artillery strikes. I doubt it would happen that way. The war would be on before any troops crossed the border. NATO wasn't stupid and would know full well what the massing of WP troops near the border would mean. Stern warnings and ultimatums would be given. When those were not met, (conventional) cruise missile and air strikes on the forces in east germany were extremely likely. I won't sepculate ont he results of those, the point is that in my opinion there would likely already be a shooting war before any WP ground forces crossed into NATO terrirtory. That would make the intial attack much harder still.

Narwan

[Siddhi]

narwan:

- good point on the technolgical equipment of the dutch, as to pointing out my reversing the belgium and dutch army traints. are you sure the dutch had leo-2s as well as massed heavy IFVs in BEFORE 1985? also, again without notes in front of me, I don`t think ANY of the category A MRR regiments deployed on the IGB at that time had more then a single BN of BTRs,if that, and the BMP is a great piece of equipment, if only for it's low profile and manuverability.

- the abilty of VII Corps (? i forget) to deploy to NORTHAG in time is seriously questionable. IIRC it would take 10 days for REFORGER to completete the first phase, the NATO Rapid Reinforcement Plan would take 30 days at least. The ability of the soviets in particular to get their units up to war strength much quicker is a very complicated debate, but in my view, true. The biggest mistake in my view is your appraisal of the political component - the ability of NATO to actually mobilise in time is by no means certain, it requires substantial political will and in RL would also require bruxelles to agree IN TOTAL for it to go ahead. In terms of "pre-emptive strikes", i think you can forget it - there is no way that such on order would be sanctioned by NATO unless there had been tensions for a long time (over a month) and enough time for political consensus to be built.

- on fortifications and obstacles. i have to admit this is actually one my old duties, and something i know a bit about. it short: it's all a bit different, people have spent over 50 years working on the problem, there is quite a lot of give and take - effectivly it comes down to terrain however. obstacles in the hills/mountains is one thing, the north german plain is another.

- as to germans willing to nuke on their border: sorry, completly, irrefutably, wrong. Not even Kohl would have agreed to it, according to him, and he was by far the most aggressive.