Red Army = most effective force !

[Smersh]

I'm not exactly a expert on NATO tactical or strategic defense strategy, its been a few years since I've red anything about it. But, is what you guys keep talking about, essentially sabatoging and destroying transport and other infrastructure, what NATO defense strategy called for? I find it hard to beleive West Germany would carry out a sort of modern 'scourged earth' plan.

Arming civilians I think would have lead to increased civilian casaulties, by makeing it difficult for soldiers to distinguish combantants from non-combatants. Its not difficult to imagine military age men universally being arressted or targeted.

this again brings up the fact that any probable conflict would be extremely painful and destructive for all sides.

[baggypants]

Post deleted by baggypants

[Listy]

baggypants said:
I don't recall estimates on how many civilians would have been expected to take a weapons handout, it was just one of many planning rumors you heard about back then, but not being armed is no guarentee of survival if you are a civilian in such a situation.

The Soldiers I've seen comment where all very clear on that. The local Germans where ready to have a crack at Ivan, as a large chunk of them had already had one go round with the rooski's the first time round.

[Siddhi]

[/quote]

How big would the initial success be, How much territory could have been occupied in that golden period?

[/quote]

depending on operational/ and some strategic suprise being achieved by the WAPA, assuming moderate WP air superiority for the first few days, and moderate SF action, all within the 1980-85 timeframe, i would give the WP good chances in breaking NORTHAG completly. the belgiums and dutch are good soliders and each have national distinctive charachteristics (IIRC the belgiums could mobilise very quickly, and the dutch had a very smart supply system), but the real question would have been if they could retreat fast enough to keep their armies intact. if NORTHAG was smart and the germans did not insist on saving Hamburg AND the dutch and belgiums could save their army in a retreat they, together with BOAR and the germans, could probablly have stablised the line at Hannover by D+3/5. OTOH the chance that the dutch or belgiums would simply disintigrate given the equipment pairing (old Leos against T-72/80s/ BMPs) was simply very large in such great terrain. CENTAG and US VII Corps OTOH would probablly have stopped them within 20-50km, at least until the second echalon would hit.

@on supply and obstacles.
austria was "obstacle mad" and prepped everything imaginable for demolition, also it had the heaviest fortified lines in europe (possible exception of the swiss), and still the ability of solid engineers and good planning to overcome these hindrances are not that great, IF terrain and weather play their part. having said this the germans were perfectly willing to blow everything to hold the WP, this included even "over the road canals" (water cannals that are in effect "reverse bridges" over a roadway, if you know what i mean) - the questions is how often you are actually able to do this: demo lines are very easily cut by arty fire, especially 120mm airburst (i have no idea why, angle maybe?), also you can simply kill the demo team instead, there are a lot of options, the point being that at 10-25% faliure rating for each obstacle you will have a lot of obstacles left open that you PLAN on being closed, it makes your reserves very hard to position. as PLASMACRAB correctly pointed out, most of not all transportation infrastructure build in many european countries (incl. germany) post war had very definte national defence guidelines, there are dozens of interesting websites and pictures on the web for anyone that is intersted. NARWAN i talked to a HV District commander (Tromso) some years ago and he also confirmed that you, like austria, had pre-mined basicaly everything he said however the main problem was not the 51st(?) MRD advancing out of Kola but was the SOV airborne and marine forces landing in your area and capture the mob locations.

BAGGYPANTS talked about the high casulties needed to "breach" obstacles with speed - i agree. the only real cliche that is certainly right was the WAPA acceptance of casulties compared with western armies - you can see it in what they consider the minimum for combat effective (a MRR)= 30-40% (!!) while IIRC in the US it would be 50-60%.

if the WP was unlucky and the terrain was really muddy and wet, fine, little off-road movement of supplies possible, but in the NORTHAG area the monster ZIL trucks were perfectly capable of driving over fields, and most trucks have a recovery winch anyway. furthermore you cannot compare germany WWII with germany of today, there are MANY TIME more roads and villages today and the armies really are SMALLER then they were then (the amount of vehicles actually in use is not disimilar).

logistics is a science, not (or not only) an art, and people learn how to do it for YEARS. as i mentioned, the WAPA had some very easy solutions to complex problems, and traffic management for WAPA was very easy as they have their own "Kommandanten Force" troops that were its own command and purly in charge of managing traffic and logistic flow, unlike the west, that left it all the poor MPs who would be complelty overwhelmed. just imagine an expected 3-6 MILLION german refugees heading west in their own personal autombiles, all within 1 week, and you can see that the main thing getting in the way of the WP tanks could very well be VW Beatles...

[narwan]

baggypants said:
You're correct about West german reservations about a 'scorched earth' trade land for casualties type of defense in depth. They wanted to stop the attack on the border but to do that they were ready to accept making every crossing, canal, river, rail or road for a 20 kilometers strip nothing but rubble.
'Blowdown' would have been the detonation of small (1.5kt-1kt) nuclear warheads in dense forest areas to 'blowdown' the trees and block large areas. The West Germans were against it but the U.S. wouldn't rule it out.

The germans were indeed more than willing to reduce the border area (20 or more kilometres deep) into a wasteland, if need be a nuclear one, to stop or decisively slow a WP advance. It would appear their hesitance to use nukes was more a public mask than reality since they seem to have prepared a fair number of critical points with nuclear demolitions which were to be destroyed upon the beginning of hostilities.

Siddhi:
If you give the WP T80's you should give the dutch Leo 2's. Their appearance in the respective forces is nearly simultaneous (and by the late 80's about half the dutch tank force was Leo 2's). You should also keep in mind that while nearly the entire dutch IFV force was made up YPR-765 PRI's half (or more) of the WP mech units were in BTR's. BTR's are useless against the YPR's, while the YPR has no problem taken out BTR's or BMP's. In the armor vs chain gun equation it also has the edge over the bmp-2. Then there are the vast amount of YPR SP-ATGM's. Those were meant to deal with the tanks you mentioned. In order to do that with little risk, they have the unusual ability of elevating their launch platform up to about 30 feet so they can fire over hill tops, trees, walls and buildings without exposing themselves. Not something you can easily model in the game, but impressive and effective. It's also the dutch who had the fast moblisation scheme, the fastest and most effective of all of NATO. by the middle to late 80's the dutch had one of the most modern and well organised armies of NATO. The only real drawback was the lack of a decent combat helicopter.
And there's off course the US corps destined for the north german plain. Only a single brigade is stationed there in peace time but all equipment for the rest is allready in theatre, only the troops need to be flown in (REFORGER). Again, if the WP had enough time to assemble the large forces needed to take on the dutch and german corps on the north german plain, then Nato would have had time to at least begin with REFORGER...
The north german plain was defended by germans and dutch, not belgians. The belgians are actually further to the south in the much thicker wooded and hilled terrain, which their infantry heavy army is designed to make best use of. Directly south of the dutch and germans is the BAOR whose northern most forces cover the southern edges of the plain.

The north german plain was not a walk over.

And as to the many roads, thats true, once you get some distance away from the border. The whole point is though that there is very little cross border infrastructure (and access roads to the border on both sides) which would have been the bottleneck chocking all WP troops actually crossing into west germany.

Narwan

[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.

[narwan]

Siddhi said:
- 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? .

Yes. Starting with the second production run (which was in 1980 I think) the dutch were getting Leo 2's. The first batches received (not a lot yet) went to the heavy recon battallions (two operational with Leo 2's in 1984). Later whole tank battallions were equiped/operational. That started in 1984 and by 1988 half the armor battallions were Leo 2's (the rest Leo 1's). While not an exact match that closely resembles the operational introduction of the T80.

By 1984 half the mech battallions had the heavy IFV, the rest a wheeled APC. By 1988 all mech battallions in the three mech infantry divisions of the dutch corps had the heavy IFV (and two of a reserve brigade aswell). Dutch recon units (of which they had a lot) also mostly employed the heavy IFV in 1984 with some lighter IFV's (M113 with 25mm gun) added.

Siddhi said:
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.

In 1989 the soviet divisions still used the TO&E of 1 tank regiment, 1 bmp regiment and 2 btr regiments for the motorised rifle divisions. That includes the divisons in east germany. Add in the tank divisions whichhad no btr regiments or battallions and you end up with more or less a 50-50 spread between BTR's and BMP's. There were some reports of maybe some divisions having two bmp regiments and 1 btr regiment but I've yet to see that substantiated. Seems there weren't enough bmp's to achieve that.
No debate on the bmp being a good piece of equipment, the dutch heavy IFV is so too.

Siddhi said:
- 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.

I did make reservations about the US reinforcing the north german plain myself. As I said earlier, even without them the north german plain is far from a walk over.
I also don't believe in the argument that NATO would be politically weak in replying to a soviet threat and build up. I believe that they full well realised that a weak response only calls the one thing you're trying to avoid over yourself.
You're questioning NATO's ability to mobilise, well I'm pretty sure that the WP had as much if not more problems themselves. I recall you yourself mentoning such a thing about the Hungarians a while back? The soviets would certainly need the troops of their allies in an attack so the political and mobilisational problems are not exclusive to NATO.
And such a 'pre-emptive' strike is extremely likely in my view. If there are large troop concentrations on one side of the border and aircraft with stand-off weaponry patrolling on the other side what would happen if those aircraft would light up targets on the other side with their radar (let's say anti sam missiles). I doubt the soviets would hold their fire, not all of them anyway. Only one sam needs to be fired to start a shooting war. Let's say no sam was fired. What would happen if a single NATO missile was fired (with for example the option to self destruct before hitting the target)? Now the WP troops would certainly open up. Again a shooting war with opening missiles being fired within seconds of each other with both sides accusing the other of firing first, which would happen in any case. I have a hard time not to see an air war preceding the ground war.

Siddhi said:
- 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.

The north german plain isn't really a plain at all. It's riddled with rivers, canals and streams. There are hills, some wooded land and plenty of urban centres. And very wet ground. If it is rainy, much of the ground would get 'swampy' to swampy to be of much use to heavy vehicles. In other words, while not as good defensive terrain as further south, it still offers plenty of options to defenders.

Siddhi said:
- 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.

Which is what I always thought too. With the end of the cold war not only Soviet plans started to surface. From some of these that appeared in germany it would seem the germans were in fact willing to go so far. Remember that demolition charges are very low yield with very little non local effects. They had about a dozen locations were these were called for. (If anyone can come up with some online references to these I'd be grateful since I don't have them myself).
The germans employed the strategy of forward defense (also well known). Can't do that without being ready to lay waste to that forward area... They knew that if they were succesful in that, it would/might save the area's behind from damage. In that view it makes sense.

Narwan

[Marcello]

"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."

Which requires digging hundreds of meters or kilometers of deep trenches.With the commonly available commercial equipment that is a very time consuming affair, not something that can be done on the fly. The only way such task can be carried out in a reasonable timeframe is with chain escavators, like the soviet PZM series. From what I have seen this isn't the sort of equipment that your typical local construction firm will generally have in the inventory.

"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."

But in reality many of the actions you are describing are actually construction activities. You are calling for building obstacles requiring extensive digging and earth moving. Such activities are actually very time consuming and as they would require damaging infrastructure, infringing private property etc. it would be unlikely that they would be carried out until the war was a sure thing.By then it would be too late to carry them out in an extensive manner.

"Well so did NATO, the germans in particular"

I have no doubt that they were prepared to blow up bridges,laying minefields (much faster than trench digging) and such. What I have a lot of reservations about is much of the rest, like blowing up off ramps and so on.If they were in the plans and the necessary preparations (pits for the demolition charges etc.) had been made, by any means tell me so. If they are just ideas being tossed around, then they are not very practical.

[Marcello]

"I believe that they full well realised that a weak response only calls the one thing you're trying to avoid over yourself."

Just because it makes sense in strategic terms that does not mean the political realities of the NATO countries would make it feasible.