Red Army = most effective force !

[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.

[Marek_Tucan]

It's similar to Czechoslovakia in 1938 - all bridges were prepared for demolition (in sense that there were picked places where to put them to have greatest effect, how large amount to put there and larger bridges got already prepared special "demolition chambers"). During the mobilisation, all that was needed was to proceed along the plans and place explosives where needed.

[Marcello]

I have no doubt about the bridges were set up for quick demolition. That is pretty basic.
What I have reservations about is the other stuff it has been talked about, such as demolishing the off-ramps etc. In South Korea they have massive concrete blocks ready to be dumped on the roads and tricks like that.But it is all prepared in advance and ready to be operated on short notice. Was something like that done in Germany? I might be wrong but not that I am aware of.

[Shan]

I believe there are many myths about the WP that still persist in the West. As Siddhi mentioned, it's important to distinguish between Category A, B and C units - and so on: it would be important to get some knowledge about the Soviet + WP doctrine and organization first - some 'dry' reading unless you're a real freak or you had officer training on that subject anyway, but I really appreciate my old copy of a manual on that subject - quite useful,then you know exactly what+ where TVD West was and so on, and dont have to rely on 3rd-hand sources or the over-rated western intelligence reports from the 80s that still persist on the internet... but such manuals aren't printed any more (I would guess), better get one on the flee market or via e-bay!

[baggypants]

Post deleted by baggypants