The Third World War: August 1985 Page 15
An accurate tally of air strength is therefore not easy, because of its inherent flexibility, but, taking ground-based fighter aircraft as the main yardstick, NATO deployed for operations in the critical central sector — excluding French forces — some 2,800 aircraft, compared with approximately 4,500 deployed by the Warsaw Pact. This numerical disparity had long presented a problem and still did. It was a problem compounded by the relative ease of reinforcement enjoyed by the Warsaw Pact, by an insufficiency of forward airfields on the Allied side, and by some difficulties in inter-operability, caused by the variety of different aircraft in use in NATO air forces.
There had, however, been a marked all-round improvement in NATO tactical air strength in the previous few years. Several first-class new aircraft had been introduced, embodying the most up-to-date technology. For the air superiority role the American F-15 was better than any other fighter, both in its performance and in its armament. It was admirably complemented by the lighter F-16. Both were greatly assisted in their task by the ability of AWACS (airborne warning and control system), belatedly introduced in the 1970s, to detect intruding aircraft and control the operation of our own. For strike missions the Tornado, with its ultra-low flying capability, presented the Warsaw Pact with severe problems, as did the Jaguar and the smaller AlphaJet and Hawk ground-attack fighters. The adoption of increasing numbers of aircraft developed and built in co-operation by two or more allies was beginning to give more flexibility to NATO air operations, with a higher degree of inter-operability.
The quality of the new aircraft was more than matched by the weapon systems they carried, tailored to what were seen to be the essential tasks of stopping the Soviet tanks and cutting off the flow of immediate reinforcements to the battle area. Precision-guided weapons, cluster munitions and the all-important electronic aids were given great emphasis.
The decision by the United Kingdom to provide once more a proper defence of its own airspace, described in detail in Chapter 19, helped the tactical air forces to solve two of the problems mentioned above: first, it provided protected airfields that enabled aircraft to be diverted to as well as based in the United Kingdom, thus easing the operational difficulties posed by an insufficiency of airfields; second, it enabled reinforcement by fighter squadrons from the United States to be carried out more safely, taking advantage of the steps that the United States had put in train to make her large reserves of aircraft rapidly available.
The Soviet Air Force had, of course, been increasing its own ground-attack and deep strike and interdiction capability for some years, which posed severe air defence problems for the NATO forces, ground and air. Furthermore, the Soviet Union’s own dense air defence made the task of NATO aircraft much more difficult. Despite this, NATO air commanders had some confidence that the quality and versatility of their aircraft, the edge that their weapon systems and electronic warfare capability gave them, and the higher training standards of NATO airmen, would all go a long way to redress the numerical imbalance with which they had to contend.
A very important change in the command structure of NATO air forces had been the setting up, under the Central Region, of a Commander Allied Air Force Central Europe (COMAAFCE) in 1976. This greatly increased the flexibility of the Allied air forces and enormously enhanced their effectiveness.
It was technology, however, that was the principal key to the marked improvements made to NATO forces in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Weapons systems were now more effective and more versatile than they had ever been and tactical concepts and organizations had been improved to make the best use of them.
When the new NATO strategy of ‘flexible response’, introduced in the middle to late 1960s, was first discussed, it signalled the wish by the United States, in the face of her own increased strategic nuclear vulnerability, to have more defence options in Europe than an early recourse to the use of nuclear weapons. Her European allies were initially reluctant to downgrade the nuclear element in deterrence — seeing this as the important link between the United States and the European battlefield — and unwilling to improve their conventional forces to the level that the new strategy demanded. This reluctance persisted generally until nearly a decade later, when concern at the steady and continuous increase in Soviet military capacity slowly began to make itself felt, first among conservatives, then almost right across the whole spectrum of public opinion. The steady erosion of the military balance in Europe, coupled with an assertive and opportunistic Soviet foreign policy, notably in Africa, led by the late 1970s to the growth in almost every Allied country of a political climate more receptive to the claims of defence spending.
This new mood of caution towards the Soviet Union (following as it did one of rather euphoric expectations about detente, now disappointed) had coincided with a sudden surge in military technology, both nuclear and conventional. In the field of theatre nuclear weapons, the enhanced radiation weapon (the ‘neutron bomb’) offered the West the possibility of suddenly nullifying the Soviet tank advantage while inflicting less civilian casualties than would be caused by nuclear weapons in the existing armoury. At the same time new, very-small-yield nuclear weapons (‘mini-nucs’) began to be introduced and others were modernized. The possibility of basing deterrence primarily on nuclear weapons once more began to find adherents — though not, it must be said, among governments, who were treading warily. This was partly because there had also been rapid advances in conventional weapons technology. Dramatic improvements in accuracy of attack and miniaturization of components and vastly increased explosive yields (such as from fuel-air weapons — the so-called concussion bombs) made it possible to contemplate engaging with conventional weapons targets (such as aircraft shelters, that could hitherto only have been destroyed with nuclear weapons.
The debate over strategy — and with it over the allocation of resources — continued to a varying extent for some years, and in a sense a compromise was gradually adopted: the strategy of flexible response was retained and new technology was used to enhance the strength of the conventional forces, but the theatre nuclear armoury was modernized as well, on the theory that if the new nuclear weapons were known to be more effective and thus more usable the Soviet Union would be less likely to provoke their use. So both aspects of deterrence, conventional and nuclear, were strengthened.
The maintenance or restoration of the Western technological edge was accepted by all Allied governments as the primary means of stopping the military balance from deteriorating further. The ability of the NATO defences to hold against attack from massive Soviet tank forces, possibly able to attack with warning measured in hours rather than days (sometimes termed a ‘standing start’, to denote an attack that could be made without the need for reinforcement), was also seen to be reliant on the use of technology, but to require improvements in readiness as well. With this increased readiness should go an increase in the number of reinforcements available, largely through making better use of reserves.
With the assistance of a judicious push from the new Carter Administration in 1977, the NATO Allies began to stir themselves. Some weapons, such as ATGW and SAM, had proved so effective in the October War of 1973 in the Middle East that the need for them was self-evident. They began to come out of factories in Europe and the United States in increasing numbers and to be bought by every Allied country. More advanced weapons, such as PGM (precision-guided missiles) for air attack against a variety of targets, found their way first into United States air forces, then into others. The cruise missile, with its astonishingly accurate guidance and relative cheapness, caught the imagination, both for its possibilities in the theatre conventional role and as a potential nuclear weapons carrier, perhaps — in some cases — instead of existing QRA (quick-reaction alert) aircraft. Besides all this, great efforts went, with rather less publicity, into esoteric electronics such as ECM (electronic counter-measures) and ECCM (electronic counter-counter-measures). The miniaturization of electronic components made possible impr
ovements in weapons and techniques (in command, control and intelligence gathering and dissemination, for example) that had been unthinkable a few short years before. In the innovative capability of the Western electronics industry lay the ability to keep technologically ahead of the Soviet Union, which was handicapped by its more cumbersome system of development and the absence of commercial competition in a collectivized, state-controlled industry.
Hand in hand with interest in new weapons went thinking, both evolutionary and revolutionary, about the new tactical organizations, or changes in old ones, that would be needed to get the best out of them. All the major Allies experimented with new divisional establishments. The United States and Germany made them larger; Britain and France made them smaller. All aimed to get more firepower for less men. Similarly, studies were made of the possibilities of using the new small but powerful weapons to give reserve forces a strength and mobility they had never had before, so that they could be deployed to give defence in depth and backing to the heavier regular forces in the forward area.
Thus, in the late 1970s the overhauling of the NATO defences so long sorely needed was put in train at last. It was often done hurriedly, sometimes reluctantly, occasionally without sufficient thought, and was not in the event enough wholly to deter the Soviet Union. But it happened, and was to prove the West’s salvation. The spur was the lengthening shadow of the Soviet forces in Europe. As so often before, the Soviet Union proved the best recruiting officer for NATO.
There were, of course, still weaknesses. Two of the most serious lay, as always, in the overall numerical superiority of the forces deployed against the West, and in the low level of standardization in the equipment of its own forces. The first, giving the Warsaw Pact an overall advantage in the Central Region which (though it can be variously calculated) was certainly not less than two and a half or three to one, was made more serious by the ability of the attacker to choose his own points of attack and develop there, at will, a very much greater relative advantage. The second stemmed from the understandable tendency of free and independent countries both to consult their own economic interests in the procurement of military hardware and to reflect their own military philosophy in its design. The Chieftain and the Leopard, for example, were both very good tanks, but of different kinds. The XM-1, newer than either, was different again.
Ideally all armies should have had the same type of tank or truck or gun. Such a solution was rare. Instead the Alliance put its immediate efforts into what it called inter-operability — the ability to operate with each other; to have common radio frequencies, for example, if it were not possible to have the same sets; to have the same calibre guns and rifles, using the same ammunition, if not the same weapons. Much was achieved in this direction, notably with artillery and tank guns, in fuel and in other supplies. Operational procedures were not as difficult to harmonize as policies in the procurement of hardware, and NATO had gone far, in spite of language difficulties, in developing a common practice. But they were still, in this very important respect, some way behind their enemies.
CHAPTER 13: The Warsaw Pact Forces
In the Soviet Union at the end of the year 1984 there were rather more than 4 1/2 million men and women under arms. The ground forces furnished 170 divisions, of which half were now always in the category 1 state of readiness, that is to say, not less than 90 per cent complete in personnel, fully armed and equipped up to field service scales, and with a complete provision of all supplies (including fuel and ammunition) for four days’ sustained action. Forty-five divisions (twice as many as in the sixties, though not all in category 1) were deployed close to the Sino-Soviet border and some thirty more in the southern regions of the USSR.
Of more immediate concern to NATO were the thirty-two Soviet divisions — sixteen tank and fifteen motorized, with at least one (and perhaps more) airborne, all in category 1 — stationed in European countries of the Warsaw Pact. These formed four groups of forces — army commands, in effect — one each in the German Democratic Republic (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, or GSFG), Poland (the Northern Group), Czechoslovakia (the Central Group) and Hungary (the Southern Group), containing in total over half a million men and 11,000 tanks, with some 8,000 artillery pieces and over 1,000 integral aircraft. The Sixteenth Air Army, also deployed in the GDR, represented no more than the spearhead of the available tactical air resources. In the western USSR were seventy more divisions (a third of them tank divisions), of which only a few were kept constantly in category 1, but from which further reinforcement was readily available.
In addition to the Soviet forces in Central Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries in the Northern Tier (the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Poland) deployed a dozen tank and a score of motorized divisions of their own, all organized, armed and trained on the Soviet model, while in the Southern Tier (Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) the one tank and five motorized divisions of the Hungarian Army were also available. The military importance of Hungary in the Pact, it may be said in passing, had recently lain mostly in its exclusion from the Central Front in any discussions with the West on theatre force reductions. Forces to be withdrawn from the Central Front could therefore be conveniently retained intact by simply moving them into Hungary. It was in large part this (among other reasons, which suggested that there was little point in continuing so unprofitable a dialogue) which had caused discussions on reductions eventually to be allowed to lapse.
Although the armed forces of the Pact satellites were organized on Soviet lines and similarly armed and equipped, with an identical operational doctrine, there existed in the Pact something less than the 100 per cent standardization and inter-operability which was sometimes, not entirely correctly, envied in the West. There were language difficulties for a start, but perhaps more important were divergences in equipment. These became more marked as newer types were introduced into Soviet divisions but by no means always into those of other Pact countries. There was also no universal mobilization system in the Warsaw Pact, any more than there was in the Atlantic Alliance. It must also be emphasized that the Warsaw Pact, as such, embodied no war-fighting structure comparable to that of NATO, and thus lacked both some of NATO’s strengths and some of its weaknesses. The forces of component countries of the Warsaw Pact were regarded — and used — as integral parts of the forces of the Soviet Union.
Up to the outbreak of hostilities the question of the political reliability of the forces of the satellites was much debated in the West. It was to become clear from the outset, however, that there could be no doubt at all as to the loyalty to Moscow to be found in Warsaw Pact forces at the higher and medium levels of command. The attitude of the non-military masses in these countries and the response to higher military command at lower levels of responsibility, not least among the rank and file, was to prove a different matter.
The quantitative level of forces facing the Central Region of NATO in 1984 had not greatly increased over the past few years. Nevertheless, even with the recent increases in the strengths of Allied in-place forces, there was still an immediate superiority in Pact divisions of almost three to one. There was also on the Soviet side, it need hardly be added, the capability to concentrate swiftly with little warning, resulting in a very marked superiority at chosen points. This, according to Allied expectation, could be as high as twenty or thirty to one in each of four or five separate thrusts. A critical element in the battle was to be, as had been expected, the comparative success rate of Pact penetration as against the speed of Allied regrouping to meet the main thrusts once these had been identified. In the north of NATO’s Central Region in northern Germany, where Allied forces were weaker, lateral movement was easier. In the south, where Allied forces were stronger, it was more difficult. In both sectors the choice of thrust lines for the attacker was to some extent constrained by the nature of the ground. The threat of an overpowering concentration of strength by an assailant with the initiative nevertheless continued to be, as it had been from the beginning, a major
preoccupation on the Allied side. It was here, in Allied thinking, that air power had a crucial part to play.
More important than any recent increases in Warsaw Pact strengths were innovations and improvements in equipment and important development in warlike practice. These went hand in hand and should be treated together.
In the mid-sixties Soviet military thinking, while recognizing that warfare would continue to be dominated by nuclear weapons, began to move away from the concept of land operations as inevitably and inescapably nuclear from the outset and to consider the possibility of an initial conventional phase. There thus began the study of what has been described as the non-nuclear variant. At no time had it been accepted in the USSR that nuclear and non-nuclear operations could be distinguished in kind and that a ‘firebreak’, as some called it in the West, could be conjured up between them. All operations of war, in the Soviet view, lay in a continuum. The concept of a nuclear ‘deterrent’ which could ‘fail’, with its ‘failure’ followed by active warfare, was foreign to their thinking. All known weapons of war were available for use as policy dictated and occasion demanded. Nevertheless, it began to be accepted that a major war might open on conventional lines and that non-nuclear operations could easily be prolonged.
In any case, the massive application of armoured strength remained for the Soviet Union the primary means of resolution on the battlefield. Up to the mid-sixties the tank was still the trump card, whether the game was to be played with nuclear weapons or not. But a new complication developed. As early as 1964 Khrushchev was shocked to see how vulnerable the tank had become to guided missiles. Within a few years it was clear that Soviet generals had acknowledged a qualitative change in armoured warfare. The Arab-Israeli War of 1973 aroused a great concern for the future of the tank and triggered off an urgent search for means of neutralizing anti-tank defences. The Minister of Defence, Marshal Grechko, himself took a leading part in it.