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with or without ERA or 120mm guns the Soviet mission vs the US was probalby never more than a holding action. The real invasion corridor was vs the BOAR/WGr/Dutch across the North German Plains. vs the much more restricted terrain and higher troop density vs the Americans along with modern artillery sub muntions Bavaria was pretty safe.
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Well, by the deployment patters of the Soviet Union's best tanks, the invasion would have occurred opposite of the U.S. V Corps, given that the Soviet Union deployed their best there and achieved even higher amounts of local material superiority.
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Really, are you sure? Prove it!
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Well, I will get you the name of that book that analyzes the situation very deeply.
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I mean sure they trained to fight in a WMD enviroment, and thier force structure and troop density sure seemed to be geared towards offnesive operations (armor heavy, lots of offensive engineering assets, mobile air defenses etc).
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Well, you misinterpreted what I said. I never inferred that their strategy wasn't offensive. In fact, the use of tactical nuclear weapons can be used offensively. The idea, of course, would be to use tactical nuclear or chemical weapons in order to clear passages which where their mechanization can pass through. I will have to get you the name of that book, but there are other examples that lead to the same conclusion - such as armor that was designed to survive nuclear strikes deep into NATO territory (ob. 219 specifically for Alaska). Of course, many of these designs were just prototypes (well, most likely, most of them were) - but it shows some side to the Soviet doctrine.
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But if you have an actual copy of thier war plans post it please.
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I will get yo the name of that book.
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It is the offical stance FIS that the USSR never really wanted to attack, let alone break through. Did the USSR really want to attack? That question is the single biggest mystery of the Cold War.
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Of course they didn't. What rational leader wants to start a nuclear war? What rational leader wants to bring the world to that brink? But that doesn't mean that contention plans were developed. I never said that the Soviets
wanted to attack - I just said what may have happened had they attacked.
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Kruchev reportedly told his commanders to stop mobalisation of the paratroopers becuase the American's were crazy and Nasser wasn't worth it.
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Khrushchev lost power to Brezhnev, who came close to nuclear war during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. There were important shifts in the Soviet Union's strategic thinking between the different premierships. You can't look at one and conclude a rule.
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In fact at every turn during the cold war when the Nuclear spectre raised its head it was the USSR that backed down.
They didn't risk war over Berlin, meekly accpeted nukes in Turkey, backed down in Cuba, left Nasser out to dry ect and so forth.
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Of course not. Fortunately, most Soviet leaders were rational. But you missed the point, or misconstrued it on purpose. Read below.
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So hwer eis the evidence that the USSR was committed to a policy of national suicide in order to reach the Rhine?
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I never said that the USSR wanted to invade Western Germany, in the first place. I never hinted that there were existing plans to launch an invasion. I merely supposed
if there was an invasion. There are many examples that can lead to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, even if the Soviets didn't really want to. Especially, if they felt threatened. Fortunately, they never did and they decided to back out when the going went hot. But, that doesn't rule out a potential invasion of Western Europe during drastic times.
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Likewise, while the US was prepared to use nukes when and where as needed, such release was in the hands of the German's on German soil.
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Well, more accurately, it was in the hands of NATO command in Europe. If NATO felt that the front was broken then I don't doubt that tactical nuclear weapons would have been used. I'm sure that the use of tactical nuclear weapons would have led to full fledge nuclear warfare had the Soviets not stopped the invasion right there.
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First off the Chally I's gun is not low velocity and holds the world record for long distance direct fire kills.
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It's not a low-velocity gun per sé. However, it is rifled. Rifled guns fire APFSDS at much lower velocities than smoothbore guns, and rifled guns also limit the length of the penetrator. These are the major reasons why the Challenger 2 is being fitted with Rheinmetall's 120mm L/55 smoothbore.
Long range penetration during the Gulf War didn't require high velocity given the targets they were engaging (a T-55).
In ODS it easily penetrated T-72's in excess of 3000M. Even allowing for decreased protection of monkey models the L11A5 could still core the T-72 in excess of 2000M.
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Secondly 500 Abrams, 1800 Leo's and 400+ Chieftans and Chally's backed by 3-8000 more tanks with 105's is more than a match defensively for the WGSF.
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I think you should take your own advice and stop looking at numbers. The general disparity in number was 2+:1, in favor of the Soviets. The
general disparity. I think that you, of all people, should understand that forces might be congregated in different fashions.
Local superiority might have been
much greater.
It seems that many NATO commanders at the time were not too sure that they could stop the Soviet Army if there was an attack without the use of nuclear weapons. This view is somewhat given in Richard Simpkin's
Tank Warfare (I think on Amazon you can purchase a copy for $500, if you're interested).
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The tiube fired AT-10 could not destroy either of the three big ones and that was the principle AT weapon of Soviet armor. The Missile also drastically reduced the R.P.M of Soviet tanks.
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Well, you could be right, but it's not insured that they would have used their tank launched CE missiles. According to
Soviet Gains in Armor/Antiarmor Shape US Army Master Plan, by Robert R. Ropelewski, the Soviet 125mm APFSDS at the time could penetrate all Western tanks except the Challenger and the M1A1HA, which was not deployed in large numbers at the time, until the very late 80s.
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Thirdly, becuase percived doctrine and past history indicated that the Red Army would apply sustained pressure via echelons to force a breakthrough, and not re-inforce defeat the actual numbers in play at any one time are much more balanced locally to a dept of about 24-36 hours
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They aren't specifically for the reason you stated. The material superiority of the Soviet Army allowed them to increase the number disparity in any sector of the front which they wished to achieve a local breakthrough. This has always been historically proven in all campaigns of the Red Army and Soviet Army during and after the Second World War. For example, the general number disparity on the Eastern Front in 1944 was around 2:1, yet the Red Army was able to achieve local numerical disparity of ~3:1 in some areas.
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Again the numbers don't tell the whole story. Many of those tanks were satalite nation or catagor B T-55 and T-62 units, and a few T-34/85 and T-10/IS-III/IIM. Also a signifigant minority of the more Modern T-64+ tanks were in SGSF and not readily availabe for use in Germany.
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Actually, all T-10s and heavy tanks had been withdrawn to the East. There were definitely no heavy tanks in Central Europe during the 80s. AFAIK, the ~800 T-34s still in use in the Warsaw Pact were not active service. All Soviet armor was up to date, and this was 7,000+ tanks (the Soviets alone had more armor than all of NATO in Central Europe). Poland had already begun producing their own T-72s with their own ERA (Erawa) and nations like Bulgaria were also getting large amounts of T-72s to replace their T-55s.
According to information I have, most T-64s were in Central Europe.
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ERA did not protect from high velcocity cannon fire, sub munitions, FASCAM, or air lauched HVATGM's like the Hellfire and Maverick.
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Well, you are making hasty generalizations. The Hellfire II was introduced in 1992 to defeat Soviet ERA. There were no tandem warhead Hellfires before then deployed, at all. Like I said, according to U.S. documents 80-90% of their anti-tank weapons were rendered ineffective. The first round designed to defeat Soviet ERA was the M829A3 which was not yet designed (they were on the M829).
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To be sure ERA added a new dimension but it did not radically alter the way of doing business. Don't go just by articles, go by reaction. When a real threat was perceived the west acted quickly.
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It didn't always react quickly. It took them around 7 years to widely deploy countermeasures against ERA on wide basis. These articles aren't stupid, and they have also noted historical trends of the slow response time of the West to respond to WP threats.
There are historical precedents.