Tactical nukes

[S2]

A.R. Reply

"I am damn glad those days are far behind me."

Concur. EAP and NAF messages measured an artillery officer more than any other single event in his development. Screw that up and you couldn't operate in a two-man control environment nor an FDC. End of your career.

I used to pray if things went totally ballistic that the commies would just crack an egg right atop my FDC. Living and fighting in that world would have been worse than the next life.

[kato]

Living and fighting in that world would have been worse than the next life.

We did drills for N/C observation posts during my service (in an NBC unit) in the late 90s. The general - serious - consensus for such posts was that if that new sun didn't immediately get you all rules would go out of the window. Bullet or atropine overdose.

[Chogy]

Do you guys think the attempts to equip and train troops to fight in an NBC environment was eye-candy, a band-aid to make everyone feel better? Was there even a small chance of conducting combat ops in a heavily contaminated area?

[T_igger_cs_30]

Do you guys think the attempts to equip and train troops to fight in an NBC environment was eye-candy, a band-aid to make everyone feel better? Was there even a small chance of conducting combat ops in a heavily contaminated area?

Hard to say, Chogy B & C was as much a deterrent as was N, well maybe not quite as much, but I think we all realised that once an area was totally contaminated, it made things difficult for both sides........ and always the one thing you could never control the wind............ definately not eye candy but in a major theatre of war, definately a last resort IMO.

Good question though.

[S2]

Chogy Reply

"Do you guys think the attempts to equip and train troops to fight in an NBC environment was eye-candy..."

Nope. They really, really expected us to survive and fight in a radioactive, persistent chemical contaminated battlefield.

What we'd be fighting over somewhat confuses me as you'd be talking the combined mass of the Warsaw Pact and NATO making an utter mess of things in central and western Europe. The numbers of civilian dead staggers my imagination in that world. The lives of those civilians who survived initial nuclear or chemical strikes even worse than a soldier's lot.

The possibility of families from Canada, U.S. and Great Britain getting home would be questionable. All would depend upon alert and evacuation times. That'd be on everybody's mind. German troops would be freaking about their families.

Ugly to the nth degree.

[Officer of Engineers]

Do you guys think the attempts to equip and train troops to fight in an NBC environment was eye-candy, a band-aid to make everyone feel better? Was there even a small chance of conducting combat ops in a heavily contaminated area?

I don't know, Colonel. The thing was that we expected the WarPac to charge across nuclear contaminated zones. They were more casualty tolerant than we were. And hence, we were obliged to defend in a nuclear contaminated zone.

Prayers were answered that we never had to find out.

[H Nelson]

"I am damn glad those days are far behind me."

I used to pray if things went totally ballistic that the commies would just crack an egg right atop my FDC.

Awesome line. I'm gonna steal it.

[H Nelson]

Preparing troops for a fight in an NBC environment was a critical part of our deterrence strategy. Herman Kahn developed the idea that a nuclear exchange is a fight for a relative advantage. The country that is left best able to survive post NUDETs is the "winner".

If Russia looked at us and said "Boy-oh-Boy Comrade! Those American troops will still fight after a nuclear exchange. Their civilians will still produce. They have stored food, and have emergency management and leadership facilities ready to take over. They even have plans to rapidly increase their population!" then we have decreased any advantage Russia could hope to have following a war.

Therefore, training troops to fight in a nuclear environment was more of a strategic consideration than a tactical one...

[Officer of Engineers]

If Russia looked at us and said "Boy-oh-Boy Comrade! Those American troops will still fight after a nuclear exchange. Their civilians will still produce. They have stored food, and have emergency management and leadership facilities ready to take over. They even have plans to rapidly increase their population!" then we have decreased any advantage Russia could hope to have following a war.

I don't think the Russians would be concerned how well we would be doing after an exchange. They would be too busy with their own sick and dying ... as would we.

[1979]

I don't think the Russians would be concerned how well we would be doing after an exchange. They would be too busy with their own sick and dying ... as would we.

Sir , it my understanding that soviet WW3 scenarios started with a nuclear strike on Poland by Nato forces, in order to disrupt the crossing of that area by their second echelon.

[Officer of Engineers]

They've misread us just as much as we've misread them. We didn't think about tossing nukes until being crossed the Rhine.

[kato]

Bit earlier. In the last exercises in the 80s, nukes would have been used at the point when the enemy approached Hamburg and Munich and breached the Fulda Gap. When the Rhine would be crossed France would have flattened Germany.

[Officer of Engineers]

When in the 80s? The Warsaw Pact adopted a defensive posture from mid-80s on in which they would abandon East Germany to lure NATO in and then to counter-attack from Poland.

[1979]

They've misread us just as much as we've misread them. We didn't think about tossing nukes until being crossed the Rhine.

It might shed some light on the way they intended to use theirs.
(i.e. nuking the european ports and airbases to disrupt Nato reinforcements arriving on the continent).

[Officer of Engineers]

They're still class protected in Moscow. The only two war plans we have is a 1960 Czech one and a Hungarian War Game just about the same era. We have only personal ancedotes about the abandoning of East Germany from mid-80s on but nothing on how the battlefield would be shaped. The only thing I can say is that what imagine the battlefield would be was completely different on how they see the battlefield.