The Third World War - The Untold Story (9 page)

1984 called seek and destroy armour, shortened into the not infelicitous little acronym SADARM. An artillery projectile exploding in an airburst releases sub-munitions, which then descend by parachute, swinging and scanning for hard targets. Their sensors emit millimetric wave signals and where there is a response (which would hardly come from anything but a tank or self-propelled gun) the sub-munition fires a charge through the top of it. Although a virgin weapon in 1985, these looked like being winners and V and VII US Corps took in the relatively small numbers available most gladly. The very high importance of early reduction in the numerical superiority of Soviet tanks fully justified the accelerated funding of this project in the early 1980s.

Artillery guns (as opposed to rocket equipments) were of course of the highest importance. Happily the Western allies had long agreed on a common calibre of 155 mm. A towed version of a British-German-Italian gun in this calibre (the FH-70) had already been operational for some years. What was needed was the self-propelled version of the same gun, the SP-70. Such of these as were in service in 1985 were expected to survive well on the battlefield and prove themselves to be agile and effective, the improved ammunition and range of up to 29 kilometres being most welcome. In far greater numbers, however, the familiar American-built SP M-109 and M-110 would still provide the main means of artillery fire-delivery in depth.

Dangerous though the numerical superiority of Warsaw Pact armour would be, its attrition was not the only task of the artillery. The traditional role of counter-battery fire, to reduce the effectiveness of the enemy’s artillery, would still have a high priority. It was to be expected that on both sides, after every engagement, guns would have to move to another site to avoid the enemy’s counter-bombardment. Location of gun position was with modern techniques too efficient to permit of sitting around. The calls for fire support that could be expected on FH-70, SP-70 and M-109 and M-110 guns, were bound to be heavy and might in the event far outweigh their ability to respond, demonstrating all too clearly NATO’s relative shortage of artillery.

The Soviet Union disposed of a heavy 122 mm mortar called the BM-21, which was capable of firing forty rockets either singly, or in groups, or in what is daintily described as ‘ripples’ in which one huge deafening and destructive impact is closely followed by another, and another. The 240 mm successor to this equipment was also in service by the summer of 1985. The huge quantity of fire that multiple rocket launchers can put down has enormous shock effect. The NATO response to the introduction of these Soviet multiple rocket systems was to develop a new American-German-British multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS), which fired two packs of six rockets, also singly or in ripples, out to a range of 40 kilometres. It was just as well that the first batteries of NATO’s multiple rocket launchers had been introduced in all Allied armies by 1984, giving troops some idea of the scale of bombardment to be expected. To experience this on the receiving end in complete surprise for the first time would be totally stunning.

Rivers and canals in the Federal Republic were developed, in the short time available, into the best possible obstacles. Bridge demolition chambers had been built into new bridges in the Federal Republic until the mid-seventies, but since then their design had incorporated no easy system for destruction. The engineer effort involved in preparing the demolition of all sizeable river crossings was enormous. Much more could have been done if even modest funds had previously been devoted to the development of more rapid demolition systems. As it was, many major bridges had to be left intact.

Soviet tanks were at one time required to have a swimming capability but this turned out to be a total failure and the USSR had no amphibious tanks in service in 1985. All types of Soviet main battle tank could, however, be waterproofed and fitted with a snorkel for air intake. Their self-propelled (SP) guns and armoured personnel carriers were expected to swim.

Where recent Soviet experience would be likely to stand them in good stead would be in the use of helicopters. Their MI-24
Hind
types, the
Hind
D and
Hind
E particularly, which had been developed as gunships, that is to say as flying weapons platforms, had given them in the occupation of Afghanistan the most valuable possible experience and now provided formidable weapon systems. A variety of weapon fittings had evolved
(Hind
D now carried a turreted gun) in addition to heavier protection, while in the development of their tactics the Soviets had made great strides. These two really powerful gunships would certainly prove to be more battleworthy and far less vulnerable than the MI-24
Hind
A, which was still in service, from which they had been developed. Their pilots had been trained to operate without friendly ground support. Their casualties would be numerous, that was certain, but the effectiveness of this new highly-developed instrument of war was likely to be reaffirmed at every major obstacle and whenever the pace of the armoured battle began to flag. The pattern to be expected was that
Hind
attacks would probably be followed up with landings, in at least company strength, from
Hip
troop-carrying helicopters, of which MI-8 -
Hip
E - was a late assault development. The deep penetration of sorties such as this would naturally cause commanders to worry about disruption in the rear but the real successes that these helicopter operations would seek to achieve would lie in the maintenance or renewal of forward momentum in the mainly armoured attack.

Would the helicopter now be taking over from the tank, as the tank’s most lethal enemy? This was by no means certain. What had to be ensured, if war came, was that the
Hind
should not be allowed to become the undisputed owner of low-level airspace. The helicopter did look, however, like laying a claim to be the tank’s heir presumptive.

Other helicopters whose performance reinforced this claim, in addition to
Hind,
were the now well-established US UH-1
Cobras
but even more the new AH-64
Apache
with its
Hellfire,
fire-and-forget laser-guided anti-tank missile. Outright dogfights between opposing helicopter forces on any scale would probably be avoided, since neither adversary had a truly effective helicopter air-to-air weapon, though both sides were proceeding hastily in the early 1980s with promising developments. With equipment in service the best results would come where imagination was most actively applied. It was very likely that those Western allies who possessed relatively few helicopters would tend to hold their precious fleets in hand for special situations while those with more extensive assets could use them from the outset more boldly in the forward areas. The British Army
Lynx,
introduced in the early 1980s and fitted with the TOW (tube-launched optically-tracked wire-guided) missile for anti-armour use, would tend, for example, to be kept out of contact until the Soviet attacking forces had closed right up. The
Lynxes,
which might be said to be more vulnerable than the gunship helicopters, could play a highly important part in dealing with a well-defined enemy breakthrough. By hovering low and using the full 4,000-metre range of the tow missile,
Lynx
would be able to keep out of range of enemy air defence and out of sight of ground-to-ground weapons, while still delivering an effective attack. The high mobility of these aerial vehicles and the lethality of tow would make them a natural counter-attack force. The use of scatterable mines (or RDM - remotely-delivered mines) to delay and distract the attention of Soviet armour could improve the kill rate of
Lynx
and other anti-armour helicopters considerably. The United States’ helicopter force would work in much the same way as this, but with deeper forays beyond the forward line of troops, in conjunction with fixed-wing strike aircraft such as the A-10
Thunderbolt.
Attack upon the second echelon would be of high importance.

The Franco-German HOT (high-subsonic optically teleguided) anti-tank missile system, used in the helicopters of both France and the FRG, with a range from 75 to 4,000 metres and sufficiently massive penetration to defeat any known tank in service in the mid-eighties, could not fail to make a valuable addition to the NATO anti-tank armoury.

The part likely to be played by rotary-wing aircraft has been stressed here because of its intimate association with the land battle. A truer air war could also be expected to range widely and deeply, with 2 and 4 ATAF (Allied Tactical Air Forces) initially intent on winning the air battle in the face of greater numbers of aircraft and of really formidable Warsaw Pact air defence. The opening high explosive and chemical attack on NATO airfields could expect success to the extent that, delivered with surprise, it would leave the Western allies with somewhat reduced resources and less flexibility. Defence against chemical warfare would severely reduce the efficiency of personnel and increase turn-round time on airfields. Shelters had been hardened, however, and alert procedures improved to ensure the survival of as many as possible of the aircraft attacked on the ground.

Interdiction, wherever possible, and attrition of enemy forces in depth would form the major offensive role of the Allied air forces, with the ground forces getting relatively little close support in the early stages except in cases of extreme urgency. The devastating tank-busting capability of the US A-10
Thunderbolt,
though its full exploitation invited uncomfortably high losses, would be especially effective in these emergency situations, as well as when working with anti-tank helicopters in seeking out and destroying the Soviet armour, as is described in the next chapter.

In its ground forces the United States had by the summer of 1985 replaced many of its M-113 APC with the new
Bradley
M-2 infantry fighting vehicle. The
Bradley
M-2, which was not just a new ‘battle taxi’ but a true fighting machine, could make a world of difference since it gave each squad its own tow missile, to be fired from under the shield of armour, and for close-in protection a 25 mm electrically-fired
Bushmaster
gun capable of destroying light armour and firing a high-explosive anti-personnel round as well. The squad also had the
Dragon
medium-range ATGW (anti-tank guided weapon). The infantry could not yet be said to be a match for armour but it could certainly now give a better account of itself under armoured attack than before.

If there was one area of almost desperate deficiency in Allied Command Europe (ACE) in the middle 1980s it was in air defence. Overall air defence planning in NATO only began to take real shape at the beginning of the eighties with the formulation of the Air Defence Planning Group’s programme. This was to take in all air command and control (both offensive and defensive), NATO airborne early warning, NATO IFF (identification friend or foe), the multi-functional information distribution system (MIDS) and air defence weapons. In a programme initiated in 1980, intended to be implemented over fifteen years, it was sad, if inevitable, that little progress had been made in the five years before the war. NATO looked like going to war with air defences of very uneven capability which cried out, as with so much else in NATO, for standardization.

Medium- and high-level missile air defence in ACE was still provided by
Hawk
(homing-all-the-way killer) and
Nike. Patriot,
a far superior system to either, could probably have replaced both, operating (as the sales talk put it) ‘from treetop level to very high altitude’. It had proved expensive to develop and was not available in time to be generally deployed in Europe before the outbreak of war, though it was just coming into service in early 1985. Its absence would be felt. At lower levels, protection was afforded by
Rapier.
The new type of tracked
Rapier
system introduced in the early eighties enormously enhanced air defence in both Northern and Central army groups in the Central Region. The very low-level cover provided by the American man-portable
Redeye
(in British and Canadian formations by
Blowpipe),
all too sparsely spread, would leave vulnerable points too often totally exposed.
Stinger,
a US shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapon, began to supersede
Redeye
in 1981 and was generally in service in USAREUR in 1985. It used passive infra-red (IR) homing, the missile operating independently after initial arming and launch by the operator. This was a great step forward in low-level air defence. Among NATO allies the Federal Republic of Germany was the first to adopt
Stinger
but others followed. It was in wide (but unhappily not general) use in the Central Region in 1985. The US, German and Dutch formations had air defence weapons not greatly dissimilar from the Soviet ZSU-23-4 radar-controlled anti-aircraft gun. The US divisional air defence system (DIVADS) offered promise and the German SP armoured anti-aircraft system
Gepard (Cheetah),
with its twin 35 mm guns, was costly but might prove its value against air attack, even at $4 million per copy. One advantage to NATO was that Soviet pilots had neither the equipment nor the training to fly quite as low as those of 2 and 4 ATAF. They would therefore be more exposed to earlier radar detection and subsequent attack.