Considering articles like these...

>1985
soviets have an advantage in armor, army size, medium/long range missiles, and AA weapons

NATO has advantage in army training, defenders terrain (hills, mined areas, first spot-shoot, et al), night fighting equipment, current-gen fighters, infantry-portable AT weapons, and CAS

soviet tactics would be to demolish runways close to the front to deny air superiority using their missiles, followed by a mechanized thrust with their superior offensive mobility and tank advantage using their dense AA to further deny NATO airpower

NATO strategy would be to slowly retreat, inflicting as much damage to the soviets before withdrawing to a superior defensive line, and blowing bridges and other defensive tactics to continuously stall for time
this would bog down the soviet attack and try and remove their momentum

it would likely devolve into stalemate over time, with neither side able to decisively take down the other
however, vast swathes of west germany and france would be in russian hands, making it a slight russian victory
this assumes nukes arent deployed, because if they are, then no one wins

the US marines operating out of japan might take some soviet pacific ports and cities, they would be unable to affect the battle in western europe due to siberia being in the way, preventing a true 2-front war

The soviets were unlikely to ever be able to consolidate any gains and any conquered territories would just increase their already huge logistic problems.

Considering how many peace living hippy shitstains there are in the west, how effective would NATO mikitary have actually been?

The Bundeswehr at least had a remarkable professionalism and was generally quite a decent military from what I remember hearing.

The problem with the soviet model of war is that they didnt have the population advantage. They were outnumbered 2.4:1, and their only hope was that either they could take continental Europe quickly and the rest of NATO would sue for peace or that NATO countries wouldnt tolerate the casualties and thus would give up. This was entirely wrong. They had no chance of taking continental Europe before the rest of NATO could mobilize thanks to forward deployed tactical nukes. Further, they had no chance of the NATO countries not accepting high casualties because NATO fully expected and was prepared for the war to go nuclear if the soviets attacked conventionally, and simply put there is no amount of conventional casualties that compare to all out nuclear war.

Problem is that by this time NATO had PGMs. The jig was up as was blatantly displayed in the gulf war. PGMs and air land battle has changed the face of war. In fact the only groups that have had any success at all against it are those irregular units which blend in to the local populace and use small unit hit and run and ambush attacks exclusively. Large formations get blown up before they can do anything militarily thanks to those PGMS.

>soviets have an advantage in armor, army size, medium/long range missiles, and AA weapons
BS, especially on the AA weapons. There is no better AA then air superiority fighters. Guess which side has the best one? Oh and NATO had a lot more of them then the soviets did.

As sad as it is, the soviets attacking into the teeth of dug in armored divisions (which had better tanks btw) supported by better equipment, a massive air advantage, massed artillery, minefields just gets them slaughtered. Because if even just one portion of their attack plan doesn't work out exactly as planned, they lose. Badly.

>including civilians
Way too double your figures

By the end of the war the Soviets actually had reasonable K/Ds once they got there shit together, especially considering the fact they were on the offense against a well motivated and capable enemy.

Also the Zurg rush meme is a gross oversimplification of Soviet strategy, they had a bit more tactical finesse then they're given credit for and made good use of recon and intel quite frequently. Not to say there wasn't plenty of times they were incredibly incompetent but that's to be expected with such a large army with varying levels of organisation and leadership.

>Seems like an extreme thing to do just for the hell of it.
what is propaganda?

>defenders terrain
pre-sighted with artillery. Soviets wargamed this and concluded that firing from fixed positions was a waste. Its why all their tanks had entrenching tools so they can dig up fresh positions every 12 hours or so.

>night fighting equipment
Most fighting vehicles had IR equipment, while night vision devices were distributed to troops, particularly DMs. On the average these devices were a generation behind but its nothing groundbreaking in comparison to actual thermal imagers which the US wouldn't field in numbers until into the very tail end of the CW.

>infantry-portable AT weapons
Has poor effectiveness on the open battlefield. Aiming one from your foxhole is simple enough, doing so while under incessant artillery barrage (you can get concussed by a 155 mm shell exploding from as far as 300 m) is another matter entirely.

>NATO strategy would be to slowly retreat
The fighting retreat is amongst the hardest of stratagems to implement without turning into a rout. The enemy only has to get lucky once and penetrate your defensive line and suddenly units are in panic. There are reserves sure, but the Soviets were aiming for a penetration through the broad front. And even if Airland Battle was that good and US technology that great, other sectors don't employ the same doctrine and don't enjoy the same technology.

Soviet intelligence was top tier. They had infiltrated the top of the Heer and the Nazi party and were telling Stalin the exact time and date of operation barbarossa.... he ignored them.

The main problem with the NATO's position at the start is that it isn't setup for a massive offensive across a broad front. You want defence in depth, as much depth as you can allow, but political considerations meant that most bases were pretty much spitting distances of the front lines and at high risk of becoming overrun. You also want a mobile defence - not possible given that your enemy has more maneuver formations than you by a few times. Lastly, NATO reinforcements would always arrive later, and fewer in numbers than Soviet reinforcements.

>The problem with the soviet model of war is that they didnt have the population advantage. They were outnumbered 2.4:1
Wouldn't matter since the conflict would be decided before 6 months at the most.

>and their only hope was that either they could take continental Europe quickly and the rest of NATO would sue for peace or that NATO countries wouldnt tolerate the casualties and thus would give up.
Even if they just kept up the slowest rate of advance against Germany back in WW2, that still leaves them steamrolling past NATO positions by a month.

>Problem is that by this time NATO had PGMs. The jig was up as was blatantly displayed in the gulf war. PGMs and air land battle has changed the face of war. In fact the only groups that have had any success at all against it are those irregular units which blend in to the local populace and use small unit hit and run and ambush attacks exclusively. Large formations get blown up before they can do anything militarily thanks to those PGMS.
Nonsense. Look at Allied Force. Complete aerial superiority, a very high allocation of force than can be expected in a CW scenario, and much better technology, and yet they only inflicted minimal damage to the Serbian Ground Forces defended only by a couple batteries of outdated crap. The Serbs were also actively employing their ground forces in several offensives during this time as well.

the M47 dragon and the famous TOW missile are definitely very effective and would definitely be able to help blunt soviet assualts

>Problem is that by this time NATO had PGMs. The jig was up as was blatantly displayed in the gulf war. PGMs and air land battle has changed the face of war. In fact the only groups that have had any success at all against it are those irregular units which blend in to the local populace and use small unit hit and run and ambush attacks exclusively. Large formations get blown up before they can do anything militarily thanks to those PGMS.
Also consider the scenario then: you have NATO airpower fending off attacks from Soviet airpower, which is no slouch, while Soviet missile brigades are hammering your airbases, all the while you have to provide vital CAS, which couldn't be done with all these nasty SAMs and AAAs that have to be SEAD/DEADed. That's a fuckton of jobs in a very short time period. Planes have to do maintenance as well or they fall off from attrition. How the fuck are you going to generate the sorties needed to evaporate even a Soviet division that has close to a thousand vehicles?

>BS, especially on the AA weapons. There is no better AA then air superiority fighters. Guess which side has the best one? Oh and NATO had a lot more of them then the soviets did.
Ground SAMs and AAAs can stay on overwatch for days on end. Your jet can only do that in 8 hour shifts with refueling for 2-3 days max alpha, and then it has to go into the shops for repairs with at least an equivalent hour spent flying in repairs. Your jet can also fire a couple missiles at most - an equivalent value SAM battery can shit out dozens of missiles.

I'm not dissing on their capability. I'm skeptical on the infantry grunt being able to withstand an artillery bombardment. Most successful applications of the ATGM didn't have their users under heavy artillery fire. If you can point out at least one occassion I'd be happy to change my mind.

>bases were pretty much spitting distances of the front lines
Yeah this is true; however, to say that they'd be swamped is highly unlikely, given the sheer amount of ordinance the soviets would be facing.

>You also want a mobile defence - not possible given that your enemy has more maneuver formations than you by a few times.
Is absolutely incorrect. That is in fact exactly the time it is most important for you to be mobile. And just because your opponent has more maneuver troops doesn't mean they have any quality at all to them. We saw how soviet maneuver troops fared against the chechens. The problem is that because of the centralized command structure of the soviet units, when they encounter an equally mobile opposing force which gives movement discretion to frontline troops, the soviets are always a step or two behind.

>Wouldn't matter since the conflict would be decided before 6 months at the most.
Bull. The soviets never showed that they could advance against military opposition at such a rate. Especially one which has a extremely well built defensive grid and a technological advantage.

>Even if they just kept up the slowest rate of advance against Germany back in WW2, that still leaves them steamrolling past NATO positions by a month.
Who says they manage to advance at all? The 1985 soviets had little to no combat experience, facing a foe which had massive amounts of combat experience (thank you Vietnam) as well as a doctrine and force built entirely to counter all the soviet advantages.

>Look at Allied Force.
Prevented the Serbians from using their massed mechanized troops in the open. Prevented them from using their airforce to support their ground troops. Forced the Serbians to disperse their massed formations. Crippled the Serbian logistics to the point they could not advance against light infantry. Forced the Serbians to surrender. Seems like it worked quite effectively.

Oh yeah, fun part I forgot to mention about the serbian propoganda about NATO's intervention doing nothing. That means that the kosovo light infantry militas flat out beat the Serbian military which was 5x bigger, had a fully mechanized force and an airforce. So either NATO crushed the serbs, or the serbs are complete and utter crap at war.

>while Soviet missile brigades are hammering your airbases
possibly, but as we have seen cratering runways is a very short time the airfield is out of action, and those missles dont have the accuracy necessary to take out the HAS's, therefore most likely the NATO airforces keep operating as expected.

>Soviet airpower, which is no slouch
Oh, but soviet airpower is a massive slouch. Their aircraft have terrible records with their victories coming almost exclusively against other soviet made aircraft or civilian craft (all Mig-29 kills all Su-27, most Mig-25 and Mig-23 kills)

That said the first few days of the conflict it would be massively chaotic and exciting in the air.

>Ground SAMs and AAAs can stay on overwatch for days on end.
If they do that they die. The only way to keep them alive is to turn them off; however, when they are off they cannot be shooting down aircraft. As was shown by allied force, a SAM network which operates under proper soviet doctrine (repositioning constantly, never radiating for more than a few minutes, etc.) is entirely unable to prevent enemy aircraft from doing their thing.

>an equivalent value SAM battery can shit out dozens of missiles.
At which point it is completely out of operation until a whole new shipment of missiles reaches it. Which is next to impossible when aircraft are interdicting logistical structures and shipments.

IADS, SAMs, AAA are inherently a losing strategy because they are slower, significantly more exposed (planes dont have to worry about motors, etc.), and constrained by the radar horizon which aircraft can and do exploit.

Was actually a thing the soviets did until 1985 i think. I think you underestimate the heavy focus the soviets put on the deep battle mentality.

Having so much shit behind the lines makes any recon vehicle think twice about breaking through the first line, as they will just find another line advanding 2-3km behind the first one, and another one, each being part of the massive reserve pool local officers could call on. This doctrine is literally overwhelming force, but you need a lot of support infrastructure for a lot of equipment. Hence, the soviets stuck with transport trains even during the offense, as there was literally no substitute for 2000 tonnes of supplies being moved around at once.

Keep in mind this was a military institutional entity that could call upon entire armies in reserve within a week. Cars and trucks won't cut it.

They managed to supply Leningrad by rail - rail built on lake ladoga's ice

That is not how deep battle works at all. First it is a large scale strategic doctrine, not a tactical level single vehicle type doctrine. Second, it is not wave after wave of man power, rather it is an attack all across the front, with massive reserves on standby. The reserves are then deployed to the axis that are advancing. These continue their advances deep into the enemy rear (hence deep battle) The idea is to penetrate your opponents lines by having a centrally controlled reserve force that is deployed to whichever locations your troops are successfully advancing. It is a very easy to learn strategy and rather effective, so long as the communications to and from the front lines are clear and open. If those get shut down or then central command bombed, then it sputters to a halt. Also if the enemy knows you are using this strategy it can be taken advantage of quite easily by intentionally giving way and thus allowing them to advance directly into preprepared kill boxes, but this requires significant amounts of training and coordination to pull off.

Attached: deep battle.png (1283x1134, 68K)

An article in the NYT by Uber lib Les Aspin saying how the Soviets aren't as tough as they look and saying we're overspending on defense... Color me surprised.

I had a friend in the Red Army in the 80s. A dream duty station was East Germany, lol. He qualified with the AK by taking two shots at a sand berm. He said the chechnyans were a mob in the army going by their own rules and would kill you without blinking if you even looked at them wrong. It was a big treat to get white bread on Sundays. Overall it sounded like a great military experience.

Has there ever been a not-shit time being in the Russian military? Even if you're a rapacious looter, you're still an expendable peon under an oppressive regime, and you still have to be in Russia.

>Yeah this is true; however, to say that they'd be swamped is highly unlikely, given the sheer amount of ordinance the soviets would be facing.
The Soviets as the attackers, would bring to bear more ordinance than any NATO formation in their could.

>Is absolutely incorrect. That is in fact exactly the time it is most important for you to be mobile.
There's no room for maneuver. You try to flank one army there's another one behind it driving to your own flank. The entire scenarios gamed to hell and back.

>And just because your opponent has more maneuver troops doesn't mean they have any quality at all to them. We saw how soviet maneuver troops fared against the chechens.
Did you seriously just compare the Russian army post collapse to the Soviet army pre-collapse? In any case the Georgian 8 day war exists to provide an adequate example of how a Soviet manuever formation would work

>The problem is that because of the centralized command structure of the soviet units, when they encounter an equally mobile opposing force which gives movement discretion to frontline troops, the soviets are always a step or two behind.
Total nonsense. Soviet advances were characterized by speed and initiative over any tactical wizardry. Its the Soviets/Russians who are the ones constantly ahead in the speed game - see Georgian 8 days war that was fought with almost exactly no preparation from the Russian side. A total complete strategic surprise and yet they managed to do a counter offensive. Czechoslovakia, opening of Afghanistant etc.

>Bull. The soviets never showed that they could advance against military opposition at such a rate. Especially one which has a extremely well built defensive grid and a technological advantage.
Yeah, like WW2 didn't happen, and everyone hallucinated it. Fact is, the only nation with the institutions, doctrine, and training meant to both receive and deal out a massive broad front attack are the Russians/Soviets.

>with only 6 hours of preparation
>Believing 50 year old soviet propaganda

Attached: condescending chris rock.jpg (500x500, 50K)

>implying the Warsaw Pact wouldn't have turned on Russia the moment shit hit the fan

>Who says they manage to advance at all?
Only most military analysts worth their salt.

>The 1985 soviets had little to no combat experience, facing a foe which had massive amounts of combat experience (thank you Vietnam)
If we're taking any recent combat experience no matter how incomparable to what is going to happen in Europe then what is Afghanistan? The funny thing is Afghanistan is even more recent for the Soviets.

>doctrine and force
AirLand Battle as a doctrine was very new so is the army its designed around. Deep Battle has been around since the 1930's, has been tested rigorously in WW2, and over the decades has been refined just as the army it was designed for.

>Prevented the Serbians from using their massed mechanized troops in the open. Prevented them from using their airforce to support their ground troops. Forced the Serbians to disperse their massed formations. Crippled the Serbian logistics to the point they could not advance against light infantry. Forced the Serbians to surrender. Seems like it worked quite effectively.
The Serbs were using their ground forces in detached company or battalion sized battle groups throughout the war so IDK what you're talking about.

>Crippled the Serbian logistics to the point they could not advance against light infantry.
Pretty sure the Serbs were wiping the floor with the KLA all throughout Allied Force. I'd be happy to have some citations though. I'm using the Russian summary of events but I'm open to more information.
drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzm4KRY0DAidVDhxUVh4RVpaQzA/view

>The Soviets as the attackers, would bring to bear more ordinance than any NATO formation in their could.
sure, more unguided ordinance. NATO would bring PGMs to the table. The combat effectiveness is orders of magnitude apart.

>There's no room for maneuver.
Yeah there is, its called NATO territory.

>Did you seriously just compare the Russian army post collapse to the Soviet army pre-collapse?
The Top Tier Soviet troops commanded by the same leaders as in 1985, carrying out a plan devised in this time period (seriously their Europe invasion plan involved them driving unsupported armored columns into urban environments, lol lambs to a slaughter) using soviet frontline equipment (armored divisions, airforce, naval assests, etc all soviet era equipment). Seems like a pretty good comparison. Please explain what you think massively changed about the effectiveness of the two armies, because one of them got BTFO by light technologically inferior infantry despite outnumbering the infantry 10:1 an advantage the other wouldnt have.

Oh the goergian war, when suddenly they had a volunteer army not a conscript one, and they couldnt even take the georgian capital in 8 days, but they are supposed to have smashed NATO in the same time frame? Oh yeah, most depressingly for Russia, they couldnt achieve air superiority over a country without fighters! Seems like a liability if they tried to fight the worlds premier air force.

>Soviet advances were characterized by speed and initiative over any tactical wizardry.
lol, what you have described is literally a centralized command instituting a deep battle doctrine. Which gives zero freedom to front line commanders, and prioitizes communications from the front to the command centers. This was proven to be a gigantic liability in the era of PGMs. Turns out if you blow up the command centers deep battle stops working because the reserves dont know where to go.

>Oh yeah, fun part I forgot to mention about the serbian propoganda about NATO's intervention doing nothing. That means that the kosovo light infantry militas flat out beat the Serbian military which was 5x bigger, had a fully mechanized force and an airforce. So either NATO crushed the serbs, or the serbs are complete and utter crap at war.
It was the other way around.

>possibly, but as we have seen cratering runways is a very short time the airfield is out of action, and those missles dont have the accuracy necessary to take out the HAS's, therefore most likely the NATO airforces keep operating as expected.
Launching hundreds of aircraft in the air means tens of aircraft, fuel, and ammo out in the tarmac at any one point in time. A CEP of a 100 m doesn't matter if the thing is packing submunitions that can seed the entire place with hundreds of munitions.

>Oh, but soviet airpower is a massive slouch.
What is Vietnam?

>If they do that they die. The only way to keep them alive is to turn them off; however, when they are off they cannot be shooting down aircraft. As was shown by allied force, a SAM network which operates under proper soviet doctrine (repositioning constantly, never radiating for more than a few minutes, etc.) is entirely unable to prevent enemy aircraft from doing their thing.
Maybe it has something to do with Serbia only having a couple batteries of 60s era crap to begin with.

>At which point it is completely out of operation until a whole new shipment of missiles reaches it. Which is next to impossible when aircraft are interdicting logistical structures and shipments.
They can intercept every shipment? Now that is speaking from the realm of delusions.

>IADS, SAMs, AAA are inherently a losing strategy
On their own. They are a shield, and what does a shield afford its user? force protection. It doesn't cost as an equivalent airforce but what it does is keep the opposing airforce busy while you advance.

>sure, more unguided ordinance. NATO would bring PGMs to the table. The combat effectiveness is orders of magnitude apart.
NATO didn't have as much PGMs nor were PGMs of the time as effective as they are now.

>Yeah there is, its called NATO territory.
The low countries? You just left the massive storage bases and military equipment in Germany. gg
>The Top Tier Soviet troops commanded by the same leaders as in 1985, carrying out a plan devised in this time period (seriously their Europe invasion plan involved them driving unsupported armored columns into urban environments, lol lambs to a slaughter)
Bullshit. Soviet doctrine specifically advocated bypassing urban centres, which would be bombed to bits by artillery or even nuked or gassed.

>using soviet frontline equipment (armored divisions, airforce, naval assests, etc all soviet era equipment).
Badly maintained, and undermanned. The force that rolled into Grozny didn't have an infantry screen at all.

>Oh the goergian war, when suddenly they had a volunteer army not a conscript one,
Georgian war was before the Russian push for contractualization. jesus christ.

>and they couldnt even take the georgian capital in 8 days,
They could've easily taken the Georgian capital. The entire Georgian military was in a route with the bulk of 58th Army squeezed through the Roti tunnel.

> but they are supposed to have smashed NATO in the same time frame? Oh yeah, most depressingly for Russia, they couldnt achieve air superiority over a country without fighters! Seems like a liability if they tried to fight the worlds premier air force.
What the fuck are you talking about? The Russian airforce was conducting missions over Georgian skies from day one to 8. Sure a couple aircraft got shot but they didn't have the excuse of an extended air campaign to soften enemy defences nor is getting shot down a cause to say there is no air superiority.

>Yeah, like WW2 didn't happen, and everyone hallucinated it. Fact is, the only nation with the institutions, doctrine, and training meant to both receive and deal out a massive broad front attack are the Russians/Soviets.
Oh please show me when the soviet army advanced 800 miles in 6 months against a dug in opponent as is the underlying assumption of your it will be over in 6 months claim.

>Only most military analysts worth their salt.
lol, see you have already defined them as being right "worth their salt" thus you cannot use them as evidence in support of your position because you have already excluded dissenting views. Hence you are deluded.

>what is Afghanistan
True, but the troops stationed at the border in Europe were not the same troops deployed. Plus the soviet troops were still in Afghanistan.

>AirLand Battle as a doctrine was very new Deep battles been tested in WWII.
And yet every time the two have met, Air land battle has kicked Deep battles ass. Look up long range reconnaissance strike the soviet version of airland battle they theorized would crush them. apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a231900.pdf

>the Serbs were wiping the floor with the KLA all throughout Allied Force
and yet they lost. No amount of Russian propoganda changes the fact that the serbs got BTFO by light infantry militas despite having a fully mechanized force and an airforce. Now either it was due to NATO bombing or because the russian strategies, tactics, and equipment suck balls. Both of which contradict your claim that 1985 soviet troops would crush NATO ones.

>The Serbs were using their ground forces in detached company or battalion sized battle groups throughout the war
Hell their initial push into kosovo was an army group with more than 300 tanks, 450 arty pieces, supported by some 50 aircraft. That scale of attack completely dissipated after NATO got involved. Nice try at gaslighting. You've really drank the Russian propaganda koolaid.

>Prevented them from using their airforce to support their ground troops
The Serbs flew hundreds strike of sorties into Kosovo using fighter-bombers and helicopters flying at rooftop height through the mountains that run all through southern Yugoslavia. NATO did not intercept any of these sorties and they provided valuable support for Serb troops fighting against the KLA. Though none were shot down by NATO, it is reported that at least two of these planes either crashed or were shot down by friendly fire.

>Oh please show me when the soviet army advanced 800 miles in 6 months against a dug in opponent as is the underlying assumption of your it will be over in 6 months claim.
Vistula-Oder Offensive had the Soviets drive through 300 miles of the best Germany can throw at it in 2 weeks. From East German borders there's at most 150 miles before you reach the West German borders at the other side.

>True, but the troops stationed at the border in Europe were not the same troops deployed. Plus the soviet troops were still in Afghanistan.
I was patronizing you with that remark.

>And yet every time the two have met, Air land battle has kicked Deep battles ass. Look up long range reconnaissance strike the soviet version of airland battle they theorized would crush them.
When and where?

>and yet they lost. No amount of Russian propoganda changes the fact that the serbs got BTFO by light infantry militas despite having a fully mechanized force and an airforce. Now either it was due to NATO bombing or because the russian strategies, tactics, and equipment suck balls. Both of which contradict your claim that 1985 soviet troops would crush NATO ones.
Now this is bullshit, pure and concentrated. The Serbs withdrawn from Kosovo in good order with most of their army intact. They wiped the floor with the KLA who were withdrawing into Albania in massive numbers ("muh refugees, cool AK bruh"'). Lemme guess, you a Kosovar?

>Hell their initial push into kosovo was an army group with more than 300 tanks, 450 arty pieces, supported by some 50 aircraft. That scale of attack completely dissipated after NATO got involved. Nice try at gaslighting. You've really drank the Russian propaganda koolaid.
You can disperse on the attack.

I'm pretty uninformed on this so be great if someone could correct me if needed, but weren't the Deep Operation tactics the soviets used successfully pretty much a clone of Blitzkrieg?

You shouldn't trust defectors completely.
They are defectors, so they obviously have an interest to present the thing they're defecting from in the worst possible light.
Soviet military had issues but they were a quite formidable opponent.
Dunno about that.
For example, the performance of both original Dragon and original TOW (A/B variants) was quite exaggerated. Neither could deal with T-64/T-72/T-80 composite armor, and Dragon had other limitations, while TOW wasn't that portable.

NATO tended to underestimate Soviet capabilities in some areas, and overestimate them in others.

There's shitload of tiny details like this when it comes to Cold War comparison between the blocs. It's pointless to get lost in details. In general, Soviets had conventional superiority until mid-80's.
From mid-80's onward, that gap rapidly collapsed.

>Has there ever been a not-shit time being in the Russian military?
Berlin, May 9th 1945?

Also, as the other guy kinda explained, people here focus too much on what NATO would do and totally ignore what Soviets would do.
Soviet military was a serious institution and studied war on an unprecedented scale. They spent as much as the Americans despite having smaller economy, and at several points they even spent more. Their MIC was immense. Their conventional superiority was immense.

Also, an advice, just because X was introduced in 1972 doesn't mean every unit had it in 1972 or that it functioned with zero issues.

NATO technological superiority some here imply didn't really exist as a relevant factor before mid/late-80's.

For fucks sake, British army, one of the premier NATO armies, still used trucks to transport infantry in early 80's, and most of their infantry used trucks. Only mechanized infantry in BAOR had APCs.
Warrior? Used by three battalions in late 80's.
Meanwhile. in theory, all Soviet motor-rifle troops had APCs or IFVs. And GSFG formations were all class A divisions and very well equipped.

Where some NATO armies had undisputed advantage was that their armies were more professional, but this advantage tends to be exaggerated.

He didn’t ignore them, he was just woefully unprepared. So he decided to build up strength in preparation for their invasion. The Nazis attacked during this very vulnerable period of preparation, those cheeky bastards

The problem here with this thread is that people are assuming all NATO militaries (and all WarPac ones for that matter) were equal. While the US army and BAOR could probably hold up to the soviets, the Belgians and Hollandaise had an entire section of the line to themselves, which they would've lost in all likelihood.

Out of the 27 million dead Soviets, 18 million were civilians.
Out of the 9 million remaining Soviet soldiers who died, 2.5 to 3.5 million were captured in 1941 and died as PoWs due to German treatment.
Then, Germany lost 4 million soldiers in combat (only KIA), and its allies lost another million.
So, the actual combat losses are 5 million for the Axis, and 6 for the Soviets.

Deep Operations doctrines were first written in the late 20s; in other words, BEFORE Blitzkrieg.
Not to mention that there's a radical difference: Blitzkrieg relies on concentrating armored forces in one point of the front and have said armored forces exploit the breakthrough while going towards main targets (capital cities, communication hubs...) while Deep Operations tactics rely on infantry supported by massive amounts of artillery and by tanks to create several breakthroughs, and relies much more on airborne operations.

Ground Forces: Arguably the best in the world, though began to lag in certain areas like in the development of low light and thermal optics. They certainly would've been effective, great equipment and theory.

Air Forces: Used anachronistic ground control setup and had pilots with fewer flight hours, likely would've been hamstrung by these issues but in conjunction with ground based air defenses could've put up a great fight.

Navy: Had issues with maintaining both their vessels and experienced personnel, readiness suffered across the board as a result. Despite some solidly built vessels, their performance suffered as maintenance facilities and inexperienced crews struggled with keeping equipment in good shape. Horribly outnumbered, the question isn't if they'd lose against NATO at sea, its when.

Attached: 1396822648450.jpg (1612x1009, 281K)

>NATO didn't have as much PGMs nor were PGMs of the time as effective as they are now.

The Soviets considered the PGMs of the era equivalent to tactical nukes in effectiveness.

>We saw how soviet maneuver troops fared against the chechens.
No we didnt. We saw how a bankrupt remnant misapplied Soviet doctrine and couldnt use enough troops to control the area. And was forced to pullout by a bunch of pathetic whiny asses

>facing a foe which had massive amounts of combat experience (thank you Vietnam
Oh. You are a fucking idiot.

Meaning that you have personally witnessed TOW gunners missing during heavy artillery barrages or that that is what you're guessing since you've never been anywhere near a TOW nor artillery.

>apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a231900.pdf
What is this supposed to prove? It's an anodyne evaluation that has nothing to do with Air Land Battle at all.

>The low countries? You just left the massive storage bases and military equipment in Germany. gg
Who said anything about abandoning them. THe idea of defense in depth is to allow the soviets to overextend themselves while destroying their C2 and logistics. Thereby allowing a massive maneuver and counterattack completely slaughtering the disoriented soviet troops.

>Soviet doctrine specifically advocated bypassing urban centres
Nope. Read the seven days to the Rhine plan, they planned to go straight through urban environments, because the soviets thought once the front line was breached that NATO troops would be to busy running to fight. Which is seriously wrong given NATO plans to fight while falling back.

>The force that rolled into Grozny didn't have an infantry screen at all.
yep, exactly following soviet armored push doctrine. They didn't think infantry could stand in the face of a larger fully mechanized force. See how they operated in Afghanistan, and again in Chechnya.

>Georgian war was before the Russian push for contractualization
No it was not. The push started in 1996. apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a545442.pdf

Further the war was supposed to be fought by the all professional military and mostly was, though some units of conscripts saw action.ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pdffiles/pub1069.pdf

>They could've easily taken the Georgian capital.
could've, would've, didn't They failed to move the front 20 miles to the capital in 8 days and no amount of propaganda will change that fact.

>What the fuck are you talking about?
As much as they were bombing Georgia, Georgia was bombing them throughout the entirety of the war. The RuAF failed to shut down the 15 bombers that Geogia had despite Georgia having no fighters at all. RuAF couldn't even enforce a basic no fly zone over a country which could not contest it! Yet you claim they would have wiped the floor with NATO's vastly superior airforce.

>people here focus too much on what NATO would do and totally ignore what Soviets would do.
Bullshit. These are some of the best threads on Jow Forums. Good points made on both sides.

5 J-21's, 6 MiG-29's, more than a dozen helicopters are all confirmed to have been shot down by NATO aircraft. NATO not only intercepted them, but force most to turn back. The ones that didnt died.

>Vistula-Oder Offensive
First that is only at the end of the war after the Germans are directly fighting a land battle on two fronts, so it was by no means "the best the germans had" it was simply what the germans had, and yet in no 6 month time period did the soviet army advance 850 miles.

>I was patronizing you with that remark.
So you resorted to insults because you dont have any legitimate arguments. Thank you for admitting it.

>When and where?
Iraq twice. Further the gulf war was a complete and utter shock to the soviets as B grade divisions following proper deep battle doctrine and wonderful reverse slope defense got completely and utterly BTFO.

>The Serbs withdrawn from Kosovo in good order with most of their army intact.
You have now shifted the goalposts from NATO's bombing did nothing, to the Serbs survived so they didnt lose! That is, to borrow your phrase, bullshit, pure and concentrated. Serbs lost because of NATOs intervention. Get over and stop sucking up Russian propaganda.

>You can disperse on the attack.
Yes you can but they didn't. Also you really have no idea how armored divisions work do you? That is literally a fully armored division with at least one more mechanized division as well as most of the serbian airforce all in a single attack.. It was not an attack where each squad and vehicle were disperse, but rather a concentrated blow. Such attacks never happened after NATO started bombing, precisely because the serbs dispersed their forces. Which means NATO caused the failure of the serbian army to achieve their goals. Hence NATO's bombing worked very effectively.

It is the Russian theory which actually predates air land battle. Further it shows the Soviets themselves new of the value of PGMs and viewed their widespread adoption as completely game changing. But hey, lets accept the soviets military word and at the same time discount the soviet militaries word. Literally it makes it clear anyone believe PGMs wouldn't have changed the predicted 1985 outcome is engaging in a heavy amount of double think and self delusion.

Thank you for admitting that they applied soviet doctrine. Which shows that unless they were perfect (and no one is in war) then they'd be just as fucked in 1985 against NATO. Why do most of you think that somehow the Russian military completely changed once the USSR broke up? Did they forget how to fight? Did their weapons suddenly disappear? Did their plans catch fire and those who wrote them forget what they had written? The failure of the Russian military in '94
reveal just how hollow the soviet military had actually been. Further NATO integration of former soviet countries reinforced that message by showing just how shit their equipment, training, and doctrine already was when the soviet where still a thing.

Thank you for your input. Do you have anything to contribute besides insults?

>ust because X was introduced in 1972 doesn't mean every unit had it in 1972 or that it functioned with zero issues.
Completely true but it works both ways. The soviets didn't have widespread use of kotackt 5 and thus the vast majority of their tanks were vulnerable to NATO ATGMs and tank munitions. Further the mass use of PGMs just 6 years later, and the fact they were thousands of GBU-10, 12, 16 (developed in 1964 no less, so they had two decades of production) as well as hundreds o the new GBU-24's and that's just the US stash. The rest of NATO had their own stashes of PGMs.

>massive maneuver and counterattack
>completely slaughtering the
>disoriented soviet troops
You're full of shit.
t. mobile ground-based C2 equipment operator and communications officer, retired from military, making private sector IT bucks
You're entire reasoning is based around the assumption that
- invading WP forces would voluntarily overextend themselves (consider what "overextend" even means in the context of WP logistics)
- the average WP soldier would have the individual initiative, commitment, and bravery of a New York civilian
- your troops would have perfect, impeccable morale
- we've spent all our training and planning time figuring out a way how to slaughter the most of ourselves in a fight with you
Fucking hell, we were so ready to answer western aggression back then, officers literally unironically used decommissioned tank radio sets from the 50s in their out-of-town gardens and there was always a cadre of officers and professional soldiers on 30-minute notice with full gear, and every fucking factory worker had training for some military profession. We had lists of reservist tankers, SAM operators and others ON HAND

>Vistula-Oder
Was launched prematurely to force reserves and fuel be diverted away from the western front. The attack was supposed to be launched months later and the guns that were supposed to be used weren't even manufactured at that point. Back in military high school, one of my teachers was an artillery officer that was supposed to be stationed further south, but 50+ % guns from the other fronts were hastily relocated to the Polish sector. 1 month later, the Soviets were stopped by high command just outside of Berlin to wait for the other fronts to secure their flanks, and to replenish. Consider the fact that in the 50s through to the early 80s, the Warsaw Pact dwarfed the WWII-era Red Army and spent every year making 2 massive joint military exercises - summer and winter - somewhere in the Eastern Bloc.

>Further NATO integration of former soviet countries reinforced that message by showing just how shit their equipment, training, and doctrine already was when the soviet where still a thing.
Christ, give me strength... those former "soviet" countries had shit militaries in the 90s because we went from top ten per capita military spending to 1% GDP military spending in a time when literal artists, drug addicts and assorted CIA plants (which were shown in official declassifications two decades later to have been just that) were propped up as national leaders, national infrastructure was sold to (western) "private" corporations and every referendum with less than 50% attendance about joining a western organization was accepted as binding. My country's universities trained Nork nuclear weapon researchers and my military base specifically was cloned with the finest level of detail - including the fucking LAMPS - to Syria. Guess who's still alive and kicking in the Middle East?
You're talking about "shit equipment, training and doctrine" in a time when we phased out armor-piercing pistols because overmatching personal "bullet-proof" vests is "inhumane", our tracked IFVs were fucking scrapped because having a 7 cm cannon made them "battle tanks", and when my base was being decommissioned, trucks with Italian license plates arrived to take away all our guns and ammunition from warehouses. Guns which were ours but we "never sold" are in circulation in Africa and the Balkans.

But let's pan back before 1989.
Your precious "PGMs" were evaluated to have a success rate of less than 30% - coupled with their low availability, their impact on our forces would be negligible at worst. Your expensive black aircraft were tracked by SAM batteries without fuel just for training. Your satellites were well-documented and there was never anything for them to see we didn't want them to when they were around. We had our own satellites to boot. Steamrolling you = vacation job

>You're full of shit.
Nice to start with something constructive

>- invading WP forces would voluntarily overextend themselves
Not true at all, simply stated that if NATO needed to maneuver they had the space to do so. Personally given the abject failure of the soviet military and the hollowness exposed just a few years later, I highly doubt the soviets would have been able to push forward a single inch into NATO territory

>- the average WP soldier would have the individual initiative, commitment, and bravery of a New York civilian
WP soldiers were massively discouraged from disobeying orders and the chain of command. THey showed effectively zero individual initiave in afghanistan and checnya, but please explain why you suddenly think in 1985 they'd have more initiative then NATO troops.

>- your troops would have perfect, impeccable morale
Nope, never brought that up at all. Simply said they wouldnt completely collapse and rout. But you cannot seem to see the difference

>- we've spent all our training and planning time figuring out a way how to slaughter the most of ourselves in a fight with you
Soviet doctrine was outdated as soon as PGMs became widespread. The soviets knew it, NATO knew it, neither side publicly admitted it because the soviets didn't want to look weak and NATO wanted more funding.

>the Soviets were stopped by high command just outside of Berlin to wait for the other fronts to secure their flanks, and to replenish.
Bingo. Thank you for proving my point. The soviets didnt ever advance 850 miles in 6 months precisely because of logistical problems repositioning their troops and material. Yet the previous user and you seem to claim that they wouldnt experience any issues at all when fighting a group whose literal defense strategy had a major component devoted to denying the soviets the use of necessary logistical material.

First see The soviets themselves considers PGMs to be of equivalent effectiveness as tactical nukes.

>trucks with Italian license plates arrived to take away all our guns
Which is how we know so much about the actual capabilities of soviet hardware. Final results show it was shit and would have fared extremely poorly against NATO. See NATO had bought the lies the soviet had been saying about their equipment and troops and prepared a legitimate force to fight that threat. Problem was the soviets massively overstated their abilities and thus NATO actually massively outmatched the soviets.

>Your precious "PGMs" were evaluated to have a success rate of less than 30%
lol, not even close. Paveway II of which there were thousands had a CEP of 1.1m. A 2000lbs bomb going off 1.1 m from any vehicle in 1985 ever made, will destroy said vehicle.

Seriously how have you been so severely brainwashed by Russia propaganda? I mean you have been positing all anti NATO propaganda while trying to talk up Russian hardware and military equipment, despite the fact that whenever a NATO army has fought against Russian equipment and doctrine, they've wiped the floor with them. Russia couldn't even do that against Ukraine, and yet you believe the Russian revisionist history that soviets were strong, and their military hardware unmatched, etc. etc. despite all evidence to the contrary.

>reserves dont know where to go

West until they run out fuel or see the ocean.

>6 months
Holy shit, the fuck you think this is, WWI?

Woah dude something the US military could have done in 2 is very, very implessive.

>yep, exactly following soviet armored push doctrine. They didn't think infantry could stand in the face of a larger fully mechanized force. See how they operated in Afghanistan, and again in Chechnya
Halfassing it in Afghanistan with not nearly enough troops, made worse by them killing all their most faithful allies?

Or Chechnya, where they again are unable to bring sufficient forces to bare? Russian military success throughout history was and has been predicated upon sustained conflict and continuously brining in supplies and reinforcements to overwhelm the enemy until they win.

1980s USSR and 1990s Russia being totally incapable of doing this speaks volumes of how thoroughly the Soviets destroyed Russian capabilities for anything short of r for survival in the face of the Apocalypse. The final years of Czarist Russia and the early days of Soviet Russia werent so bad. Their economy and at home morale was so bankrupt they couldnt fight.

It doesnt pertain to this discussion, which is in fact a fight on the largest scale.

>1980s USSR and 1990s Russia being totally incapable of doing this speaks volumes of how thoroughly the Soviets destroyed Russian capabilities for anything short of r for survival in the face of the Apocalypse.
Thank you for making my point.

>It doesnt pertain to this discussion, which is in fact a fight on the largest scale.
You think that the fact that the single largest component of one of the two sides is a hollow shell doesn't matter to how a fight between the two sides would play out? Really?

No if it was WWI they wouldn't even make it in a century. You may not realize this, but large scale advances are extremely difficult, they take massive amounts of time especially when opposed by an enemy which is almost as numerous and technologically superior. Further anons keep claiming that the soviets will be able to achieve advances that they never before achieved against the most powerful foe the would ever face, and I am calling BS on these claims.

Except the concept of deep battle is to support the axis which are working and advancing, and if you've lost C2 you don't know which axis are advancing. If you follow your plan, the soviets walk straight into strongly prepared defenses and get annihilated piecemeal as they fail to enact the deep battle directly. See picture Deep battle requires clear communication between the front lines and the reserves during the fight. If this is disrupted the strategy falls into a classic frontal assault which ends with the defender being generally victorious and massive loses for the attacker either way.

Attached: chechnya.png (812x2028, 374K)

Why has nearly nobody read the two articles in this thread?

What the shit.. that's, that is really impressive actually.

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