job151

Would have to agree -- your questions would in fact require an essay, or several. However perhaps more on point would be reference to any number of open source references. Of course for US doctrine, take a look a the CD for sale on this site. However "NATO" doctrine is probably harder to track down, especially for the period before the wall fell. To the best of my recollection there was no NATO tactical doctrine -- tactical doctrine was simply the member nation's doctrine for that sector. For the operational level -- you'd have to try to track down alliance political--military documents of that era. For the soviet side, though one can use the recent FMs on the OPFOR on the CD, better is to use the old FM 100-2-1,2,3 series on the Soviets. Hard to find, but good reference. For a very good overall coverage look for the Scott's "The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union" from Westview Press I believe, very good operational level reference. If you really want to dig into primary source material, try to find "Tactika" kind of a Soviet 100-5 from the late '80s (Canadian intel folks translated). Long post, but big questions, one final thought -- our doctrines are derived from "our" histories and analyzes of those histories. Thus "AirLand Battle" is an American read on history, technology, and the way to succeed against a numerically superior foe, as was the soviet doctrine of echeloned forces, massive artillery support and "push logistics" their best stab at how to win offensively in the face of precision weapons and potentially NBC use. JFB