Highlander Recce

Here's a fun glimpse of how the sausage gets made. An early shot of the M48 Chaparral AA vehicle model with the official US MERDC camou pattern overlaying it. Adventures in vehicle texturing. 

Well... You understand I kinda "can" only what was posted (and vetted) in other (Russian language) sources?  My primary interest in guy was in Cuban Missile Crisis (that was my crush of university years ) and the Soviet decision making in beginning of 80s. But in principle he was the head of the whole of Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service Analytics since 1971 and he was quite open (or open enough? ) so that made him quite an outstanding person. Plus it was not a kind of free-for-all course - there was a compulsory pre-selection - so there were normally about 12-18 of us who had his undivided attention for few hours once a week. The discussion normally dragged on pretty much into the late night.

I grew up just 8 km from the inner-german border and never felt any fear or such - today I think that is strange.
Just the opposite, there are many nice memories concerning the military of that time. We often had the 16/5th Queens Royal Lancers on exercise at the farm of my father. They were stationed at the town of Wolfenbüttel nearby and everybody loved to see them, my mother because we talked english all day, the soldiers because they had warm places to sleep and a shower, and my father because he had an agreement to get a bottle of Famous Grouse for each day of their stay. We did things you never get elswhere, driving a Ferret Mk1 (I called it armored Dune Buggy), a Scorpion tank and even firing a Sten SMG on the meadow behind the barn. Once my father and me visited their barracks for some claybird shooting and the officers invited us to the officers mess. Wow, never saw so many silver cups and a living tradition like that.
When I served at PzAufklBtl 1 (Armored Recon) from '79 to '83 (just the proper time for this game) we were not even allowed to keep our battalion coat of arms, it was from the Black Hussars from Brunswick who fought with the British against Napoleon, but was too similar to the SS sign. That happens to military traditions when you loose your wars.
At that time I met kind guys from the 2nd Armored Division on Reforger exercise near Brunswick and found some nice friends there (Cpt. Hutto somewhere around here?).
And I served as contactperson for the team of 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards during the Boeselager Cup, an international competition among reconaissance forces. Still remember the 'Biwak' on the last evening.
One day I heard the sound of a Huey helicopter nearby and it did not disappear. So I looked for the source and found some thee or four Huey Cobra hovering directly at the outskirts of the village. I immediatly fetched my brothers and we tried to follow them with my Renault R4. Tough job, soon they were gone. But suddenly they reappeared one after the other over a ridgeline and took my car as a training target. Oh, man, that was exciting. I tried to make their job as difficult as I could but these helis were really fast and agile. I would love to ride one of those, must be like a flying Kawasaki.
I think Germany really lost something important with all these kind soldiers who are gone now and with them the BFBS radio and the British Wargamers Association with which I had so nice times at Rheindahlen and elsewhere.
And, by the way, a german Recon Btl was a complete all arms force in '79, ideal for a Bundeswehr expansion one day. There was a ground surveillance radar plt, two companies with Luchs and Leopard1, and a heavy company with grenadier plt (on Schützenpanzer kurz, later Fuchs), engineer plt, and 120 mm mortar plt.
And now I am here, working as an engineer on military simulation and looking forward to my retirement next year being excited to have all the time necessary to play my favorite game then, CM:CW.
 
 

Not that I always or usually 😉 agree with @Aragorn2002, however to look at this subject from Dutch perspective after WW2:
Basically after WW1 The Netherlands put pacifism in practice. The idea was that neutrality would save/protect us from war, there was a large 'broken rifle' movement. The only tank we had was in a museum and had to be driven out to help defend the coutry after our neutral strategy didn't work.
So, from there the perspective of 'dangerous nonsense' is nuanced I guess. I don't think Aragorn likes war or something.
Well I think that the history of our countries are in a large way responsible for these differences. We took some different lessons from WW2, so to say 😉
Personally I'm happy for Germany to take a more outspoken role with regards to EU / NATO defense and geopolitics. We shouldn't forget what happened, but the past shouldn't burden the present with feeling of shame or guilt. At least that's my opinion. 

@37mm,
I had a course at the university taught by the guy who had been the head of the Analytics Division of the KGB's First Directorate (Foreign Intelligence). He had obviously been very much into the deliberations of the highest echelons of the Soviet Union as he personally was the Politburo's primary source of information and assessment of the West's intentions. And the guy was quite frank and direct in sharing his views on the mindset prevalent there. He said by beginning of 80s these war plans existed in a kind of parallel reality. In 60s and 70s they served as a very much needed conventional deterrent to the US's superiority in nuclear weapons. But by the beginning of 80s the Soviet Union caught up in nuclear capabilities and political leadership understood the moment you would really need to open these plans it would be pretty much the end of the world. So there were plans how the Soviet Army steam-rolls to the Channel but there were no serious planning on what to do AFTER. Even how to feed these millions and millions of soldiers thousands kilometers away from the borders of Soviet Union. It was somehow tacitly assumed that were these plans to succeed no one would really care by than. Soviet army (together with the Military Industrial Complex) was a huge and very influential part of Soviet economy. So as every other army in the world the Soviet one should be allowed to plan however fantastical these plans may look like. And to train to execute these plans.
And there was a clear understanding how much Soviet economy of 80s depended on the inputs of the West (primarily the Western Europe). So these plans were a kind of a specter of a mad dog one should not mess around with. Because denying the Soviet Union access to world markets would dealt a VERY severe blow to the Soviet Union. With no military action whatsoever.