Not exactly on point for CMSF, but need verification

[luderbamsen]

Originally posted by Speedy:

You've got me hankering for CM: Germany 1988 now.

[/QB]

Oh dear, you just made me drool...

[John Kettler]

Speedy,

That's only half as "fun" as an actual Russian battle plan for seizing Europe which surfaced after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It envisioned the use of some 200 tac nukes and reaching the Channel in ~ two weeks, these in addition to heavy targeted use of persistent and nonpersistent chemical agents.

This story appeared in ARMED FORCES JOURNAL in late

1989 or in 1990.

I wrote what I did from memory, but there are tons of material if you but dig a bit. This'll give you a taste of what's available. There are similar sites covering Russian artillery, rockets, etc. In fact, there's stuff readily available now that people died to get the merest glimpse of when I was in the business.

http://fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/

Here's a remarkable (British grade understatement) resource, but you'll need to cross compare the weapons with the types in inventory at the time period of interest. I'll say, this, though, they're not all listed by NATO name and nomenclature, but by the Russian ones. I highly recommend that you find an AVIATION WEEK or similar forecast and inventory issue which will explain in tabular form that a NATO X is a Russian Y. Frankly, I flounder often, having memorized tons of threat data under the NATO designators.

This'll help guide you through the 100, 15, 125 mm gun launched ATGMs, the AS series missiles, the AT series ATGMs, and so forth. The database is browsable.

http://warfare.ru/?

Some info on artillery ammunition. Note the laser guided stuff and the designator, whose NATO designation was SAGE GLOSS.

http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=254&cattitle=Munitions

ATGMs (not complete, but useful)

http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=261&cattitle=ATGM

MLRS

http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=353&cattitle=MLRS

Air-to-surface missiles

http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=263&cattitle=Air-to-Surface

IFVs and APCs

http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=245&cattitle=IFV+and+APC

Tanks

http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=244&cattitle=Tanks

Chemical weapons

http://warfare.ru/?lang=&catid=329&linkid=2354

What some of the missiles named look like.

http://www.ausairpower.net/weps.html

Operational versions of this were also deployed and proved frighteningly effective in tests by the Swedish military. The Russians were the world leaders in the field of high power microwaves. By 1989, Pentagon open source documents showed artist renderings of a battlefield HPM vehicle.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/kopp/apjemp.html

Russian CBUs--on the receiving end!

http://mcc.org/clusterbombs/resources/research/death/chapter3.html

FIELD ARTILLERY JOURNAL article on Krasnopol 152mm laser guided shell, IOC 1987. Long!

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IAU/is_4_7/ai_92457739/pg_1

Good stuff here on both old and new nastiness. AS-10 and AS-14 were major issues in my day.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=49433

These should keep you out of mischief!

http://www.aeronautics.ru/technology.htm

Ordnance lists

http://www.milparade.com/ra/content1.htm

http://www.milparade.com/ra/content7.htm

Regards,

John Kettler

[ June 28, 2007, 02:34 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Commissar]

Thanks for the info. I remember reading about those 'monkey models' from Suvorov's book. Makes perfect sense to me. Keep the top notch stuff for yourself and give the stripped down versions to your "buddies". If the enemy gets a hold of it, they only get a false impression of what the real equipment can do. I was reminded of that when I heard the news that the Japanese wanted to buy F-22s. Yeah, right. The Japanese have terrible problems with securing sensitive information. They have already allowed several leaks about the AEGIS system to go to who knows who and the latest example was some info leak because some JP military personnel were sharing porn with one another.

Anyway, I heard about our vulnerability that you describe before, but I also remember critics claiming that this was gross overexaggeration and an attempt by the services to get more money out of congress for defense, etc. Seeing as I was only a kid at the time, I didn't exactly have access to sources that could confirm any of that

I've been interested in the Soviet/Russian military and weaponry since high school, but that article I posted opened up my eyes a bit and confirmed what I suspected for quite some time. It would be awesome if Battlefront did a CM set in 1980s, good old NATO v. WarPac. Sure, plenty of other people have tried to do it, but I would pay good money to see Battlefront do so with the CM series.

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Commissar,

I have written repeatedly on this matter over the years. See, for example, the Syrian TO&E thread. The shocking conclusion of the 1985 Defense Science Board Summer 1985 Study was that the U.S. was in big trouble on both sides of the armor/antiarmor battle. Russians could penetrate ours, but we couldn't penetrate theirs. Only the Hellfire missile was deemed still semiviable; TOW, Dragon and LAW were all basically useless, incapable of a frontal kill vs. even an ERA equipped T-55, never mind anything more modern. The situation was no better with the then standard NATO 105mm tank gun--firing anything. Without going into details, the capability of Russian ERA to defeat long rod penetrators, as well as HEAT, was known in the mid 80s. Of course, the Maverick was fine. Hard to defeat a 173 lb. shaped charge on something with most of the KE of a battleship round!

I was at Hughes Missile Systems Group working as the in house threat specialist when the news broke, and many were in shock. Out of this came a crash effort to revive the TOW. First came ITOW (Improved TOW) with a standoff probe to enhance penetration, followed by TOW 2, with a revised guidance scheme (thermal IR usable through smoke and dust in addition to usual xenon beacon, which isn't) full caliber redesigned advanced warhead and a standoff probe, followed by the TOW 2A with ERA stripping precursor charge, followed by TOW 2B (top attack via low overflight and downward firing charge directed into thin roof armor).

My now retired brother was in the 2/11 ACR as a Bradley commander in the late 80s in Germany. He was shown a plain TOW 2 and told, "If you ever are issued one of these, it's war." Best he ever had was ITOW. Our nightmare at Hughes was a lead attack wave of ERA equipped T55s attacking behind advanced obscurants I describe below, followed by the good stuff. We would've been out of TOWs in short order and would then have been facing slews of Russian armor in its own optimal firing range.

Numbers tell.

If you're wondering why our mighty M1 (of which we had a handful when there were thousands of T-64s and T-72s in East Germany alone, later T-80s) was in jeopardy, it's because we discovered that the Russians had fielded an answer to a tank we never

produced: the T95 family equipped with sandwich armor made of glass encased in steel (built M60s instead). Guess what the original M1 had? Yep. I know so because I read the declassification notice on the special security status of the M1's vierceous (glass) core armor. The HEAT solution to the M1 was fielded in all sorts of weapons in the 1960s, and we didn't find out until several years AFTER the Yom Kippur War when we performed technical exploitation on ammunition captured by the Israelis. Bear in mind that this ammunition had to be effectively obsolete before Russia would allow it to be exported. The "obsolete" ammo turned out to be able, even in something, say, the size of what the SPG-9 fired, to pierce an M1 frontally. Most ungood, as my father would say.

While we're used to seeing steel penetrators in Saddam's HVAPFSDS round, the Russians long had tungsten and had DU long rod penetrators operational in quantity by the 1980s. Per Suvorov's INSIDE THE SOVIET ARMY, steel penetrators are monkey models reserved for ignorant foreign purchasers and wartime extreme demands when putting something into battle is better than nothing. Ditto the armor arrays on export tanks, at least, during the Cold War. Suvorov's list of the differences between a Russian BMP and the monkey model should prove most enlightening and is broadly applicable to the whole export weapon issue. The Kornet's the closest the U.S. has ever come to modern front line Russian antiarmor weaponry.

Other nasty discoveries included better explosives

than we had, wave shapers for HEAT rounds (enhanced penetration) and the discovery that Russian HEAT warheads were designed to take advantage of their own momentum. We, though, tested HEAT warheads statically, resulting in an understatement of their penetration by some 30-40%. 30-40%! To this, add broadband obscurants capable of defeating all sorts of surveillance and targeting means, denying us long range kills critical to whittling down the armored horde, hard kill tank defense weapons, such as Drozhd, new generations of antimateriel warheads capable of shredding Bradleys the way the BM-21 was designed to shred M113s (deliverable by long range MRLs and TBMs), etc. And don't forget all those flying tanks (HIND and FROGFOOT)!

SIDEBAR

NATO airbases were vulnerable to all kinds of Russian munitions for killing TAB V aircraft shelters, they had loads of rocket boosted runway busters (we had to buy France's Durandal and develop others), ARMS to take out NATO radar, etc. And lots more SAMs than we thought they had! The air defense system was not only vulnerable to what I've described, but also to jamming, was readily saturable, and was a prime target for Spetsnaz.

AWACS, for example, was only at one airbase.

END SIDEBAR

The U.S. spent BILLIONS on a crash get well armor/antiarmor program. AT-4 replaced LAW after even ILAW (Improved LAW) seemed hopeless. Dragon suffered the same fate, eventually being replaced by Javelin. We've already discussed TOW, now about to go wireless. The M1 was upgunned to the Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore and coupled with our uber round: the "Silver Bullet" which went through crash development and deployment. Did you notice that before the Desert Storm Hail Mary attack jumped off, every vanilla M1 in that effort was pulled and replaced by M1A1HAs (120mm gun and DU armor array) sent straight from V Corps in Germany? We sent our very best against monkey model T-72s because our standard M1s could've been killed frontally by weapons which would amaze you with their mundaneness. Every tank family from T-55 up had a gun launched ATGM version, and artillery (including mortars and MRLS) was widely equipped with precision guided munitions.

The above is a partial list of just how bad things were, and this is without factoring in the massive espionage penetrations of the 1980s, which meant that they were reading our mail, knew where our nukes and chemical munitions were in Europe, could read much of our classified message traffic in real time, trail our SLBMs, etc.

Hope this was useful.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Commissar]

ignore

[Commissar]

oops, double post..

[MikeyD]

I've often wondered why BFC has been so visibly opposed to the idea of a 1970-80's 'Fulda Gap' title. Perhaps they did a little research equivalent to John's above and thought to themselves "Uh oh, this wouldn't be pretty."

I recall a book put out in the 80s by the U.S. printing office "The Soviet Theater Nuclear Offensive". instead of a defense in depth Nato pretty much was using a 'tripwire' defense where breaching their thin front would trigger a nuclear response. The Soviets, by contrast, were planning for a battlefield 'shaped' by tactical nukes - basically driving their closed-down tanks over a charred landscape.

Everything you read about any but the most optimistic hopes (including Reagan's 'We could win a nuclear war' attitude) for a European confrontation turns out to be a global nightmare.

[kipanderson]

Hi,

“I've often wondered why BFC has been so visibly opposed to the idea of a 1970-80's 'Fulda Gap' title.” I agree…they are strange people .

To answer the Commissar’s question on how K-5 works.

It is internal, not external, reactive armour. The plates do not explode away off the surface of the tanks is in first generation ERA. K-5 works roughly like this.

There is an outer covering of armour that will stop most smaller rounds, even many medium rounds. Under it there are two or more plates which when struck by either HEAT or kinetic rounds will slide. It is this sliding action that absorbs the energy of the round. Remember that behind the K-5 there is a full set of standard, modern laminate, fiber glass and steel armour as well.

There are explosives used in K-5, but only very small amounts. Long-rod penetrators need to have their forces perfectly lined up nose to tail to work. “Slide” the nose just a little and all is lost .

All good fun,

All the best,

Kip.

[Ivan Drago]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

Perhaps they did a little research equivalent to John's above and thought to themselves "Uh oh, this wouldn't be pretty."

Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like all the more reason to make a game modeling it

...*sigh*...

Something about a Nuclear Apocalypse being ignited by the greed of two superpowers duking it out with enormous machines of destructions across the entire plain of Europe resulting in its incineration, all modeled in glorious 3D graphics and tracking everything from the flight dynamics of a single piece of atomized shrapnel to the negative effects on fighting ability of a Russian soldier who had too much vodka the previous night...

... gets my eyes all glazed up and drool begins to collect in the corner of the mouth - should I seek psychological help?

[Commissar]

Originally posted by kipanderson:

Hi,

“I've often wondered why BFC has been so visibly opposed to the idea of a 1970-80's 'Fulda Gap' title.” I agree…they are strange people .

To answer the Commissar’s question on how K-5 works.

It is internal, not external, reactive armour. The plates do not explode away off the surface of the tanks is in first generation ERA. K-5 works roughly like this.

There is an outer covering of armour that will stop most smaller rounds, even many medium rounds. Under it there are two or more plates which when struck by either HEAT or kinetic rounds will slide. It is this sliding action that absorbs the energy of the round. Remember that behind the K-5 there is a full set of standard, modern laminate, fiber glass and steel armour as well.

There are explosives used in K-5, but only very small amounts. Long-rod penetrators need to have their forces perfectly lined up nose to tail to work. “Slide” the nose just a little and all is lost .

Kip.

Thanks for the explanation. Sounds like what would happen if an angry bull charged you and then slipped on some banana peals.

I think the reason given why Battlefront doesn't release a CM dealing with modern combat a la NATO v. WarPac was because so much of the data is considered classified and hence would not be available for proper modeling. Well, I remember reading that on the forums as an explanation. That didn't seem to stop Battlefront from releasing CMSF which is even more contemporary to current events than any WarPac assault through the Fulda Gap or WWIII scenario. Although the Syrian army is hardly Category A divisions of GSFG, I would love the ability to push my Soviet regiment, etc against those pesky western imperialists....just for the fun of it. Instead, the closest thing I have on the horizon is World In Conflict which will undoubtedly look pretty and deals with a fictional WWIII scenario, but will hardly have the anal historical accuracy and groginess that Battlefront could provide.

[ June 28, 2007, 04:29 PM: Message edited by: Commissar ]

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Originally posted by Commissar:

I think the reason given why Battlefront doesn't release a CM dealing with modern combat a la NATO v. WarPac was because so much of the data is considered classified and hence would not be available for proper modeling. Well, I remember reading that on the forums as an explanation. That didn't seem to stop Battlefront from releasing CMSF which is even more contemporary to current events than any WarPac assault through the Fulda Gap or WWIII scenario. [/QB]

The differnce being that through Iraq we can now know how modern US stuff would cope with 80s Russian export stuff. How 80s NATO stuff would have fared against 80s WP stuff however is largely unknown.

[John Kettler]

Commissar,

You're welcome! I highly recommend you read all of Suvorov's Cold War books, starting with INSIDE THE SOVIET ARMY, plus SPETSNAZ, INSIDE SOVIET MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, and INSIDE THE AQUARIUM. The much earlier THE LIBERATORS covers the Sixties.

You guys do realize, don't you, that Hackett's THIRD WORLD WAR 1985 was rewritten so the West would win.

ISTR royal pressure was involved.

Some of the key points of what I described were widely discussed, not just in defense journals, but even in TIME magazine, which had a sidebar on a very advanced tank called the FST (Future Soviet Tank). In all, I don't believe this was a Pentagon con job. Had the balloon gone up between the Seventies and mid Eighties in Europe, I believe it would've been a bloodbath. One former KGB general, who ran some of the top spies for the Russians, is of the opinion Russia would've won. Fortunately, things never reached that point, and part of the reason apparently lies in the deterrent effect of some revolutionary American aerospace weapons of staggering power and speed.

The Russians were forced into a technological spiral they couldn't afford and which nearly broke us first. That's the standard version.

Regards,

John Kettler

[unsobill]

John Kettler I strongly suggest to you NOT to read Suvorov's books ... he haven't seen even a tip of the huge iceberg...

[John Kettler]

kipanderson,

Long rod penetrators are immensely strong in compression but weak in shear. K5 and similar ERA technologies put shear loads on the rod it was never designed to handle. HEAT's defeated by literally moving plates across and through the jet. Those same moving plates wreak havoc on long rod penetrators. Good K5 discussion on Fofanov's site.

Commissar,

Chobham armor was thoroughly compromised, too. Seems Willy Brandt's SecDef equivalent was a Russian spy! You can learn a lot of useful stuff if you can locate the various annual DOD "Soviet Military Power" reports and the last one, "Russian Military Developments," issued after the soviet Union collapsed. Bitter wars were fought within the intelligence community over what to say and what to show, such as the amazing rendering of the gigantic Typhoon SSBN.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Commissar]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Commissar,

You're welcome! I highly recommend you read all of Suvorov's Cold War books, starting with INSIDE THE SOVIET ARMY, plus SPETSNAZ, INSIDE SOVIET MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, and INSIDE THE AQUARIUM. The much earlier THE LIBERATORS covers the Sixties.

You guys do realize, don't you, that Hackett's THIRD WORLD WAR 1985 was rewritten so the West would win.

ISTR royal pressure was involved.

Some of the key points of what I described were widely discussed, not just in defense journals, but even in TIME magazine, which had a sidebar on a very advanced tank called the FST (Future Soviet Tank). In all, I don't believe this was a Pentagon con job. Had the balloon gone up between the Seventies and mid Eighties in Europe, I believe it would've been a bloodbath. One former KGB general, who ran some of the top spies for the Russians, is of the opinion Russia would've won. Fortunately, things never reached that point, and part of the reason apparently lies in the deterrent effect of some revolutionary American aerospace weapons of staggering power and speed.

The Russians were forced into a technological spiral they couldn't afford and which nearly broke us first. That's the standard version.

Regards,

John Kettler

I've read "Inside the Soviet Army" and "The Liberators". The two things I remember from the first book very well are: 1) monkey models 2) His question he asks western officers. Goes something like this: you got 3 battalions on the attack, and a limited amount of support (air, arty, reinforcements,etc) you can allocate. One battalion is suffering heavy casualities and is bogged down. One battalion is losing ground, about to retreat. The last battalion is also suffering heavily but is making some progress and ground against the enemy. As the commander, how do you allocated your support and reinforcements AS A SOVIET COMMANDER? The answer is simple: you throw all your support and reinforcements to the one battalion making head way against the enemy. The other battalions don't deserve to expect support. You only reinforce success, not failure. At this point, Suvorov comments that he can see a smirk on Western officers' faces because they think they see the Soviet Army's weakness. He berates them because he considers this the Soviet Army's strength. Diluting your strength like most Western officers would do is a foolish mistake from his point of view.

I never really liked those WWIII books written by western authors. They all ended the same with NATO victory as if it were pre-ordained. The only fictional book I've ever seen that dealt with WWIII and written by a western author that didn't was Ralph Peter's "Red Army". I found that rather refreshing.

I remember reading about the FST-1 (Future Soviet Tank) in another book about Soviet tank designs. It was a very interesting concept. Basically a Soviet tank with a much reduced turret which only contained the actual main gun. The crew was relocated into the main hull and were lined up in a row along the short axis of the vehicle. Looks like the Nizhny Tagil tank follows this design.

"Star Wars" weapons absolutely scared the crap out of the Reds. Western experts criticized the program for its low probability of actually working, but who really cares? The Soviets were convinced the US would get them to work and it worked wonderously as a bargaining chip in any disarmament talks both sides were engaged in.

I never got to read "Soviet Military Power" on its own. I did read "Soviet Military Power--annotated and corrected" which took the same DoD document and supposedly corrected the wrong info and what the author termed 'DoD propaganda'. He would reveal some tricks DoD supposedly did to beef up the Soviet threat into something more than it was in order to basically scare congress into increasing military budgets. Anyway, that was the author's viewpoint.

Didn't know about that chobham thing. I remember that F-111 crashing in Yugoslavia and thinking, "Oh great, the Russians now have a new play thing to study and take apart."

[ June 29, 2007, 12:02 AM: Message edited by: Commissar ]

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

I've often wondered why BFC has been so visibly opposed to the idea of a 1970-80's 'Fulda Gap' title. Perhaps they did a little research equivalent to John's above and thought to themselves "Uh oh, this wouldn't be pretty."

Somewhat, but in the opposite direction...

[Moronic Max]

I've often wondered why BFC has been so visibly opposed to the idea of a 1970-80's 'Fulda Gap' title.

I'm pretty confident Steve's stated, on multiple occasions, that they won't do a Fulda Gap title because the market isn't there.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I don't think it's the market. I think Steve just isn't interested in the subject.

[John Kettler]

Commissar,

I loved that quiz, for nothing better illustrated the difference between two systems of military thought. It was the Russians, too, who came up with the term for and formal mathematical equation for correlation of forces.

Am still waiting to see the FST, but Fofanov says the thing's in trials, or at least was.

Red Army was pretty good. Peters is/was an Army intel officer. The part where the MRL commander argues and loses with the zampolit was priceless, but frighteningly possible.

When your primary strategic and intimidation horsepower lies in ballistic missiles, a system which eats them is disturbing indeed. But see Bearden (www.cheniere.org) on SDI, Russian style. Scary!

I read a borrowed copy of the annotated Russian take on the first SMP, also "Whence the Threat to Peace?" but SMP was an annual for years and densely packed with juicy intel data.

Believe you're thinking of an F-117, not an F-111.

Was downed by an SA-3 using EO tracking. True cause was the same as what cost us a bunch of B-52s in Linebacker II. Constant reuse of the same flight route and profile.

As for Russian stealth...

http://righttruth.typepad.com/right_truth/2006/05/the_new_russian.html

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/6583/project315.html

http://www.aeronautics.ru/nws002/awst039.htm

http://www.aeronautics.ru/t60s01.htm

Vanir Ausf B,

Believe you're correct. Also seems to be true of the Pacific War. Too bad, but as my housemate says "It is what it is." Fortunately, the Italians make pretty good substitutes for the Japanese, both in equipment and general organization (big squads with lots of rifles and weak grenades). And palm trees. Okay, they should have coconuts!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Speedy]

Thanks for all those links John, they should keep me busy for a while.

[Commissar]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Commissar,

I loved that quiz, for nothing better illustrated the difference between two systems of military thought. It was the Russians, too, who came up with the term for and formal mathematical equation for correlation of forces. . . .

. . . .Believe you're thinking of an F-117, not an F-111.

Was downed by an SA-3 using EO tracking.

Yup, thinking of the stealth fighter.

I'm sure the Russians are keeping the remains in a nice and safe hanger somewhere.

The Soviets came up with some rather elaborate algorithms in order to eliminate Clausewitzian friction or "luck" in war. They tried very hard to make war into a science and reducing qualitative and quantity differences into mathematical formulas that would literally give you the formula for victory. The amount of effort they put into this is quite large and makes for rather dull reading. Human beings can't even control the weather much less dictate that luck sit in a corner and behave herself. There are just too many examples in which a side just shouldn't have won or survived, yet did despite rather overwhelming odds, equation or no equation.

[ June 29, 2007, 06:07 AM: Message edited by: Commissar ]

[Bigduke6]

I dread to think what it would sound and feel like inside as your ERA was being scrubbed off! Enough to make you bail probably.

Alternatively, it might alert the T-72 crew of the need to swat the Bradley.

now my question would be

Could a Bradley fire it's 25mm chain gun to scrub off the ERA so it's TOW could have a chance at at a penatration or teamworked with an M1 and it's 105 or 120mm gun. I'm figuring that the 25 is going to have to go full auto for 3 to 5 seconds to do a good scrub job

Well, that's a boffo idea as long as

(1) The T-72 doesn't decide to shoot back at the Bradley

(2) The there are more Bradleys and M1s, than T-72s

(3) The people inside the T-72s are too dumb to figure out teamwork themselves.

(4) The M1 or Bradley preparing to shoot through the hole in the reactive armor is capable of doing it, when the T-72 and its friends are going to be rather irritated at the scrub tactic.

In other words, this is the Cold War equivalent of Sherman crews being told that the way to deal with a Panther is to get close and bounce a round off the bottom of the mantlet. It might sound like a good idea to the planners, but to the crewmen told to jump through a dumb hoop to defeat an enemy vehicle a good deal better armored than the planners expected, the tactic is little short of a death sentence.

On whether K-5 is fieldable or not, maybe fytinghellfish is right, and the stuff is just too expensive for the poor cash-strapped Russians.

Of course, with oil at 60 dollars a barrel, natural gas at 230 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters, nickel at record prices, and a KGB guy in the Kremlin, you might just think the Russian army might have other reasons besides lack of cash or will to explain why not much of the tank fleet is equipped with the stuff.

Like:

- Maybe it's in warehouses somewhere and if the balloon goes up they just plan to bolt it on. Otherwise, why leave it on a tank where it can get beat up in training or maybe a chunk of it get sent to the CIA?

- The next generation tank is better armored than T-80 + K5, and so why bother re-equipping their entire fleet with armor that's soon going to be obsolete.

- Reactive armor is chemicals and plastics, it is not super-high tech, and arguably manufacturing a lot quickly is a lot easier than (say) increasing production of aircraft or tanks. So the Russians figure if they need a lot of it, they can make it up easily enough.

[bartleby]

The interesting thing about SDI is that Reagan wanted it because he didn't believe that deterrence worked. He initially wanted to offer it to the Soviets as well, since a mutual shield would be the only way to eliminate the power of ballistic nuclear weapons. They didn't accept his offer, and perhaps it was too much trust to ask of them, but that's how it went.

A lot of interesting info came out after the Cold War ended, indeed. The scariest stuff was the Soviet's plan for tactical nuke use, as MikeyD mentioned - NATO just dropped the ball in that regard. We assumed that the other side would think the same we as we did without evidence to back that up. We would have had a terrible surprise if an actual conflict had come about. The overly rational models of nuclear conflict would have been useless. Thank goodness that's (mostly) done with, anyway....

[luderbamsen]

Could we PLEASE stop talking about a CM Fulda Gap scenario?

I'm getting, well, "aroused", and people are starting to give me funny looks...

Of couse, if we were actually to get a Fulda Gap scenario I'll happily accept the humiliation

[Soddball]

Originally posted by unsobill:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Soddball:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by unsobill:

its ok it dont hurt to kill "weak" russians in video games... another thing is possible conflict and underestimating enemy potential like hitler and napoleon did

You are just begging to be banned, aren't you? </font>

[Speedy]