I want a Fulda Gap 1980's WWIII Mod

[RedMike]

Just for the record.

RedMike...out

[Berlichtingen]

OMG! Imagine the scenarios. There's the US Army... sitting... waiting...

Along comes Gorbachev...

[metalbrew]

It would certainly be cool to have hardware to model an early 80's cold war flashpoint... but...

If I had those units I would be the first guy to create a "Red Dawn" scenario. Wolverines!

[jomni]

But I heard SPMBT fans saying that the 80's is the worst time to play US vs. Russia since Russian technology really lagged at that point. US optics outmatched the Russians. The battle will result just the same as they current US vs Syria match.

[Derfel]

Yay! I want a "Red Storm Rising" mod too!

Anybody play "Assault" series of boardgames? Great fun... or at least they were fun.... back in the stone age...

[metalbrew]

Originally posted by Derfel:

Yay! I want a "Red Storm Rising" mod too!

I thought about that briefly too, but there's only 2 memorable ground battles in the story. The amphib assault on Iceland and the "powerline hailmary" that cut off the Russian salient. Maybe you could include the prepared tank fighting position and fallback narrative too. Most of the book is Naval and Air Force with a heavy sprinkling of Intel.

But if we get the equipment to model early 80's I'll do a uniform mod and make a fat little Tom Clancy with some yappy voice mods and the US and Russians can both fire HE at him for 10 minutes before they clash. I like to pretend "Red Storm Rising" wasn't written by Clancy, because by-and-large he's military history's version of the used car salesman.

[The Warrior]

If not Red Storm Rising mod how about Team Yakee

mod?

[Wisbech_lad]

Nuh uh. I want a Indo-Pak mod.

Chawinda, Assal Uttar! Woot! Centurians vs Pattons!

[Kineas]

Originally posted by jomni:

But I heard SPMBT fans saying that the 80's is the worst time to play US vs. Russia since Russian technology really lagged at that point. US optics outmatched the Russians. The battle will result just the same as they current US vs Syria match.

The smoke effects are a bit overstressed in the hex based engine, and this is the time when the Russians don't have thermal imaging. This would be more balanced in the CM engine.

Other than that there are no imbalanced technologies just wrong purchase prices in QBs

[jomni]

Oh I see. So it's a gamey thing.

[John Kettler]

jomni,

As someone who was a professional Soviet threat analyst at the time, I can assure you that you have the situation reversed. The U.S. was in dire straits in the armor/antiarmor match up and lagged big time in virtually every category. A handful of vanilla 105mm gunned M1s and mostly M-60s faced hordes of GSFG T-64s and T-72s, supplemented at some point by T-80s. I have written extensively on this topic, but suffice it to say that it was well enough known that it made TIME magazine. The conclusion of the Defense Science Board Summer Study in 1985 was chilling: With very few exceptions, they could frontally penetrate our tanks at will with their weapons, but we couldn't return the favor. Of U.S. surface fired ATGMs, only the Hellfire was deemed still viable. Dragon and TOW were hopeless against even an ERA protected T-55, let alone something nastier. I am profoundly glad the clash you posit never occurred, especially with a brother in a Bradley CFV screening the Inter-German Border and the Russians "reading our mail" in real time, thanks to Walker/Whitworth et al. Then KGB general Oleg Kalugin's assessment was blunt: Russia would've won!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Derfel]

Metalbrew:

Nah, aren't you forgetting the rumble at (scratches head) uh... some German place with bridges... also I seem to recall some company/brigade size armor engagements being depicted too... anyway I was more into the era than actually copiyng stuff from the book.

John:

Were the TOW of mid-eighties really incapable against ERA? I always figured the ERA was a sort of useful in low intensity conflicts (=low tech)but not so great in actual out and out war since once you've been hit that area is down to the armour of the vehicle. Which wasn't always great, especially on the older models.

Also, I was under the impression that the NATO 105 mm was up to killing at least T-72's and downwards... propaganda perhaps?

[Pinetree]

Red Army had some scenes that would make good scenarios. The defence of the farm by the recon captain, Air assault on Hamelin, The Soviet breakthrough against the British, etc..

[RT North Dakota]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

The conclusion of the Defense Science Board Summer Study in 1985 was chilling: With very few exceptions, they could frontally penetrate our tanks at will with their weapons, but we couldn't return the favor.

Well that may have been the assesment but the reality was rather different. Never understood why we painted the Russians as big as we did. Poor performance in Afghanistan. Poor performance in Chechenya - and generally poor equipment. I remeber all the fear when T-72 came out. In reality it turns out to be a very poor tank, just like T-90.

[ng cavscout]

My impression was that the Soviet threat was slightly overstated in order to ensure nice juicy defense budgets.

I am currently playing a game of the old GDW offering, Third World War as the Warsaw Pact, and it is sure fun to see the 3rd Shock Army and the 2nd Guards Army encircling Hamburg.

I still think this would be a good choice for a game. Maybe if there is enough equipment covered in follow on modules, it could be a mod at least?

[Commissar]

Originally posted by RT North Dakota:

Well that may have been the assesment but the reality was rather different. Never understood why we painted the Russians as big as we did. Poor performance in Afghanistan. Poor performance in Chechenya - and generally poor equipment. I remeber all the fear when T-72 came out. In reality it turns out to be a very poor tank, just like T-90. [/QB]

You may want to read this then since the US Army came to John's conclusions after doing recent tests on Soviet MBTs:

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=52;t=001566;p=1#000000

When I first came across this article, I thought it might be faked. I had to come to the forums to see if the article really appeared in Jane's and said what it reported. Kipanderson verified that it indeed is an actual article and not bogus (he has access to Jane's apparently). I had heard of these claims before, but frankly they sounded rather alarmist to me. For all I knew, it was just DoD making these claims to justify a larger defense budget, as some critics claimed. Turns out it wasn't. But who had better tanks, etc really doesn't matter. If the US/NATO and the Soviets went to war, the nukes would start to fly once one side or the other started to win and that would've been the end of us all.

As for Russian/Soviet performance in Afghanistan and Chechnya, the reasons why those wars may not be indicative of Russian capabilities has already been stated elsewhere in these forums. I really haven't studied either conflict to really say much, but somehow I don't think it's as simple as saying, "they lost in Afghanistan, so they must suck and were no threat to us during the Cold War." It would be like someone saying the US military sucks and was no threat to WarPac because they lost in Vietnam to a bunch of technological primitives with AK-47s. Vietnam was hardly that simple and the US lost for a whole host of reasons.

Yesterday I read something interesting that may give an indication on the Soviet attitude about the qualitative differences between themselves and the US/NATO. In the 1988 edition of Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army , David C. Isby, Jane's Publishing Co., p.55; Isby writes:

The Soviets believe that a future war in Europe, China, or South Asia will be decided not by the sum total of weapons or tactics, but at operational level. They are well aware that in the Second World War their tactics were never as good as those of the Germans. Soviet weapons, while excellent and of serviceable design, were seldom able to trump on the battlefield through technological superiority alone. It was Soviet operational art that surrounded Stalingrad, defended Kursk and destroyed Army Group Centre. The quality and weapons of German units really did not matter, once they had been encircled by the Soviets. The emphasis on the operational level of war means that any limitations suffered by weapons and tactics are of secondary importance. Soviet weapons and tactics and the men who use them do not have to be as good as those of their opponents. They simply have to be adequate for the execution of Soviet operational-level actions.

The increased emphasis on the operational level may be in part a reaction to improvments in NATO weapons and tactics. The Soviets, who would find it difficult to make their weapons and tactics superior to those of NATO, have apparently decided not to match Western improvements but to trump them by looking to operations that will, if successful, make irrelevant any superiority. The answer to a good tank is not necessarily a better tank. The solution may lie instead in a raiding force across the tank's supply route, or a missile on the tank's headquarters, or spraying the tank with nerve agent in its vehicle park, or best of all, using the full capabilities of the Soviet state to make the tank owner's refrain from using it at all. . . .

In contrast to their tactics, the Soviet's operational science and art cannot be described as stereotyped. In the Second World War, the Germans realised that while Soviet tactical commanders were usually amateurs, their operational-level commanders were worthy opponents, as Stalingrad, Kursk, Orel-Bryansk, and the Destruction of Army Group Centre demonstrated. If much of Soviet tactical thinking can be seen as battle drills and terrain-dependent template deployments, then operational thinking is guided by the study of military history. As as result, it is much harder to predict the actions of a Soviet front commander than it is those of a battalion commander.

Anyway, it's an interesting viewpoint. However, I don't really see how you can win operationally if you can't win tactically consistently. I'm assuming you have to win at least a few key tactical encounters in order to achieve operational victory.

I think most of us would love to see a Fulda Gap CM, but it seems that Steve isn't interested in doing one. However, I recall claims that Steve wasn't interested in doing modern combat and low and behold we have a future, theoretical war with CMSF.

[ August 16, 2007, 05:30 PM: Message edited by: Commissar ]

[kipanderson]

Hi,

Who doesn’t want a Fulda Gap module … but it is not going to happen.

If you want modern combined arms warfare your best chance/only chance is to support the lobbying for the T90 in a module.

All the best,

Kip.

[John Kettler]

Derfel,

My TOW exegesis is at the link Commissar so kindly provided. There, you will find not only that, but a wealth of other material on the actual armor-antiarmor situation and numerous other matters during the Cold War. Should prove most attention-getting!

NG Cavscout,

I have the Assault series myself, to include the tasty Suvorov add-ins, but haven't played it really. Reason? My gaming circle was dispersed to the winds.

Regards,

John Kettler