Would NATO and Warsaw Pact forces use nuclear weapons?

Could we (NATO) defeat them without the use of nukes?

Twilight2000

Nukes in Fulda wasn't about winning anything. It was to speed bump those fucks.

I believe someone wrote a documentary...

Attached File

We were called speed bumps.  Our whole purpose was to stop the gap, slow the gap down, do whatever we could to halt the invasion.  
Our commander said in reality we had a life expectancy of roughly 10 seconds.  Out of 21 years active duty, 4 army and 17 CG, the 2 years I spent in Fulda were the best.
We worked hard and played harder and the command let us live life to the fullest.  I miss those days.

I always figured that low-yield nukes would be a "given" in that case.

My dad was there for quite some time. Nukes for sure.

Kinda sad that all our Abrams and Warthogs never got a chance to whack all those Commie T72s

Kruezberg Monestary. You know what I'm talking about.

We were speed bumps in the DMZ in Korea too.

From what I've read the US always intended to go nuclear. It's called deterrence for a reason

I read Admiral Gorshkov's book on Soviet Nuclear doctrine and they believed they could win a tactical or theater level nuclear conflict as well as a conventional war, or combination of them. To the Soviets nuclear or chemical weapons were just another type of weapon in the arsenal with associated political implications, but nothing they considered TEOTWAWKI

I was stationed 10 mins away from there. Well, 30 mins drunk on a mtn bike. Wildchicken for the win!

There may, or may not, have been pre-deployed nuclear weapons with no "STOP" once they were activated...A 3 Star Army General may or may not have told me this while we were watching Desert Storm live in his office....

We Loaded nukes every exercise on F-111s.  We fully expected to get nuked in response.

Every exercise started conventional, then went to selective nuclear release.

Every exercise ended with all flyable F-111s loaded for acceptance, downloaded, then launched on command.

For us it was usually around 72 F-111s loaded with 2 nukes each.  B-61 or B-57.

This was 88-90.

Sounds like a fuckin' party.

There would be no other way to win than use nukes.  The numerical supremacy of the Warsaw Pact couldn't otherwise be countered.

Not our soil so hell yes we'd use them.

Nobody wins.  We should probably play a game of chess instead.

Operation Able Archer, Ronnie would have let the nukes fly, in 1983 the Pershing 2 was being placed in West Germany

The Russian economy would have collapsed all the sooner and more gloriously.  Heck, the Russians would have seen how the other side was living and probably would have given up, at least after the initial mushroom clouds had cleared.

The correlation of forces and corresponding warplanes evolved over the course the Cold War.

At the beginning, NATO was massively outnumbered, so the only real counter to invasion were nuclear strikes.

Inside The Soviet Army gives a pretty detailed account of what the initial stages of a Warsaw Pact invasion might look like. It featured a heavy use of tactical nukes. It is difficult to believe that an attack like that would have not gone strategic.

I’ve got a book on the decline of the USSR, and it states that the inability of WP forces to make it from the Inter-German Border to the English Channel in a sufficiently quick and organized fashion was a contributing factor to the eventual collapse of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union. When you can’t win the war of conquest that you’ve organized for, you lose the purpose of your organization.

There was the Gulf War.  Probably the shortest tank battle in history.   The Abrams our ranged the T72 by a good distance.  It was like shooting fish in a barrel with a mini gun.  The A10’s and Apaches both got to do what they were designed for.

That took me back a bit...thanks!

The same with the F16s at Ramstein.   The F16s and the mission are no longer there, just like there are no more F111s.

This.

This one was at least as good.

The Chicken for the MF lose.  

I think Clancy nailed how it would have went down, for the most part. I think our conventional forces would have done better than many think.

Salty Nation was the name of the war games we played once a quarter.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were conventional war.  Thursday was stand down to generate for the SIOP with Snowcat missions with single nuke target so they knew we meant business then Friday we launched every flyable aircraft in the wing.  Total nuclear war ??.  Good times.

Yeah but that's like saying the Patriots got to play some random DIII college

I love the lore where soviet soldiers were 8 feet tall and could walk through nuclear fire.  The truth is, they were incredibly crude and their weapons in hind site were shit.  Still they could have done a lot of damage and hurt a lot of people.  The truth was, the whole thing was a permanent sitskreig on both sides.  No one ever expected the balloon to actually go up.  The consequences in the long rung were too high to contemplate.

An actual crossing across the Fulda gap would have been a monumental failure on both sides that ended western civilization.  The soviet increasingly octognerian leaders were too practical for that.

This is good. I read the paperback in 1980. The hardcover was published in 1978.



https://www.amazon.com/Third-World-War-August-1985/dp/0425044777/

Interesting thread. I had a dream last night I was running into a cinder block walled basement and diving into a corner just as a nuke went off nearby. I swear I felt the heat, heard the blast, and saw the light as the house above me was destroyed. I woke up a split second later, but I don't think I lived in my dream. Weird.

Agreed. A good read of perspectives and likely scenarios within the timeframe.

Come on, who doesn't like a post out in the middle of nowhere. On top of a mountain with forest and farmland around ya. With nothing much to do but drink.

I used to agree with the prevailing theory that overwhelming communist force would've been countered with nukes.

Now I'm more inclined to think the whole Warsaw Pact organization would have fallen to pieces under the weight of it's own decay, disfunction and disarray before it could move the tanks from the motor pools to the border.

Reminds me of some US units I was with.

To add to above As a good example of how the air war would have went look at the Becca valley air battle, where just a couple of Israeli Air Force F15's basically destroyed the entire Syrian Air Force, the Warsaw pact would have had its ass handed to itself, unless the nukes come out, then everyone loses!

The Iraqi T-72 tanks - and their ammunition - were not the same as what the E Germans and the Soviets were running.

-K

I have that book.  

I think the answer to OP's question also revolved around the time-frame.  Before or after Reagan's defense policies took effect.

-K

Yep.  19E(K)  3/33. ‘81-83. They would’ve known we were there with our M60A3’s in hull defilade.  The M1 was a game changer, though.  We’re not waiting on you, say hello to a battalion of tanks in your ass...  ??

41% nukes get used, 26% everybody loses. Boy howdy, ain't that the truth!

The next war in the ETO isn't gonna be like the last one we planned. Yes, there were nuclear weapons in theater. Yes there were pre-planned and specifically designed placements for some of those weapons (but no actual weapons) in places like rail yards, major autobahn interchanges and the like. Nike Hercules was the primary air defense artillery. I see that the deployments to europe are mostly not listed on the sites I visited but it is common knowledge that they had nuclear capability. Our forward deployed USAF units also had nuclear availability as did artillery. All of that is in the public realm. I am not aware of any units that had chemical weapons in 1970-era ETO. Go look on wikpedia and be amazed at how far we were prepared to go. It was guys like me that guarded the places they kept all that shit or arranged for security when they were transported.

We trained to fight in an NBC environment. MOPP sucked. It just plain sucked. Wintertime....maybe. Summer? Fuck that. But fuck you will, or die. LOL. I was a shiny new PVT E-2 that got sent to NBC school. I remember thinking it was some sort of promotion...until I figured out I was merely a self-mobile canary-without-a-cage LOL. In woodland green camo. With a cute little box that beeped. And lots of needle stickie-thingies and sticks, powder, wipers....decotamination gear, stupid floppy rubber booties you couldn't walk in and a charcoal rubber suit. And a bug-eyes rubber mask. Oh, and a steel pot that didn't stop much but you could dig with it, cook stew in it or use it for a sink. Try that with a K-pot LOL.

Tripwire. Delaying force. 72 hours. LOL. My most favorite company commander was a West Point graduate and an all-around great guy. He figured none of us were gonna live long enough to kill a commie ourselves but we could make it so those following us could. Good enough for me. On the off chance we DID survive, we spent plenty of hours playing in the woods and doing what they call MOUT today. Oh wait, they got a new name for fighting in urban areas. Shithole, I think it is LOL.

Yeah, guarding the Fulda Gap had its moments. Glad we didn't have to fuck up a perfectly good country defending it but I'd rather fuck up someone else's country than my own. That's the American way.

The neutron bomb was going to be used if the Soviets had come through the Fulda Gap. The warhead was going to be delivered via GLCM units. Enhanced radiation was the way to go in Europe. Since the neutrons disappear from the environment rapidly, such a burst over an enemy column would kill the crews and leave the area able to be quickly reoccupied. Ground zero would be relatively safe soon after the blast.

I suspect huge swaths of the red army's equipment wouldn't have been functional.

You lived but you were mutated and now have super powers. For God's sake please use them for good.  I, for one, will be very disappointed in you if I hear of people getting cut in half with laser vision.

Watching Russian dash cam videos, it all would have been wrecked at the first intersection in Poland

More than a few German houses fell victim to US armor cutting corners too tight over the years

In my all time top 10 and Clancy’s best.

Heard an A-10 pilot on the news back then: "Load me up...they ain't even shootin' back"