The Third World War: August 1985

Intelligence here was critical. Since his arrival in the corps the Commander had made a minutely detailed study of the terrain and planned a very thorough intelligence operation covering every approach. What he could not cover with his own sensors he asked to have covered for him by CENTAG. To help him find out what he wanted he relied on the reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence resources available at every level of responsibility, from intelligent young men with binoculars and a radio in a hole on a hill far forward to the input from highly sophisticated satellite systems in space. The Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) had been designed to handle a vast volume of intelligence material coming in from sources as varied as satellite systems, reconnaissance vehicles, both manned and unmanned, ELINT (electronic intelligence), SIGINT (signal intelligence) and battlefield surveillance of all kinds, and to funnel it all into processing centres for analysis, correlation, assessment and distribution. The corps commander, however, was too old a hand to place exclusive reliance on processes not within his total control and on systems vulnerable to counter-measures. His principal instrument for the assessment of the enemy’s intentions was to be the strong engagement he intended to fight in the covering force area up against the border, forward of the Hanau and Fulda rivers. His final judgment, which, like all fighting soldiers, he knew must in the last resort be purely intuitive, whatever aids he had, would depend on his interpretation of that action.

The armoured cavalry regiment on the border was a powerful brigade-sized armoured force in its own right, basically of light tanks, now reinforced by a medium tank battalion and a mechanized infantry battalion, together with self-propelled artillery and attack helicopters. Commanders in the covering force had been ordered to destroy leading elements in engagements which should either be opened at extreme range or be held down to very short-range ambush; to force the enemy to commit strong reserves and deploy his artillery; and to give no ground at all except to avoid the imminent certainty of encirclement and total destruction. Small armoured task forces had reconnoitred and in many cases prepared some hundreds of excellent battle positions before the battle began. The Commander was entirely convinced that in the action of the covering forces lay the whole key to success in his main battle. If this action was conducted as he intended, it would in his view both identify the main thrust and give him a little time to organize his response to it. At the same time it would slow down the Soviet surge just enough to cast doubt on the invincibility of the total armoured offensive. This, he thought, could pay a big dividend.

The course of events was to suggest that he was right.

II: The View from Rheindahlen

The G3 (General Staff — Operations) Duty Officer in Headquarters, Northern Army Group, still in its peacetime location at Rheindahlen in northern Germany, finished entering in his log the routine call at the half hour to AFCENT, while his two juniors in other corners of the map room were already putting together material for the next, and turned again to the letter to his wife. It was just after three o’clock on the morning of the first Sunday in August 1985. The night had been warm and thundery; a brief rainstorm about midnight had done little to freshen it.

There had not been much to report to AFCENT. Most of what was important had gone earlier in the night — reports on the army group’s state of readiness, the dispositions at last light of its five component corps,[2] tank and gun states, arrival of reserve units and of reinforcement personnel, the intelligence SITREP, and so on.

The general alert ordered in Allied Command Europe on the news of the airborne invasion of Yugoslavia and the follow-up by two Soviet motor-rifle divisions out of Hungary, resulting in an almost immediate clash with US marines, had done curiously little to change things in the Central Region. Events had been moving towards a general alert for some days, though the weight of evidence suggested that an attack by the Pact in the Central Region, if it ever came off, would be most unlikely before the beginning of September and scarcely possible much before mid-August.