The Third World War: August 1985

The maintenance or restoration of the Western technological edge was accepted by all Allied governments as the primary means of stopping the military balance from deteriorating further. The ability of the NATO defences to hold against attack from massive Soviet tank forces, possibly able to attack with warning measured in hours rather than days (sometimes termed a ‘standing start’, to denote an attack that could be made without the need for reinforcement), was also seen to be reliant on the use of technology, but to require improvements in readiness as well. With this increased readiness should go an increase in the number of reinforcements available, largely through making better use of reserves.

With the assistance of a judicious push from the new Carter Administration in 1977, the NATO Allies began to stir themselves. Some weapons, such as ATGW and SAM, had proved so effective in the October War of 1973 in the Middle East that the need for them was self-evident. They began to come out of factories in Europe and the United States in increasing numbers and to be bought by every Allied country. More advanced weapons, such as PGM (precision-guided missiles) for air attack against a variety of targets, found their way first into United States air forces, then into others. The cruise missile, with its astonishingly accurate guidance and relative cheapness, caught the imagination, both for its possibilities in the theatre conventional role and as a potential nuclear weapons carrier, perhaps — in some cases — instead of existing QRA (quick-reaction alert) aircraft. Besides all this, great efforts went, with rather less publicity, into esoteric electronics such as ECM (electronic counter-measures) and ECCM (electronic counter-counter-measures). The miniaturization of electronic components made possible improvements in weapons and techniques (in command, control and intelligence gathering and dissemination, for example) that had been unthinkable a few short years before. In the innovative capability of the Western electronics industry lay the ability to keep technologically ahead of the Soviet Union, which was handicapped by its more cumbersome system of development and the absence of commercial competition in a collectivized, state-controlled industry.

Hand in hand with interest in new weapons went thinking, both evolutionary and revolutionary, about the new tactical organizations, or changes in old ones, that would be needed to get the best out of them. All the major Allies experimented with new divisional establishments. The United States and Germany made them larger; Britain and France made them smaller. All aimed to get more firepower for less men. Similarly, studies were made of the possibilities of using the new small but powerful weapons to give reserve forces a strength and mobility they had never had before, so that they could be deployed to give defence in depth and backing to the heavier regular forces in the forward area.

Thus, in the late 1970s the overhauling of the NATO defences so long sorely needed was put in train at last. It was often done hurriedly, sometimes reluctantly, occasionally without sufficient thought, and was not in the event enough wholly to deter the Soviet Union. But it happened, and was to prove the West’s salvation. The spur was the lengthening shadow of the Soviet forces in Europe. As so often before, the Soviet Union proved the best recruiting officer for NATO.

There were, of course, still weaknesses. Two of the most serious lay, as always, in the overall numerical superiority of the forces deployed against the West, and in the low level of standardization in the equipment of its own forces. The first, giving the Warsaw Pact an overall advantage in the Central Region which (though it can be variously calculated) was certainly not less than two and a half or three to one, was made more serious by the ability of the attacker to choose his own points of attack and develop there, at will, a very much greater relative advantage. The second stemmed from the understandable tendency of free and independent countries both to consult their own economic interests in the procurement of military hardware and to reflect their own military philosophy in its design. The Chieftain and the Leopard, for example, were both very good tanks, but of different kinds. The XM-1, newer than either, was different again.