The Third World War: August 1985

Warfare in the Middle East had shown that intense operations with modern equipment resulted in an unprecedentedly high rate of consumption of stocks. For category 1 divisions in the GSFG, stocked to combat readiness, there was now provision for two to three days’ further fighting, dumped in forward positions. This would have to be brought forward if a frontal assault on the NATO defences carried attacking formations through into any significant degree of penetration. As for ‘deep thrust’ operations, these demanded an altogether different kind of logistic support — in swiftly moving self-contained columns, capable of keeping up with the advance and looking after themselves in a fluid battle. At the beginning of the 1980s logistic tactics rather like those being practised in British armour in BAOR in the fifties (before the blanket of massive retaliation (see Chapter 4) had fallen over the last sparks of armoured experience from the African deserts in the Second World War) were being studied — on exercises of course, in the Soviet mode, rather than in the conference room, and with an input from more recent combat experience in the Middle East. The BMP was modified as an armoured logistic vehicle, and, in the three years preceding the outbreak of hostilities, the handling of armoured replenishment columns, protected by a highly mobile anti-tank and air defence, became an important feature of Red Army manoeuvres.

Meanwhile, the offensive capability of Soviet armoured and motorized formations continued to improve. All category 1 and many other armoured divisions had been re-equipped by 1980 with the 40-tonne T-72 tank, with its high velocity 125 mm gun and laser rangefinder, its low silhouette, rugged construction and NBC protection. A newer and better tank, the T-80, with spaced armour, ATGW and an improved 125 mm smooth-bore gun, was also beginning to come into service. The T-62, whose gun had so disconcerted Israeli armour in 1973, was now being finally phased out.

In the motorized infantry of which each tank division now had one regiment to three of tanks, the proportion in motorized infantry divisions being reversed) the mechanized fighting vehicle BMP-76PB — fast, quite heavily armed and NBC-protected — had completely replaced the earlier models of personnel-carrier. A still newer infantry combat vehicle than the BMP began to appear in the GSFG in 1977: the MTLB, with improvements which included a 76 mm gun. Seven new infantry regiments appeared in that year in the GSFG, at first mounted in trucks, soon to be replaced by MTLB. By 1982, ten regiments had been similarly converted. Self-propelled artillery in 122 mm and 152 mm calibres was widely in service for forward deployment, though there was still some inclination towards the traditional Soviet use of massed artillery (now strengthened by the 180 mm piece, in answer to the American 175 mm M-107) for indirect fire controlled from further back. Saturation fire was effectively thickened by an improved version of the well-tried BM-21 122 mm rocket launcher, throwing missiles of fifty-five kilograms sixteen and a half kilometres from forty tubes on one vehicle.

Air defence organic to the division now incorporated large numbers of the new SA-8 surface-to-air missile launcher for very low-level defence, in addition to SA-7, SA-9 and SA-10, together with SA-6 and SA-3 for medium-level defence and SA-4 and SA-5 against high-level attack, as well as a liberal provision of guns, of which improved ZU-23s were the backbone.

In the anti-tank inventory, now of even greater importance in the offensive concept of the deep thrust, the 76 mm SPG-9 had replaced earlier recoilless weapons, though the familiar RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launcher, somewhat improved, was still in service. So were the wire-guided ATGW, though early models of more sophisticated weaponry, aiming at matching the ‘fire and forget’ systems already considerably advanced in the West (in which pre-set guidance and terminal homing removed much of the combat pressure on the operator), were now coming into service.

Offensive thrust had been increased by improved assault engineer resources, more and better bridging, and more effective amphibious vehicles and ferries. Mine clearance and swift automatic mine-laying capabilities, either on the ground or from the air, had developed greatly as the implications of fluid operations in depth were more fully explored.

Operations of this sort, indeed, had come more and more to dominate Soviet tactical thinking in a time of unprecedented experiment.

In a very wide area of debate on the conduct of the land battle one single issue stood out as more important than most. It concerned the basic organization of field formations.