The Third World War: August 1985

It was by now clear that at any one of half a dozen points at once, on either army group front in the Central Region, the Russians could develop a high degree of local superiority in armoured and armoured infantry attacks, under massive artillery and air-to-ground support, and would press any advantage with the utmost vigour and complete disregard of casualties. Soviet momentum was maintained by heavy concentrations of armour and firepower on narrow fronts; flanks were largely ignored. With the weight of the attack and the determination — even the recklessness — with which it was pressed wherever it took place, penetration at one or more points was inevitable. Swift exploitation by troops of the second echelon would then follow hard on the heels of the first. Immediate counter-attack from the Allied side was in the early stages rarely possible. The Russians made no attempt to consolidate ground. It was hard to find a moment, however fleeting, when they could be caught off-balance. Counter-attack often simply ran head-on into the armour of the next wave and was smothered almost before it had got under way. Even the concentrated fire of Allied divisional and corps artillery could for the most part only attenuate somewhat the force of attacks pressed with such violence and in such numbers, with so high a disregard for loss. Air-to-ground attack, in this first forty-eight hours, was nothing like as plentiful as the corps and subordinate commanders would have wished, but the Allied air forces were, on CINCENT’s express order, being used to counter the enemy’s air forces both in the air and on the ground in an endeavour to establish a tolerable air situation in addition to their continuous pounding of ‘choke points’ now in rear of the main battle.

It was only rarely that the attacks of Soviet tanks and armoured infantry could be stopped. Tanks would almost always get through, and fresh waves of attacking armour would move in behind them. Equipment for equipment, sub-unit for sub-unit, man for man, the NATO defence was by no means inferior to the attacking forces. In one important respect at least, that is in almost every aspect of the whole field of electronic technology, NATO was already showing up better. On the first day, however, the defending formations were simply being swamped by numbers, dominated and driven on by blind faith in the doctrine of the total offensive.

But even on the first day weaknesses began to appear in the way the Russians fought their battle. The handling of armoured infantry provides an example which deserves attention, for it was to be of critical importance.

The BMP, improved but still essentially the same machine, had originally been evolved as an armoured infantry combat vehicle for use in exploitation of nuclear action. Its chief purpose was to move in swiftly to overwhelm, by mainly mounted attack, whatever NATO defences still survived the nuclear attack, travelling in close company with the tanks whose further action would resolve the battle. To maintain the impetus of the armoured advance some protection of the tanks by infantry was indispensable. But the BMP was itself highly vulnerable to anti-tank attack. The precision-guided missiles now deployed by NATO in very considerable numbers showed that mounted attack was often suicidal. The toll of BMP on the first day was heavy.

The Red Army had long recognized that in the non-nuclear battle mounted action for motor infantry was not always feasible, though it was certainly worth trying, particularly in the first assault. The alternative was to dismount the infantry for an attack on foot against such NATO anti-tank defences as survived the suppressive fire of artillery and air forces. In the event, well-located Allied missile launchers survived, even on that first day, in considerable numbers. Dismounted infantry had no hope of keeping up with tanks moving at their best speed. When motor-rifle infantry were prevented by anti-tank fire from going in mounted, therefore, the whole attack slowed down.

We have seen how Soviet tactics for the penetration of hostile defences in the non-nuclear variant of the land battle had latterly come to depend upon manoeuvre at least as much as on massed frontal attack. Manoeuvre by mounted infantry demanded both tactical surprise and effective suppression of anti-tank defensive fire. In the battle of the Central Region neither, for the Warsaw Pact, was complete, even on the first day.

Professor J. Erickson, one of the best informed and soundest observers of the Soviet military scene, had said in 1977: ‘Above all the Soviet command will pay the closest attention to the loss-rate in the first 10–15 km of the advance…’ These were prophetic words.