Ideally all armies should have had the same type of tank or truck or gun. Such a solution was rare. Instead the Alliance put its immediate efforts into what it called inter-operability — the ability to operate with each other; to have common radio frequencies, for example, if it were not possible to have the same sets; to have the same calibre guns and rifles, using the same ammunition, if not the same weapons. Much was achieved in this direction, notably with artillery and tank guns, in fuel and in other supplies. Operational procedures were not as difficult to harmonize as policies in the procurement of hardware, and NATO had gone far, in spite of language difficulties, in developing a common practice. But they were still, in this very important respect, some way behind their enemies.
CHAPTER 13: The Warsaw Pact Forces
In the Soviet Union at the end of the year 1984 there were rather more than 4 1/2 million men and women under arms. The ground forces furnished 170 divisions, of which half were now always in the category 1 state of readiness, that is to say, not less than 90 per cent complete in personnel, fully armed and equipped up to field service scales, and with a complete provision of all supplies (including fuel and ammunition) for four days’ sustained action. Forty-five divisions (twice as many as in the sixties, though not all in category 1) were deployed close to the Sino-Soviet border and some thirty more in the southern regions of the USSR.
Of more immediate concern to NATO were the thirty-two Soviet divisions — sixteen tank and fifteen motorized, with at least one (and perhaps more) airborne, all in category 1 — stationed in European countries of the Warsaw Pact. These formed four groups of forces — army commands, in effect — one each in the German Democratic Republic (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, or GSFG), Poland (the Northern Group), Czechoslovakia (the Central Group) and Hungary (the Southern Group), containing in total over half a million men and 11,000 tanks, with some 8,000 artillery pieces and over 1,000 integral aircraft. The Sixteenth Air Army, also deployed in the GDR, represented no more than the spearhead of the available tactical air resources. In the western USSR were seventy more divisions (a third of them tank divisions), of which only a few were kept constantly in category 1, but from which further reinforcement was readily available.
In addition to the Soviet forces in Central Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries in the Northern Tier (the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Poland) deployed a dozen tank and a score of motorized divisions of their own, all organized, armed and trained on the Soviet model, while in the Southern Tier (Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania) the one tank and five motorized divisions of the Hungarian Army were also available. The military importance of Hungary in the Pact, it may be said in passing, had recently lain mostly in its exclusion from the Central Front in any discussions with the West on theatre force reductions. Forces to be withdrawn from the Central Front could therefore be conveniently retained intact by simply moving them into Hungary. It was in large part this (among other reasons, which suggested that there was little point in continuing so unprofitable a dialogue) which had caused discussions on reductions eventually to be allowed to lapse.
Although the armed forces of the Pact satellites were organized on Soviet lines and similarly armed and equipped, with an identical operational doctrine, there existed in the Pact something less than the 100 per cent standardization and inter-operability which was sometimes, not entirely correctly, envied in the West. There were language difficulties for a start, but perhaps more important were divergences in equipment. These became more marked as newer types were introduced into Soviet divisions but by no means always into those of other Pact countries. There was also no universal mobilization system in the Warsaw Pact, any more than there was in the Atlantic Alliance. It must also be emphasized that the Warsaw Pact, as such, embodied no war-fighting structure comparable to that of NATO, and thus lacked both some of NATO’s strengths and some of its weaknesses. The forces of component countries of the Warsaw Pact were regarded — and used — as integral parts of the forces of the Soviet Union.
Up to the outbreak of hostilities the question of the political reliability of the forces of the satellites was much debated in the West. It was to become clear from the outset, however, that there could be no doubt at all as to the loyalty to Moscow to be found in Warsaw Pact forces at the higher and medium levels of command. The attitude of the non-military masses in these countries and the response to higher military command at lower levels of responsibility, not least among the rank and file, was to prove a different matter.
The quantitative level of forces facing the Central Region of NATO in 1984 had not greatly increased over the past few years. Nevertheless, even with the recent increases in the strengths of Allied in-place forces, there was still an immediate superiority in Pact divisions of almost three to one. There was also on the Soviet side, it need hardly be added, the capability to concentrate swiftly with little warning, resulting in a very marked superiority at chosen points. This, according to Allied expectation, could be as high as twenty or thirty to one in each of four or five separate thrusts. A critical element in the battle was to be, as had been expected, the comparative success rate of Pact penetration as against the speed of Allied regrouping to meet the main thrusts once these had been identified. In the north of NATO’s Central Region in northern Germany, where Allied forces were weaker, lateral movement was easier. In the south, where Allied forces were stronger, it was more difficult. In both sectors the choice of thrust lines for the attacker was to some extent constrained by the nature of the ground. The threat of an overpowering concentration of strength by an assailant with the initiative nevertheless continued to be, as it had been from the beginning, a major preoccupation on the Allied side. It was here, in Allied thinking, that air power had a crucial part to play.
More important than any recent increases in Warsaw Pact strengths were innovations and improvements in equipment and important development in warlike practice. These went hand in hand and should be treated together.
In the mid-sixties Soviet military thinking, while recognizing that warfare would continue to be dominated by nuclear weapons, began to move away from the concept of land operations as inevitably and inescapably nuclear from the outset and to consider the possibility of an initial conventional phase. There thus began the study of what has been described as the non-nuclear variant. At no time had it been accepted in the USSR that nuclear and non-nuclear operations could be distinguished in kind and that a ‘firebreak’, as some called it in the West, could be conjured up between them. All operations of war, in the Soviet view, lay in a continuum. The concept of a nuclear ‘deterrent’ which could ‘fail’, with its ‘failure’ followed by active warfare, was foreign to their thinking. All known weapons of war were available for use as policy dictated and occasion demanded. Nevertheless, it began to be accepted that a major war might open on conventional lines and that non-nuclear operations could easily be prolonged.
In any case, the massive application of armoured strength remained for the Soviet Union the primary means of resolution on the battlefield. Up to the mid-sixties the tank was still the trump card, whether the game was to be played with nuclear weapons or not. But a new complication developed. As early as 1964 Khrushchev was shocked to see how vulnerable the tank had become to guided missiles. Within a few years it was clear that Soviet generals had acknowledged a qualitative change in armoured warfare. The Arab-Israeli War of 1973 aroused a great concern for the future of the tank and triggered off an urgent search for means of neutralizing anti-tank defences. The Minister of Defence, Marshal Grechko, himself took a leading part in it.