The practice would be to employ non-persistent non-lethal or incapacitating agents in the advance in bombardment preparatory to attack, for example, on positions it was intended to overrun or occupy. Such agents would disperse in a matter of minutes. Tear gas, or the CS used in civil disturbance, are good examples of such agents. What are known in the West as DM and DC, with secondary effects such as nausea, giddiness and reduction of the will to fight, are military versions. Non-persistent agents include chlorine and phosgene, lethal when sufficient is inhaled, but by the early 1980s thought to be of little use on account of unreliability.
More persistent agents, including blister gases — for example mustard and nerve agents such as the highly lethal Tabun (GA) and Soman (DC) — would be used to seal flanks and deny areas not intended for occupation, as well as to attack airfields, often in conjunction with delayed-action bombs.
The purpose of all CW attack would be twofold: to inflict casualties, and by causing opponents to take full protective action to impede performance.
It is difficult for anyone without experience of exacting work done under full CW protection to realize how far it saps efficiency. Protective clothing is burdensome and hot, and physical work in it is very exhausting. Staff work, though not so demanding physically, is difficult in respirators and thick gloves. The maintenance of effective seals over apertures such as windows, doors and hatches is time-consuming and involves severe self-discipline. Decontamination demands not only appropriate equipment and a plentiful water supply, but also minute care, which diverts attention and resource from other essential tasks. Men get accustomed to some degree to the discomforts and distractions of CW precautions but they are rarely more than 50 per cent efficient under them and tire quickly.
It was known that Warsaw Pact defensive capabilities in the field were inferior to those of the West, where British protective clothing and equipment were of outstanding quality, and alarm and other precautionary procedures were well practised. Other NATO members followed in varying degrees of effectiveness. The great disadvantage on the Western side was the general lack of a retaliatory capability everywhere but in USAREUR. Stocks of offensive toxic agents in the US had once been high but had deteriorated, or been dispersed, or destroyed so far that by 1980 they could be said (and were, by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) to be virtually non-existent. One SACEUR after another from the late 1970s onwards had emphasized that only the availability of an adequate retaliatory capability could be considered an effective defence against Soviet CW.
Interest lay chiefly in what is known as the binary round, a projectile in which two substances of a non-toxic nature are combined in flight and become a toxic substance before impact. Though there were technical difficulties (a short flight, for example, put obstacles in the way of effective combination of ingredients), the great merit of the binary round lay in safety of handling and storage, and a possible reduction in the sensitivity of Allied countries about hosting it in peacetime. The production of the binary round was recommended in the US in the early 1980s but it had not proved possible to store any in European countries by the summer of 1985. A useful step forward, however, had been the bilateral agreements between the United States on the one hand and Federal Germany and the UK on the other for the manufacture of quantities of such munitions for 155 mm artillery. They were to be stored for the time being in the US and brought forward when required.
Thus the armed forces on the Soviet side were in 1985 well prepared for offensive CW action but not over-well equipped to withstand attack, and on the other side quite well (in the case of the British, very well) prepared in defence but with a retaliatory capability confined entirely to the Americans. It was unlikely that, if a Warsaw Pact attack involved early and widespread use of CW in the field, the Western allies would fail to make use of the US capability to respond. This, however, would involve delay on the Western side and give the Soviets some initial advantage. This was almost certainly what was intended.
The Soviets would without doubt employ CW from the start of any offensive and the Western allies were well and truly warned to expect it. It was also highly probable that the two US corps would not be attacked in this way since it was a fair guess that the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) would find some way of employing the American retaliatory capability on his own authority in support of US troops, using munitions flown in for the purpose. This would be well known on the other side, as would also be the inability of other Western allies to retaliate in kind, at least for the time being, on their own behalf. Allied casualties, if war broke out, could be confidently expected but if precautions were taken and discipline prevailed they need not be high.
In aircraft the Alliance was compelled on the whole, in the years leading up to the war, to make do with what it had, or at any rate to improve it as best it might by stretching existing capabilities a little further, rather than to try to introduce far-reaching innovations. Given the financial constraints, Allied air forces, with an immense concentration of effort, did not do too badly.
The EF-111, for example, was an improved jammer built into an F-111 airframe, capable of Mach 2-plus speeds at height and a supersonic performance at sea level. Being also highly manoeuvrable it was a good survivor. The EF-111 carried ten high-powered jammer transmitters and a terminal-threat warning system which detected weapons-associated radar emissions and would provide flight crews with warning of impending attack from SAM anti-aircraft artillery or interceptors. These aircraft, beginning to enter service in 1983, were expected to prove very effective as deep-penetration escorts. In the Second World War the protection of deep penetration by an air force was provided by fighter escort or, when beyond its range, by the capacity of the bomber to fight its own way through the enemy’s interceptors, as in the US 8th Air Force. In the 1980s the penetrating aircraft had to be protected primarily from the result of electromagnetic emissions, whether its own or the enemy’s, which would serve to guide gun, missile or interceptor attack towards it. The EF-111 development typified modern trends.
So did the TR-1, a retooled version of the old U-2 (what the press called the ‘spy plane’), a high-altitude (over 70,000 feet), long-range (over 3,000 miles) reconnaissance and surveillance platform providing battlefield information to tactical commanders. This aircraft, too, was a definite plus. It had advanced electronic counter-measures (ECM), synthetic aperture radar systems, and capability to direct precision strikes against enemy radar emitters (PLSS — precision location strike system) and to collect ELINT (electronic intelligence) data. It began coming into NATO service in the early 1980s.
The story was the same with the F-4G, a modified F-4E Phantom, containing advanced electronic warfare equipment and armed with anti-radiation missiles, of which the latest, AGM-88 — HARM (high-speed anti-radiation missile) — was just coming into service when war broke out.
The F-15 Eagle was still in service, with a newer version, the Strike Eagle, carrying improved systems and possessing a better all-weather capability. The F-16 Fighting Falcon, which began to come into squadron service in 1981, represented a real advance. Its equipment included a multi-mode radar with a clutter-free look-down capability, head-up displays, internal ‘chaff (strips of foil which act as decoy to enemy homing missiles) and flare dispensers, a 500-round 20 mm internal gun and ECM, all in an aircraft with speed around Mach 2, a ceiling of more than 50,000 feet and a ferry range greater than 2,000 miles. This was a great improvement on any fighter the Western allies had hitherto seen. The F-18 Hornet, a one-man multiple-mission fighter bomber of even more advanced type, attractive to both navies and air forces, had suffered many delays in development and was not yet in service when war broke out.