The Cold War: A Military History

NOWHERE WAS THE Cold War more intense, nowhere was it more likely to have broken out, and, provided it remained non-nuclear, nowhere was it more likely to have been decided than in Europe – NATO’s Central Region. In compliance with their wartime agreements, the Allies divided Europe into two, split by a line which was christened the ‘Iron Curtain’ by Winston Churchill, although where it ran north–south through Germany it later became known, rather more prosaically, as the ‘Inner German Border’ (IGB). Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the major part of Germany were in the Western camp, while Czechoslovakia, the remainder of Germany, Hungary and Poland lay in the East. Sweden and Switzerland were long-standing neutrals, while Austria, after a ten-year Allied occupation, became neutral in 1955.

On the Western side the dispositions on the Central Front were principally the outcome of wartime agreements between the UK and the USA, with a last-minute amendment to accommodate the French. Thus the British forces were in the north, with contingents from Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands and Norway all within the British zone. US forces were in the south, but with an enclave at Bremerhaven to ensure their supplies. The French were given a smaller zone in the south-west. Generally speaking, the victors occupied former Wehrmacht barracks and Luftwaffe airfields in accordance with where units came to a halt in 1945.

By the early 1950s some of the occupation forces had departed and those that remained did so under the terms of newly concluded treaties with the Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, the formation of the new German armed forces (Bundeswehr), and in particular of the army (Bundesheer), resulted in some reshuffling, the situation then remaining substantially unchanged for the remainder of the Cold War.

THE NATIONAL ARMIES

The great majority of nations depended upon conscription to man their armies, but Canada, the UK and the USA changed during the Cold War to all-regular armies. Among those that depended upon conscription, however, not only were there considerable differences between the systems, but, in addition, the terms decreased in severity and the length of service grew shorter as time passed. By the late 1980s, for example, Danish conscripts served for nine months, those in Belgium and France for twelve months, and the Germans for fifteen months, while the Dutch served for a nominal twenty-four months, although the final few months were spent on ‘short leave’. These reductions in service inevitably reduced efficiency, especially as equipment became more sophisticated and needed greater skills for its operation.

In the 1960s Belgium was supposed to provide two corps in West Germany, each of three divisions, giving a total of nine brigades. By 1970, however, the reality was that it fielded only one corps, composed of two divisions, each of two brigades, and then in 1977 there was a further retrenchment, which involved moving one brigade from each of those divisions back into Belgium. A yet further reorganization in the early 1980s resulted in the forces in West Germany being reduced to the corps headquarters plus one division of two brigades and an independent reconnaissance brigade. The second division, consisting of two brigades, was relocated in Belgium.

In proportion to its population and resources, during the Second World War Canada made a very large contribution to the Allied efforts; it then continued to maintain a force in western Europe throughout the Cold War. For many years the 4th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group (4CMBG) was located in the north, forming an essential element of NATO’s NORTHAG (Northern Army Group) reserves, but in the 1970s it was moved south to Lahr, where it became a CENTAG (Central Army Group) reserve. The Canadians struggled manfully to maintain this as a viable force, and its troops were extremely professional, but 4CMBG’s combat equipment was always less than that of a normal brigade, both in quantity and, sometimes, in quality.

In the original NATO force goals Denmark was committed to field two full-strength divisions, but this was never achieved, partly because of financial difficulties, but also because of a high level of domestic opposition to heavy defence spending. As a result, there were military manpower cuts in 1973, 1985 and 1987. The main element of the field force was the Jutland Division of three mechanized brigades and one regimental combat group, which was located in peacetime in Denmark, but which deployed to Schleswig-Holstein in war; this deployment, however, would have taken place only some one to three weeks after mobilization, which was needed to round the division out to wartime strength. The second Danish division, which was even more dependent on reserves, defended the whole of the Jutland peninsula, although, as described below, it would have been assisted in this task by the UK Mobile Force.

Following its admission to NATO, the FRG rapidly built up its forces, particularly the army (Bundesheer). The initial organization – Heerstruktur I – was tailored to meet NATO requirements and consisted of five divisions, which were completed by 1957 and manned principally by conscripts on a twelve-month engagement. This was subsequently changed in 1958 to Heerstruktur II, to comply with NATO’s new ‘tripwire’ strategy (MC 14/2), and concurrently the army reached its target of twelve divisions. In the aftermath of the 1961 Berlin crisis, conscription was extended to eighteen months. The 1967 NATO change to ‘flexible response’ (MC 14/3) resulted in Heerstruktur III, which included strengthening the panzer (armoured) divisions, increasing the ‘teeth-to-tail’ ratio, and creating a territorial army. Finally, Heerstruktur IV, introduced in 1981, strengthened the brigades in the regular army and restructured and strengthened the territorial army.

The Bundesheer produced three corps, whose composition varied according to their combat role, plus one division:

• 1 (GE) Corps was part of NORTHAG, being positioned between the Dutch and British corps, and consisted of three panzer (armoured) divisions and one panzer grenadier (armoured infantry) division – a total of twelve brigades.

• 2 (GE) Corps was in the south, facing the Czechoslovak border and essentially defending the hilly country of Bavaria. Its composition reflected the complexity of its role: one panzer, one panzer grenadier, one mountain and one airborne division – a total of twelve brigades.

• 3 (GE) Corps was the northernmost corps in CENTAG, and on deployment would have been located between the Belgian and US corps. It consisted of two panzer divisions and one panzer grenadier division – a total of nine brigades.

• The twelfth division was committed to NATO’s LANDJUT (Land Forces Jutland) and was located in Schleswig-Holstein.

An efficient conscription system maintained this force at a high degree of readiness. Combat units (i.e. brigades and below) normally required only an additional 5 per cent to bring them up to war strength, while divisional support units needed 25 per cent and corps support units 50 per cent.

In the early days of NATO tiny Luxembourg produced a regimental combat team of three battalions, but this commitment slowly decreased until by 1988 there was just one light-infantry battalion, whose war role was with the Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (Land) (AMF(L)).

The Dutch provided 1 (NL) Corps, which was responsible for NORTHAG’s left flank, where it was located between LANDJUT and 1 (GE) Corps. One of the major problems for 1 (NL) Corps was that only the 41st Armoured Brigade, a reconnaissance battalion and some support units were stationed in the FRG in peacetime; the remaining units were in the Netherlands, and, from the time the Dutch government gave the order, would have required ninety-six hours to reach their combat positions.

The Dutch conscription system was known as ‘Direct Intake into Reserve’, and each regular unit had a reserve ‘shadow’ unit. Conscripts served for two years in a regular unit, of which the last six months, sometimes longer, were spent on ‘short leave’, which meant that they were liable to rapid recall, following which they were transferred as a group to their ‘shadow unit’, where they served for a further eighteen months. Efficient as this system was, it still took time to implement.

The main British contribution was 1 (BR) Corps, which was part of NORTHAG. During the Cold War few countries reorganized their army as frequently as the British; on some occasions the reorganization was due to changing national, political or economic circumstances, although on others the reasons baffled friend and foe alike.

In the 1950s 1 (BR) Corps consisted of three armoured divisions and one infantry division, but in the 1960s this was reduced to three all-arms divisions. Then, in 1976, it underwent a fundamental reorganization, in which the brigade level of command was eliminated and command over units was then exercised by four divisional headquarters. By 1982, however, these changes, which had been achieved at considerable expense, were seen to be fundamentally flawed and were totally reversed (at further expense), this time to three, much stronger, armoured divisions, two of them with three armoured brigades and one with two armoured brigades and an infantry brigade. (The infantry brigade was stationed in the UK in peacetime.)

To implement the 1976 changes a fourth divisional headquarters (HQ 3 Division) was taken over to Germany, while to implement the 1982 changes a different divisional headquarters (HQ 2 Division) was returned to the UK. In the UK this divisional headquarters retained its war role in Germany, being committed to the new task of rear-area security of 1 (BR) Corps, for which it fielded three motorized infantry brigades, one of which was regular and the other two from the Territorial Army.

As a quite separate commitment, the British provided the United Kingdom Mobile Force (UKMF), which consisted of the 1st (UK) Infantry Brigade (four motorized infantry battalions, one armoured reconnaissance battalion, one artillery battalion and an armoured squadron) and an air-force component of three fighter squadrons. In addition, since by NATO rules communications and logistics were a national responsibility, the force required a large logistics tail, bringing the UKMF total to well in excess of 15,000 men. This force was stationed in peacetime in the UK, and in war would have had to mobilize (approximately one-third was from the Territorial Army) and then move either to Jutland, where it came under command of the Danish Commander LANDJUT, or to northern Italy.

The United States made a major contribution to NATO land forces on the Central Front, with the US army undergoing a number of reorganizations during the years of the Cold War. In the military excitement of the 1950s, the post-Second World War army in Europe was converted into the ‘Pentomic Army’, equipped with battlefield nuclear weapons and organized on the basis of a ‘rule of five’ – i.e. five battalions to a brigade, fire brigades to a division, and so on. In the 1960s the Vietnam War, not surprisingly, took priority in all US military thinking and Europe was something of a backwater, regaining its precedence only in the early 1970s. Conscription ended in 1973, although legislation for the ‘draft’ remained for use in an emergency, but US manpower in Europe actually increased over the years, from 197,000 in 1975 to over 227,000 in 1988, of whom 204,700 were army personnel stationed in the FRG.

US ground forces were commanded by the Seventh (US) Army and organized into two corps, 5 (US) Corps in the north of the former US zone and 7 (US) Corps in the south, both of which came under CENTAG in wartime. Most US units were stationed in the FRG in peacetime; however, some elements were ‘dual-based’, which meant the manpower was stationed in the USA in peacetime but in war would make use of a full duplicate set of equipment located in Germany.[1] Each corps also included an armoured cavalry regiment, which was permanently based in the FRG. In addition to these divisions, there were seven artillery brigades, four independent artillery groups and nine surface-to-surface-missile battalions (three with Pershing II, six with Lance), as well as numerous engineer, aviation, communications and logistics units permanently in Germany, with many more in the USA, earmarked for the Central Front in war.

The US goal was to have ten full divisions in western Europe within twenty-one days of a deployment order. This would have enabled them to field two full-strength corps in CENTAG, one full-strength corps (3 (US) Corps) in the north as CINCENT’s reserve, and one division (2 (US) Armoured Division) as part of NORTHAG.

In 1945 the French army occupied a zone in south-west Germany abutting on the French border, where it remained throughout the Cold War, first as an occupying power, then under a bilateral treaty with the Federal Republic on the admission of the latter to NATO, and finally under a new bilateral treaty following France’s withdrawal from the NATO integrated command structure. From that time, however, France’s forces in the FRG were no longer assigned to NATO, and their precise role in war was never totally clear, although, as described elsewhere in this book, while the French relationship with NATO underwent a number of changes, the relationship was always closer than was depicted in the media.

The major field formation was always the First French Army (FFA), but its internal organization underwent a number of reorganizations over the years. Once French nuclear weapons became operational, the ground forces were organized to serve as a ‘trigger’ for French nuclear intervention, but they were subsequently reorganized to enable them to play a more positive role in the land battle. The most significant factor on the ground was that, if NATO defences in West Germany failed to halt an attack, there was little likelihood that victorious Soviet forces would halt on the Franco-German border; it thus made sound sense for French ground forces not only to defend the border, but also to bolster NATO defences to the east of that border. For this reason detailed plans were made for French counter-attacks, particularly in the NORTHAG area.

By the 1980s the FFA consisted of three corps:

• 1 (FR) Corps – three armoured and two light armoured divisions, of which one armoured division was stationed in the FRG;

• 2 (FR) Corps – two armoured divisions and one infantry division, with the majority located in the FRG;

• 3 (FR) Corps – two armoured divisions and one infantry division, all stationed in north-east France.

In addition, the Force Action Rapide (FAR) consisted of four divisions (one light armour, one marine, one airborne, one alpine) and the Foreign Legion Operational Group. These were designed to conduct intervention operations outside Europe in peacetime, but would have been available for national defence in time of war.

DEFENDING THE CENTRAL REGION

NATO ground forces in central Europe believed themselves to be facing an aggressive-minded enemy, which, if it attacked, would do so in a series of rapid drives, led by tanks and highly mobile infantry in armoured personnel carriers, with the aim of eliminating NATO forces as rapidly as possible. NATO also believed that the Warsaw Pact would attack along six main axes:

• along the Baltic coast and north into Jutland;

• towards Hamburg and then along the North Sea coast;

• across the North German Plain, using the flat, rolling countryside with its abundance of roads, through the 1 (BR) Corps position and towards the Ruhr;

• through the Fulda Gap in the direction of Mannheim;

• from Zwickau through the so-called ‘Hof Corridor’ towards Nuremberg and Stuttgart;

• from Czechoslovakia, with two pincer movements meeting west of Munich.

The defence of the Central Region against these threats was not an easy task. Western Germany stretched approximately 700 km from north to south and was some 300–400 km wide, which meant that, from a military point of view, it was seriously lacking in depth. The original strategy for the defence of the Central Region was based on a thin ‘crust’ of conventional forces, penetration of which would have resulted in the virtually automatic use of nuclear weapons.^{1} This was subsequently changed in December 1967 to the strategy of ‘flexible response’, which required a credible conventional defence, sufficiently strong to contain any attack as far forward (i.e. as near to the IGB) as possible. Both these strategies were, however, within the overall concept of ‘forward defence’, which, not surprisingly, was insisted upon by the West Germans and required that Warsaw Pact forces be held as far to the east as possible, even though this was not necessarily ideal from the operational point of view.

The task of defending central Europe fell to NATO’s Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), which was originally located in France and commanded by a French general, but in 1967 it moved to Brunssum in the Netherlands, at which time a German general took command. The command was divided into two – Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) and Central Army Group (CENTAG) – commanded by a British and a US general respectively. The headquarters of AFCENT, NORTHAG and CENTAG were fully integrated NATO organizations, but below them were a number of corps, each of which was almost totally national in organization. This provided a certain degree of strength, but also caused NATO a number of difficulties, not least because nations retained the right to organize, equip and train their troops according to their national requirements, standards and traditions; nations were also, to a large degree, able to decide on their readiness and mobilization plans. As a result, there was no such thing as a standard NATO division in size, organization or tactics, and when more than one nation used the same equipment it was frequently as much by chance as by design.

There was a major anomaly in that, while Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein were the vital northern flank to the Central Region battle and overlooked the exits from the Baltic (also an area of vital interest to the Central Front), they came under CINCNORTH (in Norway) rather than under CINCENT. Two major threats faced Denmark, both of which emanated from areas of vital interest to the Central Region: a Soviet/East German overland thrust through Schleswig-Holstein, and an amphibious attack by East German, Polish and Soviet marines along the Baltic coastline.

NORTHAG headquarters was at Rheindahlen, just outside Mönchengladbach, Germany, and was a fully integrated NATO headquarters, commanded by a British four-star general. It was responsible for the defence of the Federal Republic from the southern border of Schleswig-Holstein in the north, to a line running approximately from Kassel to Bonn. Its area of responsibility thus included the North Sea coast with its vital ports of Bremerhaven and (in depth) Antwerp and Rotterdam, the North German Plain leading to the Ruhr, and the Harz mountains in the south.

The army group comprised four corps and a reserve division:

• 1 (NL) Corps was on NORTHAG’s left, and in the 1980s consisted of three armoured and six armoured infantry brigades, of which the 41st Armoured Brigade and a reconnaissance battalion were the only units stationed in the FRG in peacetime. There were also three divisional headquarters (1, 4 and 5 Divisions), but there were no permanent divisions, the corps commander allocating the divisional commander between two and five brigades, according to the tactical situation.[2]

• 1 (GE) Corps consisted of three panzer divisions (1, 3 and 7) and one panzer grenadier (11) division, each division comprising three brigades. Each brigade was made up of four panzer or panzer grenadier battalions, of which three were fully active, while the fourth was at cadre strength only, requiring reservists to bring it up to strength on mobilization, which would have required ninety-six hours. 1 (GE) Corps’s position was to the right of 1 (NL) Corps, where it shared the responsibility for the North German Plain with 1 (BR) Corps. Alone among the national contributors to the central region, the Germans were split, 1 (GE) Corps in NORTHAG being located at a considerable distance from 2 and 3 (GE) Corps in CENTAG.

• 1 (BR) Corps held the southern part of the plain, sitting astride the main east–west Hanover–Essen autobahn route, which would inevitably have been one of the Warsaw Pact’s main axes of advance. The corps consisted of 1 and 4 Armoured Divisions, each with three armoured brigades. 3 Armoured Division, however, consisted of two Germany-based brigades – one armoured brigade, with two armoured battalions and one mechanized infantry battalion, and one brigade which was termed ‘armoured’ but in fact consisted of one armoured and two mechanized infantry battalions – while a third brigade (the 19th Infantry Brigade) was stationed in the UK in peacetime. 2 Infantry Division (three motorized infantry brigades) was also stationed in the UK in peacetime. British plans involved the move of some 60,000 troops across the Channel to bring 1 (BR) Corps and its support elements to full strength of some 120,000.

• 1 (BE) Corps was responsible for the high ground on the southern edge of the NORTHAG sector, which had the reputation of being ‘difficult tank country’, although whether the Warsaw Pact shared that opinion was a different matter. The Belgian corps consisted of one division (16 Mechanized) of two brigades (one armoured, one mechanized), plus the Groupement Reconnaissance (equivalent to a brigade) in Germany. The second division (1 Mechanized), with two brigades (both mechanized), was stationed in Belgium.

• 2 (US) Armoured Division was tasked as NORTHAG reserve and would have deployed initially on the left, in the rear of 1 (NL) Corps. The division consisted of three brigades, of which one was located in West Germany in peacetime, while the remainder of the division was in the United States, but with duplicate equipment stockpiled in Germany.

• There were also contingency plans to deploy an additional US-based corps to the NORTHAG area, where it would have served as the CINCENT reserve. This was 3 (US) Corps, for which two divisions-worth of equipment were stored in Belgium and the Netherlands.

CENTAG headquarters was located at Heidelberg under the command of a US army four-star general, with four corps forward:

• 3 (GE) Corps was the left (northernmost) corps in CENTAG, located between NORTHAG’s right-flank corps (1 (BE) Corps) and 5 (US) Corps. It consisted of two panzer divisions and one panzer grenadier division – a total of nine brigades.

• 5 (US) Corps, immediately south of 3 (GE) Corps, was composed of 3 Armoured Division and 8 Mechanized Infantry Division, together with the 11th Armoured Cavalry Regiment, whose specific task lay in the Fulda Gap.

• 7 (US) Corps deployed to the right of 5 (US) Corps and was composed of one armoured and one mechanized infantry division (of which one brigade was in the FRG, the remainder in the USA), plus an armoured cavalry regiment.

• 2 (GE) Corps was in the far south, facing the Czechoslovak border and essentially defending the hilly country of Bavaria, although it inevitably also had to look over its right shoulder at the Austrian border, in case the Warsaw Pact failed to respect that country’s neutrality. 2 (GE) Corps was large, and its composition reflected the complexity of its role: four divisions – one panzer, one panzer grenadier, one mountain and one airborne – giving a total of twelve brigades.

Since it was NATO policy that each nation was responsible for its own logistic support, each corps, plus 2 (US) Armoured Division in NORTHAG, had its own rear area, in which its logistic units were located. These required both control and protection, not least because the Warsaw Pact was known to give priority to attacking such facilities. Security of these rear areas was therefore of considerable concern to the corps commanders, although nations allocated differing priorities to the task.

Responsibility for the NATO Rear Combat Zone lay with the Bundeswehr’s Northern Territorial Command for NORTHAG and the Southern Territorial Command for CENTAG. These territorial commands were subdivided into a series of geographical areas, but they also included ten home-defence brigades, which were equipped with older types of tanks and artillery. There were also fifteen home-defence regiments, each with three motorized battalions, which had mainly security tasks.

AIRBORNE FORCES

A particular and sometimes controversial element of the Central Region’s ground forces was the paratroop units. Such units had been formed and used for the first time in the Second World War, and in all armies they immediately became a corps d’élite: they developed an extremely aggressive mode of fighting, and their special selection processes were coupled with very high standards of training and fitness. They also developed, not unintentionally, a mystique about their operations, which endured throughout the Cold War.

While the high reputation resulting from their performance in combat was fully deserved, other factors gradually came to the fore. Their capital costs were high, since they required a large, specially equipped air fleet to take them into battle, and they needed a great deal of specially designed lightweight equipment. Their operating costs were also high, as they required frequent exercises to maintain their standards, particularly in parachuting. On top of all these, one of the lessons of the Second World War was that parachute operations tended to be costly in lives, since, virtually by definition, units were placed in positions of great danger and this, coupled with their aggressive tactics, resulted in unusually high casualty rates.

The largest and most capable of NATO’s airborne forces was 82 (US) Airborne Division, whose main combat element was three airborne brigades, each of three parachute battalions. There were also three artillery battalions, a divisional anti-tank battalion and an aviation battalion. 82 Airborne Division was based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where one battalion was always at eighteen hours’ notice to deploy, with one company at two hours’ notice and the remainder of the brigade at twenty-four hours’ notice.

Some equipment was specially developed for the airborne role, such as the Sheridan light tank, but 82 Airborne Division had nothing like the range of specialist weapons and equipment developed for Soviet airborne forces. Its anti-tank defences, for example, depended upon the TOW crew-served system, and the Dragon and LAW (light anti-tank weapon), while air-defence weapons were Vulcans and Stingers, all of which were standard army weapons.

On the other hand, the division’s air-transport assets were unrivalled. In the 1980s USAF air-transport assets comprised 97 Lockheed C-5 Galaxies, 250 Lockheed C-141 Starlifters and 544 Lockheed C-130 Hercules. Not all of these would have been allocated to lifting 82 Airborne Division, but there was sufficient to deploy a brigade very rapidly, with the remainder of the division following close behind. Indeed, the C-141s regularly demonstrated their ability to take off from the USA with a full load of paratroops, fly across the Atlantic, and then drop them straight on to a tactical drop zone in West Germany. Once committed to such an operation the troops would have been able to sustain themselves for three days, but would have then needed air resupply.

Most other NATO armies maintained a parachuting capability: the Germans and French both operated a complete division of three brigades, while Belgium, Canada, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK each maintained between one and three battalions. All these forces had peacetime commitments to national defence, particularly in rapid-reaction operations, and not all the battalions were necessarily in the parachuting role at all times, but all were capable of parachute operations and would have been available to NATO in war.

The French airborne forces included the most experienced paratroop units in any army, most of the units having fought in Indo-China from 1949 to 1954 and in Algeria from 1955 to 1962. Thereafter they moved to France, but continued to take part in numerous operations, particularly in Africa. From the 1970s onwards 11 (FR) Parachute Division comprised two brigades of three battalions each, with a seventh battalion under divisional control in a ‘special forces’ role. They were capable of ‘rapid deployment’ in Africa and Asia, but in a general war would have fought in Europe, albeit under French rather than NATO command. Like most other airborne units, however, their deployment ability would have been limited by the availability of suitable aircraft.

The British had built up a sizeable parachute force during the Second World War, eventually fielding two divisions, but one division was cut immediately the war ended. The force was further reduced to two brigades in 1947–8, the 16th (BR) Parachute Brigade being all-regular (three battalions) and the 44th Parachute Brigade being found by the Territorial Army (six battalions). The parachute force continued to exist up to the end of the Cold War and frequently took part in limited war and peacekeeping operations, including Northern Ireland and the 1982 Falklands War. By 1990 three regular and two Territorial Army battalions remained, but limitations of equipment, particularly in the number of transport aircraft, meant that in general war not more than one battalion-group operation could have been undertaken at a time.

The provision of air transport for parachute operations was almost always a problem; the Belgians, for example, frequently looked to the US to provide suitable transport aircraft. In a war on the Central Front, air operations by large and slow transport aircraft, flying at low level, would have been especially hazardous both on the original fly-in and in subsequent resupply operations, unless major efforts were devoted to the suppression of enemy air defences. Thus, even though most NATO paratroops units would have been declared to SACEUR in a war in Europe, there was a lack of clarity over just how they might have been used. Indeed, the occasions on which a battalion-sized or larger force might have been used in the airborne role in a battle in the Central Region remain difficult to identify.

MOBILIZATION

NATO’s defences depended upon a complicated series of preparations for war, ranging from essentially covert tasks, such as the activation of war headquarters and communications systems, to overt measures such as the deployment of troops, aircraft and ships to their war locations, culminating finally in the commencement of hostilities. The Alliance would, therefore have had to persuade fifteen member nations (sixteen, once Spain had joined) not only to transfer assigned units to NATO operational command, but also to mobilize the reserves necessary in all countries to bring front-line units up to full wartime strength. The former could have been done with little public knowledge, but the latter would have been only too obvious.

All national armies depended to a significant degree on the mobilization of reservists to bring both combat and logistic units up to wartime strengths. This mobilization process was a national responsibility, with marked differences between nations, resulting mainly from different traditions and legal systems. For all, however, it was an extremely complex operation.

To take just one European member as an example, in the 1980s the four-division-strong 1 (BR) Corps required substantial reinforcements to bring it up to war strength. First, there were four infantry brigades in the UK which had to be sent to Germany: 19th Infantry Brigade, which reinforced the Germany-based 3 Armoured Division, and the three brigades of 2 Infantry Division (two of them from the Territorial Army) which were responsible for rear-area security. Second, there were also the headquarters and support units of 2 Infantry Division, as well as two signals brigades to provide the rear-area communications systems and an engineer brigade for airfield repair. In addition to these, 1 (BR) Corps needed a vast number of individual reservists (former regulars with a reserve liability) to bring the regular units up to strength and to serve as battle-casualty replacements.

It should be noted that the UK would concurrently have been mobilizing other elements of its wartime forces. Most important of these was the United Kingdom Mobile Force, consisting of 1st (UK) Infantry Brigade, air-force elements and a large logistic ‘tail’, all of which was entirely UK-based. This required many reservists and Territorial Army troops to bring it to its war establishment before it moved to its most likely destination, Denmark. Mobilization was also required for the forces committed to tasks within the UK, principally for ‘home defence’ (i.e. the security of the UK base).

The numbers available to meet these requirements varied over the years, but in 1987 the UK had some 160,000 reservists, while the Territorial Army comprised some 85,000 men and women, most of whom were in formed units. The procedures involved in the mobilization and reinforcement of 1 (BR) Corps were given two full-scale rehearsals, the first in Exercise Crusader in 1980, the second in Exercise Lionheart in 1984. These involved moving some 15,000 troops in forty ships, and a further 15,000 by air (5,000 in air-force aircraft, 10,000 in civil aircraft); forty-nine trains were needed, as well as some 15,000 vehicles. All this involved a vast amount of road movement and large numbers of troops passing through civil and military airports, harbours and railway stations.

In a time of international tension, the calling-up of the individuals, the mobilization of the Territorial Army (both of which required parliamentary authority), and moving them all (plus, in the case of formed units, their vehicles and equipment) to Germany and Denmark would have been an even more massive operation, and could never have been hidden from the British public, the media or the Warsaw Pact.

There were numerous choke points which would have been vulnerable to hostile action, either from direct attack by Warsaw Pact forces or from sabotage and other interference by Warsaw Pact agents or anti-war protestors. Such vulnerable points included a relatively small number of ports and airports in south-east England, and in Germany and the Low Countries.

Crossing the Channel was a problem which did not affect other European countries, but their mobilization would have been as massive in scale and equally impossible to hide. The German Bundesheer, for example, required to mobilize approximately 1 million reservists for the regular army and a further 450,000 for the territorial army, all within the space of ninety-six hours.

The United States not only had a far wider water gap to cross, but was also committed to transporting much greater numbers to reinforce both the Central Front and the northern and southern flanks. This commitment included six divisions (some 90,000 troops), most of whom would have flown to Germany, where they would have picked up pre-positioned weapons and equipment (POMCUS), and approximately sixty air squadrons, for which the aircraft would have self-deployed, with the manpower moving by air transport. All these were scheduled to arrive over a ten-day period, with regular units arriving first, followed by army and air-force reserve units, then the Air National Guard and finally the National Guard (army). Also moving to Europe, but in this case by sea, would have been three Marine Amphibious Brigades.

The US mobilization system was based on flexibility. The president had the authority to mobilize up to 200,000 reservists for a maximum of ninety days (as was done in the 1961 Berlin crisis), or, if he declared a state of national emergency, up to 1 million reservists for twenty-four months. Congress could then have confirmed the national emergency and authorized the calling-up of all reserves. All reservists were obliged to report to their mobilization centres within forty-eight hours of receiving notification, but the majority would have needed some form of training before their onward move to Europe.

It was also planned that the draft would have been restarted to generate trained men after a gap of several months, although this would inevitably have caused short-term dislocation and required a number of trained and experienced officers and NCOs to set it in motion. The National Guard and Air National Guard would also have been mobilized and deployed as formed units, and it was estimated that all National Guard divisions scheduled to move to Europe would have arrived in less than thirty days after the mobilization order had been issued.

The massive planned move to Europe would have required a large force of aircraft and ships, for which an ‘Airlift Emergency’ would have been called. This would have enabled 171 commercial aircraft to have been available within twenty-four hours and a further 268 within forty-eight hours. The problem with the ships earmarked to transport heavy equipment was that they could have taken anything up to four weeks to reach the embarkation ports, and in most cases would also have needed to offload, before they could take on the Department of Defense passengers or cargoes. US mobilization and deployment plans were regularly practised in a series of exercises: air exercises were designated ‘Reforger’ (Reinforce Germany), while sea exercises were designated ‘Ocean Safari’.

The situation within Germany and the Low Countries would have been without precedent. First, mobilization within those countries would have been taking place on a massive scale, with some 2 million men and women travelling to their reporting depots. Second, 60,000 British and some 300,000 US troops would have been moving into Germany, landing at a variety of service and civil airfields and ports. In the Low Countries four British infantry brigades (plus signals brigades and an engineer brigade), with virtually all their equipment and vehicles, would have been disembarking to follow the Belgian and Dutch brigades en route to their wartime positions in Germany. Within West Germany these new arrivals would have joined hundreds of thousands of troops resident in the country (and their vehicles, tanks and guns) as they too deployed to their wartime positions.

There would also, without a doubt, have been a serious problem with refugees fleeing in a westerly direction, which could well have caused serious delays to the reinforcement forces endeavouring to move eastward and could also have interfered with plans to demolish bridges. The problem was (and remains) completely unquantifiable, but it seems reasonable to assume that it would have been on a massive scale. The most immediate fear of the civil population would have been of becoming involved in the fighting, especially as they would have assumed that nuclear and possibly chemical weapons would be used. On top of that, however, would have been German folk memories of the atrocities committed by Soviet troops following their conquest of eastern Germany in 1945.

The only possible precedents were the flow of refugees during the 1940 German invasion of France and the Low Countries, and the 1944–5 flight of ethnic Germans in front of the Soviet advance into Germany. The refugees of those days were, however, virtually all on foot (or, in the case of a proportion of the Germans along the Baltic coast, travelled by sea), while those in any war in Europe in the 1980s would have been predominantly in vehicles – at least until they had exhausted the fuel stocks along their routes.

Control of refugees was a national responsibility, which, as far as the Central Front was concerned, meant Belgium, the FRG and the Netherlands, but whether these countries would have been able to cope and to keep the routes clear for troops moving in the opposite direction is a matter for conjecture. There was also a NATO Refugee Agency, whose task was to provide a consultation forum and to co-ordinate actions in war, but it was certainly not an executive agency and could, at best, only have provided cross-border co-ordination.

LOGISTICS

Although NATO laid down guidelines, logistical support was a national responsibility, one major consequence of which was that national lines of communication (LOC) stretched rearwards from the operational corps to the home country. For the Danes, the West Germans and the French this presented few problems, but for the others it was a major headache. The Belgian and Dutch LOC were several hundred kilometres long, but at least they were all overland, whereas the British not only had much greater distances to cover, but also had to cross the English Channel from ports in south-east England to ports on the Belgian, Dutch and German coast.

Worst of all was the position of the United States. Not only had it to cross the Atlantic, but also, following the expulsion of NATO facilities from France, its maritime LOC terminated in ports on the German and Dutch North Sea coast (principally Bremerhaven) and thereafter its supplies had to be transported by road and rail down the length of Germany – along routes which ran parallel to the IGB and within easy reach of any Warsaw Pact thrust.

There were many logistical problems, but one merits mention: that of war stocks, and in particular of ammunition. The level of war stocks was not as glamorous and vote-catching a subject as the number or quality of tanks or artillery pieces, but in the event of an actual attack those weapons would have become useless without an adequate and timely supply of ammunition. Throughout the Cold War, artillery, tanks and small arms became capable of ever higher rates of fire. Indeed, the appetite of weapons such as the Multiple Rocket-Launcher System was so voracious that the cost and capacity of the resupply system became a major constraint in both their purchase and their use.

The NATO requirement was that nations should hold ammunition stocks based on the calculated requirement for thirty days of use, but there was always some doubt about the validity of the figure. Indeed, one of the major lessons of post-Second World War conflicts such as the Korean, Middle East, Vietnam, Falklands and Gulf wars was that ammunition expenditure was greatly in excess of peacetime predictions. For example, the British noted after the Falklands War that one of the lessons learned was that ‘rates of usage, particularly of ammunition, missiles and anti-submarine weapons, were higher than anticipated’.^{2} Many insiders consider this to have been a serious understatement, not least because, on the day the Argentine garrison surrendered, the British artillery had less than one day’s ammunition stocks in the theatre. During the Gulf War, the British land forces (essentially one armoured division of just two armoured brigades) required 104,000 tonnes of ammunition for initial stocks, while the total cargo which would have been required had fighting continued would have been 19,000 tonnes per week.^{3}

The difficulty for NATO was that, with higher than expected ammunition expenditure, forward munitions depots would quickly have been stripped bare and national stocks would have been depleted to replenish them. But, owing to ever-reducing peacetime orders, many munitions factories had been closed and their plant sold off, and those that remained would have taken time to crank up production to meet the short-term requirements. Indeed, even if they had succeeded in doing so, their output could well then have choked the resupply system.

One solution adopted in the 1980s was a programme to build ammunition depots. These would have eased transportation problems in war, but, since they were difficult to disguise, they were vulnerable to sabotage and to air attack. A further difficulty was that, in order to be of any value, such depots needed to be relatively close to the projected deployment areas, which meant that in a surprise Warsaw Pact attack they might well have been overrun before the forward troops had deployed in sufficient strength to protect them.

MALDEPLOYMENT

As the Cold War progressed, it became clear that many formations and units in the Central Region were badly deployed in peacetime. In overall terms, the southern part of the FRG was hilly and heavily wooded, making it better country for defence than the north, which was much more open, less heavily wooded and in most places ‘good tank country’. Thus, in an ideal world, the US and West German forces, with their mass of armour and long-range anti-tank systems, should have been in the north. This would also have eased the US logistics problem. It would, however, have meant that the Belgians, British and Dutch, with further German support, would have been in the south. Not only would that have run in the face of history, but the exchange would have been extremely costly. In addition, the Belgians, the Dutch and in particular the British would have incurred severe logistic penalties, which they were much less able than the US to cope with.

Even within each nation’s forces, however, there were serious examples of bad deployment, where units required to deploy very rapidly to the front line in a crisis were located several hundred kilometres away in peacetime. This applied not only on a national scale, e.g. with the distance between Belgian and Dutch peacetime barracks in their home country and their deployment positions near the IGB, but also within national deployments in the FRG. Such problems were examined from time to time, but, though there were a few minor adjustments, a major reshuffle was always prevented by the huge costs that would be involved. Thus maldeployment simply came to be accepted as a fact of life.

CONCLUSION

It is clear that, in the ‘worst-case’ scenario of a sudden and unexpected Warsaw Pact attack, Central Region forces would have required substantial augmentation to bring them up to combat strength. In the first place, even the forward units in some armies would have needed individual reinforcements, which would have been found either by redeployment of regular soldiers (e.g. by closing down the training organization) or from reservists.

The increasing practice of locating major elements of the forward divisions and brigades in their home countries meant that, even if they were regular, they would take some time to arrive and would require valuable and scarce movement facilities, while reserve units would take even longer, having to mobilize and possibly also needing to carry out some training before deploying.

Despite all these difficulties, the NATO ground forces appeared impressive to the Soviets and they never once faced a major challenge.

AS WITH THAT of the Americans, British and French, the long-term Soviet deployment on the Central Front was, in the main, a direct result of where the Red Army stopped in 1945, although there were some minor adjustments during the forty years of the Cold War. The forces permanently stationed in East Germany were designated Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG),[1] with their headquarters at Zossen-Wünstorf, 30 km south of Berlin, and comprised five armies, most of which were approximately equivalent to a NATO corps in size.

The Soviet army believed that the basic form of military strategy was the offensive, and all its (and the Warsaw Pact’s) planning, organizations and exercises were devoted to this end. The 1945 organizations lasted for only a short time, and from 1947 infantry regiments began to be mechanized, using BTR-40P wheeled trucks. This process gathered pace in the 1950s, until 1957, when a major re-equipment programme began to bear fruit and new-style tank and motor-rifle divisions were introduced, which were smaller, easier to control and much harder hitting than their predecessors. These were organized into two types of army: a ‘tank army’, in which tank divisions normally predominated, and a ‘combined-arms army’, in which motor-rifle divisions predominated, the number and type of divisions depending upon the army’s combat mission.

The history of GSFG included some major equipment milestones, which marked a significant increase in tactical capability. The first of these was the fielding of T-62 tanks and BTR-60 eight-wheeled armoured personnel carriers in the early 1960s, while in the early 1970s the Mi-24 (NATO = ‘Hind’) helicopter gave a totally new capability to the Soviet air force’s Frontal Aviation command. The changeover in artillery from wheeled to tracked self-propelled guns, which came in the late 1970s, was also of major significance, although it was made considerably later than in NATO. The final stage was marked by the fielding of the new T-80 tank, which joined the front line facing NATO in the mid-1980s.

THE WESTERN TVD

In war the Warsaw Pact forces in central Europe would have come under the Western Teatr Voyennykh Destiviy (Theatre of Military Operations (TVD)), which would have been subdivided into fronts, each composed of a number of armies, and an air army. The commander-in-chief Western TVD controlled all Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces in Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary and Poland, as well as the second-echelon armies which would have been generated by the western military districts in the USSR.

SOVIET ARMIES IN GERMANY

In 1945 East Germany was occupied by six armies: the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Guards Tank Armies; the 3rd Shock Army; and the 8th Guards Army.[2] Of these, the 4th Guards Tank Army was gradually withdrawn to the USSR in the 1950s, followed by the 3rd Guards Tank Army in 1960–61. This appears to have overstretched the headquarters that remained, since, in the aftermath of the 1961 Berlin crisis, a new headquarters unit, the 20th Guards Tank Army, was formed. The other army was Frontal Aviation’s 16th Air Army, which remained in East Germany from 1945 to the end of the Cold War.

From the 1960s onwards, GSFG comprised the following.

• The 2nd Guards Tank Army, the northernmost formation, occupied an area near the Baltic south of Rostock, with its peacetime headquarters at Fürstenberg–Havel, 60 km north of Berlin. Despite its title of ‘Tank Army’, it actually consisted of just one tank division, plus two motor-rifle divisions.

• The 3rd Shock Army was located in the centre and, in view of its intended role of thrusting across the North German Plain, it consisted of four tank divisions and a single motor-rifle division, making it, at least on paper, the most formidable fighting formation in any army. The title ‘Shock’ was conferred in 1945, but the name changed to 3rd Mechanized Army in 1947, before reverting to 3rd Shock Army in 1957–8. The headquarters was at Magdeburg, conveniently close to the IGB and just off the E8 autobahn, which would have been the main axis of the army’s advance into West Germany in the event of war.

• The 8th Guards Army was located in the south and, as its intended role would take it through primarily infantry country, it consisted of one tank division and three motor-rifle divisions. Its headquarters was at Nohra, 10 km south-west of Weimar.

• The 20th Guards Army was located just west of Berlin, effectively in the rear of the 3rd Shock Army. It consisted of three motor-rifle divisions, and did not have an integral tank division. Its headquarters was at Eberswalde-Finow, some 40 km north-east of Berlin.

• The 1st Guards Tank Army was virtually identical to the 3rd Shock Army, with four tank divisions and one motor-rifle division. Its headquarters was at Dresden, in the south-east corner of the GDR.

GSFG also included considerably more supporting units (artillery, engineers, aviation, communications and logistic services) than other similar organizations in the Soviet armed forces. Thus, for example, GSFG was supported by 34 Guards Artillery Division, which was three times the size of a normal artillery division.

The offensive nature of GSFG’s wartime missions was underlined by a further six reinforced bridging regiments and six amphibious river-crossing battalions, whose wartime mission was to ensure that the many rivers in West Germany and Denmark were crossed quickly. There were also two assault-engineer regiments, specially trained in urban clearance tasks, whose wartime missions would have been in cities such as Braunschweig and Hanover and in the Ruhr. Two aviation regiments were equipped with Hind attack helicopters, which established such a fearsome reputation in Afghanistan. There were also eight spetsnaz battalions for employment in NATO’s rear areas, and one integral airborne regiment, although GSFG had priority call on one or more of the airborne divisions back in the USSR, which were normally under centralized Ministry of Defence control.

The peacetime strength of GSFG amounted to some 380,000 men, with 7,000 tanks, 3,000 infantry fighting vehicles, 300 helicopters and a vast amount of artillery. All were manned at Category-A levels, which was usually well in excess of 90 per cent of their wartime figure.

OTHER SOVIET FORCES ON THE CENTRAL FRONT

Situated in Poland was the Soviet Northern Group of Forces (NGF), with its headquarters at Legnica. In peacetime its troops consisted of two motorrifle divisions and an air army. In war its position astride the lines of communication from the homeland would have been absolutely vital to the success of the offensive, and it would have been reinforced by units from the USSR.

The third element, in addition to GSFG and NGF, was the Central Group of Forces (CGF), which was formed in 1968, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. The headquarters was located at Milovice, Czechoslovakia, some 30 km north-west of Hradec Králové, and after a rapid build-up in 1968–71 the CGF was composed of two tank and three motor-rifle divisions.

NON-SOVIET WARSAW PACT ARMIES

Czechoslovakia had two armies: the 1st (Czech) Army (comprising one tank and three motor-rifle divisions), with its headquarters at Příbram, and the 4th (Czech) Army (two tank, two motor-rifle divisions) at Písek. Each of these Czech armies had a larger than normal engineer component, with one engineer brigade, one bridging brigade and one construction brigade in each army, with more under central control. Total strength of the Czechoslovak army (1984) was 148,000, of which approximately 100,000 were conscripts.

The German Democratic Republic’s Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) was considered to be both the most efficient and the most loyal of the satellite armies, and fielded two armies: the 3rd (NVA) Army, with its headquarters at Leipzig, and the 5th (NVA) Army at Neubrandenburg. Both consisted of one tank and two motor-rifle divisions, all of which were maintained at Category A (90–100 per cent strength) in peacetime and were backed by a very efficient mobilization system. The total peacetime strength of the NVA was some 120,000 (1984), of which 71,500 were conscripts.

Poland provided three armies, which in peacetime were based in each of the three military districts, and virtually all of which were scheduled to come under direct Soviet command in war:

• Silesian Military District – one army of three tank and two motor-rifle divisions;

• Pomeranian Military District – one army of two tank and two motor-rifle divisions;

• Warsaw Military District – one army of three motor-rifle divisions but no tank divisions.

The 6th Airborne Brigade was stationed in the Pomeranian Military District, and the 7th Sea Landing Brigade was stationed on the Baltic coast, from where it would have taken part in amphibious operations against Denmark in war. The Polish army did not have the specialist engineer brigades found in the Czech and East German armies. The total strength of the Polish army in 1984 was 210,000, of which 153,000 were conscripts.

Unlike their opponents in NATO, where commonality ceased at corps level, the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact forces were all organized on Soviet lines and used mainly Soviet equipment, some of which, such as tanks, was manufactured locally under licence. The equipment was not, however, exclusively Soviet, and Czechoslovakia, for example, produced armoured personnel carriers and self-propelled guns to its own designs, some of which were also used by Poland.

WARSAW PACT PARACHUTE FORCES

Throughout the Cold War the Soviets maintained by far the largest airborne forces in the world, and, as in most armies, these enjoyed an elite status, with special equipment and special uniforms (including a sky-blue beret). Their importance was further emphasized by the fact that they were not part of the normal army chain of command, but were subordinated direct to the Ministry of Defence. There were seven airborne divisions,[3] all of which were maintained at Category A in peacetime, each consisting of three airborne regiments, an artillery regiment and an air-defence battalion, together with communications, engineers and logistic units – a total of some 8,500 men. In war they would have been tasked directly by the Ministry of Defence for a major strategic mission or allocated to lower headquarters for specific operations, possibly on a scale of one airborne division to each major front, or probably more than one in the case of the Western TVD.

Soviet airborne forces were equipped with a large range of lightweight equipment, which was specially designed for the airborne role. Such airborne items ranged from self-propelled guns and tracked personnel carriers to lightweight folding saws, and airborne troops were always the first to receive new standard weapons, such as 5.56 mm rifles.

Soviet airborne units were particularly intended for desantnyy missions – a Russian term denoting operations in enemy rear areas, carried out in co-ordination with the forward elements of the ground troops, and with the aim of maintaining the high momentum and continuity of the offensive. Such missions would almost certainly have included the traditional airborne task of seizing vital ground or crossings in advance of major thrusts by ground troops, possibly as the opening move in a war in western Europe. Probable missions would have included seizing bridgeheads across major rivers, such as the Elbe, Weser and Rhine; capturing forward airfields; and attacking nuclear-supply points, communications centres and major logistics concentrations. This was confirmed by Marshal Sokolovskiy:

The airborne troops had a flexible organization, being designed to conduct operations in divisional, regimental or battalion strengths, depending upon the requirement. The normal tactic was for pathfinders to form the first wave of the assault, arriving in the battle area by parachute, with the aim of securing the drop zone (DZ) and marking it for the main assault force, which arrived after a minimal interval and dropped together with its heavy equipment. In most larger operations securing an airfield or creating an airstrip would have been a high priority, to enable later troops and heavy equipment to be air-landed rather than air-dropped. Soviet airborne troops’ tactics were always very aggressive, and as soon as sufficient men were available they began a rapid expansion to link the DZs to each other, coupled with raids and assaults on any enemy units encountered.

The fixed-wing aircraft were provided by Voyenno-Transportnaya Aviatsiya (Military Transport Aviation (VTA)), which comprised some 1,700 aircraft, providing sufficient lift for the assault elements of two airborne divisions simultaneously. From the mid-1970s onwards three basic aircraft were used, the smallest being the four-turboprop Antonov An-12 (NATO = ‘Cub’), which carried eighty paratroops or an equivalent load of equipment and was equivalent to the USAF’s Lockheed C-130 Hercules. The second and larger aircraft was the Ilyushin Il–76 (NATO = ‘Candid’), powered by four turbojets, which carried 150 paratroops. Largest of all was the Antonov An-22 (NATO = ‘Cock’), which was capable of air-dropping either men or equipment, although it seems unlikely that this would have been done in any but the most benign environment, the aircraft depending instead upon the early capture of an airfield. The VTA was reinforced by further transport aircraft from the Soviet state airline, Aeroflot, which were intended to be used virtually straight away for air-landing operations, although they required lengthy preparations before undertaking parachute drops.

The VTA took part in all major exercises, but also obtained valuable operational experience in conducting the airlifts to Prague in 1968, to Egypt and Syria during the 1973 Middle East War, to Ethiopia in 1978 and in the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Soviet airborne doctrine was that objectives should be a maximum of 400 km from the front line for a divisional operation and a maximum of 100 km for a battalion operation. Relief by ground troops was intended to take place between two and seven days after the landing, although experience by all armies in the Second World War suggested that such a meeting seldom went according to plan.

Unless there was a reasonable expectation of total surprise, an airborne assault would be preceded by intense air and artillery operations to destroy enemy air defences along the line of the proposed route. Following that, the transports would fly across friendly territory at medium height before descending to low level to cross the front line for the approach to the assault area. The aircraft formed into a stream for the actual drop, which took place at a height of between 400 m and 1,000 m and a speed of 330 km/h, with intervals between the waves. Divisional operations used between four and six DZs, each approximately 4 km long and 3 km wide.

The other Warsaw Pact countries all maintained a parachuting capability: East Germany, Poland and Romania each had a brigade-size force; Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia a regiment; while Hungary had one battalion. All were organized along Soviet lines and used Soviet equipment, methods and tactics.

CONCLUSION

According to NATO’s 1984 assessment,^{2} the Central Region (and the southern part of the Northern Region) was faced by some ninety-five divisions from the Soviet, East German, Polish and Czechoslovak armies. Of those, some sixty-one divisions (16,620 tanks and 10,270 artillery pieces and heavy mortars) were either deployed in the forward areas or held at a high state of readiness and could have attacked within a few days of mobilization. There were also seven airborne and two air-mobile divisions, based in the USSR, which could have been allocated specific missions within the Central Region, and a division-sized amphibious force in the Baltic. They were armed with some of the finest equipment in the world, and the three forward Soviet armies were positioned much closer to the IGB than were their opponents, adding to the Alliance’s fear of a ‘bolt from the blue’. But they never attacked.

DURING THE COLD War the confrontation between NATO and Warsaw Pact tanks came to exemplify the land battle in a way that had no parallel at sea or in the air. Indeed, the tank became the dominant symbol by which armies not only were judged by others but also judged themselves; and when the Chieftain tank was described as the ‘virility symbol’ of the British army,[1] the comment could equally well have been applied to other tanks and other armies.

THE REQUIREMENT

The main battle tank, like any piece of military equipment, was designed to meet a specification laid down in a general-staff requirement. The various armies had generally similar requirements, although, since the design of any weapons system must inevitably involve compromises, they tended to make different judgements on the relative priorities.

The requirement started with the tank’s offensive capabilities, which were that it had to be able to destroy the following:

• Tanks in daylight at an ever-increasing range. In the 1960s this was 2,000 m, but by the late 1970s it had increased to 3,000 m, and up to 5,000 m if possible, which had to be achievable with at least two different types of ammunition.

• Light armoured vehicles (e.g. armoured cars and armoured personnel carriers) at ranges out to 5,000 m, and troops in the open at all ranges between 75 m and 2,000 m.[2]

• Field defences by direct fire using a high-explosive round (and also to fire smoke and illuminating rounds).

• Aircraft, particularly helicopters and drones, flying at low altitude (150 m) and low speed (maximum 300 km/h).

In order to perform these tasks the tank needed to be immune to enemy anti-tank weapons, using a combination of armour protection and the ability to present a small target by using ground, smoke and agility. Apart from protection against enemy anti-tank weapons, the crew also needed protection against nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons. The tank needed to have good cross-country mobility, coupled with long range to enable it to work over wide fronts and at great depths.

There was a host of other requirements, as well. For example, all nations required to move their tanks by train, which meant that the vehicle had to fit on to a standard flat wagon, and that its height and width must fit inside the relevant railways’ standard loading gauge.[3] Similarly, weight was restricted by national road and bridge load-bearing capacities, as well as by the capability of tank-transporter vehicles. The designer’s task was to endeavour to meet as many of these requirements as possible, and, where they conflicted with each other, to achieve a compromise acceptable to the general staff.

TANK DEVELOPMENT 1949–1989

The story of the development of the tank is typical of that of many weapons systems during the years of the Cold War as NATO and the Warsaw Pact vied with each other in a seemingly endless competition, which cost their countries vast sums of money and kept some of their finest scientific brains and key defence industries fully employed.[4]

All tanks are, in essence, compromises between mobility, firepower and protection, and the major armies came to differing conclusions about the balance, based primarily upon their experiences in the Second World War, but with some changes resulting from later conflicts such as the Korean and the Arab–Israeli wars. Thus the Soviet army, with its strategy of attack, was wedded to the concept of a fast, highly manoeuvrable tank with good firepower, which had also to be available in large numbers; protection and casualties were relatively low priorities in an army awash with manpower. The British, shaken by the way their tanks and in particular their guns had been outclassed by German tanks throughout most of the Second World War, vowed never to be outgunned again. Accordingly, they gave firepower the top priority, followed closely by protection, and with mobility a poor third; as a result, throughout the Cold War, British main battle tanks were almost invariably the heaviest in service. The Americans fell somewhere in between, their thrusting tactics requiring speed and manoeuvrability, with firepower second and protection third. All NATO countries, however, were convinced that the answer lay in defeating the sheer quantity of Soviet tanks by superior Western quality and sophistication.

There were four types of weapon for use against other tanks:

• Very-high-velocity solid projectiles fired by other tanks. These depended upon their kinetic energy to punch their way through the armour. and included the armour-piercing discarding sabot (APDS) and the armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS).[5]

• High-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) projectiles, fired by enemy tanks or infantry. These used chemical energy to burn a hole through armour. Since the effect of these rounds did not depend on the velocity of the projectile, this type of warhead was used both in tank guns and in antitank guided missiles.

• High-explosive plastic (HEP)[6] projectiles, fired by tanks. In these the round blistered on to the face of the armour plate and then exploded, dislodging a scab on the inner face which ricocheted around the inside of the tank.

• Anti-tank mines, which attacked the belly of the tank.

• Top-attack minelets, delivered by aircraft or artillery shells, which used small HEAT charges to attack the top of the tank.

Two of the key criteria in the use of tank guns to fight other tanks were, first, their ‘first-round kill probability’ and, second, the achievement of ever greater range. These depended on a host of factors, each of which was repeatedly addressed during the course of the Cold War. The most effective rounds were those using kinetic energy to penetrate the enemy armour. The kinetic energy of a moving body is the product of the body’s mass multiplied by the square of its velocity, all divided by two:

Both variables in this equation were tackled with enthusiasm.

The rounds’ mass was increased by fabricating the rounds of ever denser material: first steel, then tungsten carbide and finally depleted uranium. Even greater attention was paid to increasing the velocity, since, as the equation above shows, the effect of this was squared. The original round was the armour-piercing discarding sabot, which was spin-stabilized, being ‘spun up’ by the rifling in the gun barrel; the mass could be increased by making the round longer, but beyond a length-to-diameter ratio of about 7:1 the round became inherently unstable. A length-to-diameter ratio of about 12:1 could, however, be obtained by making the round fin-stabilized, with almost negligible rotation. This resulted in a smooth-bore barrel, which was initially examined and rejected by the US army in the early 1950s, but which was adopted by the Soviets and the West Germans in the 1970s, even though it meant that none of the existing spin-stabilized range of ammunition could be fired and an entirely new range had to be produced.

The construction of the barrel and the methods by which it was produced were also critically re-examined, and new and more exotic production processes were developed to produce ever truer barrels. The question of increasing the accuracy of assessments of range to the target also exercised the tank designers, since, in a direct-fire engagement, the more precisely the range is known, the more likely it is that the first round will hit. In the early 1950s most tanks used an optical rangefinder, but the accuracy of such a device depends upon the length of its ‘base’ (i.e. the distance between the two lenses), which was limited by the width of the turret. A delicate optical device was also at an obvious disadvantage in a vehicle which travelled over rough terrain and which could expect to be hit by incoming rounds.

The British produced a simple system in which a machine-gun, mounted coaxially with the main gun and firing rounds which were ballistically matched to the APDS rounds, was used to find the range. This was accurate and cheap, but the intended target knew from the machine-gun hits that it was under attack and there was always a brief pause between the British tank gunner seeing the hit and firing the main gun. Finally came lasers, which were not only absolutely precise and gave an immediate read-out to the gunner, but were also difficult for the enemy tank to detect, although laser-warning devices started to be fitted in the 1980s.

As time went by, research revealed increasingly exotic factors which could affect the probability of a first-round hit. These included ambient weather conditions, since crosswinds could blow the round off course, while rain, temperature and humidity could also cause minor deviations. As a result, tanks were fitted with environmental sensors so that these factors could be included in the fire-control equation. Also, because the tank would be firing from a hastily chosen fire position, it was unlikely to be level, and so the angles relative to true vertical and true horizontal had to be calculated and allowed for.[7]

It was also discovered that, despite the ever more sophisticated methods of manufacture, barrels had become so long that they bent under their own weight. The amount of what was known as ‘droop’ was infinitesimal, but it was just enough to affect the gun’s accuracy. Thus a reflector was fitted in a protective housing above the muzzle and a laser in the turret detected the amount by which the barrel was off true. This too then became part of the fire-control calculations.

By this time the quantity of information being fed to the gunner was so large that he needed assistance from a fire-control computer. The complexity of the computer increased rapidly as its value was more fully appreciated – not least because it could perform a number of tasks automatically, thus easing the load on the tank gunner. One effect of the introduction of computers – usually known as ‘integrated fire-control systems’ (IFCS) – was to cause a rapid escalation in tank costs.

The tank also had to be defended against enemy anti-tank weapons. In the 1940s and 1950s tank hulls and turrets were fabricated from cast homogenous steel, with the thickest armour in the forward quadrant, while protection against HEAT and HEP projectiles was obtained in some designs by spaced armour. As the kinetic-energy weapons became more powerful, tank designers responded by sloping the armour, thus effectively increasing the distance to be penetrated by the incoming round, as well as increasing the possibility that the round would ricochet off the plate. In the 1970s the British introduced ‘Chobham’ armour, which was created by mixing layers of conventional armour plate and ceramic materials, which effectively overcame the menace of the HEAT round.[8] Then, in the 1980s, explosive reactive armour (ERA) appeared, in which the most vulnerable areas of the tank were covered with specially tailored explosive blocks, which were detonated when hit by an APDS/APFSDS projectile, thus diverting it away from the tank. The blocks were individually bolted to the armour plate and could be easily replaced. The Soviets also developed a special lining for the interior of their tanks, which was designed to prevent small metal fragments from ricocheting around the crew compartment.

These defences were all intended to defeat direct-fire weapons, but the anti-tank mine meant that the underneath of the tank had to be protected, as well. Such mines also attacked the tracks, damage to which could prevent the tank from moving, thus scoring a ‘mobility kill’.

Finally, the tops of the tank hull and turret were for many years more lightly armoured than the rest of the tank, because they were relatively safe from attack. In the 1980s, however, these areas also became targets for attack by a new weapon, the bomblet with a HEAT warhead, which was delivered in large numbers either by artillery shells or in canisters dropped by aircraft.

At the start of the Cold War, Soviet tanks were all diesel-powered, while all Western tanks were powered by petrol engines. A petrol engine provided greater power for a given weight than a diesel, but fuel consumption was very high, resulting in a short range and a large load on the logistics system; the British Centurion Mk 3, for example, which served in the Korean War, had a range of just 161 km and had to tow a single-wheeled trailer to increase this. Also, petrol was inherently dangerous, with the US M4 Sherman being especially notorious for ‘brewing up’ when hit.

One of NATO’s earliest attempts at standardization was to insist that military engines should all be capable of ‘multi-fuel operation’, so that they could use petrol of varying grades and also diesel, with only minor adjustments required on changing over. This was tried and proved an expensive failure, and tank engines rapidly changed to diesels or turbo-charged diesels, which not only offered much greater range but also were markedly less flammable. In the 1980s, however, the US M1 Abrams entered service powered by a gas turbine, which offered exceptional power output for it size.

The ever-increasing power output from these engines tended to offset the growing weight, as is shown by the power-to-weight ratio, which is a fairly reliable means of assessing tank mobility. This increased from 10 kW/tonne for the British Chieftain in the 1970s to 19 kW/tonne for the US M1 and 20 kW/tonne for the German Leopard 2 in the 1980s.

SOVIET TANKS

Throughout the Cold War it was the Soviet tank force which held the initiative, with the West reacting to this. Soviet designers were innovative, while the Soviet General Staff appeared to be much less conservative about the design and employment of tanks than many of their counterparts in the West. There was also a fundamental difference in approach between the Soviet/Warsaw Pact and NATO armies, since the former were building tanks in very large numbers for an attack, whereas the latter built much fewer tanks for defence.

At the start of the Cold War, the Soviet armoured forces had tremendous prestige, having played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The main Soviet tank, the T-34, had come as a very unpleasant surprise to the Germans, having good armoured protection and being very robust, not too heavy (32 tonnes) and totally devoid of any frills. It was originally armed with a 76.2 mm gun, but was later upgunned with an 85 mm weapon, and in the early days of the Cold War this T-34/85 was considered to be a major threat to NATO’s Central Front.

The T-34/85 was complemented by the JS-3 (JS = Josef Stalin) heavy tank, which caused particular concern to Western armies in the early years of NATO, since it was armed with a 122 mm gun – by far the heaviest and most powerful weapon in any tank of that era, and able to defeat any NATO tank. In addition, the cast hull and turret were excellently shaped and made of armour up to 230 mm thick, which would have resisted any existing NATO tank gun. The JS-3 weighed 46 tonnes, had a maximum speed of 40 km/h, and, for its time, was a very formidable threat, and Western countries produced a number of tanks specifically to counter it. The JS-3 was produced in moderate numbers and was succeeded by the T-10, essentially an improved JS-3, but with even better armour, a newer and more powerful version of the 122 mm gun, and a new engine giving greater speed. The T-10 was in production from 1957 to the early 1960s, when it was phased out in favour of the T-62 medium tank, but, with the JS-3, it remained in service with reserve units for many years.

Meanwhile the major development effort was concentrated on the first post-war Soviet medium tank, the T-54, which entered service in 1954 and served with all the armies of the Warsaw Pact. Over 95,000 T-54s and an improved version, the T-55, were produced in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Poland and China – a production run which lasted some thirty years, setting a record which is unlikely to be surpassed. The hull was well sloped, with thick armour, and the low, squat, hemispherical turret was designed to prevent penetration by anti-tank rounds, causing considerable discussion in the West. The T-54/55’s 100 mm gun was powerful for its time, and with their good cross-country performance and low profile these tanks were ideal for the Warsaw Pact requirements.

Next to appear was the T-62, which entered service in 1962 and was of generally similar shape and layout to the T-54/55, but slightly larger. It introduced the yet more powerful 115 mm gun (at a time when the West was standardizing on 105 mm), which was also the first smooth-bore tank gun to enter service, enabling it to fire fin-stabilized rounds with considerably greater muzzle velocity. The T-62 was, however, only a qualified success: among its serious shortcomings were a poor suspension, a tendency to shed its tracks, vibration, and an automatic cartridge-case ejection system which could severely injure its crews. These problems led to a much modified version, with a revised suspension, the T-72.

There then followed the T-64, a totally new design throughout, with a new 125 mm smooth-bore gun and a twenty-two-round automatic loader, which enabled the crew to be reduced to three men. The T-64B introduced a revised 125 mm gun, which was capable not only of firing normal rounds, but also of launching a radio-guided anti-tank missile with a range of up to 4,000 m. There was a new-style angular turret, which, together with the glacis (i.e. front) plate was fabricated from composite steel/fibreglass armour. The running gear, which gave good cross-country performance, was based on that of the JS-3, but, surprisingly in an army renowned for its simple, powerful and reliable engines, the power unit in the T-64 proved to be very unreliable. With horizontally opposed pistons, this was of similar layout to the British Chieftain tank engine, which also proved very troublesome. This led to the T-80, which was essentially an improved T-64 with a completely new gas-turbine power pack.

The T-72, which was produced in parallel with the T-64, had a different hull and suspension from the T-64, but mounted the same 125 mm smoothbore gun/missile launcher as in the T-64B. Later versions also included a laser rangefinder.

All these Soviet tanks were built in vast numbers and, as happened in other armies, they were constantly being upgraded and rebuilt. As new models appeared the older models were simply passed along the chain to lower-category units, thence to reserve units, and finally to storage depots, making it almost impossible to say that a Soviet tank had actually gone out of service.

Since their tanks were built to attack, and because much of western Europe’s terrain is criss-crossed by small rivers, the Soviets gave their tanks a river-crossing capability. This involved making the entire tank watertight and fitting a breathing tube to the turret hatch. Thus, if bridges were unavailable, Warsaw Pact tanks were able to wade across rivers up to 4.5 m deep, although the breathing tube was so narrow that there was no question of the crew using it for an escape, and river-crossing exercises were viewed with considerable trepidation by Warsaw Pact tank crews.

The Soviet army was consistently able to produce tanks which were at least 10 tonnes lighter than their Western counterparts. These tanks were built for a specific purpose – attacking in large numbers – and they suited that purpose well. Soviet designers were consistently innovative, producing new types of round and gun, and fielding devices such as automatic loaders at a time when Western designers were well short of perfecting them.

A major advantage for the Warsaw Pact was that its forces used only Soviet-designed tanks, which resulted in a great degree of standardization.[9]

Although Soviet tanks were never used in anger against Western tanks in Europe, they did meet in wars in the Middle East and Asia. Generally speaking, in a one-on-one engagement the Western tanks proved superior in such wars – although not by a very wide margin. In the event of a conventional Warsaw Pact attack in western Europe the vastly greater numbers could well have been difficult to counter, especially as they would then have been operated by crews with much better training than those in the Middle East.

NATO TANKS

At one level NATO did manage to achieve a degree of standardization on tanks. Standardization agreements (known as STANAGS) were agreed through NATO channels and were published on many matters concerning tanks, a common main-gun calibre and the types of ammunition to be used, so that rounds could be freely exchanged between different armies. There were also a series of NATO Standard Tank Targets, based on the known criteria of Soviet tanks, which were the baseline against which all NATO guns were tested. These STANAGS were reasonably successful, although the agreements were not absolutely binding and countries were able to abandon them without penalty, apart from the logistic disadvantage of being unable to use standard NATO items.

At the highest level, however – that of tank design – NATO standardization was much less successful. Four NATO nations – France, Germany, the UK and the USA[10] – designed tanks, and there were numerous attempts to achieve commonality through collaborative projects, but, without exception, these came to naught. The first was between France and Germany in 1956, when the plan was for the two countries to agree on the general specifications for a tank, following which they would each design and build prototypes. These would then be evaluated, and the resulting winner would be placed in production in both countries. The Germans had a domestic competition between two consortia, the winner of which was pitted against the sole French entrant, but the two countries could not agree on the outcome. As a result, the French placed their entrant in production as the AMX-30, while the Germans produced theirs as the Leopard 1. In a further divergence from standardization, while the West Germans armed their tank with the British 105 mm L7 gun– at that time the de facto NATO standard – the French armed the AMX-30 with their own 105 mm design, whose rounds could not be used in the L7 barrel.[11]

Then, in 1963, the USA and West Germany agreed on a joint programme for a common tank to replace the American M60 and German Leopard 1 in the 1970s. The designers were given carte blanche to produce a totally new and revolutionary main battle tank (MBT), and this they certainly did. Known as the MBT-70, it included numerous innovative ideas, the most striking of which was a 152 mm gun/missile launcher, launching the Shillelagh missile, firing conventional ammunition with combustible cartridge cases, and served by a fully automated loader. The suspension was capable of ‘squatting’ to achieve a low profile in a static position, and could also be extended to ensure good cross-country mobility. There was a very powerful engine, capable of accepting numerous different fuels in line with NATO’s ‘multi-fuel’ policy. In addition, the automatic loader enabled the crew to be reduced to three, all of whom were housed in the turret, with the driver in an independently rotating capsule which ensured that he always faced forward. Sensors included a laser rangefinder and an environmental-control/life-support system, while reliability standards were supposedly the highest ever achieved in a tank.

A prototype was running in 1967, but by 1969 costs were escalating out of control. Estimated unit cost of a production MBT-70 was $1 million per tank at a time when the then current production tank, the M-60A1, cost $220,000 (both at 1970 prices). A design was prepared for an ‘austere’ version, designated XM-803, but the US Congress stopped the entire programme in January 1970, and it was accepted in both the USA and West Germany that virtually all the money spent on the MBT-70 programme had been wasted.

Similar British–German and Franco-German collaborative projects were equally unsuccessful, although they were both cancelled before the expenditure had reached MBT-70 proportions.

In the late 1940s the US army was equipped with two principal types of tank. The most numerous was the M4 Sherman medium tank, armed with a 75 mm gun and weighing 32 tonnes, which had proved a great success in the war, despite an unfortunate tendency to ‘brew up’ (i.e. to catch fire when hit). The second was the newer M26 Pershing, which had a much more powerful 90 mm gun, although, at 42 tonnes, it also weighed considerably more. Tank development was progressing at a relatively slow pace with the aim of introducing a new tank to replace these two in the mid-1950s when in 1950 the Korean War broke out, leading to a demand from the field army for newer and better tanks, to be delivered as quickly as possible.

This led to several ‘crash’ programmes, in the first of which a turret designed for the proposed mid-1950s tank was mounted on the existing M26 Pershing hull to produce the M47. The second design was based on a number of features of an experimental heavy tank and resulted in the M48. However, the US army paid a severe penalty for attempting to rush these two designs through the design and development stages, and the initial production versions of both the M47 and the M48 were unfit for combat use. Neither saw service in the Korean War, for which they had been designed, and it took several years to put everything right.

In the mid-1950s most Western tanks were armed with 90 mm guns, but Soviet tank armour was increasing in effectiveness, so the major armies started to seek even more powerful weapons. The US army produced an experimental 90 mm gun with a smooth bore, which enabled it to fire fin-stabilized projectiles, but in a competition with US-designed 105 mm and 120 mm guns and the British-designed L7 105 mm gun the latter won and was adopted, albeit with a US breech-block. At the same time it was decided to replace petrol engines with diesels, not least because the range of early M48s was a meagre 112 km. All of these enhancements, coupled with a totally new turret, were then incorporated into an improved M48, which was originally designated M48A2; but it was then decided that it was so different that it warranted a new designation, and as the M60 it served for many years as the army’s standard medium tank.

In the late 1950s development started of a 152 mm gun/launcher which was to be mounted in both the new air-portable light tank, the M551 Sheridan, and the planned MBT-70, which was under development with West Germany. Hopes for the new gun/launcher were very high, and, in view of the Soviet tank threat and possible delays in the MBT-70 programme, it was decided as an interim measure to mount the weapon in a totally new turret on the M60 chassis, the new version being designated M60A2. The project was approved in 1964 and a prototype was running in September 1965, leading to an order for 300 in 1967. What had appeared to be a neat interim design, however, turned into yet another major problem, with difficulties being encountered not only with the gun/launcher, but also with the Shillelagh missile, the 152 mm conventional round, and the mating of the new turret to the existing chassis. Production started in 1969, but was quickly suspended due to the unreliability of the first off the line, and service acceptance was not achieved until 1971, although even then the first operational unit was not formed until 1974. Thus it had taken ten years to get an ‘interim’ model using a majority of existing components into service. The M60A2 actually remained in service for under ten years, in what was a singularly poor programme and a very bad bargain for the US taxpayer.

With the collapse of both the US–German collaborative MBT-70 programme and the ‘austere’, US-only, XM-803 programme, the US army found itself in the early 1970s in the embarrassing position of being without a viable future tank. However, in 1973 contracts containing an outline specification were placed with two US companies, who then developed and built prototypes which ran competitive trials in 1976.[12] Later that year it was announced that the Chrysler tank had won and would be put into production as the M1 Abrams. Although the tank was a purely American design, it was constructed from the British-developed ‘Chobham’ armour, while the main gun was a British L7 rifled 105 mm in the first version (M1 and Improved M1) and the German smooth-bore 120 mm in the MlAl. One of the major new features of the M1 was the use of a gas-turbine power unit, which provides high power, but at the cost of high fuel consumption. The tank eventually entered service in 1982.

The British had suffered from a succession of somewhat indifferent tank designs during the Second World War, but at the start of the Cold War the British prime production tank was the Centurion, which proved to be a great success. It was heavier than its contemporaries, the US M48 and the Soviet T-54, but the British were determined to have a well-armed and well-armoured tank following their experiences of being been consistently outgunned by German tanks, particularly the Panther and the Tiger. The Centurion’s main gun was progressively improved: the early tanks were armed with a 76 mm gun, but this was replaced first by an 83 mm gun and later by the L7 105 mm gun, which was so good that it was adopted by virtually every other army in NATO, except the French.

In the late 1940s the British also developed a heavy tank to meet the NATO requirement to defeat the Soviet JS-3. The Soviet tank’s armour was so thick that a very powerful gun was required to defeat it, and the British selected a US 120 mm gun, which, with its associated ammunition, was so large and heavy that the Conqueror tank, in which it was mounted, weighed 65 tonnes. The Conqueror earned a reputation of being slow and suffering from relatively poor mobility, although its top speed was only marginally less than that of the Centurion and its power-to-weight ratio (10 kW/tonne) was identical. Only 180 were built, and all were deployed in West Germany between 1955 and 1968 as tank destroyers.

In the 1950s the British started a project for their next tank, to replace both the Centurion and the Conqueror. This again followed their invariable Cold War priorities of firepower and protection, although one of their earliest decisions in this project caused considerable surprise among their NATO allies. The very powerful British L7 105 mm tank gun and its ammunition had become the virtual NATO standard in the 1950s, being installed in US M48s and M60s, British Centurions and West German Leopard Is, but the British themselves then became the first to leave the standard by insisting on a new 120 mm gun for this new tank. Initially, the new tank – named Chieftain – was beset by problems, particularly with the engine, transmission and suspension, but these were eventually resolved, particularly when an order from the shah of Iran for 700 tanks produced both money and an even greater sense of urgency to find a cure. The original staff requirement had been issued in 1958 and a prototype was running in 1959, but the Chieftain did not enter full service with the British army until 1967.

The search for a successor to the Chieftain began with a joint future-tank project with West Germany, but when this broke down in 1977 the British were forced to continue on their own in a project known as MBT-80. However, the contract to sell Chieftain tanks to Iran had led to a much improved version, known as Shir 2, of which several prototypes had been completed when the new Khomeini government suddenly cancelled the order. The British then decided to produce a modified version of Shir 2 to meet their own requirement for a Chieftain replacement. This tank, which had a new hull and power pack, but the same L11 120 mm gun as the Chieftain, was eventually placed in production as the Challenger, entering service in 1983.

The West German tank industry produced just two tank designs during the Cold War – Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 – both of which were outstandingly successful. The Leopard 1 was originally produced as part of the 1950s Franco-German project, but, when this fell apart, the German entry was placed in full production in 1963 for the German army. Some 4,561 Leopard 1s were produced in Germany between 1965 and 1979, with another 920 in Italy.

The Leopard 1 was conventional in design, being armed with a British L7 105 mm gun, powered by a multi-fuel engine, and with a crew of four. The design incorporated the lessons learned by the German army on the Russian front in the Second World War and was well armoured but also highly mobile. The Leopard 1 became the virtual NATO standard tank of the 1970s, equipping the Belgian, Canadian, Danish, Dutch, West German, Italian and Norwegian armies.[13]

The Leopard 2 was started as a low-key insurance against the failure of the US–German MBT-70 programme, which turned out to have been a wise precaution. When the collaborative project was cancelled in January 1970, the Bundesheer placed orders for seventeen prototypes of the German design, which were completed in 1974. Production started in 1979, with 2,125 being produced for Germany, 445 for the Netherlands, and others for the Swiss and Swedish armies. One of the significant features of the Leopard 2 was the Rheinmetall smooth-bore 120 mm gun, which fired fin-stabilized ammunition and was able to penetrate the NATO standard heavy-tank target at a range of 2,200 m.

In the early post-war years the French worked hard to re-establish their military industries, one of the most important being tank design and production. Like the UK and the USA, the French produced a heavy-tank design in the late 1940s, intended to counter the JS-3. This 50 tonne tank was armed with a 120 mm gun, but did not go into production because large numbers of US M47s were made available under the US Mutual Defense Assistance Program. France then joined with Germany in a collaborative programme to develop a new medium tank, but, when they failed to agree with the Germans on a winner, the French placed their entry, the AMX-30, in full production in 1967. The AMX-30 was less heavily armoured and thus 3 tonnes lighter than Leopard 1. Also, whereas other NATO armies at that time were standardizing on the British 105 mm L7, the AMX-30 was armed with a French 105 mm gun. This had a rifled barrel, and its only anti-tank round was a unique HEAT projectile in which the charge was mounted on ball-bearings; this meant that, while the projectile body spun to maintain stability in flight, the charge remained stationary (or spun at a very slow rate), which, according to the French army, considerably enhanced its effect. All other NATO tanks carried at least two, if not three, types of anti-tank round, such as HEAT, HESH/HEP and APDS projectiles. The only other NATO country to buy the AMX-30 was Greece.[14]

Several efforts to produce a replacement for the AMX-30, including a joint project with Germany, failed. In the end a new version, the AMX-30B2, was placed in production in 1981, and 693 of the original model were upgraded to the new standard. As the Cold War ended, a totally new French tank, the Leclerc, was about to enter production.

The NATO countries’ experiences with tanks typified much that was good about the Alliance, as well as some of its failures. There was a considerable exchange of information about the Soviet armoured threat and about each other’s plans for countering it. There was also a large degree of agreement on standards – particularly on weapon calibre, ammunition types, fuel and so on.

There were also some substantial efforts – the term ‘heroic’ might not be an overstatement – to achieve collaboration. The Franco-German attempt in the 1950s and the German–US attempt in the 1960s both resulted in prototypes, but there were also several others, including one between West Germany and the UK in the 1970s, and another between France and Germany in the early 1980s, which came to naught even before the prototype stage had been reached. Part of the reason was that, for the countries concerned, the tank was so pivotal to the army’s prestige and to its self-image that, no matter how good the intentions at the start of a collaborative project, national considerations frequently reigned supreme. Another reason was that countries considered it vital to their national interests to maintain their own national research-and-development capabilities, as well as tank, gun and ammunition production bases. There were also the potential export markets to be considered. There was, however, one advantage in all this, in that, once the major tank producers had paid the research-and-development costs and had fought out their political battles with each other, the smaller NATO nations were then able to move in and place their tank, gun and ammunition orders at very advantageous prices.

The national programmes outlined above were hugely expensive, but there were other aspects which added significantly to the defence budgets. There were, for example, many projects which were either purely experimental or which were intended for production but never got beyond the prototype stage. For example, the US army’s experimental T92 was developed in the late 1950s. It included many new features, such as a 90 mm smooth-bore gun and a very low silhouette, but was cancelled in 1960 on the grounds that its hull and turret were so different from preceding tanks that production lines would have required complete retooling, which would have been more expensive than simply improving the M48 to produce the M60. The total costs of this abortive programme, including the development of the gun and the construction of eleven prototypes, was $25 million (at 1960 prices).

The NATO armies were faced with a major dilemma. First, information about Soviet equipment was sparse and, in general, the details of a new Soviet tank were learned only after it had entered service in East Germany with the GSFG. But, as has been made clear above, new-tank programmes were lengthy – a minimum of ten years for a completely new tank and gun – and there were many pitfalls. On those occasions that armies tried to shortcut the lengthy procurement system in order to get a new tank or a new gun into service quickly, they almost invariably landed in trouble, as did the US army with the M47 and M48 in the early 1950s. Even worse was the later experience with the M60A2, when the apparently simple ‘interim’ arrangement of marrying the 152 mm gun/launcher to a new turret on an existing chassis went seriously awry.

New programmes were, if anything, even worse. Design work on the replacement for the M60 started in 1965 with the German–US MBT-70 collaborative programme. After that programme had collapsed, however, and with numerous bureaucratic adventures (particularly with the US Congress) en route, the first M1s did not reach operational units until 1982 – seventeen years later. In the UK, consideration of a Centurion replacement began in 1951 and the first production Chieftains started to enter service in 1967, just one year fewer than the US M60 replacement, and without the complication of an ill-fated collaborative programme, although the new tank was not really satisfactory until well into the 1970s.

The fielding of a new type of tank was by no means the end of the story, however. Not only did design problems have to be sorted out, but in-service tanks were constantly being modified to incorporate such features as a new gun, additional armour or updated electronics. If the type was still in production, such improvements were incorporated into new builds, but they were also retrofitted into existing tanks, frequently at maintenance depots, in an effort to keep the design up to date. The British army, for example, fielded no less than thirteen major versions of the Centurion and ten of the Chieftain, while versions of the US M48 reached M48A5. One of the significant features of such retrofits was that they usually appeared in defence budgets under headings such as ‘maintenance’, while only new production vehicles appeared under the named tank programme, making it virtually impossible to ascertain the total ‘cradle-to-grave’ costs of a long-serving tank such as the M48, M60, Chieftain or Leopard 1.

ASSESSMENT

The NATO and Warsaw Pact tanks of 1990 were immediately recognizable as lineal descendants of the tanks of 1949. All had a single main gun mounted in a rotating turret atop the hull, and the chassis was generally similar, with the driver at the front and the engine at the rear. There had, however, been some diversions on the way. The US developed the 152 mm combined gun and missile launcher, which served in the M551 Sheridan and the M60A2 but was then abandoned, whereas the Soviets perfected a similar system using a 125 mm barrel. The British experimented with liquid propellant for the tank round, which would have both simplified and reduced the stowage inside the tank and greatly improved safety, but this failed owing to difficulties in measuring the precise amounts needed. In the Soviet T-64 and T-72 the use of an automatic loader enabled the crew to be reduced to three men – a radical reduction which most Western armies considered at one time or another, but which was always rejected, even though it would have helped to ease their manpower shortages.

The Swedes aroused considerable interest in many armies with their S-tank, which had no turret, the gun (a modified version of the British 105 mm L7) being fixed instead in the glacis plate. The gun was trained in line by rotating the vehicle on its tracks and elevated by using the adjustable suspension system. The British were sufficiently interested to lease a company’s worth of S-tanks for a year of trials and exercises in West Germany, and they also built a prototype of a similar vehicle. But the British project was dropped in favour of the traditional rotating turret, while the Swedes, having praised the virtues of the S-tank for many years, replaced it with the German Leopard 2, which had a conventional rotating turret.

One problem designers were always wrestling with was that of the overall height of the vehicle. Taking three typical 1960s tanks as an example, the Soviet T-62 was lowest at 2.4 m and the US M60A1 the highest at 3.26 m, with the British Chieftain in between at 2.9 m. There were two limiting factors: the height of the sitting driver dictated the height of the hull, while the height of the standing loader dictated the height between the floor and the turret roof. Various solutions were found. The French and Soviet armies placed a maximum height limit on selection for tank crews, while the British introduced a semi-reclining position for the driver. The main problem, however, was that of the loader, who had to stand to perform his job, and the only effective solution was to get rid of the task altogether by installing an automatic loader. It was for this reason, rather than economy of manpower, that Soviet tanks from the T-72 onwards were fitted with autoloaders.

Some unusual solutions were tried, although few ever progressed beyond range testing. The West Germans, for example, tested a tank with two 105 mm guns, in an effort to increase the firing rate, but that proved a dead end. In a different approach in the quest for ever greater tank-killing power, the British used one Centurion chassis to test a 183 mm gun in a boiler-plate turret and another for trials with a 180 mm gun in an open mount with a concentric recoil system and an automatic rotary loader. Neither progressed beyond the prototype stage.

During the period of the Cold War, tanks certainly increased in capability, with bigger guns, thicker armour, more powerful engines and ever more sophisticated command-and-control systems, but one major consequence was that the weight grew inexorably. In the British army, for example, the initial version of the Centurion, which entered service in the mid-1940s, weighed 49 tonnes, while the final version, the Mk 13, weighed 52 tonnes. The successor, the Chieftain (1960s) weighed 55 tonnes, and the next tank, the Challenger (1980s), a massive 62 tonnes. Even the Soviets, who believed very strongly in keeping tank weights down, suffered from similar problems: their T-34/85 (1940s) weighed 32 tonnes, while the T-54 (1950s) came in at 36 tonnes, the T-62 (1960s) at 37 tonnes and the T-72 at 43.5 tonnes.

The true cost of a tank is difficult to discover, not least because the various nations involved use differing criteria to arrive at a final figure. With these provisos in mind, a careful analysis of the unit costs of US tanks at 1972 prices arrived at the following figures:^{1}

Prices steadily escalated, and the hull, turret, gun and most components cost more as the Cold War progressed; the British Challenger 1, for example, cost £3 million at 1985 prices. Most components increased in cost, but by far the greatest cost escalation was in the electronic devices, such as fire-control systems, sensors, engine controls and radios.

OF ALL THE arms in the ground forces, the infantry – arguably the most important element on the tactical battlefield – underwent the greatest change during the Cold War. Up to the early 1950s (and later in the smaller armies) the infantry was fundamentally unchanged from the Second World War, being organized into battalions of between 500 and 800 men and divided into three to five rifle companies. The main feature of all infantry battalions, however, was that the great majority of men moved on foot, as the infantry had done since time immemorial, dictating a sustained speed of advance of approximately 5 km/h, which had a major impact on the speed at which battles could be fought.

Efforts were made during the Second World War to make the infantry more mobile. Some battalions were given sufficient trucks to enable all the men to move on wheels, but, since the trucks were simply load-carriers with seats, they provided no protection and the men had to dismount in order to fight or if under threat from artillery or air attack. The trucks also had very limited cross-country capability. Attempts were made on the Allied side to introduce armoured protection, mainly by converting tanks, but the resulting vehicles entered service in relatively small numbers. The Germans produced a half-track vehicle specifically as a troop carrier, but the metal sideplates were thin and there was no overhead cover, so the protection was only marginally greater than that provided by trucks, although mobility was greater. Nevertheless, the basic problem for army commanders was that, if tanks achieved a break-through, their speed of advance far outstripped that of the plodding infantry.

PERSONNEL CARRIERS OR COMBAT VEHICLES?

As so often, the US army led the way to the next major development, the armoured personnel carrier (APC), which initially consisted of an armoured box mounted on tracks, carrying an infantry squad of twelve men. A far-seeing operational requirement was issued in September 1945, and the outcome, the M75 APC, entered service in 1951, setting a trend which has continued to this day.

Subsequent development followed two main strands. The first was for a so-called ‘battle taxi’ whose prime role was to move the infantry about the battlefield, giving them protection and speed of movement, and delivering them to a point near the objective from which they could then advance on foot into the assault. For such a requirement the infantry inside the vehicle needed only to be able to see out in order to orientate themselves and to be able to disembark rapidly.

The other school of thought maintained that what was required was an infantry combat vehicle, which not only carried a heavy weapon in the turret but also provided the infantry with the means of fighting from inside the vehicle. In such a vehicle, it was claimed, the infantry could actually fight from their vehicle, keeping the enemy’s heads down by the sheer volume of small-arms fire and disembarking only when actually on top of the objective.

The other main area of difference was over tracks and wheels. Tracks conferred exceptional cross-country mobility but were noisy, expensive, required considerable maintenance, and tended to damage road surfaces – a major consideration in peacetime. Wheels, on the other hand, were cheaper, more reliable, quieter, easier to replace if damaged, and, when on roads, not only did less damage, but also enabled the vehicle to move much faster. On the other hand, wheels were more vulnerable to damage, and did not provide such a good cross-country capability.

The first of the ‘battle taxis’, the US army’s trend-setting M75 APC, entered service in 1952. It carried a driver, a commander and a squad of ten men. It was of all-steel construction and was high, making it difficult to conceal, and it was not amphibious; it also had a petrol engine. Nevertheless, it was an impressive start. The M75 was followed by the M59, which entered service from 1954 onwards. This too was of all-steel construction, but was cheaper than the M75 to produce and was amphibious in calm conditions.

Still not satisfied, the US army persevered and its efforts in this particular development chain culminated in the M113 APC, which became the archetypical APC between 1960 and 1985. The original US army requirement was to provide a lightweight armoured personnel carrier for armour and infantry units; it had to be capable of amphibious and air-drop operation, have superior cross-country mobility, and be adaptable for multiple functions by means of kits and/or modification of its superstructure. The designers succeeded in meeting all of these objectives, and the M113 proved to be one of the most successful military designs of all time, with over 80,000 being produced for service in at least fifty armies in a production run which lasted from 1960 to the early 1990s.

The M113 had a body fabricated from welded aluminium, which protected the crew (commander, driver and eleven infantrymen) from shell splinters and small-arms fire. It was powered by a diesel engine, giving a maximum speed of 64 km/h and a range of 320 km (later increased to 485 km). The infantrymen sat on two benches facing inwards, and exited through a downward-opening rear ramp. The basic vehicle was armed with a pintle-mounted 12.7 mm machine-gun, although many users mounted heavier weapons, of which the largest to enter service was a turret-mounted 76 mm gun in an Australian version. The M113 was fully amphibious with little preparation, being propelled in the water by its tracks. Apart from the normal infantry versions a large range of specialized versions were produced, including bulldozers, flame-throwers, mortar carriers, radar vehicles, anti-aircraft gun/missile carriers, command posts, anti-tank weapons carriers, and transport for engineers, communications and recovery operations.

The M113 was very successful, but one of the reasons for its longevity was the difficulty experienced in finding a successor. By the early 1960s the US army had decided on a requirement for a mechanized-infantry combat vehicle (MICV), the first attempt at which was a vehicle designated MICV-65, of which five prototypes were produced, but it was considered too large and development ceased. In 1967 the Armored Infantry Fighting Vehicle (AIFV) appeared, which was in essence an M113 adapted to meet the MICV requirement, but this too was deemed unsatisfactory and development ceased, although the design was later produced in large numbers for the Belgian and Dutch armies.

In 1972 the XM723 programme started, which was intended to lead to a vehicle which would serve in both armoured and infantry units, carrying a crew of three plus eight dismounting infantry. After many vicissitudes, repeated reviews (most of them antagonistic), much criticism and many redesigns, this programme resulted in the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) and the initial production vehicles were eventually handed over in 1981, with the first unit forming in March 1983. Forty-one M2s were issued to each infantry battalion, where they replaced M113s, although many M113s continued to serve in other roles.

The M2 was constructed of welded aluminium with spaced, laminated armour on the front and sides, and was armed with a turret-mounted 25 mm chain-gun, a coaxial 7.62 mm machine-gun and a twin TOW anti-tank missile launcher. The vehicle crew consisted of commander, driver and gunner, and seven infantrymen were carried, of which six were provided with firing ports and periscopes. Thus, after a protracted and very expensive development process, the US army finally obtained a MICV which was only marginally better than the German Marder (see below), which had preceded it into service by some fifteen years.

The Soviet army initially followed a policy of transporting infantrymen in motor-rifle units in motor-rifle divisions in wheeled APCs, starting in the 1940s with the 6 × 6-wheeled BTR-152,[1] a very ordinary design, which used a truck chassis with a new steel superstructure to carry seventeen infantrymen. This was replaced in the 1960s by the BTR-60, an 8 × 8-wheeled, open-topped, boat-shaped vehicle, which carried a crew of two and twelve infantrymen. The original open top meant that the men could disembark quickly over the sides, but they had no protection from overhead artillery bursts, nor could the vehicle be made NBC-proof; this was rectified in later versions, which had a covered-in roof with hatches. The vehicle was fully amphibious and was powered in the water by water jets. The original pintle-mounted 7.62 mm or 12.7 mm machine-gun was later replaced by a turret-mounted 14.5 mm machine-gun, and firing ports were provided for some of the infantrymen. This was an efficient design and quite unlike anything then in service, making it another example of the radical thinking of which Soviet designers were capable. The BTR-60 was later complemented by the improved BTR-70.

Motor-rifle units in tank divisions were mounted in tracked APCs, the earliest version being the BTR-50, which entered service in the mid-1950s. This was based on a light-tank design, but, like the wheeled BTR-60, it had a large, open troop compartment, from which the men jumped to the ground. This was replaced in the 1960s by a design even more outstanding than the BTR-60: the BMP-1. This was a very low, fully tracked vehicle constructed of welded steel plate and carrying a crew of three and an eight-man infantry squad. The BMP-1 weighed 13.5 tonnes fully loaded and was armed with a new 73 mm low-pressure gun, with an AT-3 (NATO = ‘Sagger’) anti-tank guided missile mounted above it. The BMP-1 had full NBC protection and was fully amphibious, and excellent ballistic design gave protection against small-arms fire up to 12.7 mm calibre. A later version, the BMP-2, appeared in 1982; this was essentially a modernized BMP-1, but armed with a 30 mm cannon and an AT-5 (NATO = ‘Spandrel’) anti-tank missile system.

The BTR-60/70 and BMP-1/2 again showed that the Soviet General Staff and designers were capable of daring and innovative thought, producing designs which, on their appearance, caused some alarm in the West. Pictures were the only evidence that most Western defence experts had of these APCs until examples were captured in the Middle Eastern wars, but there was also a very lively debate in Soviet military journals on their employment in combat, with officers of all ranks joining in the frequently heated discussions.

In the late 1950s the Bundesheer started to consider the design of its first Cold War infantry fighting vehicle, and, not surprisingly, it began by analysing the experiences of the Second World War Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. These studies convinced the Germans that they needed a vehicle from which the infantry could fire their weapons, enabling them to fight their way on to the objective, thus protecting the infantry during the final – and very vulnerable – assault phase. The result was the Marder, the first prototypes of which ran in 1961, although there was then a very careful, albeit somewhat prolonged, series of trials before it entered service in 1971.

The Marder had a steel body, the front of which gave complete protection from 20 mm rounds. It was operated by a crew of three: commander, gunner and driver. The dismounting infantry numbered only six, sitting on outward-facing benches, four of whom were provided with firing ports. Armament comprised a 20 mm cannon and a coaxial 7.62 mm machine-gun in a two-man turret, with a separate remotely controlled machine-gun at the rear of the vehicle. All vehicles were later also fitted with a Milan anti-tank guided-missile launcher. The result was an extremely capable vehicle, highly mobile, with considerable firepower and good protection from small-arms fire and NBC, but with a weight of 28 tonnes, which made it by far the heaviest MICV to enter service. Marder equipped the infantry battalions in both tank and panzer grenadier divisions, and with periodic updates it served the Bundesheer from 1971 until well beyond the end of the Cold War.

All NATO and Warsaw Pact countries had little option but to follow the lead set by the US and Soviet armies, and to mount their infantry in vehicles. Most simply adopted US or Soviet carriers, but there were a number of exceptions.

Some armies adopted wheeled APCs. The Czechs and Poles, while following the Soviet lead in adopting a wheeled APC for motor-rifle troops, did not adopt the Soviet BTR-60 but instead jointly developed the OT-64 8 × 8-wheeled APC, which entered service in 1964. This carried a crew of two (driver and commander) and two sections (eighteen infantrymen) – by far the largest number of men carried by an APC. It was very successful, but was eventually replaced by the BMP-1.

The Dutch also developed an 8 × 8-wheeled APC, the YP-408, a large vehicle which was based on a DAF truck and accommodated a crew of two and ten infantrymen. It served in the Dutch army from 1964 until being replaced by the US-designed tracked AIFV from 1977 onwards. The British also used a wheeled APC, the 6 × 6-wheeled Saracen, in the 1960s, but it was employed mainly by the support troops in reconnaissance units and only rarely by infantry battalions.

The French army used wheeled APCs for roles outside Europe, but for European warfare it used tracked APCs, all of French design. The first was the AMX VCI, which entered service in 1957 and was based on the AMX-13 light tank. It had a troop compartment accommodating ten infantrymen, with eight facing outwards and two to the rear, all of them with firing ports. The VCI was replaced from 1973 onwards by the AMX-10P, an all-aluminium vehicle, armed with a 20 mm cannon on an external mount. It carried eight infantrymen, but these did not have the ability to fight from inside the vehicle.

From 1963 onwards the British also used a tracked APC, the FV432, which was generally similar in design to the M113, but constructed of steel. In the 1970s, however, when the British army started to consider a replacement for the FV432, there was an intense internal debate over the future requirement, which centred upon whether a new vehicle should be a MICV, as exemplified by the German Marder, or simply a better APC. Various prototypes were designed and tested, including a very large MICV, but in the end the Mechanized Combat Vehicle-80 (MCV-80) was selected, mounting a 30 mm Rarden cannon, and carrying eight infantrymen (one of whom was also the vehicle commander), although they did not have firing ports and therefore could not use their weapons from inside the vehicle. The title, MCV-80, was intended to demonstrate that the vehicle would enter service in 1980, but, as so often happened when such dates were included in a weapon title (e.g. the German/US MBT-70 tank), this proved to be over-optimistic and the vehicle did not enter service until 1987.

THE INFANTRY REVOLUTION

Fielding APCs and MICVs represented a true revolution in the infantry, since the men were all mounted, together with their weapons, equipment and supplies, while the tracks gave them a mobility virtually identical with that of tanks; in addition, since every vehicle was fitted with a radio (and the radio was no longer limited in size by the need for it to be carried on a man’s back), commanders were able to achieve an unprecedented degree of control. Further, the vehicles were able to carry heavy machine-guns or cannon in turrets, as well as lighter machine-guns and anti-tank guided weapons, greatly increasing the firepower available.

Later it was also realized that, by creating a slight overpressure inside, these vehicles could provide collective protection against chemical and biological weapons. APCs/MICVs also proved remarkably adaptable, forming the basis for many specialist vehicles for use as command posts, ambulances, communications stations, recovery and repair vehicles, and minelayers. As a result they were produced in considerable numbers

There were, of course, some penalties. Each APC required a driver and a commander, which meant that every section was robbed of two men on the ground – a significant number of men when a battalion was equipped with some sixty or more APCs. In addition, the battalion’s logistic requirements increased dramatically, principally for fuel and spares, while the maintenance requirement also increased.

The change in capability can be gauged by a brief examination of the infantry battalion in the British army, whose experiences were typical of the changes in all armies. In the 1950s a British infantry battalion consisted of some 700 men, for the majority of whom the normal means of movement was on foot. There were three rifle companies, in which the vast majority of men were armed with a 7.70 mm bolt-action rifle, although each rifle platoon also had three 7.70 mm light machine-guns and three 51 mm mortars. The heavy-weapons company operated six 7.70 mm Vickers heavy machine-guns, six 120 mm WOMBAT recoilless anti-tank guns and six 76.2 mm mortars. Mobility was limited to approximately twenty Jeeps or Land Rovers, mainly for commanders and communicators, and twenty three-tonne trucks, whose primary purpose was logistic resupply.

In the late 1980s a British mechanized battalion was still approximately the same size – 725 men – but now every one of these had his own allotted place in a vehicle. All men carried an automatic weapon, the riflemen carrying the British standard 5.56 mm rifle. The battalion operated 157 vehicles, comprising 90 MCV-80 Warrior IFVs, 19 tracked reconnaissance vehicles, 16 Land Rovers, and 4 one-tonne, 17 four-tonne and 11 eight-tonne trucks. Heavy weapons included eight 81 mm mortars, twelve Milan anti-tank guided-missile launchers, and a large quantity of 30 mm Rarden cannon and 7.62 mm machine-guns mounted on the Warriors. Logistic resupply had, however, become a severe problem, especially for fuel, ammunition and spares, while the maintenance requirement was met a by a platoon of twenty-eight men. All IFVs had at least one radio, as did most Land Rovers. The greatest change, however, was in the infantry’s mobility, since it had become fully capable of moving cross-country in company with tanks or of moving at high speed along roads.

FIELD ARTILLERY

WHILE THE TANK became the public and political symbol of an army’s military prowess, overshadowing other battlefield weapons systems, within armies the importance of the artillery arm remained undiminished and, despite the advent of missiles and rockets, the gun remained the weapon of choice in the tactical battle.[1] Provided targets were within range, guns were capable of producing extremely accurate and very destructive fire at virtually any spot selected by battlefield commanders. Further, artillery command-and-control systems enabled the guns to switch targets quickly and to increase the weight of fire by bringing additional batteries into action as required.

Artillery was of great importance in the Second World War, and this continued in the many smaller wars between 1945 and 1990, when the tactical value of artillery was demonstrated repeatedly, although never more convincingly than at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu during the First Indo-China War. During that prolonged siege, which lasted from December 1953 to May 1954, Viet Minh artillery occupied the hills overlooking the French base and from there they totally dominated the battlefield, closed the airfield, cut off supplies, and eventually bludgeoned the garrison into defeat.

In the early 1950s there were only a small number of self-propelled guns, all in open mounts on converted tank chassis, which supported armoured divisions in some armies (e.g. the British and US). The great majority of guns were wheeled pieces, towed either by a specially designed artillery tractor or, in some cases, by an ordinary general-purpose truck. At a US army conference held in Washington in January 1952 it was decided that the speed of modern warfare was increasing to such an extent, particularly with the infantry planning to be mounted entirely in armoured personnel carriers, that wheeled guns would no longer be able to keep up with the speed of movement. Also, the threat of nuclear weapons made it necessary to place the crews inside closed gun-houses (turrets) for protection. Furthermore, tracked vehicles were more capable of moving into temporary fire positions, getting into and out of action quickly, since there was no need to separate the gun from its tractor and set it on a base-plate. Then, after firing, they could move out rapidly – the so-called ‘shoot-and-scoot’ tactic – before enemy artillery could determine the source of the rounds and fire a counter-battery mission.

The US army initiative resulted in three outstanding designs – the M107 (175 mm), M109 (155 mm), and M110 (203 mm) – although the M109 was the only one to provide a gun-house to shelter the crew. These weapons came to dominate the NATO artillery arms, seeing service in virtually every NATO army except that of France. US army deployment, which was typical of other NATO armies was fifty-four M109 155 mm and twelve M110 203 mm in each armoured and mechanized infantry division, and twelve M107 175 mm in each corps.

The great majority of other NATO nations simply followed the US lead on artillery tactics and adopted US weapons, and only a few other guns were developed. The British produced the 105 mm Abbot tracked SP gun in the 1960s, but within NATO this served only with the British army, since it was by then clear that the future lay with the larger 155 mm calibre. The British did, however, collaborate with Germany and Italy in the successful 155 mm Field Howitzer 1970 (FH70) programme, producing a towed gun which was destined for use in ‘out-of-area’ roles by the UK and by territorial defence units in the FRG and Italy. The success of the FH70 led to a follow-on collaborative project with Germany, the ambitious SP70, a 155 mm self-propelled, tracked weapon, using the same ordnance as the FH70. Unfortunately it proved to be too ambitious, and after a great deal of expenditure it was eventually cancelled and the two countries went their separate ways.

The only other NATO nation to retain a significant domestic artillery industry was France, which produced a series of towed and self-propelled artillery pieces. The French retained towed guns for use by their front-line mechanized infantry divisions, even producing the new TR 155 mm towed gun in the 1970s, at a time when all other European armies had long since converted to self-propelled pieces.

Soviet artillery had established an awesome reputation during the Second World War, but for the next two decades it experienced a conservatism unusual in the Soviet armed forces, which not only adhered to towed artillery, but also invariably deployed it in rows of six guns in uncamouflaged fire positions. Well-established Second World War guns therefore remained in service throughout the 1950s, and their replacements in the 1960s were also towed. It was only in the 1970s that self-propelled guns came into service, in which existing tracked chassis were matched to modified versions of existing guns, producing systems of 122 mm, 152 mm and 203 mm calibre. Although long overdue, these proved to be of excellent quality, with the usual Soviet combination of practical design, simplicity and long range, and caused considerable alarm in the West.

Czechoslovakia made a notable contribution to artillery design with its DANA system, which entered service in 1981. This featured a 152 mm gun in a split turret mounted on a modified 8 × 8-wheeled truck chassis. Although the wheels reduced its cross-country capability in comparison with a tracked vehicle, its performance was more than adequate for service in central Europe with its excellent road systems, and any tactical disadvantages were offset by its high road speed, long road range, considerably reduced capital cost, and ease of maintenance.

In the 1950s NATO armies were equipped with guns of a wide variety of calibres, and in one of its early efforts at standardization NATO decided on the 105 mm round. France, the UK and the USA all produced self-propelled guns of this calibre in the 1950s and 1960s, but the shells had limited carrying capacity, lethality and range compared to those of 155 mm (as shown in Table 27.1), and 155 mm subsequently became the NATO standard for field artillery.

The varieties of payload also increased considerably during the Cold War. US army 155 mm rounds, for example, could carry high explosives (HE); chemical agents; direct-fire anti-tank; flares; smoke; anti-tank minelets; anti-personnel minelets; and self-forming, top attack, anti-tank munitions. Warsaw Pact countries produced similar payloads, and also developed a communications jammer housed in a 152 mm shell.

Great efforts were also made to extend the range. One method was by lengthening the barrel; virtually doubling the length of the 203 mm barrel in the US M110, for example, increased the range of the M106 HE projectile from 16,800 m to 21,300 m. Shell design was also progressively refined, with techniques such as base bleed and rocket assistance both being used to enhance the range. Somewhat to the frustration of Western designers, however, Soviet designers always seemed to be able to obtain greater range than their Western counterparts: for example, the Soviet 152 mm gun fired a 43.5 kg shell to 24,000 m, while the US 155 mm fired a 42.9 kg shell to 14,600 m.

Nothing is ever achieved without penalty, however, and the consequence of increasing the calibre was that individual rounds were heavier, meaning that fewer could be carried on the gun, while the increase in firing rate meant that more rounds were required from the logistics system, and the increase in range placed new requirements on the target-acquisition process.

There was a major difference between the maximum or ‘burst’ fire rate, which could be kept up for only a short time, and the sustained fire rate; the respective rates for the M109, for example, were three rounds and one round per minute. The M109 carried twenty-eight rounds, which, even at the sustained rate, could be used within half an hour and, while no gun would fire even at the sustained rate for a very long period, all armies’ ammunition consumption rates rose to a dramatic degree. The US army responded by developing the tracked Field Artillery Ammunition Support Vehicle (FAASV), which could carry either 118 rounds of 155 mm ammunition or 75 rounds of 175 mm. Despite such advances, the demands of the guns for more ammunition, coupled with rapid movement to pre-empt counter-attack by enemy guns, made artillery resupply a major problem.

As with tankmen, gunners pursued the goal of first-round accuracy. Accuracy on target depended upon knowing the precise location of the guns, and manual methods of surveying gun positions gave way to much faster and more accurate electronic systems. In addition, movements became so frequent and time in any one position so brief that the traditional method of ascertaining meteorological conditions by visual and manual methods was no longer adequate and fully automated systems were introduced.

The introduction of SP guns with the crew housed in a turret meant that visual methods of control on the gun position were superseded by radio. Ever-expanding artillery communication systems also enabled artillery commanders to exercise much greater co-ordination and control of their units, and to respond much more rapidly to requests for fire support. Many national artillery arms were also quick to latch on to the potential of computerized fire-control systems.

Every military system inevitably preys on its own, and, as artillery became more effective, so too did the duel between artillery systems (known as ‘counter-battery’ fire) intensify. In the early 1950s there were two, fairly primitive, methods of locating enemy artillery. One used analysis of craters to estimate the direction and range of the gun. The other, called ‘sound ranging’, used sensitive microphones placed along a line (the ‘sound base’) and connected by radio; the sound of gunfire was detected by operators, who used the time of detection at the different microphones to compute the point of origin.

In the 1970s, however, the scale and efficiency of Soviet artillery systems, coupled with the ever shorter time spent in any one position, forced NATO to develop more accurate, more rapid and less manpower-intensive systems, such as the US army’s Firefinder, which consisted of two radars: one to detect mortars, the other to detect guns and missile launchers. On detecting a projectile, the radars tracked it briefly and then used the trajectory to compute the point of origin, presenting the precise location of the launch site to the operator before the incoming projectile had hit the ground. The operator then passed the co-ordinates of the enemy position to the fire-direction centre, for it to be included in the counter-battery fire plan.

AIR DEFENCE

From about 1943 to the end of the Second World War the Allied armies operated in an environment of air supremacy, leading to the virtual neglect of air defences for armies in the field during the early years of the Cold War. There was therefore a continued dependence upon Second World War gun-based systems well into the 1950s in the West, and it was only when the Soviets began to field missile-based systems that Western development was given any real sense of urgency. As in other areas, however, the Germans had left a rich legacy of guided-missile projects, and these were used as the starting point for new air-defence systems.

The Hawk missile entered service with the US army in 1959 and was also purchased by a NATO consortium (Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands), which laid out a complex network of static Hawk sites covering most of western Europe. These were subsequently upgraded to Improved Hawk (I-Hawk) by all except Belgium. Both Hawk and I-Hawk were effective, with a maximum range of 40 km, and not only were capable of intercepting aircraft, but also demonstrated a capability of attacking missiles and battlefield rockets such as NATO’s Honest John. The British meanwhile produced a mobile air-defence missile, the Thunderbird, which was deployed in Germany from 1959 to 1976.

At the lowest end of the scale – within infantry battalions – miniaturization led to a spate of missiles which were light in weight and easy to control and which could be carried in a container which doubled as the launch-tube. Typical of these were the US Redeye and its successor the Stinger, and the British Blowpipe. Guidance methods varied, with Redeye/Stinger using an infra-red seeker to home on an aircraft’s exhaust, while Blowpipe was steered by the operator, enabling it to attack an aircraft head-on. It was originally envisaged that such weapons would be distributed on a wide scale, giving a broad coverage of the AFCENT area, but NATO pilots were not very enthusiastic about flying over their own troops armed with such weapons, especially if the operators were ‘trigger-happy’ as a result of recent enemy air attacks. So, identification friend-or-foe (IFF) systems were fitted and missile operators were brought under centralized control to ensure that they did not blaze away regardless.

At the divisional level there were a large number of missile systems, although all took much longer to develop and cost very much more than planned. The US army rushed the Chapparal system into service in 1966, by mounting four Sidewinder missiles, normally used by aircraft, on an existing tracked chassis and adding a simple radar. Chapparal was to have been replaced by Roland, a Franco-German programme which started in 1963 and eventually entered service with the French and German armies in 1977 – fourteen years later. It was then adopted by the US army for service in late 1977, but there was a four-year delay before it actually entered service, and even then the promised large orders were cut back to just twenty-seven. Meanwhile, Chapparal, the interim system, remained in service until the 1990s. The British developed the mobile Rapier, which went into service in 1967 as a fairly simple optically guided system, towed by a light truck, but was then developed into a much more sophisticated weapon mounted on a tracked vehicle.

At the corps level the US Patriot system also suffered from a long-drawn-out development, which started with intensive studies in 1961. By 1965 the system had been designated SAM-D and was intended to defeat saturation air attacks by large numbers of aircraft at all heights and by short-range missiles, both of them in an intense ECM environment. Full development did not start until 1967 and was protracted, to say the least, as the first unit did not form until 1984. Nevertheless, it proved to be an exceptionally good system, using a combination of command and semi-active homing guidance to control a missile travelling at speeds of Mach 2–3 and with a maximum range in the region of 65–70 km.

In contrast with the NATO nations, the Soviet Union gave high priority to air defence from the start of the Cold War, and in particular to missiles, and proceeded to follow a coherent development plan throughout. In the ground forces, area coverage was provided by SAM brigades, whose operations were co-ordinated with those of the tactical air army, while at division and regimental level SAMs and anti-aircraft guns provided point defence. These were tied together by an efficient target-acquisition and early-warning system, whose tasks were to provide the air-defence units with target data and other units with warning of incoming attacks. All units were encouraged to use shoulder-launched short-range missiles, machine-guns and rifles against hostile aircraft.

The first missile, the SA-1 (NATO = ‘Guild’), which was also the world’s first air-defence missile to be deployed on a significant scale, entered service in 1954 and was intended for homeland defence, while the first mobile missile system for the field army, the SA-2 (‘Guideline’), entered service in 1957. The SA-2 missile was mounted on a wheeled transporter–erector, launched vertically, and guided by radar, and its capabilities were amply demonstrated on 1 May 1960 when an SA-2 missile hit the US spy plane piloted by Gary Powers, thus not only provoking the ‘U-2 Incident’ but also effectively ending the USA’s ability to overfly the USSR with U-2s. The missile was widely exported and was constantly updated, particularly as a result of operational experience by its export customers, including North Vietnam, Egypt and Syria.

Next came the SA-4 (‘Ganef’) system, which entered full service in 1967 and consisted of two missiles mounted on a tracked carrier. This highly mobile system was designed to accompany advancing forces, each army having a brigade of twenty-seven launchers, which moved in two echelons, one some 10 km behind the front line, the other 15 km further back. The amphibious tracked carrier was specifically designed for the SA-4 system, but was subsequently used for many other systems. The SA-4 remained in service until the early 1990s but, as far as is known, was never used operationally, although a brigade was deployed to Egypt in 1971–2 and another brigade was deployed to Kabul Airport in 1979.

The series of army air-defence missile systems continued with the SA-6 (‘Gainful’), which, like the SA-4, was powered by a ramjet. It entered service in 1970 and complemented the SA-4 in the forward areas, the first echelon being some 5 km behind the forward troops and the second echelon 10 km further back still. The system was designed to combat low-level fighter-bombers and was widely used in the Soviet army; it was also exported to Egypt and Syria. The initial version of the SA-6, with one radar for three launchers, was used to great effect in the 1973 Arab–Israeli war, where it initially caused great problems for the Israeli air force, due, at least in part, to surprise. After suffering losses, however, the Israelis discovered three weaknesses: the missile could be defeated by a combination of chaff and manoeuvre; the engagement radar was vulnerable to attack; and the system could be saturated.

The SA-6 was due to be replaced by the SA-11 (‘Gadfly’), but problems with the new system’s missile led to a stop-gap system being fielded, which was designated SA-6B by NATO, and which combined the proven SA-6 missile with the SA-11 trailer, launcher and radar; it served in limited numbers from 1979 to the mid-1980s.

The Soviets had, however, already developed another new divisional-level system, the SA-8 (‘Gecko’), in which each 6 × 6-wheeled, amphibious launch vehicle also had its own engagement radar. After prolonged problems with the missile, this entered service in 1980.

The development of these Soviet missile systems followed a constant path. The early missiles were designed to counter the medium- and high-level threats that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s, while the SA-6, SA-8 and SA-11 also countered the low-level threat that started to become important from the 1970s onwards. These systems were deployed at divisional level and above, while at regimental level there were SA-9 (‘Gaskin’) vehicle-mounted missiles and air-defence guns (e.g. the ZSU-23–4 – see below) and at battalion level there was a plethora of shoulder-launched missiles (e.g. the SA-7 ‘Grail’). There was at least one SA-7 launcher in each tank and motor-rifle platoon, while each regiment had a platoon of four quadruple SA-9 launchers and a platoon of four ZSU-23–4 guns. The missile’s infrared seeker was reported to be fairly susceptible to deception, and the West developed a multitude of countermeasures, including baffles over helicopter engine exhausts, flares with varying heat intensities, and infra-red decoy pods.

One of the notable achievements of the Soviet system was that it managed to develop a series of missiles and associated radars which could be deployed both on land and at sea, only the launchers being different. Another strength was that most of them were very simple to use.

Those missiles that were used operationally in conflicts outside the USSR usually achieved some success in the early days of the conflict, followed by diminishing returns as pilots learned how to cope with them. In a war in central Europe, however, these systems would have been operated by much more skilled operators and would have been at much greater density; they would undoubtedly have caused NATO pilots considerable difficulty.[2]

The Soviets claimed that their goal was to produce an air-defence ‘umbrella’ over their forces, and in this they substantially succeeded.

Nowhere was the difference in approach between the Western and Soviet approaches to weapons procurement shown more clearly than in the development by each side of a self-propelled, tracked, low-level gun system to provide air defence for rapidly moving armoured units.

First to be fielded was the Soviet ZSU-23–4,[3] which Soviet designers based on a standard tracked chassis, virtually identical to that already in wide-scale use for the SA-6 missile system. To this was added a simple turret with 360-degree traverse, in which was mounted an already proven quadruple 23 mm cannon system, each barrel being capable of firing short bursts at an effective rate of 1,000 rounds per minute. The one new item was the ‘Gun Dish’ radar, which performed all the necessary functions of search, detection, automatic tracking, and range and angle calculation. The result was a devastating and totally autonomous weapon system, which achieved great success in various Middle East wars. During the 1973 war, for example, thirty of the eighty Israeli aircraft lost in low-level missions fell victim to the ZSU-23–4. The weapon was not without its problems: barrels had a short life and were prone to overheating, the radar was ineffective below about 60 m, and there were some safety problems. Nevertheless, it was regarded with considerable respect by NATO aircrew and was considered to be a major threat to low-flying aircraft – particularly ground-attack types such as the US A-10, the British Harrier and all types of helicopter.

The US army developed a system known as the Sergeant York, which was similar in concept to the ZSU-23–4, using the chassis of the M48A5 tank, two standard L70 40 mm cannon, and a radar system developed from that installed in the F-16 fighter; the only totally new item was the turret. Development started in 1973, but, despite taking so many elements ‘off the shelf’, the project lasted for ten years and was dogged by difficulties, particularly in integrating the various systems, and costs escalated out of control. One of the consequences of the time taken was that by the early 1980s the threat had moved on, with the introduction into Soviet service of stand-off weapons for fighter-bombers and helicopters. The concept of the Sergeant York was to attack the aerial platform (i.e. the fighter-bomber or helicopter) rather than the stand-off missile, and in the end the gun system, with an effective range of 3,000 m, was perceived to be of limited value. This, coupled with the severity of the technical problems, resulted in its cancellation in 1985 after fifty production vehicles had been delivered.

Having cancelled the Sergeant York, the US army turned to SHORAD (Short-Range Air Defense), based on the French Roland missile; this entered service in very limited numbers. Next came the Air-Defence/Anti-Tank System (ADATS), which was also cancelled. Thus by the end of the Cold War, and after some twenty years of development and very considerable expenditure, the US army still did not have an adequate short-range air-defence system.

TARGET ACQUISITION

Targets had to be identified, their nature and co-ordinates passed to the artillery command system, fire brought to bear, and the results assessed. The increasing range of artillery, however, made this a severe problem: the US M107 175 mm gun, for example, had a maximum range of 32.7 km, while the Lance artillery rocket reached out to 120 km. This meant that, whereas looking into enemy territory to a depth of 10–15 km had once been sufficient, it now became necessary to see up to 100 km or more. Also, the rapidity of movement across the modern battlefield meant that it became increasingly important to acquire targets such as concentrations of tanks in real time, if advantage was to be taken.

Front-line troops could acquire targets using optical methods, but were limited to the line of sight, which under central-European conditions could vary between 1 km and 5 km. Air reconnaissance by manned fighters was important but for many years depended upon the aircraft returning to base for films to be developed and for the prints to be passed to artillery HQs, which, however slick the processes became, involved an in-built delay. There were also other methods, such as monitoring enemy communications and using breaches of security, decryption or traffic analysis to obtain information on such factors as nodal points or artillery nets.

A solution which became increasingly widespread was the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which were directed either by an on-board computer programme (drones) or by a pilot on the ground sending directions via a radio link (remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs)). Such UAVs relied on their very small size, quiet engines and ‘stealthy’ construction to escape detection. Wide-scale use of such devices originated in the 1960s, when they were introduced into the Vietnam War and Israel. At first such devices simply brought back photographs of the targets they had been sent to look at, but later they became capable of transmitting photographs or TV pictures in real time, enabling them to be used to detect targets and also to send back spotting information, so that artillery staffs could assess the results of the fire mission and, if necessary, re-engage.