The Third World War: August 1985

CHAPTER 12: NATO Forces

The structure and strength of the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as they stood against those of the Warsaw Pact in the summer of 1985, must now be examined.

Attempts on the part of the Atlantic Council to prescribe to Allied governments, in the early days of the Alliance, what force goals they should meet had long been abandoned. Member states had always, in fact, put up no more than what they thought they could afford, usually claiming in self-justification that nothing more was necessary.

In actual structure NATO was still in 1985 much as it had been for the past twenty years. Except for some adjustment in the matter of naval and tactical air command (to which detailed reference is made in Appendix 3) there had been little change.

At the head of the Alliance of the fifteen signatory states stood the North Atlantic Council, meeting at ministerial level in normal times at least twice a year but with permanent representatives at ambassador level meeting constantly. The senior military authority in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the peacetime military structure which was such an important and unusual feature of the Alliance, was the Military Committee, composed of an independent chairman and a Chief of Staff of each Allied country except France, which had withdrawn from it in 1966, Iceland, which had no forces, and Luxembourg, which was represented by Belgium. The Military Committee was in permanent session with its own military staff. There were two Supreme Allied Commanders, SACEUR for Europe and SACLANT for the Atlantic, both American, and the Cs-in-C of the Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (JACWA) who were British. Under SACEUR were three regional commands: the northern, AFNORTH, with a British Commander-in-Chief; the central, AFCENT, under a French C-in-C until France’s withdrawal from the integrated military organization in 1966 and thereafter under a German; and the southern, AFSOUTH, under an American admiral.

In peacetime there were under AFNORTH, which took in Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark and Norway, the assigned forces of Norway and Denmark and one German division. There were plans for reinforcements from the UK, Canada and elsewhere, if they could be got there in time, in an emergency.

Under AFCENT were the Northern and Central Army Groups, NORTHAG and CENTAG, the first under a British, the second under an American, commander. Also under AFCENT was AIR-CENT, which provided centralized control of the two Allied air forces supporting NORTHAG and CENTAG.

Under AFSOUTH, commanded by a US admiral, came the assigned Italian and Turkish forces (and, as long as she remained a member, the forces of Greece) with the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean also earmarked, though not assigned. There was an overall air command (AIRSOUTH) but two subordinate naval commands and separate commands for ground defence in Italy, under an Italian general, and, in the south-eastern part of the area, including Turkey, under an American.

In spite of the great importance of the flanks the critical area of NATO on land was clearly the Central Region, covering the Federal Republic of Germany up to (but excluding) Schleswig-Holstein and the Federal frontier with the Low Countries. It was in the Central Region that NATO’s greatest concentration of ground and tactical air forces was gathered, facing those of the Warsaw Pact across the Demarcation Line which separated West and East Germany, then followed the Czechoslovak frontier down to neutral Austria on the south-eastern flank.

All the regular forces of the Federal Republic (organized in three corps and twelve divisions, with sixteen armoured and fifteen armoured infantry, two mountain and three airborne brigades) were assigned to NATO in peacetime. The six Territorial Army brigade-sized groups established for Home Defence were not, until a lengthy argument came to an end in 1985; then these too, with the three Territorial Commands of five Military Districts, came under SACEUR. They were to play an important part in the war, though they could have been even more effectively used if they had come under Allied command rather earlier. Two German corps (II German and III German) were under command to CENTAG, the other (I German) to NORTHAG. About half the Federal German Army (the Bundeswehr) of some 350,000 were conscripts on a fifteen-month term of service.

Germany had, however, paid considerable attention to the problems of mobilization and of making reinforcements speedily effective. In the mid-1970s a Standby Reserve had been created, which the Defence Minister could call up in emergency without prior recourse to Parliament, and plans had been made for a number of cadre formations to be quickly expanded to war strength. The Territorial Army of about half a million men not only provided the Territorial Commands referred to above, but also defensive, support and communications units throughout the country, relieving the regular forces of all but the forward tasks. The training of reserves was reasonably good, taking advantage of the local and professional knowledge possessed by reservists and of the fact that the more difficult combat posts requiring highly skilled men could be filled by regular personnel, with reservists to assist them. Equipment was also good. Over half the Bundeswehr’s tanks were the new Leopard II with Chobham-type armour, giving much better protection against ATGW, and the advanced, smooth-bore, 120 mm gun. New ATGW were issued widely, to the Territorial Army as well as to regular forces. Artillery was modernized, and included new US SP (self-propelled) guns and the FH-70 medium gun jointly developed with Britain and Italy, thus providing for largely standardized ammunition. Helicopters provided ATGW support and battlefield mobility. New multiple rocket launchers enabled minelets to be sown in the face of advancing enemy tanks. All in all, the Bundeswehr was a well-found force, with the advantage of being on its own ground and highly motivated to defend its own homes.

The United States Army in Europe numbered some 200,000 men, all but 10,000 of these in the US Seventh Army in Germany, whose C-in-C was also COMCENTAG. The reintroduction of the draft in the United States, to which reference is made elsewhere (see Chapter 14), had by 1985 rescued the US Army from a highly dangerous position in relation to reserve manpower. If we do not count the Berlin Brigade the US Seventh Army was organized in two corps, V US and VII US. The four divisions and three additional brigades on station in the late seventies had been augmented by two more brigades, upon each of which the balance of a complete division could be built up in an emergency. The tank strength available to US forces in the Central Region (including tanks in the stockpile) approached 3,000, of which the greater part was by early 1985 the new XM-1, a remarkable tank, with a low silhouette, Chobham armour and advanced new armour-piercing ammunition.

As early as 1978 the United States had taken steps to build up its air reinforcement capacity, so that by 1983 five divisions (two to be built on the brigades mentioned above) could be airlifted to Europe within ten days, to join up there with their already stockpiled equipment. Plans were put into operation at about that time to disperse stockpiles, so as to reduce their vulnerability and make ammunition and other stores more quickly available to forward troops.

The XM-1 was typical of the advanced equipment that began to reach the US troops in Germany in the late seventies and early eighties. At the same time new ATGW began to come into service, including ‘fire and forget’ missiles, with fully automatic terminal guidance, for use from helicopters. The US Army had always laid great emphasis on the use of helicopters, which fulfilled a variety of roles, not least the provision of battlefield mobility. Artillery had been strengthened by the introduction (if only in small numbers) of the cannon-launched guided projectile (CLGP), which gave it a real anti-tank capacity. To the greatly increased firepower were added improvements in target acquisition through the use of RPV (remotely-piloted vehicles) giving instantaneous information. Close air support, with the emphasis on anti-tank action, was much improved with the deployment of the A-10, which began in 1978. The equipment of other tactical aircraft with PGM (precision-guided missiles) gave a much enhanced stand-off capability against land targets. Finally, the air defence of troops in the field was steadily thickened with the introduction of new SAM (surface-to-air missiles) and automatic guns.

The British forces assigned to NATO and stationed in Germany were embodied in the British Army of the Rhine, whose C-in-C was also COMNORTHAG. Excluding the 3,000-strong force in Berlin, they numbered 52,000 at full peacetime strength and were now organized in four armoured and one artillery division with an additional brigade-sized formation (5 Field Force), all under I British Corps. Earmarked for deployment from the UK in an emergency was the newly formed II British Corps, adding another 30,000 men.[4] Main battle tanks, including those in stockpile, now numbered 1,000, all Chieftain with the improved engine, though not all with Chobham armour.

Other equipment, though initially introduced very slowly, enabled most major weapons to be modernized by the early 1980s. ATGW, built jointly with France and Germany, spread throughout the regular and TAVR forces of the UK after a rather hesitant beginning. At long last the air defences of British troops in the field became as good as those of the Bundeswehr and US forces in Europe. Improved reinforcement arrangements, made possible by the increase in the availability of equipment and reserves, gave commanders the additional advantage of being able to replace battle casualties quickly.

With the new equipment and new organizations and tactics to match, morale in the British Army of the Rhine, not at its highest in the 1970s, was now fully restored.

Of the Dutch forces in the Northern Army Group (I Ne Corps) only one armoured brigade and one tank and one reconnaissance battalion were located in Germany, the rest being held back in Holland. Of the 75,000 men which constituted the whole strength of the Dutch Army, more than half (43,000) were conscripts, doing no more than fourteen months’ service. It had long been hoped in NATO that the Netherlands would be persuaded to station more of its assigned forces further forward, nearer to their emergency defence positions. The international tensions of late 1984 succeeded where previous arguments had failed and, though the false detente of the following spring tended to put the movement into reverse, the centre of gravity in the deployment of I Netherlands Corps in the summer of 1985 was further forward than it had ever been before.

The position of the Belgians was not dissimilar, though the conscripted element in the army (23,000 out of 62,000) did only eight months’ service if posted to the Federal Republic of Germany, where there were stationed in peacetime one corps and two divisional headquarters, with one armoured and two infantry brigades, as opposed to ten months if serving in Belgium. I Belgian (I Be) Corps, with some 300 Leopard I tanks, like I Netherlands Corps, with some 450, was under command to NORTHAG. Both corps had received a good deal of new equipment, notably APC, ATGW and air defence weapons. In both cases, however, the supply of new weapons to the reserve formations and battalions that would reinforce them was limited, as was the training carried out by reservists.

In addition to the major national formations Allied Command Europe also included the Canadian Brigade Group which had become by late July the equivalent almost of a small division.[5] An all-regular force, its quality was high. Old hands in other Allied countries (particularly among the British), who recalled their experience with Canadian troops in the last world war, saw with satisfaction that in their technical skills and their robust and disciplined approach they were, in the changed circumstances of today, as good as ever. The Group was stationed in the CENTAG area, not far from the French divisions.

Though France had not been a member of NATO since 1966 II French Corps, of two divisions, with corps and some army troops nearly 50,000 strong, continued to be stationed in Germany, with close military liaison with CENTAG. Three mechanized divisions in France formed the balance of the First French Army, to which the French divisions in Germany belonged. The equipment of the five divisions in the First French Army was modern and good and included battlefield nuclear weapons held inside France, under French control. Little of the equipment was standardized with NATO however, raising potential problems in supply. In addition to the Forces de Manoeuvre, of which the First French Army was part, France disposed of Territorial Defence Forces (Defense Operationelle du Territoire, or DOT) some 50,000 strong. These had a very important role, among others, in the defence of key points in metropolitan France against disruption by sabotage and against civil disorder.

On the southern flank, Italy (twelve months’ service for 120,000 conscripts in an army of 218,000) disposed of twelve divisions (three armoured) with a mixed inventory of tanks. Though Greece’s membership of the integrated military organization had been somewhat conditional since 1974, she continued to have some military links and had modernized most of her mainly conscript army (28–30 months’ service) of twelve divisions (one armoured), largely with French equipment, and, it must be admitted, with an eye on Turkey rather than the forces of the Warsaw Pact. Turkey (twenty months’ service) could field twenty-two divisions (one armoured and two mechanized) in an army of 375,000. Differences between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, sharpened by competition for Aegean oil, had by the beginning of the eighties grown somewhat less than in the years before. The curtailment of military aid from the US to which this had given rise (it was resumed in 1982) had inevitably reduced the war-fighting capability of both countries, though this had latterly begun once more to improve. Turkish equipment was generally somewhat elderly and in an indifferent state; mobility was limited and it had not been possible to reach a high level of training.

To this brief account of NATO ground forces must of course be added something of how the tactical air forces stood, since in any battle their operations would be indivisible. Here not only the aircraft stationed alongside the ground forces have to be reckoned with, but also those that could operate in a given sector from immediately outside it, as, for example, from the United Kingdom or the western Soviet Union, or from aircraft carriers that might be in the vicinity, or — though this applied more to Soviet forces — medium bombers that could be flown from relatively distant airfields.

An accurate tally of air strength is therefore not easy, because of its inherent flexibility, but, taking ground-based fighter aircraft as the main yardstick, NATO deployed for operations in the critical central sector — excluding French forces — some 2,800 aircraft, compared with approximately 4,500 deployed by the Warsaw Pact. This numerical disparity had long presented a problem and still did. It was a problem compounded by the relative ease of reinforcement enjoyed by the Warsaw Pact, by an insufficiency of forward airfields on the Allied side, and by some difficulties in inter-operability, caused by the variety of different aircraft in use in NATO air forces.

There had, however, been a marked all-round improvement in NATO tactical air strength in the previous few years. Several first-class new aircraft had been introduced, embodying the most up-to-date technology. For the air superiority role the American F-15 was better than any other fighter, both in its performance and in its armament. It was admirably complemented by the lighter F-16. Both were greatly assisted in their task by the ability of AWACS (airborne warning and control system), belatedly introduced in the 1970s, to detect intruding aircraft and control the operation of our own. For strike missions the Tornado, with its ultra-low flying capability, presented the Warsaw Pact with severe problems, as did the Jaguar and the smaller AlphaJet and Hawk ground-attack fighters. The adoption of increasing numbers of aircraft developed and built in co-operation by two or more allies was beginning to give more flexibility to NATO air operations, with a higher degree of inter-operability.

The quality of the new aircraft was more than matched by the weapon systems they carried, tailored to what were seen to be the essential tasks of stopping the Soviet tanks and cutting off the flow of immediate reinforcements to the battle area. Precision-guided weapons, cluster munitions and the all-important electronic aids were given great emphasis.

The decision by the United Kingdom to provide once more a proper defence of its own airspace, described in detail in Chapter 19, helped the tactical air forces to solve two of the problems mentioned above: first, it provided protected airfields that enabled aircraft to be diverted to as well as based in the United Kingdom, thus easing the operational difficulties posed by an insufficiency of airfields; second, it enabled reinforcement by fighter squadrons from the United States to be carried out more safely, taking advantage of the steps that the United States had put in train to make her large reserves of aircraft rapidly available.

The Soviet Air Force had, of course, been increasing its own ground-attack and deep strike and interdiction capability for some years, which posed severe air defence problems for the NATO forces, ground and air. Furthermore, the Soviet Union’s own dense air defence made the task of NATO aircraft much more difficult. Despite this, NATO air commanders had some confidence that the quality and versatility of their aircraft, the edge that their weapon systems and electronic warfare capability gave them, and the higher training standards of NATO airmen, would all go a long way to redress the numerical imbalance with which they had to contend.

A very important change in the command structure of NATO air forces had been the setting up, under the Central Region, of a Commander Allied Air Force Central Europe (COMAAFCE) in 1976. This greatly increased the flexibility of the Allied air forces and enormously enhanced their effectiveness.

It was technology, however, that was the principal key to the marked improvements made to NATO forces in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Weapons systems were now more effective and more versatile than they had ever been and tactical concepts and organizations had been improved to make the best use of them.

When the new NATO strategy of ‘flexible response’, introduced in the middle to late 1960s, was first discussed, it signalled the wish by the United States, in the face of her own increased strategic nuclear vulnerability, to have more defence options in Europe than an early recourse to the use of nuclear weapons. Her European allies were initially reluctant to downgrade the nuclear element in deterrence — seeing this as the important link between the United States and the European battlefield — and unwilling to improve their conventional forces to the level that the new strategy demanded. This reluctance persisted generally until nearly a decade later, when concern at the steady and continuous increase in Soviet military capacity slowly began to make itself felt, first among conservatives, then almost right across the whole spectrum of public opinion. The steady erosion of the military balance in Europe, coupled with an assertive and opportunistic Soviet foreign policy, notably in Africa, led by the late 1970s to the growth in almost every Allied country of a political climate more receptive to the claims of defence spending.

This new mood of caution towards the Soviet Union (following as it did one of rather euphoric expectations about detente, now disappointed) had coincided with a sudden surge in military technology, both nuclear and conventional. In the field of theatre nuclear weapons, the enhanced radiation weapon (the ‘neutron bomb’) offered the West the possibility of suddenly nullifying the Soviet tank advantage while inflicting less civilian casualties than would be caused by nuclear weapons in the existing armoury. At the same time new, very-small-yield nuclear weapons (‘mini-nucs’) began to be introduced and others were modernized. The possibility of basing deterrence primarily on nuclear weapons once more began to find adherents — though not, it must be said, among governments, who were treading warily. This was partly because there had also been rapid advances in conventional weapons technology. Dramatic improvements in accuracy of attack and miniaturization of components and vastly increased explosive yields (such as from fuel-air weapons — the so-called concussion bombs) made it possible to contemplate engaging with conventional weapons targets (such as aircraft shelters, that could hitherto only have been destroyed with nuclear weapons.

The debate over strategy — and with it over the allocation of resources — continued to a varying extent for some years, and in a sense a compromise was gradually adopted: the strategy of flexible response was retained and new technology was used to enhance the strength of the conventional forces, but the theatre nuclear armoury was modernized as well, on the theory that if the new nuclear weapons were known to be more effective and thus more usable the Soviet Union would be less likely to provoke their use. So both aspects of deterrence, conventional and nuclear, were strengthened.

The maintenance or restoration of the Western technological edge was accepted by all Allied governments as the primary means of stopping the military balance from deteriorating further. The ability of the NATO defences to hold against attack from massive Soviet tank forces, possibly able to attack with warning measured in hours rather than days (sometimes termed a ‘standing start’, to denote an attack that could be made without the need for reinforcement), was also seen to be reliant on the use of technology, but to require improvements in readiness as well. With this increased readiness should go an increase in the number of reinforcements available, largely through making better use of reserves.

With the assistance of a judicious push from the new Carter Administration in 1977, the NATO Allies began to stir themselves. Some weapons, such as ATGW and SAM, had proved so effective in the October War of 1973 in the Middle East that the need for them was self-evident. They began to come out of factories in Europe and the United States in increasing numbers and to be bought by every Allied country. More advanced weapons, such as PGM (precision-guided missiles) for air attack against a variety of targets, found their way first into United States air forces, then into others. The cruise missile, with its astonishingly accurate guidance and relative cheapness, caught the imagination, both for its possibilities in the theatre conventional role and as a potential nuclear weapons carrier, perhaps — in some cases — instead of existing QRA (quick-reaction alert) aircraft. Besides all this, great efforts went, with rather less publicity, into esoteric electronics such as ECM (electronic counter-measures) and ECCM (electronic counter-counter-measures). The miniaturization of electronic components made possible improvements in weapons and techniques (in command, control and intelligence gathering and dissemination, for example) that had been unthinkable a few short years before. In the innovative capability of the Western electronics industry lay the ability to keep technologically ahead of the Soviet Union, which was handicapped by its more cumbersome system of development and the absence of commercial competition in a collectivized, state-controlled industry.

Hand in hand with interest in new weapons went thinking, both evolutionary and revolutionary, about the new tactical organizations, or changes in old ones, that would be needed to get the best out of them. All the major Allies experimented with new divisional establishments. The United States and Germany made them larger; Britain and France made them smaller. All aimed to get more firepower for less men. Similarly, studies were made of the possibilities of using the new small but powerful weapons to give reserve forces a strength and mobility they had never had before, so that they could be deployed to give defence in depth and backing to the heavier regular forces in the forward area.

Thus, in the late 1970s the overhauling of the NATO defences so long sorely needed was put in train at last. It was often done hurriedly, sometimes reluctantly, occasionally without sufficient thought, and was not in the event enough wholly to deter the Soviet Union. But it happened, and was to prove the West’s salvation. The spur was the lengthening shadow of the Soviet forces in Europe. As so often before, the Soviet Union proved the best recruiting officer for NATO.

There were, of course, still weaknesses. Two of the most serious lay, as always, in the overall numerical superiority of the forces deployed against the West, and in the low level of standardization in the equipment of its own forces. The first, giving the Warsaw Pact an overall advantage in the Central Region which (though it can be variously calculated) was certainly not less than two and a half or three to one, was made more serious by the ability of the attacker to choose his own points of attack and develop there, at will, a very much greater relative advantage. The second stemmed from the understandable tendency of free and independent countries both to consult their own economic interests in the procurement of military hardware and to reflect their own military philosophy in its design. The Chieftain and the Leopard, for example, were both very good tanks, but of different kinds. The XM-1, newer than either, was different again.

Ideally all armies should have had the same type of tank or truck or gun. Such a solution was rare. Instead the Alliance put its immediate efforts into what it called inter-operability — the ability to operate with each other; to have common radio frequencies, for example, if it were not possible to have the same sets; to have the same calibre guns and rifles, using the same ammunition, if not the same weapons. Much was achieved in this direction, notably with artillery and tank guns, in fuel and in other supplies. Operational procedures were not as difficult to harmonize as policies in the procurement of hardware, and NATO had gone far, in spite of language difficulties, in developing a common practice. But they were still, in this very important respect, some way behind their enemies.