Note I completely agree WRT NATO putting their air defense eggs in one basket. If their AWACS umbrella ever comes down or they have to operate without it they're incredibly vulnerable to things like attack helicopters. I'd include low-flying cruise missiles in that threat bucket too. Even non-nuclear cruise missiles could severely damage NATO rear lines lacking both good SHORAD and AWACS/air cover. A bunch of dudes with Stingers wouldn't quite suffice.

The Stinger's have not completely driven the Russian Air Force from the sky but have clearly made a difference. I wonder if even older British blowpipe MANPADS would still be useful against Russian aircraft?

NATO collectively made a budget decision regarding short range air defense to some extent during and certainly after the end of the Cold War. Why would you need much air defense when you will have air superiority if not outright air supremacy? ADA systems are in many ways like the old railway operating companies. We would never need them-until you can't get contractors to do the work.

There was a USAF open estimate that Russia retains perhaps 1,500 aircraft on inventory. My guess is that only 30% or so would be operational-in a pinch somewhat larger numbers could be pushed in the air. The Russians probably aren't going to risk any more aircraft against even short range air defense unless absolutely necessary. Now helicopters-the Russians seem to be cautiously using those with more success. For now.

Lessons from Package Q
 

A lot of reporting on the Coalition air forces' performance against the Iraqi's Soviet-style (and equipped) air defenses tends to portray it as more or less of a cakewalk for the former, allowing Coalition air power to strike Iraqi ground forces almost at will, thereby dramatically impacting the course of the ground war. Some use these portrayals to argue that NATO would perform similarly against Soviet air defenses, allowing NATO aircraft to quickly focus more on tactical battlefield support. While it is true that the Coalition was able to establish air superiority over most of the battle space relatively quickly, it wasn't easy. The Coalition forces experienced some unanticipated challenges, and were forced to make some major adjustments on the fly; otherwise, the air campaign would have been significantly more costly (for the Coalition) than it turned out to be. This brief article does a good job of describing some of the challenges faced by Coalition air forces, and explains how they led to the adoption of different tactics.

https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-...ision-strikes/

From this analysis, I would argue that the Soviet's denser, more complex air defense networks and more capable systems would have presented a much bigger challenge to NATO air forces than the Iraqis ever did, and that NATO losses would be much higher than they were in the Gulf. A deadlier threat environment would have necessitated similar, if not more dramatic, tactical adjustments (namely, smaller, stealthier strike packages), which would have reduced the impact of NATO air power on Soviet ground force operations.

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IADS
 

I’d offer that 1999s Allied Force is a better look at what may have happened in a peer fight. Even with the lessons learned from ODS and a massive overmatch in firepower, Serbia was able to maintain a credible GBAD threat and deflect a proportion of NATOs efforts throughout the conflict by using anti-SEAD tactics, deception, and dispersal. Despite fielding a smaller force than the Iraqis, the Serbs were able to retain an effective air defense force.

Good call, Homer. In terms of air-defenses, the Serbs arguably did more with less than the Iraqis- that shouldn't be overlooked.

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Something to keep in mind between Iraq, Serbia, and a T2K war would be the context of the air defenses and the ROE of the attacking force. In Iraq their air defense had to defend huge areas and the ROE for Coalition forces was "shoot anything dangerous looking". In Serbia the air defenses had much smaller coverage areas covering parent formations. The Coalition ROE were more restrictive as well.

In a T2K WWIII there would likely be good defenses on the Soviet side but a fairly lax ROE for NATO forces. NATO would also have the benefit of B-2s and F-117s for taking out air defense HQs and/or batteries themselves. So definitely not a cakewalk for NATO but the Soviets also wouldn't have an impenetrable wall of air defenses.

Good points. Would the US have risked B-2s for anything but nuclear strikes, though? I'm not well versed on late-Cold War SAC doctrine, but I would hazard a guess that B-2s would not be released to deliver conventional strikes anywhere near the FEB. F-117s might have good success against Soviet air defenses initially, but the Soviets probably would have "cracked the code" pretty quickly. IIRC, the Serbians allegedly figured out a way to detect and track them using ground-based radars (shooting down at least one F-117 with a SAM), and the IRST capabilities of the MiG-29 and SU-27 would mitigate, to some degree, the F-117's stealth capabilities v. radar.

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B 2 and F117
 

My own view is that Command would be loathe to risk the (presumably) small number of B-2's available in the Twilight War for anything other than extremely high priority nuke targets. Command (again in my view) would be only slightly less likely to risk the small number of F117's against Air Defense targets and then only the top priority such as radars-even assuming you could boost the numbers slightly with increased wartime production.

You both may be right about the B-2 but I think the Nighthawks would definitely be used to break down air defenses. I'd imagine a NATO air in Eastern Europe would end up looking a lot like Desert Storm. Nighthawks taking out fixed radars and C2, Phantoms running Wild Weasel missions, and Aardvarks reupholstering everything with every stand-off weapon that can be mounted.

I agree that the Soviets will have a better response than the Iraqis though. Just better integration of their air defense, better intelligence on NATO's stealth assets, and better equipment will even the odds a bit. I think the air defenses USSR proper would main unassailable until TDM but I don't think Eastern Europe would remain quite as secure.

The B-2 Spirit only reached IOC on 1 January 1997. Depending on edition/timeline that means there would be only very few B-2 operating, indeed. Original production ended in 2000, but that was only the case, because Clinton had one of the prototypes rebuilt into a 21st Block 30 fully operational B-2. The peak of production was around 1989, so all historical 21 planes would/should/could be available for T2K.

Reports of the Russian military's demise have been greatly exaggerated
 

I think that we can all agree that the Russian military hasn't performed well during Putin's War in Ukraine, especially during the first 1-2 years. Extrapolating from that, it would be easy to conclude that the Late Cold War Soviet military would have been handled rather easily by NATO in a general European War. Perhaps that's a mistake.

Russia's been able to sustain it's "Special Military Operation" for over two years, under broad economic sanctions, and without fully mobilizing the Russian economy for total war. Recently, Russian forces have seized the initiative and are threatening to push the UAF back on a broad front after achieving a significant penetration of UAF defensive lines west of Avdkiivka.

This speaks to Russian resiliency, doggedness, and resourcefulness.

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I'm not sure Russia's inability to break a stalemate with a country that had a pre-war army 20% its size, a GDP 10% as large, and 33% of its population is a particular testament to their capabilities.

Edit: the rough equivalent for the United States would be getting stalemated by Brazil.

I'm not saying that the Russian military is good. My point is that, despite its many serious flaws, it's maybe not as bad as many analysts claimed it to be up until this year, or so. And, currently, there's growing concern that Russia may be about to break that stalemate, so the jury's still out on that point.

To be fair, the USA has been definitively stalemated by two far less powerful countries during the last 50 years (essentially bracketing the Late Cold War period), so we're not the world-beaters the jingoists proclaim us to be either.

I'm very much aware that all of these comparisons are apples-to-oranges. There are simply too many variables at play in each case to draw any meaningful conclusions re a hypothetical WWIII. We're dealing with a lot of counterfactuals. Essentially, I've been playing devil's advocate in this thread, trying to find a bright side for those who want to believe that a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Late Cold War period would have been evenly matched, or at least competitive. IMHO, that's an essential premise of TWILIGHT:2000 in all of its iterations.

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