Quote:
Originally Posted by 95th Rifleman
PG 1 isn't a good example if you are trying to compare NATO/WP equipment.
The Iraqi's fell into the old trap of fighting the last war. They set up fixed, entrenched defensive positions in a similar fashion to how they fought the Iranians in the late 80's. Having a major armoured force drive around your flank tends to cause a few problems with such a defense.
In the late 90's the gap between Western and Russian kit was not as great as many are led to assume, also the tactics devised for fighting in Europe where designed to maximise advantage and minimise weakness of the Russian kit. The game winning card in iraq was total air superiority, this would be MUCH harder to achieve facing frontline Russian air defence systems.
The Russians where (and arguably still are) the world leaders in battlefield air defence, they had to be considering the NATO air threat. the Russians would of formed concentrations of Armour and spearheaded into NATO lines putting massive local superiorityin numbers to overwhelm NATO defensive positions.
Unless you could knock out these concentrations from the air the would just roll over a position and keep going before NATO forces cold respond in numbers sufficient to blunt the spearhead.
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True war in Europe NATO would have to over come the Air Defense network, the sheer number of Aircrafts and Tanks that they had in forward positions.
I don't think anyone here is forgetting that PGW1 was very different from the type of war that the troops had trained for, that may have happen in such places as Germany, or Korea...