A few thoughts on adding the Gulf War to the game history.
Most people include the Soviet-Afghanistan War in their campaigns. However doing so means there's going to be some very skilled veteran Russian officers and senior NCOs getting around when the Twilight War starts. The same goes for the 1st Russian-Chechen War but for more ranks.
In a similar fashion people might be thinking of introducing the 1990–1991 Gulf War which also would be good experience for western troops. If you do so you should understand the massive influence this war had on Russian warfare concepts. According to a report for the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College "The Soviet Military Views Operation Desert Storm: A Preliminary Assessment" there was a lot of consternation about the outcome of this war and it's not an overstatement to say that this caused a revolution in Russian warfare so that the warfighting in the Twilight War would be significantly different.
The Russians deemed that their level of training was insufficient to deal with western armies and that the system for training conscripts would have to incorporate a new full time army of professional troops capable of being rapidly expanded. A quote from a Russian source is:
"It's simply impossible to continue to reject the idea of deep military reform from bottom to top. (The Gulf War) plays in our favor because it's absolutely clear that these sophisticated weapons can't be used with high efficiency without an adequate level of preparation of personnel, and also demand a new kind of commander."
They fully understood the difference of Iraq's rather unskilled (at all levels from trooper to generals), unmotivated and poorly/unevenly equipped army compared to theirs but also understood the West had actually only conservatively exerted themselves to deal with Saddam's forces compared to the level of exertion a war with Russia would involve. The major levels of concern were precision weapons, interconnectivity (the Interconnectivity Revolution was only just underway), and the acknowledged technology gap in some areas that had developed. Principle among these were computing power and night vision/sensing, not only in its capabilities but in its level of deployment through the forces. One level of concern was the way the West had deployed force with precision over mass, meaning that even though they 200,000 troops in-theatre they hadn't required that number to force a resolution. This implied that heavy blows could come from all directions, even from comparatively small and seemingly poorly-supported forces such as airborne or marine troops.
"Volouev asserts that the U.S. Army expects that confrontations in a TVD (the Theater of Strategic Military operations-a purely Soviet concept telling the reader that the argument also applies to the Soviet Army) will be highly mobile and aggressive. The front will be fragmented. Operations will occur along isolated, separate gaps in formations. PGMs will give combat operations the quality of tactical and operational focus that blurs distinctions between offense and defense, the front, flanks, and rear. Combat operations will become three-dimensional with width, depth, and height parameters. Strategic systems will perform tactical missions-something the VVS has been particularly keen on. Army aviation helicopters will repeatedly reduce by a factor of 8-10 the time needed to maneuver forces and assets on the battlefield. Air/Land Battle will become a means of destroying and defeating larger enemy formations in depth."
Note that the Russians and the Soviets before them weren't blind to these concepts, they fully understood the West had been developing them. However they were concerned at not only how pervasive the systems were but how quickly they had been developed. A lot of the Soviet planning had been not only out-fighting but also out-staying the enemy.
As can be understood this sort of thinking led to rapid and frank re-evaluation of how the whole concept of warfare was to be undertaken, and what strengths could be called upon and which strengths needed to be rapidly developed. The Russians had already moved away strongly from the early-mid Cold War thinking of costly breakthroughs that were designed to save lives in the long run after the Soviet-Afghanistan War. In that war they had met an enemy that could outstay even the Red Army, causing a revision of systems towards survivability that arguably has produced things like the T-14 Armata family and the crash program in body armour of the 1990s. Now the Russians were thinking along the lines of integrated systems that would produce the S-300/S-400 integrated air defence network and similar concepts, precision weapons and other concepts faster than the canonical campaign allows for.
In summary integrating the Gulf War into the campaign brings these things closer.
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