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Originally Posted by Raellus
I'm glad we never had to find out, but I really wonder how a full-spectrum air war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would have played out.
I just recently re-read Red Storm Rising and, although I still enjoyed it, one thing that really bothered me about Clancy and Bond's vision- especially in light of this story- is how ineffective Soviet AAA/SAM defenses are against NATO strike and attack aircraft. There's no Red Army bridge, command post, fuel depot, or tank farm that NATO aircraft don't manage to destroy in the novel.
I could forgive the authors this vision if they'd written this after Desert Shield/Storm, because I think that experience convinced many that Soviet-made air defenses were no match for NATO aircraft. I still content that this lesson was wrong- the Gulf War was not a peer v. peer conflict. It was like an NFL team (the Coalition) playing against a Pop Warner [under 12] team whose players had a few pieces of adult-size pads (the Iraqis). Against a modern, full-scale, integrated, Soviet air defense (AAA & SAM) network, I think NATO aircraft would have sustained significant losses.
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So a couple of things about the Serbian Operations with the F-117. I have friends who were in the planning cells at the time that all went down in the air war over Kosovo. There was serious mistakes made by the USAF and NATO air commanders that others had warned the planners about. Such things as always flying on a specific time and always having specific types of electronic warfare occur at both the ingress and egress points. Then there was actionable intelligence developed by some NATO and USN assets which showed that the Serbians were detecting the F-117s by using an old Soviet method, which we knew about but assumed only the Soviets did. That was using phone line connections and a bi-static radar setup. The USAF did the fingers in ears and "I can't hear you lalalalallal" method. There were too many folks in senior leadership of the USAF that believed the vaporware on what LO tech offered and still only say the 1991 footage of the F-117 in operation as being the benchmark. They didn't want to hear from folks who had flown against it or trained against in at places like Yuma, Fallon, or Nellis. That it could be beaten with the right tactics and that if we don't do dumb things we open ourselves up to getting beaten. Which as they say is now the history.
If you do some reading of US air ops against some Soviet air defense systems and some of the US operations in the early 80s. There is strong evidence that one could penetrate the Soviet air defense corridor and lay weapons on theater and strategic targets. This is even before
Mathias Rust did his stunt in 1987 with his C172.
There have been EP-3s, RC-135s, and other national security aircraft that were shown to have penetrated the edges of Soviet Air Defense systems and survived. Similarly, if you read some of the recent books by John Lehman and a few others in the Cold War era; they talk of the USN and RN conducting carrier operations in the Norwegian Sea, Bearing Sea, Sea of Japan all well with in range of Soviet Air defenses and being able to get with in a hair's breath of the 12 nautical mile limit before the Soviets knew who was there and what was going on. In some cases with a full on SIOP styled Alpha strike from the carrier decks.
One of the things about both Tom Clancy and Larry Bond is they knew when to listen and in the case of Tom Clancy, he was smart that he started to put various pieces of separate information and draw sometime accurate information. There is even
video of talking to NSA staffers about how he collected information from folks and how he go to some of his logical conclusions.
Also, if you re-read RSR; he doesn't talk about the Soviet Air Strikes against NATO land forces. We read a few about the US Carriers,
and Larry Bond has actually mentioned that was a huge gaming event that lead to trying to figure out how to write that specific chapter with an ending in mind. Otherwise, there is no talk about how the Soviet air power does to NATO or is even able to penetrate the NATO IADS belt.