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Old 07-11-2009, 10:20 PM
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Raellus Raellus is offline
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Good article. Thanks for the link, JHart.

I think that we all agree that the Red Army of the later Cold War years had several severe limitations but I still don't think that any of them would have been crippling. The author's assertion that late '80s Soviet doctrine advocating the use of battlefield nukes was a direct result of the Soviet high command's realization/admition of its technological inferiority vis-a-vis NATO is speculative, as the author himself admits. He may be right, but we must remember the temporal divergence that occurs around 1990 in the timeline. More on that a little later.

NATO had a clear qualitative edge by the late '80s, of that there can be little doubt. However, Soviet military science and technology were catching up, rather than falling further behind. As I pointed out in a couple of previous posts, the Soviets were in the process of rolling out several major land, sea, and air weapon systems that were comparable qualitatively, if not superior (e.g. the SU-27) to their NATO counterparts. In reality, the deployment of many of these systems was radically slowed (if not stopped altogether) by the faltering Russian economy.

This is where the divergence in the timelines comes in. In reality, the Soviet Union dissolved in '91, its economy in a tailspin, its political and social structure falling apart. Consequently, the Russian Federation (formerly the core of the Soviet military) suffered greatly as funding was all but cut off. The sorry state of the Russian military in the early to mid nineties only reinforces the idea that its predecessor was likewise a paper tiger. I've already debunked this logical fallicy earlier in this thread. What I'd like to focus on now is the way that history would have differed had the Soviet Union remained united, solvent, and fearful of NATO.

I would postulate that the Soviet Union of the v1.0 timeline would have recognized the limitations of its conventional forces in the early nineties- largely as a result of the Red Army's relatively poor performance in the Afghanistan war- and set about correcting them via a comprehensive reform program. The reversion to the strategic battle plan relying on tac-nuclear weapons described in the article was, in this scenario, merely a stopgap measure while the USSR initiated their military reform program. This program would focus on improving the training of its soldiers, especially its NCOs and junior officers. It would also address NATOs technical superiority by not only accelerating the roll out of more modern systems, but by upgrading existing systems (retrofitting combat aircraft with air-to-air refuelling equipment, older model tanks with thermal imaging systems, etc.). Instead of holding them in reserve, much older systems (e.g. T-54/55/63; Mig-21/23/35, etc.) would be sold off to the USSR's various client states (not WTO countries) to help offset modernization costs and create a leaner, meaner military.

Since the Soviets WTO allies were never fully trusted by them and given only a secondary role in Soviet strategic and operational military doctrine, they would be directed to support the Red Army's modernization program by increasing the production of military trucks, thereby ameliorating the Red Army's logistical weaknesses. Where possible, the other WTO armies would undertake their own modernization programs but their roles would be remain secondary.

The Red Army of T2K c. '95 would still win as far as the "correlation of forces" goes but it would also have made great leaps towards in catching up to NATO in terms of troop and hardware quality. In would still lag behing overall, but the gap would not nearly be as great as it was in '88 (IRL).
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Last edited by Raellus; 07-11-2009 at 10:27 PM.
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