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Originally Posted by castlebravo92
Yeah, the war in Ukraine is showing just how fast things would get destroyed in a high intensity war. Russia has lost over 3000 tanks and 100,000 men (dead, not including injured) in a year. Sounds like a lot, but doesn't sound like a lot when the USSR had around 60k tanks in 1989. But then again, the USSR was fighting China for a year and half then most of NATO for a year before things went nuclear. China would be a lot harder nut to crack than Ukraine, and Leopard 2s, Challengers, Abrams, + airpower would chew up a lot of vehicles really fast.
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And then, remember that the Ukraine war isn't particularly "high intensity" when measured to a potential NATO vs. USSR (or Pact, depending on background) war as envisioned during the 1980s. It's probably hard to fathom for today's readers of news, but the ongoing war almost completely lacks two dimensions of warfare - naval and aerial - as envisioned for WW3 and it certainly lacks several orders of magnitude in land warfare.
WW3 would have seen not 150,000-200,000 Soviets invade a country of 40 million with a GDP less than Sweden or Belgium (in 2021). Instead, the two biggest power blocs in history, plus China (and a good deal of other countries) would go toe to toe with each other and grind their forces against each other. There's good reasons, why warplanners were looking at 10-30 days scenarios: not a lot would have been standing after that, yet only the second mobilization wave would have been concluded for NATO (the next would have been after 90 days and then after 6 months).