BTR in Nevada

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

The more I think about the less likely bulk amounts of Pact vehicles are going to be available.

When you consider that it is standard practise to destory vehicles to deny them to the enemy (if only for the intel value) and I believe it's usually standard to destroy the enemies vehicles captured, particularly in the first months of the war, It's doubtful significant numbers are going to remain in any sort of usable form.

I don't think it would be standard to destroy vehicles captured, especially if general orders to the contrary were issued. It is standard when a fear of the vehicles being recaptured during quick counterattacks or recrewed by stay-behinds and used in the attacking army's rear areas. This is why many abandoned Iraqi AFV were destroyed in place during both invasions of Iraq. Even so, many were captured and either shipped back to the states for evaluation and training purposes or given back to the new and "improved" Iraqi defense forces. If the abandoned and damaged vehicles were left far enough behind the FOB during a conventional war, there wouldn't be a need to destroy them in place, especially with dedicated recovery teams operating in full swing.

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

Also, it is highly unlikely that the broad, sweeping encirclements occured as it took litterally MONTHS for the NATO forces to cross Poland. This doesn't bode well for outflanking manouvres, etc but speaks more of head to head engagements.

I respectfully disagree. Encirclement battles were fought throughout the entire four year course of the Great Patriotic War/Ostfront, with both sides taking turns doing the encirclement and being encircled. I'm not suggesting the same sort of success for NATO that the Wermacht enjoyed during the first few months of Barbarrossa. NATO armies would have to stop and rest, consolidate gains, clean up pockets of resistance, allow the supply trains to catch up, etc. before embarking on the next envelopment. And then there are Soviet-PACT counterattacks/counteroffensives to contend with.

Furthermore, broad-front steamroller-style offensives are not a part of NATO offensive operational doctrine. Nor would NATO have the strength to sustain the attrition that would go hand-in-hand with such battering ram-style offensives. Look at the Coalition offensive during Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom: deep penetration/envelopment attacks designed to distrupt enemy command and control and logistics and encircle large enemy formations. There's no reason to believe that NATO would change it up radically when fighting the Soviet-PACT. Especially since the Red Army was much more formidable than the Iraqis.

[Legbreaker]

I agree that while broad front is not doctrine, information in canon appears to support a slow moving offensive. This to me says large scale encirclements were very few and far between. This is not to say the odd small unit wouldn't have been cut off though.

It also implies that the Pact forces fought over every inch of ground. To do so would likely result in heavy casualties, especially front line vehicles. With the (at best) air parity, artillery and rear assets would probably have suvived relatively intact, pulling back from time to time to safer positions.

The can be no comparison between Poland in T2K and Iraq in either war. T2K details a very slow advance while both of the Iraq invasions were over almost before they began. In Iraq, masses of troops and equipment were captured due to the speed of the advance and the generally crap quality and fighting spirit of the soldiers themselves. I doubt the same could be said for Poland and it's early war allies.