2912n From United States of America, joined Oct 2001, 2013 posts, RR: 9 Reply 1, posted (11 years 2 weeks 6 days 5 hours ago) and read 3007 times:
No one. It would have eventually involved nukes and everyone would be a loser.
West would have the tech advantage. East would have the numbers as well as equipment that would just go on and on without the tech support needed by western a/c.
USAFJR From United States of America, joined Apr 2002, 146 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (11 years 2 weeks 5 days 20 hours ago) and read 3010 times:
In an airwar? I would say Allied. Yes we are short of pilots (according to NBC) but what ive heard is that our pilots are trained much better than most other countries.
AFC_ajax00 From United States of America, joined Nov 2000, 775 posts, RR: 0 Reply 4, posted (11 years 2 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 2984 times:
I would say Western air forces, technically more advanced aircraft and pilots, commonality in C&C, and most aircraft (NATO F-16A's) and the huge advantage the USAF and NATO E-3A AWACS would have given the West, but the Soviets relied more on SAMS knowing the west had a superiority in pilot skill and aircraft but they still had huge numbers of Frontal Aviation aircraft in East Germany and Europe so the west would have taken severe losses but eventually come out on top,(providing the war didn't go Nuclear). This is all speculation however, so do correct me if im wrong. Cheers
Once you have tasted flight, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you long to return
Airafrique From United States of America, joined Nov 2000, 139 posts, RR: 0 Reply 5, posted (11 years 2 weeks 5 days 17 hours ago) and read 2967 times:
I think in that case NATO and Allied will win that war.
I don't think the MIG or Sukhoi will stand against the
F-15, Mirage.
If there were a War, How many plane would be involved ?
USAFJR From United States of America, joined Apr 2002, 146 posts, RR: 0 Reply 7, posted (11 years 2 weeks 5 days 14 hours ago) and read 2968 times:
Yeah, Allied & NATO detection systems would be much much better. How about the use of the Pheonix missile... 90 miles on that baby. I doubt the Russians have anything like that!
By the way contact_tower;
I very kindly and politely ask you to stop picking on me. I read the topic most completely. Thankyou!
Rene From Germany, joined Nov 2001, 55 posts, RR: 0 Reply 8, posted (11 years 2 weeks 5 days 14 hours ago) and read 2982 times:
The problem with this question is, that there would never have been 'just' an air war. A war would have always included the other forces.
And then the Warsaw Pact would have had an advantage.
There was a tv-programme on air in Germany one or two years ago where they showed a possible scenario and came to the conclusion that the Warsaw Pact would have been a possible 'winner' and it sounded well thought.
Rememer the huge number of tanks and aircrafts in East Germany and Poland, not to forget the Navy.
The NATO would have had difficulties to stop them.
And many people forget, that many soviet types of aircraft where compatible with NATO equipment, so it would have been easy to use NATO airfields, after they had been taken over. And I don't think that NATO aircraft could have been used with soviet equipment.
You might think that training of NATO pilots was better than in the Warsaw Pact. But did pilots in the NATO practised landings on gras strips for example, not to forget that most NATO aircraft would have not been able to land on a gras strip.
What I want to say is that pilots and planes from the Warsaw Pact would have been (maybe) a little bit more flexible and more tough. Although it is not possible to really to compare their training 1:1. Both parties had different strategies regarding that topic.
And don't forget the psychological advantage. Soviet front units based in East Germany where something special. Their standards where high.
Well, just my two cents
Contact_tower From Norway, joined Sep 2001, 536 posts, RR: 1 Reply 12, posted (11 years 2 weeks 5 days 10 hours ago) and read 2964 times:
The AA12/R77 Adder is is allso a (on paper anyway) worthy adversary to the Aim-120 Amraam.
In the short range inventory, the AA11/R73 Archer is said to be far better then NATO missiles.
Jwenting From Netherlands, joined Apr 2001, 10213 posts, RR: 21 Reply 15, posted (11 years 6 days 4 hours ago) and read 2893 times:
Am I the only one who thinks the Soviets would have won?
- Soviet forces in Europe were very well capable of destroying NATO forces before US reinforcements could arrive.
- The Soviet Atlantic fleet could take a heavy toll on US shipping, making the required huge amphibious landings very expensive at best.
- Soviet Pacific forces tie down the US Pacific and Indian Ocean fleets, basically reducing the US capacity in the main warzone by over 50%.
- In a largescale thermonuclear exchange, the Soviets were prepared and willing to accept loosing a city for every US city destroyed. The US was not prepared for that.
The true winners in a thermonuclear strategic exchange would be the Chinese, they'd wait until it was over and pick up the scraps.
Heavymetal From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 17, posted (11 years 5 days 23 hours ago) and read 2894 times:
- Soviet forces in Europe were very well capable of destroying NATO forces before US reinforcements could arrive.
That discounts the hundreds of thousands of NATO troops already in position. Right up until the mid 80s, Europe was an armed camp from the fences of the Iron Curtain west to the sea. Allied armour was simply better, technology like the F-117 would have wrecked havoc with their command and control structure, and air superiority after the initial few hours of an incursion would have tilted decidely against the Soviets.
- The Soviet Atlantic fleet could take a heavy toll on US shipping, making the required huge amphibious landings very expensive at best.
The Soviet fleet was one their biggest weaknesses. It was enormous and enormously obsolete. The biggest threat to transatlantic provisioning by ship would have been the Backfire and Blackjack fleets. And don't discount the "air bridge" that would have been established using hundres of military & large commercial transports.
- Soviet Pacific forces tie down the US Pacific and Indian Ocean fleets, basically reducing the US capacity in the main warzone by over 50%.
I think you would have seen the Pacific theatre fairly quiet in the event of a western Europe invasion. That is unless things started going very bad for one side or the other. Then the response would have been global, and I'm sure you can guess, hellish.
- In a largescale thermonuclear exchange, the Soviets were prepared and willing to accept loosing a city for every US city destroyed. The US was not prepared for that.
No sane human being was 'prepared' for a nuclear exchange. That's pure folly to suggest that they were. That's also why one never took place. It's easy to envision hardcore Soviet hawks in the upper echelons of the military and political apparatus perfectly prepared to do nuclear battle. They existed, as very much did similar types on the American side (SAC General Curtiss LeMay was as ready to fight...and win...a nuclear exchange throughout his career as SAC's top dawg and a member of the JCS. It is one of the great quirks of history that LeMay was viewed by practically everyone as a borderline psychopath.) Fortunately the LeMays on both sides were handled/discounted by (relatively)saner men who could easily envision a post-strike world.
Jwenting, if you haven't already, read what IMO is the definitive fantasisation of an actual "World War III", Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy. In it he outlines a successful Soviet incursion into Western Europe, a brilliant Soviet occupation of Iceland, thereby choking the "air bridge" and imperiling the entire transatlantic supply line, and a successful first use of air forces against Allied naval shipping, as you implied earlier. Clancy has some shortcomings (I think it would have gone nuclear much faster) but...as he has unnervingly proved in OTHER fictional scenarios...the guy did his homework.
He also points out the Soviet weaknesses, the elements that eventually would have spelled defeat....first and foremost, the military bureaucracy that made Soviet forces cumbersome and unwieldy, secondly the Soviet "quality gap" in weaponry and technology, their tendency to stress quantity over the better weapons which they did not have....and finally the will of the Soviet government itself, which was always very fractured in how to deal with the West.
It's almost quaint to discuss the animosities of a time that really was not so long ago. We were blessed with an end to the Cold War only to find ourselves with a new faceless enemy with no tanks or navy or missiles, yet just as troublesome.
VC-10 From United Kingdom, joined Oct 1999, 3677 posts, RR: 37 Reply 18, posted (11 years 5 days 23 hours ago) and read 2897 times:
A book has been recently been published in the UK that suggest's the Russian never had any intention of invading the west.
Their military build up and 'occupation' of Poland, East Germany etc was because Russian territory had been invaded twice since the revolution and they wanted those countries as buffer zones to stop a third invasion. The author bases this asertion on studying Russion records.
L-188 From United States of America, joined Jul 1999, 29350 posts, RR: 62 Reply 20, posted (11 years 5 days 18 hours ago) and read 2859 times:
Oh and there is one other thing that needs to be considered.
The American Forces there where based in Europe from the 70's on where all volunteers, to the best of my knowledge the majority, if not all of the Warsaw Pact troops where draftee's.
History has generally shown that a draftee army vs. a volunteer army will end with the the volunteer being victorious.
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