The Third World War - The Untold Story

by Sir John Hackett

  The story was the same with the F-4G, a modified F-4E Phantom, containing advanced electronic warfare equipment and armed with anti-radiation missiles, of which the latest, AGM-88 - HARM (high-speed anti-radiation missile) -was just coming into service when war broke out.

  The F-15 Eagle was still in service, with a newer version, the Strike Eagle, carrying improved systems and possessing a better all-weather capability. The F-16 Fighting Falcon, which began to come into squadron service in 1981, represented a real advance. Its equipment included a multi-mode radar with a clutter-free look-down capability, head-up displays, internal ‘chaff (strips of foil which act as decoy to enemy homing missiles) and flare dispensers, a 500-round 20 mm internal gun and ECM, all in an aircraft with speed around Mach 2, a ceiling of more than 50,000 feet and a ferry range greater than 2,000 miles. This was a great improvement on any fighter the Western allies had hitherto seen. The F-18 Hornet, a one-man multiple-mission fighter bomber of even more advanced type, attractive to both navies and air forces, had suffered many delays in development and was not yet in service when war broke out.

  A further development of high significance was the E-3A Sentry airborne warning and control system (AWACS). Into a Boeing 707 airframe had been fitted equipment which made up a mobile, flexible, jamming-resistant, surveillance and command, control and communications system, capable of all-weather, long-range, high or low surveillance of all air vehicles, manned or unmanned, above all types of terrain. Its look-down radar gave it a unique capability hitherto absent. Sentry could operate for six hours, on station 1,000 miles from home base, with a maximum speed of 530 mph and a ceiling of 29,000 feet. Details of how it worked are given in the next chapter. Its entry into service in 1980 and into NATO in 1982 marked a great step forward.

  The improved Harrier came into service with the US Marines as the AV-8B in 1983 and with the RAF as the GR-5 a year later. More than one attempt was made by the US Administration in the late 1970s to kill the AV-8B. Happily Congress remained firm and the very valuable inter-Allied (US/UK) development of an advanced vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) aircraft was saved.

  Three major developments in the late 1970s and early 1980s emphasized the joint sea/air character of modern naval operations. First, the advent of ocean-ranging, high-performance bombers, such as the Soviet Backfire, armed with stand-off anti-ship missiles; secondly, the increased anti-submarine potency of long-range maritime patrol aircraft (LRMP), such as the Nimrod; and thirdly the much extended range of shore-based fighter protection of snipping and naval forces made possible by in-flight refuelling. The air capability of these forces was much improved also, at little extra cost, by the invention in Britain of the ski-jump flight deck, first fitted in HMS Invincible, often publicly described as an aircraft carrier but more correctly designated a cruiser. Its use considerably enhanced the combat performance of V/STOL Harrier aircraft and led to the adaptation of the hulls of container-type merchant ships to be escort carriers. Unfortunately only one of these, the British Traveller, was operational by mid-1985.

  Anti-submarine warfare (ASW), always difficult, costly and complex, was made even more so by the introduction of an effective anti-sonar coating for submarines. This reduced the detection-range of active sonar dramatically, although its use for the precise location of submarines, in order to bring weapons to bear, remained virtually indispensable. Fortunately passive sonar, which is not affected by coatings on the submarines, had made great strides by 1985. It took three main forms. For very long-range detection, surveillance arrays, called SURTASS (surface towed-array sensor system), towed by ocean-going tugs, were used; destroyer/frigate types, and submarines on anti-submarine patrol, towed tactical arrays, called TACTASS (tactical towed-array sonar system); and LRMP aircraft were equipped with much improved passive sonobuoys. All these measures would impose considerable restrictions upon the mobility of hostile nuclear-powered attacking submarines.

  Increasingly the systematic deployment of both active and passive sonars in ships, submarines and aircraft, and where possible on the seabed, had come to be seen as the basis of an effective counter to the submarine. Without the energetic application of information technology this could not have been achieved. By this means data obtained from any submarine contact, however fleeting, in any theatre of war, could rapidly be collated, after processing, with other submarine contact data and intelligence to be analysed, compared, and stored for further use. A continuously updated master submarine plot could thus be maintained, which would be accessible electronically to any NATO commander engaged in anti-submarine warfare, at any level, at sea or on shore. In addition, the exercise of command and control over the forces engaged in fast-moving and extensive air-sea combat would be much facilitated by the development and adoption of narrow-band, secure, voice communication equipment for tactical use.

  Amongst the more important new weapons in the sea/air battle would be Stingray, the air-dropped or surface-ship-launched, high-performance homing anti-submarine torpedo; and the Captor, a mobile, homing, anti-submarine mine. Lynx, an ASW helicopter coming into service in the Royal Navy in the early 1980s, was a particularly useful guided weapons platform. The underwater-to-surface anti-ship missile Harpoon was another effective new weapon, in use in NATO submarines. Without these weapon systems the exiguous naval, naval air, and maritime air forces of NATO would have been at a severe disadvantage in trying to protect merchant shipping and seaborne military forces against all-out attack by the Soviet Navy and Soviet naval aviation.

  The fighting power of the US Navy, and hence of NATO, had by mid-1985 been augmented by the first fruits of two remarkable procurement programmes, namely the building of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, Aegis-equipped {Aegis is an integrated computer-controlled air defence system), and the conversion of the Second World War Iowa-class battleships into what, as a cross between battleships and carriers, were nicknamed ‘battliers’. The former were the first major surface warships to have been conceived since the microchip came in to join the missile, and could engage air, surface and underwater targets simultaneously at all ranges out to hundreds of miles; the latter, with an assorted armament of 16-inch guns and guided missiles, both surface-to-surface and surface-to-air, coupled with the survival capability conferred by vast size and heavy armour protection, provided the US Marines with devastating and reliable naval gunfire support, as well as air cover offered by V/STOL aircraft.

  Finally, in a far from exhaustive survey, we come to Tornado, the multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) combining the activities of a new strike/attack and reconnaissance aircraft, and in another variant an advanced interceptor, which though a joint Allied (UK/FRG/Italy) development of the first importance, more than once nearly came to grief in Allied budgeting. Happily Tornado too survived, even if its production rate was slower than it should have been. Its role is covered in more detail in the next chapter, which deals specifically with air warfare.

  Military operations in Europe in August 1985 were to last for only three weeks. They would demand, none the less, optimum performance against opponents who were for the most part resolute and almost always well equipped. Penalties for inefficiency or irresolution on NATO’s part would be high. The war was not in the event long enough to extract the fullest value from developing techniques, nor even to draw the best dividends from material already in use and now becoming familiar. It was quite long enough to show where weaknesses lay. It was also long enough to demonstrate very clearly not only that non-nuclear defence is expensive (if it is to be effective), which was something that had been realized for a long time, but also that nuclear war can hardly be avoided unless the high cost of the alternative is met. The margin of NATO success would have been safer if the improved techniques and equipment, of which a few have been looked at here, had been available sooner, or in greater quantity, or if some which never came into service had not been strangled at birth. What the West had, and the way it was used, was just enough to prevent the catastrophic
use of battlefield nuclear weapons with all its dreadful consequences. It might easily have been otherwise.

  There is an old Roman saying: ‘Si vis pacem, para bellum’: if you want peace prepare for war.

  It could be reworked, on lines more appropriate to the late twentieth century, to read: ‘If you want nuclear peace prepare for non-nuclear war: but be ready to pay the price.’

  Chapter 6: The Air Dimension

  The flexibility of air power is so far undisputed that people have tended rather to tire of the phrase. There is no escaping the fact, however, that it takes years for air forces to adapt to new fundamental concepts of operation. It takes at least ten years to develop a major air weapons system and air crew need four to five years after recruitment to become operationally effective in the more demanding roles. So it was not surprising that in the late 1970s, little more than a decade after the switch from a NATO strategy of massive retaliation to one of flexible response, the Allied air forces were still heavily involved with the technical and training tasks of developing a tactical capability to match possible battle scenarios of a war in central Europe under new politico-strategic terms of reference. Nor was it surprising that the reorganisation of the Soviet Air Force (SAF) on more flexible lines (described later in this chapter) was only beginning to come to fruition in the early 1980s.

  In the United States Air Force (USAF) and the British Royal Air Force (RAF) the lion’s share of the air appropriations had throughout the 1970s been going to tactical forces. For the USAF this meant emphasis on contemporary fighters - the F-15 Eagle and Strike Eagle and F-16 Fighting Falcon - and A-10 Thunderbolt tank-busters. For the RAF it meant, among other things, Anglo-French Jaguars, the astonishingly versatile vertical/short take-off and landing (V/STOL) Harriers, F-4 Phantom fighters bought from the United States in the late 1960s and Buccaneers of a type that was a capable variant of an earlier naval aircraft. Most of these aircraft had been around for some years. By 1985 the RAF had had nearly fifteen years of experience in operating the V/STOL Harriers, for example, from dispersed sites around their base at Gutersloh well forward on the north German plain.

  That dispersal was to serve them well when Gutersloh was attacked by Soviet Fencers on the morning of 5 August and not a single Harrier was on the airfield - although some RAF Puma helicopters and a charter aircraft evacuating civilian baggage were caught with heavy casualties. The Harrier pilots knew the area backwards and their association with I British Corps in the Northern Army Group (NORTHAG) was especially close. It was out of that association, and years of exercise together, that the British doctrine of counter-armour operations from the air had grown. The principle was to exploit the speed of the fixed wing aircraft to turn the flank of the enemy’s armoured echelons and then fly up or down to attack them some 10 to 20 kilometres in the rear, at the critical point where the armour would be fanning out from its line of march on to the battlefield. These tactics, which depended, like so much else, on air reconnaissance and rapid response, were to be vindicated in the war, and the air losses, though high, were sustainable for at least a while. This did not, in the event, take the immediate pressure off the troops at the forward edge of the battle area (the FEBA) when they were being forced back by the momentum and fire power of the enemy’s tanks. The effect would be felt later. In slowing momentum at the FEBA the army was to rely primarily on the long-range fire power of well-sited tanks and anti-tank guided weapons (ATGW), as well as ATGW helicopters hovering in ambush over dead ground or concealed in woodland. The Harriers and Jaguars would of course intervene directly at the FEBA when the clamour for help became especially loud and insistent. When they did so their losses would usually be high and the trade-off between tanks and aircraft could only be justified at times of the direst need.

  The Anglo/German/Italian multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) brought into service as the Tornado in its specialized long-range interceptor role in the UK, and its interdiction and counter-air role for the European continent, was a very recent and promising arrival. The German Air Force (GAF) was tied by political and geographical logic to the defence of its own air space, direct support of the land forces of CENTAG (Central Army Group) and NORTHAG, and interdiction and counter-air operations over enemy territory. By 1984 the GAF had received most of its Tornados and its air defence force was made up of F-4 Phantoms and a residue of F-104 Starfighters left over from the 1960s.

  Each of the Allied air forces was backed up in some degree by air transport and helicopters. The helicopter was an unknown factor in operations on the scale and at the intensity that were to be experienced in the Third World War. In the event it played a versatile and often indispensable part in many roles, and notably so with the Warsaw Pact forces. But as had always been expected, losses were high and it remains an open question as to how long the helicopters could have remained on the battlefield in a longer war. The United States Army and Air Force, with Vietnam experience behind them, were to use large numbers in the gunship and logistic roles, with great skill and often with decisive local effect. In the first days of the war German and British helicopters were virtually to save the re-supply situation in NORTHAG’s rear area. The threat to soft-skinned vehicles from SAF armed reconnaissance aircraft had been seriously underestimated and the roads were blocked with wrecked trucks as well as civilian refugees. To compound the chaos and confusion the FEBA was falling steadily back to the west and it was chiefly through a non-stop shuttle of medium-lift helicopters that the ammunition and fuel would reach the front.

  In a more offensive mode RAF Puma helicopters were to be used to move army anti-tank teams and their Milan weapons across the axes of the enemy’s advance to new positions as his thrust lines swung. When they achieved surprise and found good firing positions this proved an excellent way of keeping the anti-tank weapons in action against the enemy. The British Army’s Lynxes were effectively used in a similar way. But the British had always been hesitant about helicopters, partly because of their vulnerability, and partly because of their cost. By 1985 the British Army and the RAF had still to agree upon whether the helicopter should be regarded as an air or ground system. In consequence the capabilities of this remarkable, but admittedly vulnerable, machine were not always fully exploited in the battle in the north.

  This was not true of the Soviet forces, which had always loved helicopters and built models for every kind of task and weapon. They were to use them as self-propelled guns flying above and ahead of their leading armour, as anti-tank platforms and as electronic counter-measure (ECM) stations. They even armed some with air-to-air weapons. Not surprisingly they fell easily and in large numbers to the US Patriot missiles (which were coming into service but were not yet plentiful) and the British Rapier and French Rolands and Sicas deployed by the NATO armies. Nevertheless, Allied ground force commanders at all levels would have cause to reflect that the need to strengthen their defences against marauding helicopters had not been fully appreciated.

  Bringing offensive air support to bear on the enemy’s vulnerable articulation points in a fast-moving battle places a high premium on tactical air reconnaissance, with its rapid reporting and subsequent response. This was done in the main by interdictor or fighter aircraft operating with specialized crews and equipment. Over the sea, maritime aircraft patrolled against submarines and surface ships, with land-based helicopters working closer inshore. The whole Western European theatre was enclosed by the NATO air defence ground environment (NADGE), a radar warning system within which, in addition to the air fighters, there were arrays of ground-based surface-to-air missiles (SAM) for point and area defence. In the event the demand for air reconnaissance far exceeded the limited numbers of aircraft and crews available to carry it out. Whether there should have been more tactical reconnaissance squadrons must remain a moot point. More here would have meant less somewhere else. To give an idea of scale, it is worth noting that the USAF possessed approximately five times the number of aircraft of the whole of the RAF and GAF together
.

  On the broader front of intelligence - and that was very broad indeed - it had always been feared by the sceptics that in a major war the Allied intelligence system with its computerized ‘fusion centres’ would get clogged up - and it did. The input from satellites, airborne radars, electronic sensors, photography, and a host of other sources was vast and although the computers swallowed it all at great speed and spat it out again obligingly enough, they did so in an uncomprehending way. When war broke out intelligence centres had to be diluted with inexperienced or out-of-practice staffs and this was to hinder the speed at which the significance of bald data could be appreciated - as for example after the Gdansk incident, described at the end of this chapter, when the crucial information about the Soviet Air Force Cooker frequencies took forty-eight hours to reach the operating units that so desperately needed it. But the learning curve is steep in war and processing and evaluating times were to be greatly reduced in the first few days. Nevertheless, the human burden in handling the nearly overwhelming volume of data that the sensors, computers and communications could collect, store and deliver was tremendous and was to remain so throughout the war.

  The British and German air force commanders had long seen that they would need an agile air-superiority fighter to replace their Phantoms in the 1980s, in order to counter the growing tactical air power that the Warsaw Pact would be able to bring to bear over a land battle in the Central Region. For political reasons this had to be tackled as a multi-national collaborative project and joint studies were started by the UK and the FRG with the French, who had a similar need. This well-intentioned collaboration got nowhere and the project was dropped. Differences in specifications and timescales could not be reconciled and the costs of the Tornado, which were getting badly out of control, squeezed out what little room was left in the forward defence budgets of the Federal Republic and the UK. The French kept their thoughts and their plans to themselves as the British and German staffs accepted that they would have to make do with their Phantoms for the rest of the decade. This was unfortunate but for the British there was at least the consolation that there was now room for a handsome increase of some eighty aircraft in the Harrier force. This would be welcome in the land battle but one result would be that Britain and Germany, if forced into a war in the 1980s, would be using fighter aircraft that were more than twenty years old in concept and design - the Tornado excepted - and that they would have no contemporary air-superiority fighter for the air battle.