Word: fulda
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...different; for 45 years they have prepared for a Soviet version of the blitzkrieg. Panama, Grenada, Libya, even Korea and Viet Nam were all essentially sideshows. The Big One, if it ever came, would begin with the Warsaw Pact's tank and armored columns charging across the Fulda Gap into West Germany, starting a conflict that could escalate to a nuclear Armageddon. The effort to deter or defeat a Soviet invasion of Western Europe shaped almost everything about the U.S. military establishment: manpower requirements, weapons design, budget requests, the works...
...meanwhile, is left with a military strategy that was designed for a different world, and a force structure that must be not only reduced but also reshaped to avoid -- or at worst, fight -- the wars that America might actually get into in areas far from the Fulda Gap. How much and how fast are hotly contested subjects. Asked what he expected the U.S. military to look like in 20 years, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell referred to the dizzying pace of current events. "Twenty years?" he quipped. "I'm having trouble staying 20 days ahead right...
Such thinking seems curiously out of tune with the world as it looks in 1990. The Warsaw Pact, for all practical purposes, is dead as a military alliance. Soviet troops might have to fight their way through Warsaw, Prague and even Berlin before getting anywhere near the Fulda Gap, much less Bonn, Rotterdam or Paris. And while the Soviets were long considered capable of mobilizing for a strike at Western Europe in as little as 14 days, Pentagon analysts say that NATO could now detect preparations a month in advance. Some outside experts argue that signs of war would...
...soldiers of the U.S. 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, stationed in the strategic Fulda Gap near the border between East and West Germany, life in uniform has never been easy. Most towns in the area are small, provincial and often dull. East German and Soviet border patrols are a constant presence. Above all, the American servicemen at Fulda are aware that the 30-mile gap is a likely invasion route in the event of a conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact...
...computer war typically starts with a column of Soviet tanks (red symbols on the video screen) lumbering into sight and rolling through pastureland toward the town of Bad Hersfeld, some 120 miles east of Bonn. The tanks skirt green-shaded woods and head for the blue line of the Fulda River. The Livermore programmers have lavished colorful detail on their simulation: as the action mounts land mines explode in flashes of white, and helicopter symbols appear over enemy outposts. Artillery fire slashes across the screen like a laser sword. The flight time the shells is preprogrammed to the millisecond; even...