Word: pact
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...dawn quiet of central Germany is suddenly shattered by the thundering explosions of tens of thousands of Soviet rockets and artillery shells. Then thousands of Soviet tanks, with dozens of motorized rifle divisions behind them, crash across the frontier into West Germany. Far to the south, Warsaw Pact forces blast into Turkey and through Yugoslavia toward Italy, while the Soviet Fleet moves in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic to neutralize NATO's warships...
...Committee charged that Soviet forces in Europe could now mount a surprise attack, blitz their way past NATO's defenses and reach the Rhine in 48 hours. Reported the Senators: "Should the NATO alliance fail to improve its conventional war-fighting capabilities ... the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies soon may be invited by NATO weaknesses to launch a major conventional invasion of Western Europe...
While NATO, with about twice the industrial and 1½ times the manpower base of the Warsaw Pact, maintains an undeniable advantage in its ability to slug through a lengthy war, its only substantial quantitative edge in combat-ready power in Europe is its 2-to-l superiority in tactical nuclear weapons. Its 7,000 atomic warheads, kept in Europe by the U.S., are theoretically to be delivered by plane, cannon and missile against relatively limited targets like supply depots or massing tanks. In practice, however, the U.S. would have to hesitate before crossing even a tactical nuclear threshold...
This strategy has made sense to NATO, even though the alliance is so heavily outgunned on the battlefield. For one thing, NATO would be on the defensive, thus requiring significantly fewer troops than an attacker. NATO also benefits from advanced technology. Comparison of NATO and Warsaw Pact tanks serves as a good example of NATO'S superior equipment: although the mammoth Soviet T-62 is heavier than its Western rivals-the U.S.'s M60, Britain's Chieftain and West Germany's Leopard-it is less accurate, slower, and sports a vulnerably exposed rear fuel tank...
WEAPON COMPATIBILITY. NATO may be wasting as much as 30% of its effectiveness through duplication. It deploys, for instance, 31 different antitank missiles, six types of recoilless rifles and 41 varieties of naval guns. Within the Warsaw Pact, standardization is achieved because Moscow designs and produces nearly all of the weaponry. NATO's multiplicity of arms makes battlefield resupply a logistician's nightmare and vastly complicates coordinated combat. During NATO exercises last year, a number of the alliance's planes were "shot down" by friendly forces because the radios of one nation's aircraft could...