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Red Storm Rising is a techno-thriller
novel by Tom Clancy about a third world war in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces, set around the
mid-1980s. Though there are other novels dealing with a fictional World War III, this one is notable for the way in which numerous settings for the
action - from Atlantic convoy duty to shooting down reconnaissance satellites to tank battles in Germany - all have an integral
part to play on the outcome.
Warning: Plot details
follow.
slight spoilers follow
Azerbaijani terrorists
destroy a new oil-production facility in the Soviet Union, severely
crippling Soviet oil production and threatening to wreck the Soviet economy. Facing a perceived need to make crippling
concessions to the West to survive the crisis, the Politburo chooses a different
path: war. The Politburo decides to seize the Middle East by force to secure
a new source of oil; to prevent NATO's combined reaction, they launch a KGB operation to
split NATO by making it appear as if Germany launched an unprovoked terrorist attack
on the U.S.S.R.
more serious spoilers
Unfortunately, the KGB operation has limited success: the coming Soviet attack on Germany is detected a few days in advance,
giving NATO time to start mobilization, and providing sufficient evidence to prevent the fracturing of NATO (Greece is successfully convinced that this is a "German-Russian disagreement" and Turkey is not willing to enter yet either). The war quickly becomes a meat-grinder in Germany:
NATO forces slowly give ground while inflicting terrible losses on Warsaw pact armies.
gives the whole game away
One of the strategic masterstrokes of the Soviet Union's opening moves in the war is their seizure of Iceland, destroying the American air base at Keflavík. This
destroy the GIUK line of sonar buoys, expected to prevent the Soviet Navy from operating effectively in the Atlantic by making it impossible for their
ships and submarines to enter the Atlantic undetected. The Soviet Navy becomes an offensive weapon, and the Warsaw Pact seriously
damages NATO's war effort by damaging resupply convoys coming from North America.
In Germany, the battle becomes a war of attrition that the
Soviets expect to win, having greater reserves of men and material. NATO holds the Warsaw Pact forces to small but continual
advances only through the profligate expenditure of every weapon at hand.
As the Warsaw Pact advance fails to achieve its planned breakthrough, the Politburo considers the use of tactical nuclear
weapons. The general (eventually) in charge of the Western European theatre (the Politburo keeps relieving and shooting
unsuccessful generals) recognizes the slippery slope, and stages a coup, replacing most of the Politburo with three junior
members who opposed the war at the beginning.
Analysis
An important part of this techno-thriller is the examination of a conventional ground war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
Clancy suggests that several conventional doctrines about a modern ground conflict between modern armies are wrong or
underestimated. For example, Clancy plausibly suggests that munitions expenditures would be far higher than projected; that
combat helicopters like the Apache and the Hind are not nearly as survivable as projected; that the mobility granted by modern armor means that the Soviet
doctrine of a massed thrust achieving a breakthrough of the enemy lines is a fiction--the enemy can withdraw and reform its lines
too easily to break; also, modern air power can only dominate a battlefield in the absence of an opposing modern air force.
Interestingly enough, the 2003 invasion of Iraq
(although far more of a mismatch than a mid-1980s NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict would have been) did provide some evidence for
Clancy's hypothesis. The US Army's Apaches proved more vulnerable to ground fire than had been predicted beforehand, and by the
war's end the majority of close air support was being delivered
by heavily armoured A-10 Warthog ground attack aircraft. Fittingly, Clancy
identifies the A-10 as being a key weapon in his Red Storm Rising scenario. His predictions on the high rate of
munitions expenditure also appears to have been borne out - even though Iraq was a short conflict, it drained US arsenals to an
alarming extent, forcing the Pentagon to undertake a crash programme to rebuild stocks of smart weapons.
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