What do you think all of us in Germany were during the Cold War? The 
scenario was basically this:

The Russian hoard comes through the Fulda Gap. 11th ACR (now at Fort 
Irwin, Ca) was basically a speed bump, there to slow the Russians down 
enough to allow re-enforcements to come up on line. Everyone on the 
Eastern side of the Rhine River were basically another series of speed 
bumps. We fully expected the Russian Army to make it that far. While 
those on the East of the river are slugging it out holding the Russians 
back, everyone on the Western side of the river advance as far as they 
can and continue holding off the Russians until units from the US can 
fly in, get issued their pre-positioned equipment and join the fight, 
pushing the Russians back into Russia. So we had thousands of soldiers 
who were essentially cannon fodder. And it is still not as simple as 
that. The Russians had 10 airborne infantry divisions who's sole purpose 
was to drop in behind our front lines and take out all the rear support 
echelons. The idea being if we don't have beans and bullets, we can't 
fight effectively. And it get more complicated than that but I won't get 
into all the mundane details of the plan.

Basically the Russians were prepared to fight a war of attrition. They 
were far superior numerically, but we surpassed them technologically. 
And Desert Storm proved that we had much better equipment. While a lot 
of the Iraqi Army had older tanks (T-54's and T-64's), their Republican 
Guard had more modern ones, T-72's. They had a shit load of BMP's and 
other equipment, but none of it did any good against the US armor or 
planes. So knowing this, I think that in the long run we would have 
prevailed in Europe, although we would have lost thousands of soldiers.

And the reason I know a lot of this stuff was because one of my extra 
duties in addition to being a shop foreman in a tank repair shop was to 
also give my unit annual briefings on the Russian threat. So I spent a 
great deal of time learning all this crap.

Bruce

Larry Lyons wrote:
> To me the idea is to make sure that the other side becomes cannon fodder not 
> us. otherwise you're just being a butcher not a soldier.
>   

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