How the Soviet Navy Would Have Fought World War III

War is Boring ^ | July 5, 2018 | Robert Farley

[C19fan]

Over the course of the Cold War, the balance of forces between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union changed dramatically. At different points, a war would have played out in far different ways in the major theaters, including Central Europe, the Arctic, the North Atlantic, the Far East and even in space.

For the most part, changes to each side’s forces came slowly, with only a few significant shifts due to technological advances.

[C19fan]

I played some "Harpoon" back in the day. Combat air patrols and AWACS were difference makers.

[Fido969]

[ealgeone]

Harpoon.....awesome game!

[Sasparilla]

“Captain Ramius: Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only”

[FreedomPoster]

I spent way too much time with computer Harpoon in the 1990s. And you vastly understate the importance of AWACS.

Regarding Harpoon and the subject of this article, Larry Bond wasn’t the co-author of Red Storm Rising with Tom Clancy for nothing. And reading that book is a great way to see what Cold War naval conflict could have been like.

[OttawaFreeper]

Wasn’t the United States supposed to have learned that good deal about Soviet submarines when they raised that one out of very deep waters off the coast of Hawaii back in the 1970s?

[Little Ray]

No.
That sub was obsolescent at the time of its loss.
What we got were codes, encryption machines, etc.

[RayChuang88]

I think in the end, Soviet war policy likely relied on it going nuclear fairly early. The policy was primarily aimed to knock out as many military and commercial airfields as possible early on, which would allow the Red Army to operate with less threat of an air attack on its ground forces. That's why the Russians had large numbers of SS-4, SS-5, SS-12 and SS-20 missile targeted specifically at airfields.

But getting back on topic, the article was probably right--the primary goal of the Soviet Navy was to protect its ballistic missile submarines in the Barents Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, since Soviet war policy was to keep ballistic submarines as close to Russian land regions as possible.

[G Larry]

"Despite possessing a massive number of ships and aircraft, the Soviet Navy during the 1970s was still decisively inferior to the combined forces of NATO. The fate of the Navy would have depended, to a great extent, on how long the land war ran."

The land war would have been quickly lost without escalating to nuclear.

In the 70's there were only 6 NATO ports with ship offload capability.

If the Soviet hit these targets our resupply capability would have been crippled to the point of failure, given that out Navy had limited self-offload capability.

[Buckeye McFrog]

We had the drop on their subs with seafloor listening devices until Toshiba sold them state-of-the-art machine tools.

[BobL]

I always thought that the best action for the Soviets (when they were at their strongest relative to us, about 1980) would have been a very advance, perhaps taking 50 square miles of West Germany, and then stopping...and asking the US if we REALLY wanted to exchange nukes over that small, mostly-farm, area.

If the US was ready to talk, then they could have gotten MAJOR concessions on trade, technology, etc. and possibly got to the point where they were able to effectively control Western Europe without firing a shot.

...and given what we see now in Western Europe, it probably would have been better for them.

[reed13k]

And part of why the interstate highway system was considered of strategic importance. In emergencies large stretches could be converted to runways.

[mrmeyer]

Western Europe still has a chance today. Under Soviet control it would not have as any threats would get the Kaytn treatment.

[PUGACHEV]

I think this is a pointless article. Not one mention is made of the Walker spy ring, which would have tipped the naval balance of power decisively in the USSR’s favor.

[BobL]

Agree - it’s not over yet, and they still may choose to fight But every year, the chances of winning dwindle, and cost of ‘winning’, in widespread killings, increases.

[sparklite2]

I think in the end, Soviet war policy likely relied on it going nuclear fairly early.

---

As part of the ABM treaty, each signer selected one area to protect with ABMs. The USSR picked Moscow; the US picked our missile fields.

Why the difference?

Russia planned on a first strike. With their missile silos emptied out at launch, there was nothing left that need protecting from a counter-strike.

The US put ABMs around missile sites to allow us to ride out a first strike and have something left to respond with.

Russia’s claim to never strike first with nukes was belied by the ABM Treaty choice they made.