Thirty-seven years ago, the Soviet Union held a huge military exercise. In just eight days, they gave the world the largest "military performance show" in human history, shocking the world in one fell swoop.
Let's turn the clock back to 1980. At this time, the United States has not yet recovered from the "sequelae" of the Vietnam War, and the Soviet Union, which has already entered Afghanistan at this time, has not learned any lessons from the defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War, and they still feel that "taking Afghanistan" is sooner or later. The reason why the Soviet Union thought so was because in the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union was in the "offensive" for the first and only time in the Cold War, and now the Soviet Union has reached the peak of its national strength.
With enough military strength to support it, a voice began to appear at the top of the Soviet Union at that time. They believe that when the next world war breaks out, a large-scale nuclear war will inevitably break out between the United States and the Soviet Union, but the armored mechanized troops with tenacious vitality still have great hope of helping us win the war with the surprise and support of tactical-grade nuclear weapons.
Soon, this idea became the "consensus" of many senior Soviet generals and the top brass of the CPSU Central Committee. They not only agreed with this statement, but also further extended that if we could quickly occupy all of Western Europe with mechanized forces before the outbreak of large-scale nuclear war, we would not be able to "die with the United States." Thus, the seeds of a "strategic exercise" were planted in the minds of the Soviet Union.
In November 1980, the US presidential election, Reagan became the ultimate victor of the election, successfully entered the White House. Unlike his predecessor Carter, Reagan made a "voice" as soon as he took office, expressing his strong dissatisfaction with the "expansion" of the Soviet Union (represented by the invasion of Afghanistan), and said that he wanted to give the Soviet Union some color. As a result, this was the year he called on Western European countries to boycott the Moscow Olympics. Now that the Soviet Union had stopped doing it, I thought to myself, isn't this bullying honest people? Just on the stage to target me, it seems that it is not okay not to give you the highlights of the "real guy".
Under the joint planning of the CPSU Central Committee and the Frunze Military Academy, a military exercise code-named "Occidental-81" began to surface, and the Soviet Union wanted to tell the Yankees with practical actions who was the master of Europe.
The chief planner of the "Western-81" military exercise was Marshal Ogarkov, then deputy minister of defense and chief of the general staff of the Soviet Union, a veteran general who participated in the Great Patriotic War, who was deeply impressed by the heavy casualties of the Soviet Red Army in the early stages of the war. In order to reduce unnecessary casualties, Marshal Ogarkov proposed the idea of creating core information technology with electronic computers as the core, and then promoting a new military revolution.
Ogarkov's desire for an "ideal military command and control system" must not only be connected to every division, every regiment, but even to every officer and soldier to provide the most accurate and granular information to help the command make the most correct decisions.
Therefore, the most distinctive thing about the "Western-81" military exercise is precisely not the seemingly "brainless accumulation" of arms, but the "Strategic Automated Command System" (KSBU) that the Soviet Army first invested at the strategic level. Although the Soviet Army has long been full of fire in the tactical exercises and applications of tank divisions, motorized divisions and below, when the scale of operations is expanded to the group army or even the front level, it is much more difficult for battlefield support, front-line tactical aviation, rocket forces, navies and airborne troops to incorporate the operations of "unified command".
And because most of the senior commanders of the Soviet Army in the range of 50 to 60 years old can maintain "energy and clear mind" in a day, the time to maintain an accurate grasp of the war situation and the situation of the enemy and us in the case of the commander's role has been weakened, and to make timely adjustments to strategic and tactical planning, it is necessary to rely on various automated auxiliary decision-making systems.
The rapid development of the Soviet economy in the 1970s made great strides in the modernization of the Soviet Army. For example, the Army's T-72 and T-64 main battle tanks have increased significantly, the more advanced T-80 has also begun to enter service, and the Mi-24 helicopter gunship has greatly increased the tactical value of the Army Aviation Corps; the MiG-27 and Su-24 front-line bombers of the Air Force have been equipped with air-to-surface missiles for the first time; and the Navy's Type 1143 carrier-aircraft cruiser has greatly improved the ability to support far-sea anti-submarine and landing operations
It can be said that the "Western-81" military exercise not only showed the strength of the Soviet Union in terms of "force value", but also reflected the strength of the Soviet Union's tactical concept and military science and technology.
The duration of the exercise, finalized on September 4, 1981, included the western part of the Soviet Union (present-day western Russia, all of Belarus, and the Baltic States), eastern and northern Poland, and parts of East Germany. The Soviet troops participating in the exercise numbered about 130,000, and were equipped with 1,500 tanks, more than 2,000 armored vehicles and infantry fighting vehicles (in addition to a large number of Warsaw Pact troops, with a total number of 500,000). The "imaginary enemy" of this exercise is precisely the "NATO" camp headed by the United States.
On September 4, 1981, the military exercise code-named "Western-81" officially began. According to the battle plan that has been laid out, the Soviet Army and the Warsaw Pact friendly forces will first carry out tactical nuclear strikes on NATO first-line army and air bases and assembly areas deployed in West Germany, and at the same time carry out nuclear assault and aviation bombardment in the enemy's preset defensive positions in the shallow and deep depths of West Germany, and then launch a rapid breakthrough with well-equipped tank units as the first echelon, and after seizing the air superiority in the theater, carry out brigade-level or division-level airborne landings on enemy transportation hubs, cooperate with the second echelon of operations, and "expand the results" in the direction of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
At the same time, Soviet tactical nuclear missiles would strike important ports in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Britain, preventing Britain and the United States from reinforcing ground forces to the European continent.
At the beginning of the attack, the tanks of the Soviet First Offensive Echelon tore open a breakthrough ten kilometers wide and five kilometers deep at a cost of about 30% casualties, and then the main tanks behind them rushed up and killed through the breakthrough. The Soviet Guards Airborne Division, on the other hand, carried out "raid" airborne landings at an airfield on the outskirts of Minsk, which simulated Frankfurt Airport in West Germany, and then relied on the close support of the MiG-27 and Mi-24 fleets to seize the highway hub. During the exercise, the Soviet Guards Tank 2nd Army took out its secret weapon, the "King of Land War" T-80 tank, and rushed to the imaginary "English Channel" at a high speed of 80 kilometers per day.
In the Baltic Sea, Soviet Defense Minister Ustinov, accompanied by Navy Commander-in-Chief Gorshkov, personally boarded the "Kiev" aircraft carrier to participate in joint naval and air operations and amphibious landing training. In front of the generals, bombers of the Soviet Naval Aviation, together with surface ships, carried out a "missile saturation attack" against the enemy, and then the amphibious formation landed at Hamburg, West Germany (the actual landing was Poland).
On the eighth day of the exercise, the Soviet T-80 tank group rushed to the (simulated) "Dunkirk, France" and "Antwerp, Belgium" areas, the tanks had completely taken control of the docks after a short but fierce battle, and then the coastal defense forces and air defense forces arrived and deployed their positions in the next 8 hours, completely eliminating the possibility of the enemy reinforcing the European continent through the English Channel.
The "Western-81" strategic offensive ended in a complete Soviet victory, although during the exercise there was a PT-76 amphibious tank floating sinking accident, resulting in the death of two crew members and the crash of a MiG-27 due to mechanical failure. But overall, the "Western-81" military exercise is still a very successful "show muscle" behavior. The Soviet Union greatly shocked the United States and Western Europe through this military exercise. Those Western European countries, which were already relatively weak, were psychologically more dependent on their American fathers after watching the Soviet military exercises.
The "Western-81" military exercise is not only the peak of the Soviet Union's national strength, but also an important turning point in the weakening of the Soviet Union, and ten years later, this behemoth, which once stood on the top of the world, finally "collapsed", and his "legacy" was also looted by "traitors" and "enemies".
bibliography:
From "West-81" to "East-18""
"Study on the Negotiations on Soviet and Military Arms Control in the Brezhnev Period" to the East
"The Expansionary Policy of the Soviet Union in Cuba during the Brezhnev Period" Zheng Di
"A Model of Soviet-Style Modern Offensive The Warsaw Pact "Western-81" Exercise Shocked All of Europe" Tian Yu