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The USSR’s Air-Dropped Fighting Vehicles Tore Through Cold War Conflicts
War is Boring ^ | July 20, 2017 | Sebastien Roblin

Posted on 07/20/2017 9:24:37 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki

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To: Rockingham

Yep.

The good old Neutron Bomb.

They were banking on taking some Western European cities and then daring us to use nuclear weapons to stop them. Those nukes could cause a lot of problems for our European allies. They had us over a barrel.

But we come up with the Neutron Bomb.

No fuss no muss and it kills the Russian tankers inside their tanks.

And the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union fell apart.

Their Communist theory demanded that the whole world must turn socialist before communism could happen.

But their military couldn’t take Western Europe.

So now we are dealing with the remnants of their supporting attacks in our universities, media and big cities.


21 posted on 07/20/2017 11:03:35 AM PDT by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: Rockingham
The Soviet military was built for rapid mass offensives with little spared for the expensive engineering, training, and spares required for reliable vehicles and long-term operations. Instead, the Soviets contemplated that they would be able to menace continental Europe into surrender through a numerically superior mobile army and a war plan that contemplated early and first use of tactical nuclear weapons.

Menacing AFV's on paper and pictures. Few spares. Lousy quality control.Not nearly enough trucks to haul fuel and ammo.

By the late 1970s, Western Europe was near to agreeing to terms with the Soviets. Then America elected Ronald Reagan. Suddenly, the US rebuilt and expanded their military and deployed the Pershing II tactical nuclear missile to menace Russia's bases and its European heartland. European spines stiffened and the moment passed. Less than a decade later, the communist regimes of the Warsaw Pact and then the USSR collapsed.

Western Europe opened a pipeline with the Soviets and they thought their currency problems were solved.

Then the oil price crashed and the Reagan military buildup gave their ramshackle economy a hard shove.

22 posted on 07/20/2017 11:06:07 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
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To: blueunicorn6

Muslims are doing today what the Warsaw Pact could not do after WW2.


23 posted on 07/20/2017 11:22:33 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (Is it not too late to appoint a special counsel to investigate Hillary's crimes?)
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To: The_Media_never_lie
Muslims are doing today what the Warsaw Pact could not do after WW2.

The Greens almost succeeded in the 70's and 80's...

24 posted on 07/20/2017 11:25:51 AM PDT by Snickering Hound
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To: sukhoi-30mki

Russia is not alone in this capability.


25 posted on 07/20/2017 11:32:59 AM PDT by Uncle Sam 911
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To: blueunicorn6

1970,while at at Ft Hood Tx, I would occasionally meet an old timer that was there in ‘62.
They all had tales of the Cuban crisis.
They had to strip the entire Post for ready equipment and much of it was in less than good condition.

Between Fort Stewart(?) and return more than a little assistance was needed. And most of the trip was via rail.
Not exactly STRAC.


26 posted on 07/20/2017 11:33:04 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT (GO TRUMP!)
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To: treetopsandroofs

They can’t shoot on the move, .50 BMG APIT will eat it alive, and the rear doors are fuel tanks. It’s basically a full-tracked, air-droppable Zippo lighter waiting for someone to strike the flint wheel.


27 posted on 07/20/2017 11:33:05 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: blueunicorn6

I was there, at the Fulda Gap in Germany at the height of the Cold War. This was where the Soviets would smash through with unstoppable armored columns. The U.S. military was there in force, but would it be enough to stop the Soviets? I sat in a cafe with German friends, and was embarrassed to see a U.S. serviceman of color, careening down the narrow cobblestone street on a tricycle, shrieking inanities like a boozed-up teenager. Were these the fearless warriors who would stop the looming Soviet blitzkrieg?


28 posted on 07/20/2017 11:33:31 AM PDT by tjd1454
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To: blueunicorn6
Turns out those old Soviets actually did want to rule the world.

Made very plain in the Communist Manifesto. To know Hitler's ambitions one only needed to read Mein Kampf. If you want to know what the end game for moslems is all you need to do is read the koran and hadiths.

29 posted on 07/20/2017 11:51:48 AM PDT by AlaskaErik (I served and protected my country for 31 years. Progressives spent that time trying to destroy it.)
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To: Snickering Hound

“Western Europe had a lot of diesel fuel. They could take it as they went along.
That plan didn’t work in the Ardennes in 44’...”

There weren’t many gas stations in the Ardennes. But invading German armor in 1940 stopped at French filling stations and gassed up.

Riding on Top.
I understand our guys did that often on APCs in Vietnam if they suspected B40, RPGs in the area. No one wanted to be inside with all that molten metal flying around in a rocket attack. Believe they were aluminum too.

My father (an advisor) told me a story of advising a Vietnamese hot-shot LT to not to fly all the antennas and flags on his vehicle that he must have thought gave him status.
Sure enough, a few days later Pop talks to him dying, pulled from his vehicle, smiling as he said they did when embarrassed, after his APC was the focus of an attack.


30 posted on 07/20/2017 3:56:50 PM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives)
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To: Snickering Hound

And, as the military balance shifted decisively in favor of the West, there was a Polish Pope, striking dockyard workers in Gdansk, a Czech playwright, and German crowds demonstrating against their communist masters.


31 posted on 07/22/2017 8:03:14 AM PDT by Rockingham
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To: blueunicorn6

The traditional residential university system with massive staffing by Leftists and the reflexively Leftist news media will soon pass from the scene, done in by a combination of changing technology, no longer sustainable business models, and new issue sets for which they have little to offer.


32 posted on 07/22/2017 8:18:46 AM PDT by Rockingham
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To: blueunicorn6

The time frame (before 1981) suggests Jimmy Carter’s Harold Brown, but the comment seems more like Reagan’s Cap Weinberger. Sadly, the US never developed a neutron bomb, but I imagine that if we needed one or two in a pinch, our friends the Israelis might oblige.


33 posted on 07/22/2017 9:23:33 AM PDT by Rockingham
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To: AlaskaErik

And they’re NOT “at the gates” anymore.


34 posted on 07/23/2017 3:28:11 AM PDT by Does so ("PARIS" is like OPEC, except We're Winning!)
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To: Rockingham

Didn’t Jimmy Carter kill the Neutron bomb?


35 posted on 07/23/2017 3:30:18 AM PDT by Does so ("PARIS" is like OPEC, except We're Winning!)
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To: Does so
Carter did block development of a specialized, single purpose neutron bomb weapon. It has been conjectured though that advanced "dial a yield" nuclear bombs that the Reagan administration put into in the US inventory can be set to produce the same thing: a nuclear explosion that generates a relatively small blast with a large burst of high energy neutrons that can be broadly aimed toward a target area.
36 posted on 07/23/2017 3:55:49 AM PDT by Rockingham
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