The Cold War: A MILITARY History (56 page)

Such strategic warning depended upon intelligence staffs receiving clues, which could have come from satellites, electronic intelligence (ELINT), airborne sensors, political analysis, covert or overt human intelligence (HUMINT) sources, or the ever-inquisitive media. Receipt of such warning signals was, however, insufficient in itself, and adequate strategic warning also required correct interpretation (i.e. translating information into intelligence) and, once that had been made, a determination to take action.

The outbreak of the Yom Kippur War on 6 October 1973 was one of several lessons to NATO about what could go wrong. Before the invasion that began the war, many strategic surveillance systems had been focused on the Middle East, and military, political and media interest in the area were intense. Despite all of these, the Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians managed not only to co-ordinate their plans but also to conduct preliminary moves, involving large numbers of men and a great deal of equipment, without causing undue alarm in either Israel or the United States. When the attack came, at 1400 hours on 6 October, it achieved both strategic and tactical surprise, and was a brilliant military success, with Egyptian troops pouring across the Suez Canal to eliminate the Israeli strongpoints. The Egyptians then withstood a succession of armoured counter-attacks, during which they achieved a further tactical surprise by employing a combination of artillery, heavy anti-tank guided weapons and RPG-7 hand-held anti-tank
weapons
, which, in combination, completely halted these counter-attacks until the Israelis had devised methods of dealing with this new threat.

That the Israelis then managed to turn the tables on the Arab forces is not of great relevance here; the inescapable fact was that the Egyptians had achieved a masterly surprise, and, if that could be achieved in the Middle East, it was clear that it might also happen in central Europe. What was more, the Arabs had used essentially Soviet methods, as expounded publicly by Marshal Sokolovskiy, which can be summarized as being intended to mislead the enemy commanders by developing attacks in the least expected direction, concealing moves to prepare for the offensive, and deceiving the enemy with regard to the time, place and strength of the attack.
¹
These tactics were not original, however, but were originally postulated by the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, who wrote in about 500
BC
that ‘all warfare is based on deception … offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him … attack when he is unprepared; sally out when he does not expect you’.
²

Before the Yom Kippur War, NATO planners had assumed that they would receive adequate warning of a lengthy Warsaw Pact process of mobilization. The lessons of Yom Kippur, however, coupled with the increasing strength and readiness of Warsaw Pact forces, meant that a surprise attack using in-place forces appeared to be a distinct possibility.

THE NATO ALERT BOOK

The essential requirement for NATO was that, should an attack have appeared imminent, the Alliance had to bring its military forces and member nations to a state of war in an orderly manner, at similar speeds, and in time for their armed forces to occupy the planned deployment positions from which they would repel the invaders. This would have been achieved by means of the NATO Alert System, which was codified in the ‘Alert Book’.
³

The Alert Book set out a number of ‘readiness states’, each broken down into a number of discrete ‘measures’, each of which was carefully described. These measures could be ‘called’ either individually or in groups, and, under normal circumstances, the calling of a higher readiness state meant that any outstanding measures from the previous, lower, state would automatically be implemented. As always in NATO, however, nations retained certain rights, and many measures were subject to national caveats. These procedures were routinely tested, particularly during exercises known as ‘FALLEX’ and ‘CIMEX’, and were progressively refined during the years of the Cold War.
^fn1

Military Vigilance (MV)

The lowest alert state was Military Vigilance, which was designed to be called in a period of low-level but increasing tension. It was intended to be applied by major NATO commanders (MNCs) to assigned forces without prior reference to the North Atlantic Council or to governments, although these would of course have been informed that it had been called. It consisted of a number of precautionary military measures which were estimated to have neither economic nor political effects, and which could be maintained for a protracted period without serious effects on individuals or units. Measures to be called could have included some or all of: manning war headquarters with skeleton staffs, activating reserved communications circuits,
^fn2
rechecking mobilization plans, covert reconnaissance of planned emergency dispersal sites, and conducting readiness exercises. These were all aimed at making it easier for NATO’s military forces to move rapidly into the first of the formal alert states, Simple Alert.

The Formal Alert System

The Formal Alert System consisted of a set of three progressive states, which were designed to provide increasing readiness in a period of rising tension, to ensure an orderly transition from peace to war, and to ensure the survival of NATO forces. Each state contained a series of measures:

Within these three alert states there was a host of measures, which were placed, by agreement between the MNCs and individual governments, in one of four categories:

In the ‘tripwire’ era, the alert states automatically included the whole of NATO, but with the advent of flexible response the system was amended so that an MNC could call General Alert either throughout his command or only in specified areas.

Counter-Surprise

The alert system was designed to cope with discernible increases in tension, but there was clearly a danger of a situation where the Warsaw Pact attacked with such suddenness that the Formal Alert System could not have been implemented in time. To cope with this a ‘Counter-Surprise’ system was devised, which enabled MNCs to take ‘crash’ action if their forces were actually under attack or where an attack was clearly imminent within hours.

There were a number of possible scenarios. One was where Warsaw Pact forces were on a large-scale exercise close to the Inner German Border and then suddenly started to advance towards a NATO country. Another was where military forces were taking part in ‘internal action’ against a member of the Pact and then swung to invade NATO territory. The latter could have arisen in 1968 when, following the invasion of Czechoslovakia, a number of Soviet and East German divisions suddenly swung westward and advanced to within a few kilometres of the Czechoslovak–West German border.

Counter-Surprise consisted of two states: State Orange, based on a possible attack within hours, and State Scarlet, which would have been called when under actual attack or with an attack expected in less than an hour. In the early days, even when either of these states had been called, the MNC still had to wait for Reinforced Alert to be called before he obtained operational command of his assigned forces, but from 1964 such command was transferred automatically on the calling of either state.

Issues

The alert system highlighted a number of significant issues and was the subject of repeated negotiations between NATO commanders and national governments. From the national point of view, no government wished to give up its authority to take steps to protect its own national interests. To protect this authority, few forces were under NATO’s operational command in peacetime, being either firmly promised in time of war (‘assigned’ forces) or promised with provisos (‘earmarked’ forces). On the other hand, NATO commanders wanted to assume operational command of forces, particularly the assigned forces, as early as possible during the transition-to-war process. The transfer of authority (known colloquially as ‘chopping’) was originally specified for Reinforced Alert but was later reduced to Simple Alert, although certain nations still placed caveats on this.

Such caveats – and there were many scattered through the Alert Book – meant that when a particular measure was called it excluded a specified country, whose explicit agreement to the measure had to be obtained. Such caveats were sometimes based on national political requirements, but some were also based on practical considerations. A particular problem, for example, concerned Berlin, whose defence was a tripartite responsibility – involving only France, the UK and the USA – and did not directly involve NATO. Thus the UK, for example, placed caveats on the transfer of command of certain of its Germany-based forces, since these might have been required to implement one or other of the various contingency plans under tripartite command rather than under NATO command.
^fn3

The measures were extremely comprehensive. Within the assigned forces they involved many hundreds of actions involved in preparing for war, such as (to take but a few examples) outloading stores and munitions, the recall of people from leave and courses, the general examination of plans, preparations for the control and reception of refugees, and so on. Within national defence ministries plans were also re-examined, reservists were recalled, civil transport was requisitioned in accordance with previously prepared plans, and many other actions were set in train.

The measures went far wider than defence ministries, however, and involved action by most civil ministries as well. Transport ministries had to implement actions at airports, at ports and on the railway systems, and had to requisition transport and position it according to defence-ministry requirements. Health ministries had to take precautionary measures at hospitals and to clear ward space for wartime casualties among both military forces and the general population. Interior ministries were required to activate civil-defence plans, to place the police, gendarmerie and fire units on standby, to take over the direction of national media, and, in some countries,
to
prepare and, if necessary, to implement evacuation plans. In addition, since the administration of NATO forces remained a national responsibility, there were national plans (e.g. for US and British troops in West Germany) for such matters as closing down schools for forces’ children and repatriating civilian staff and forces’ families.

THE WARSAW PACT

The Soviet air force and the strategic rocket force were virtually fully manned at all times, and the vast majority of units were in their wartime locations. The Soviet navy, while ships in commission were well manned, still required reservists to bring crews up to war establishment and to activate ships in the reserve fleet. A major factor, however, was that in normal times the navy maintained only about 10 per cent of its active vessels at sea, which meant that a substantial number of ships and submarines would have had to leave port during a very short period to reach their wartime stations.

The combat formations and units of the land forces – by far the largest element of the Soviet military machine – were placed in three categories in peacetime: Category-A units were manned at between 75 and 110 per cent of their war establishment; Category-B at 50–70 per cent; and Category-C at 10–33 per cent. All units in the Western Group of Forces (i.e. in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland) were in Category A and were usually manned up to 100 per cent, while those in the western USSR were at slightly lower levels. Category-B units would have been available for deployment in thirty days, and Category-C units in sixty days. In very general terms the categories also reflected the equipment, with Category-A units having the latest and best equipment and Category-C the oldest and least effective, with Category-B lying somewhere in between.

Officially, in the Soviet Union mobilization had to be ordered by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, which instructed reservists to report for duty and ceased the discharge of serving conscripts until further notice. Mobilization would have been effected through the local military headquarters, which were also responsible for the local drafts and thus experienced in assembling and dispatching manpower. Similar systems were employed in the other Warsaw Pact countries by their respective governments.