During the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization faced its greatest threat in what is now peaceful central Germany. And just like the South Korean government, NATO was politically committed to a preclusive defense in geographic circumstances that would have favored a far more elastic defense.

 

In a retrospective view of the situation at the level of theater strategy, we would see the eastern edge of the Federal Republic ("West Germany") extending from the Baltic coast all the way south to Austria. For some 625 miles, the border would divide East Germany and Czechoslovakia, at the time both basing areas for the Soviet army. Upon mobilization, as units of the Belgian, British, Canadian, Dutch, German, and American armies would move out of their barracks and bases to deploy into their assigned positions, NATO's "central front" would acquire a physical form. We would see not a solid line with units stationed shoulder to shoulder but rather a series of deployments of men, vehicles, and weapons within a band of territory running from north to south.

 

Roughly one-third of NATO's tank and mechanized formations (the "covering forces") would have advanced to within a few miles from the border, with the rest kept some distance behind. Even though the front held by the covering forces would not follow each twist and turn of the border, it would still be stretched out over some 600 miles. In addition, at least the low-lying tracts of the border with neutral Austria would also have to be protected, because Soviet invasion forces from Hungary could pass up the Danube valley quite quickly.

 

We can now finally dispose of the missile-infantry proposal. Given the length of the frontage that the Alliance was committed to protect, we can immediately understand why a frontal defense by missile troops would have been very weak, even if elaborately shielded by properly overwatched barriers. For we discover that in those narrow sectors of the front where the two sides would actually collide in combat, the antitank missiles would be greatly outnumbered by Soviet armored vehicles, even though the missiles were so much cheaper.

 

As matters stood during the last two decades of the Cold War, more than 10,000 tanks, an even larger number of infantry combat vehicles, much self-propelled artillery, and all manner of support units could attack from a standing start from East Germany and Czechoslovakia, with much greater forces moving up behind them from Poland and the Soviet Union.' That great mass of vehicles would not of course be distributed evenly from north to south opposite every segment of the front, but instead be concentrated into four or five vectors of advance, each moving westward in a phalanx as broad as the terrain would allow. Some might be constricted into an approach as narrow as a two-lane road, while others might advance on a width of as much as ten miles. But summing all the vectors and the width of every phalanx, Soviet armor would still be attacking only a fraction of the entire 600-mile line. Thus even if a huge force of missile troops were raised, with tens of thousands of launchers, Soviet armor rolling forward would easily outnumber them in every combat encounter.

 

The arithmetic of attrition must therefore guarantee defeat. It cannot be otherwise when the number of missile launchers must be distributed to cover all the frontage, while invading armored forces attack in concentrated force? Of course the missile troops could also be concentrated, in fact they could outconcentrate the invasion columns, if they were mobile enough. But that cannot be done just by supplying trucks to transport them up and down the front along the border patrol roads, because any movements that far forward would be much too vulnerable to artillery fires. It can only be done by keeping the bulk of the missile troops in wait at rearward crossroads, ready to rush forward on their trucks to reinforce sectors of the front under attack. Incapable of cross-country movement and thus road-bound, motorized missile troops in transit would be highly vulnerable to air attack and quite unable to move forward against the artillery fires running ahead of each invading phalanx. Helicopters could assure an even faster response. Enough of them could allow the missile troops to outconcentrate the invasion columns every time, but that is no longer the cheap alternative originally proposed — and why carry missile troops with antitank launchers anyway, when helicopters can have their own missiles without need of troops to launch them? In either case, those most fragile of aircraft would be highly vulnerable to the antiaircraft weapons that accompany armored forces and to the descending curtains of artillery fire of a large-scale offensive.