Kontakt-5 [Cold war]

Oberon · 01-07-10, 06:15 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontakt-5

I was wondering how many tankers on here knew about this form of reactive armour? I've heard of ERA but never knew of its high success rate against the M829 APFSDS of the same time period and it's kind of shocked me.
For years my view on the possible 'Red Storm' scenario has been that NATO forces while being forced to fall back to the Rhine would be able to use Sabot rounds to pick off incoming Soviet armour divisions until the sheer force of Soviet numbers would threaten to overwhelm their defensive position and they'd have to fall back to the next one, fighting defensive line to defensive line until either the NATO line crumbles due to lack of supply (depending on the successes or failures of the Second Battle of the Atlantic and/or the successful completion of REFORGER prior to the conflict) or the Soviet advance falters due to over-reaching.
However, this little tidbit of info throws a rather large spanner in the works and would have robbed NATO of a vital tool in their armour divisions.
I mean, Soviet tank losses would still be high, no doubt, due to multiple conventional HEAT round impacts and careful defensive tactics, but this armour coupled with the sheer number of Soviet forces involved in the spearhead of any advance into West Germany...it would at the very least surely result in higher than expected casualties amongst NATO forces.
Kind of knocks Clancys finest work on its head somewhat, poor old SFC Mackall would have been in trouble.

What are peoples views on this? I've always been interested in the Cold War of the 1980s as it was the era I was born into, and some might argue the era in which the war had the greatest chance of happening since the Missile Crisis with the breakup of the Warsaw Pact giving the possibility for a hardline takeover in Moscow deposing Gorbachev and going to extremes to keep its territory intact. Just one scenario anyway.

I'm rambling a bit here, but I will end with a question and that is, what do people recommend for reading purposes for scenarios relating to the Soviet invasion of West Germany and the war that would result from it, I speak of novels such as 'Red Storm Rising' and 'The Third World War' by General Hackett, but ones which people here with more grounding in modern armoured warfare than I have found to be more to their understanding of the possibility of the outcome of events in that time.

01-07-10, 06:15 PM	#1
Oberon Lucky Jack Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 25,976 Downloads: 61 Uploads: 20	Kontakt-5 [Cold war] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kontakt-5 I was wondering how many tankers on here knew about this form of reactive armour? I've heard of ERA but never knew of its high success rate against the M829 APFSDS of the same time period and it's kind of shocked me. For years my view on the possible 'Red Storm' scenario has been that NATO forces while being forced to fall back to the Rhine would be able to use Sabot rounds to pick off incoming Soviet armour divisions until the sheer force of Soviet numbers would threaten to overwhelm their defensive position and they'd have to fall back to the next one, fighting defensive line to defensive line until either the NATO line crumbles due to lack of supply (depending on the successes or failures of the Second Battle of the Atlantic and/or the successful completion of REFORGER prior to the conflict) or the Soviet advance falters due to over-reaching. However, this little tidbit of info throws a rather large spanner in the works and would have robbed NATO of a vital tool in their armour divisions. I mean, Soviet tank losses would still be high, no doubt, due to multiple conventional HEAT round impacts and careful defensive tactics, but this armour coupled with the sheer number of Soviet forces involved in the spearhead of any advance into West Germany...it would at the very least surely result in higher than expected casualties amongst NATO forces. Kind of knocks Clancys finest work on its head somewhat, poor old SFC Mackall would have been in trouble. What are peoples views on this? I've always been interested in the Cold War of the 1980s as it was the era I was born into, and some might argue the era in which the war had the greatest chance of happening since the Missile Crisis with the breakup of the Warsaw Pact giving the possibility for a hardline takeover in Moscow deposing Gorbachev and going to extremes to keep its territory intact. Just one scenario anyway. I'm rambling a bit here, but I will end with a question and that is, what do people recommend for reading purposes for scenarios relating to the Soviet invasion of West Germany and the war that would result from it, I speak of novels such as 'Red Storm Rising' and 'The Third World War' by General Hackett, but ones which people here with more grounding in modern armoured warfare than I have found to be more to their understanding of the possibility of the outcome of events in that time.