As early as World War II, the Soviet army had already fought with the "Steel Torrent". On the vast plains of Eastern Europe, millions of Soviet troops used the "Guards Tank Division" as their fist to defeat the German Central and Southern Army Groups.

Whenever the Soviet army is talked about, most people will use the term "steel torrent" to describe this army.

As early as the World War II period, the Soviet army had already fought with the "Steel Torrent". On the vast plains of Eastern Europe, millions of Soviet troops used the "Guards Tank Division" as their fist to defeat the German Central and Southern Army Groups.

But World War II is far from modern times after all. It was the Soviet Union’s 1981 “Western Military Exercise” that truly engraved the “Steel Torrent” in the minds of modern people.

"Western" military exercise, now commonly known as "81 Military Exercise", this military exercise has set many records. It is the largest military exercise in human history, and it is also a large-scale military mobilization in Europe during the Cold War era. Western Europe Almost faced the "unification" from Warsaw Pact .

The scale of the "81 Military Exercise" is unprecedented. It is known as "the Soviet Union's last punch to the West before its disintegration."

Hundreds of thousands of troops were mobilized for this military exercise. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Strategic Rocket Force worked together. With NATO as the imaginary enemy in Eastern Europe, they practiced the war in which the Soviet army broke through West Germany and controlled Western Europe.

The commander of this military exercise is Marshal Ogarkov, who is known as the "Father of Human Information War".

During the "81 Military Exercise", the Soviet Union invited the whole world to visit. NATO military attaches looked at the endless tanks , armored vehicles , and self-propelled guns. They were all sweating for the weak Western European countries. This Soviet Union This high-profile "greeting" makes NATO sleepless and sleepless.

So in 1981, the Soviet Union was deeply involved in the Afghan War. Why did the Soviet army organize this grand exercise? What kind of strength did this exercise show of the Soviet army? How have countries around the world responded to this?

1. The world isolates the Soviet Union, Brezhnev wants to give the United States a beating

Eastern philosophy has the philosophy that "the greatest prosperity must decline". Before a regime collapses, it often has to turn from prosperity to decline.

But it is different from what everyone imagines. In the 1970s and 1980s before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union not only did not "decline", but instead spent its most glorious period after the founding of the People's Republic of China.

Because of the two oil crises , the Soviet Union, as an oil-producing country, made a lot of money, and its foreign exchange increased for more than ten consecutive years.

html The Cold War situation in the 170s was "the Soviet Union attacked the United States and defended it." The Soviet Union was extremely rich. There were "lights and telephones upstairs and downstairs" in the country. Most Soviet people had two houses. They worked in the city during the week and went to wooden houses in the countryside on the weekends. Vacation.

At the same time, the Soviet Union was also actively planning a global offensive, allowing the Soviet army to compete with the United States for global hegemony.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry was working as a strategic advisor to the Department of Defense at the time. He predicted that if the Soviet Union continued to expand like this, it would expand militarily within 10 years.

Therefore, during this period, the United States engaged in diplomacy everywhere, made friends, and established good relations with China. It even wanted to attract China to join NATO.

htmlIn the late 1700s, under the leadership of "Good Man Carter", the diplomatic relations between the parties in the Cold War were once very harmonious. However, in 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan at the end of the year, destroying the balance between East and West.

Afghanistan is known as the "Crossroad of Asia". During the Cold War, it was one of the front lines of the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. To the north of Afghanistan was the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, while to the south were the followers of the United States.

html In the 170s, the United States and the Soviet Union supported their own forces in Afghanistan, both intending to control this crossroads, but they also maintained a balance in the cold confrontation.

However, the Soviet Union did not send a message to any country when it invaded Afghanistan. With this attack, major countries including China and the United States felt the crisis.

At that time, the Soviet Union's conventional military power could challenge NATO alone. If nuclear weapons were included, the whole world combined might not necessarily be able to match the Soviet Red Army. Countries felt that "military struggle" with the Soviet Union was unrealistic, so they unanimously decided to "civilian struggle".

In 1980, because the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan was contrary to the "purpose of the Olympic Games," the United States, Japan, Germany, and Britain took the lead, and more than 60 countries around the world boycotted the Moscow Olympics.

This move once disgraced the Soviet Union, because the Soviets attached great importance to the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The whole country had been busy for several years, and the people were looking forward to the Olympics day and night.

The Soviet government also spent billions of dollars to build stadiums, roads, landmark buildings, and high-end hotels. As a result, dozens of the most important countries did not come, resulting in this Olympics having the smallest number of people after the war. There were more reporters than athletes in attendance.

The Soviet people, and even the entire Warsaw Pact, couldn't help but wonder: Has the Soviet Union been abandoned by the world? How did Comrade Brezhnev get the country into this state?

Once people have a crisis of trust , a chain reaction will occur.

In 1980, Poland was the first to cause trouble. There was a workers' strike, which caused the resignation of national politicians.

In view of the domestic and international situation , Comrade Brezhnev ordered the Soviet army to hold military exercises in 1981, with the intention of knocking on the mountain and shaking the tiger, giving NATO a little color, and stabilizing the hearts of Eastern Europeans at home.

2. "Such an army is invincible"

In September 1981, the Soviet Union carried out a large-scale military exercise code-named "West", simulating a deep raid into Western Europe. The exercise areas were Belarus , the Baltic Sea coast in the western part of the Soviet Union, and the Central Europe Poland and East Germany.

During the exercise, the Soviet army dispatched a total of 120,000 people from the army, navy, air force and missile force as the main attack. The armies of Warsaw Pact Poland, Czech , East Germany and other countries cooperated with the Soviet troops stationed in Germany. More than 300,000 people participated in the entire operation.

81 military exercise is a confrontation exercise. The " Red Army " attacks from east to west, defeats the "Blue Army" playing the role of NATO army, and strives to win the English Channel within a week.

Before the military exercises began, the Soviet government sent an invitation to all foreign envoys in the Soviet Union, asking the ambassadors to bring observers and reporters to visit the exercises.

Except for the confidentiality of the missile units, other weapons and equipment of the Soviet army were photographed casually.

html On September 4th, the Soviet army set up its posture. The mechanized infantry regiments and tank units of the Soviet Army alone were equipped with more than 4,000 tanks and armored vehicles. The Soviet T64, T72, and T80 three-generation main battle tanks all appeared, and the BTR80 armored vehicle also appeared for the first time. .

The reporters’ cameras swept across the several-kilometer-long phalanx of armored troops. The Soviet army’s “iron torrent” frightened observers from various countries. These videos are still being circulated on the Internet to this day.

The T80 tank was the most powerful main battle tank in the world at the time. Its appearance put pressure on the German Leopard 2, and West Germany had to continue to improve the Leopard.

The Soviet army's tactics for this exercise were different from those in the past. Under the military reform led by Marshal Ogarkov, the Soviet army took the lead in carrying out the "synthetic army" reform:

In this exercise, armored forces, , artillery, and aviation , airborne troops, and missile troops work together. One unit is a battle cluster with extremely strong offensive capabilities, which attracts the attention of military attachés from various countries.

On the first day of the exercise, the Soviet army dispatched thousands of heavy artillery and rocket launchers to bombard the imaginary "border line" and destroy the enemy's permanent fortifications.

Subsequently, the Air Force dispatched MiG-23, MiG-25 and other "frontline fighters" to control the airspace.

After several hours of air combat, the Soviet army sent MiG-27, Su-22, Su-24 and other "attack aircraft" to fly over the front line to attack the enemy's ground armored forces.

After this step is completed, within a range of hundreds of kilometers, no one except the enemy's stragglers can pose a threat to the Soviet ground troops.

At this time, the mighty "Steel Torrent" set off. 40,000 Soviet infantrymen rode in armored vehicles and followed the tank attack, cooperating with Army Aviation armed helicopters to annihilate NATO ground troops.

At the same time, the Soviet missile force opened its nuclear arsenal and began to conduct tactical nuclear strikes against more than 140 simulated NATO military units, including US military bases, missile positions, underground command centers, etc.

Because the Soviet armored forces have all been equipped with "three defense" facilities, even if one's own nuclear bomb explodes and creates a radiation zone, the Soviet army's "steel torrent" can rush through the area within a few hours and pursue the enemy in depth.

In the first three days, the "Red Army" had basically eliminated the effective strength of the "Blue Army". According to the simulation data, NATO could only hold out in West Germany for 5 days before the Soviet army reached the English Channel.

But the Soviet army was not proud. The military exercise headquarters assumed: "The Soviet ground forces were delayed, the Baltic Fleet was dispatched, and the navy was forced to assault the enemy's coastline and land on the beach."

Subsequently, the cruiser of the Baltic Fleet , guided missile destroyers , and aircraft-carrying cruisers suppressed the enemy forces on the shore with firepower. 3 Marine regiments and 1 airborne division landed behind the enemy and cooperated with the army to win the battle.

The entire exercise was recorded by a TV station, and the broadcast equipment was a high-definition broadcast truck prepared for the Olympics.

Afterwards, the Soviet Union edited the military exercise into a documentary "This Army Is Invincible", which was played on a loop throughout the Warsaw Pact, which temporarily improved the image of the Soviet army.

3. The United States accelerates information revolution , and China holds the "North China Military Exercise"

At the end of the exercise, "Backfire" bombers opened the way, creating a channel for the T80 tanks of the Guards Tank Division, simulating the blockade of the Netherlands. region, and then the exercise was declared successful.

After the successful conclusion of the exercise, the Soviet army and other Warsaw Pact troops conducted military parades in Poland and the Soviet Union. Brezhnev wanted to deter the "rightists" in Poland and tell them that the core of the Soviet Union was still staring at Poland.

During the eight-day exercise, the Soviet army had real guns and live ammunition. Warsaw Pact countries watched the broadcast on TV, and the NATO military kept an eye on Eastern Europe 24 hours a day. The NATO countries were afraid that the Soviet Union would attack if not careful and directly bulldoze Western Europe.

According to NATO calculations, if the Soviet Union attacked Western Europe on the scale of the "81 Military Exercise", West Germany would fall in 3-5 days under the condition of France's conditional neutrality.

After that, NATO changed its tactics against the Soviet Union and gave up ground combat with the Soviet Union. If West Germany fell one day, Britain and the United States would directly launch more than 100 nuclear bombs to the front line, and a nuclear war would directly break out between the two sides.

The "Western" exercise was a complete success. The US White House think tanks also wiped their sweat. The Department of Defense reported to President Reagan that according to the Soviet Union's style of play, the US military forces in Europe would be completely annihilated. West Germany fell within 5 days, and within 8 days Soviet troops occupied Europe.

After that, Reagan also began to think about ways for the United States to overtake in corners, and finally came up with the " Star Wars Project " to fool the Soviet Union.

Secretly, Reagan asked the US military to strengthen information reform, learn from the Soviet Union's Ogarkov theory, and transform the US military.

In the East, the Chinese government also responded to the Soviet Union's "Western" military exercises.

The Chinese government decided to hold military exercises in 1980, but the scale of the plan at that time was not large. After seeing the Soviet Union's "Western" military exercises in 1981, Comrade Xiaoping and other leaders decided to expand the scale of the military exercises and allow the entire People's Liberation Army in North China to conduct a "big military training."

On September 14, 1981, just two days after the Soviet military exercise ended, the People's Liberation Army held a military exercise in Hebei.

This military exercise was carried out by the Beijing Military Region, with hundreds of thousands of troops dispatched. The Air Force, Army, and Second Artillery Co., Ltd. worked together. The Army dispatched one army plus more than 20 regiments, the Air Force two aviation teams and three airborne regiments.The exercise used more than 1,300 tanks and armored vehicles, more than 21,500 artillery pieces of various types, more than 2,470 fighter jets and bombers, and tens of thousands of cars.

The simulation state of this exercise is very "delicate". As one side of the exercise, the "Blue Army" uses bombers to drop nuclear bombs to clear the way, and then the armored cluster goes south to launch an assault on the heart of North China, seizing strategic points along the Yellow River and controlling the Central Plains region.

Before this exercise, some people commented that "the PLA military exercises seemed to be tit for tat with the Soviet Union." They were afraid of irritating the Soviet Union and suggested that Comrade Xiaoping reduce the scale.

But Comrade Xiaoping made the final decision: "If you want to exercise, the scale must be large so that it can play the role of training troops."

Starting from September 14, the People's Liberation Army will first attack with the "Blue Army", and then the "Red Army" will occupy traffic arteries and towns. Defend and counterattack, pushing the enemy back with air support.

In the five days before and after this exercise, various departments of the People's Liberation Army worked closely together, and both new and old troops were trained, accumulating experience in coordinated operations among the services.

The United States also observed China's military exercises. Afterwards, the US military believed that although the weapons and equipment of the Chinese army are relatively poor, the quality of the soldiers is relatively high, and there are grassroots commanders who have been tested in actual combat. Their combat effectiveness cannot be underestimated.

Text/Shang Xueye

References:

1, "Fearing NATO, the Soviet "West-81" exercise swept across the European continent in 8 days", Kong Lingjuan

2, "Recalling the 1981 North China Military Exercise", Li Xiang, Zou Weirong