Explain like i'm 5; how would NATO fight a war?

[evilchumlee]

I've been curious about this for a long time and i'm curious for something I want to write. I am by no means whatsoever any kind of military expert.

I've tried to do research online but it's not really getting me what I want to know, so if you can explain it like I have absolutely no idea... because I don't...

How would NATO fight a war? We're talking like, old-school Cold War World War style war.

How are the various national militaries integrated? Does each nation operate on their own, or is there actual integration of forces? I'm coming from a base zero here on how this works. Would soldiers from various nations be fighting directly with each other on an objective, or would national forces be organized and ordered to do individual missions?

I keep finding out alot about WHAT NATO does, but not HOW it actually works.

I would appreciate any enlightenment.

 

[LordsFire]

There are people much more qualified to me to speak on the issue of 'how the different nations militaries work together,' so I'll mostly leave that for others. The one thing I'll say about it, is that it's more 'units alongside' rather than 'units of mixed forces.' You might have the Brits defending Hill A to your left, and the Americans defending Hill B to your right, but you generally won't have two separate forces trying for the same objective.

On the larger issue, the main principle is Asymmetrical Warfare.

You don't try to fight the enemy strength to strength. If they have a ton of infantry, you send in the tanks. If they have a lot of anti-armor, you bomb it to bits. If they have a lot of anti-air, you hit them with conventional artillery. If they have a lot of conventional artillery too, you use extremely expensive stealth bombs to blow up the enemy AA, then use your air power to blow up their artillery, then use your artillery and air power to pound them flat.

This combines with a philosophy of 'quality over quantity,' at least in comparison to other (primarily Soviet-descended) militaries, but then also having enough money so you can have both.

Your rifleman should have more range time and better training than the enemy's, so he'll win in a straight fight. He should also have artillery and air support so he doesn't need to give the enemy a straight fight. Your aircraft are better, the missiles they fire are better, your ships are better, your tanks are better, your artillery is better...

Basically, outperform the enemy in every and any possible regard, hit him in ways he can't, or can't easily, hit back, and protect your manpower as much as reasonably possible.

One of the huge advantages NATO historically has, is that because the nation's civilian leadership does not need to fear a coup from the military, there's no threshold of 'any more than this and they're too competent, and might overthrow me.' This is an enormous advantage, on top of having drastically less (but certainly not no) issues with graft and corruption


To put it all another way, NATO soldiers are going to be better trained than any enemy they reasonably can expect to fight, have a full suite of tactical/support options to throw at the enemy until they find something the enemy doesn't have a good counter to. If the enemy actually does have a counter to all the 'standard' options (anti-armor, counter-battery artillery, anti-drone weapons, anti-air weapons, etc), then NATO just pull out the super-expensive version they can't counter, and uses that to smack a hole in enemy coverage, which more cost-effective options then exploit.

 

[Husky_Khan]

I've been curious about this for a long time and i'm curious for something I want to write. I am by no means whatsoever any kind of military expert.

I've tried to do research online but it's not really getting me what I want to know, so if you can explain it like I have absolutely no idea... because I don't...

How would NATO fight a war? We're talking like, old-school Cold War World War style war.

How are the various national militaries integrated? Does each nation operate on their own, or is there actual integration of forces? I'm coming from a base zero here on how this works. Would soldiers from various nations be fighting directly with each other on an objective, or would national forces be organized and ordered to do individual missions?

I keep finding out alot about WHAT NATO does, but not HOW it actually works.

I would appreciate any enlightenment.

NATO Forces would be divided by nationality for the most part, similar to how it was with World War Two on the Western Front if you are talking about strict organization. So there were Dutch, Belgian, West German, British, French and American sections to defend in case of Soviet Attack.

There was basically NORTHAG which would defend the North German Plain and CENTAG which would defend the Central Area including the famous Fulda Gap. Regardless CENTAG was seen as more defensible, so naturally the Americans with their far more powerful and more unified forces would've defended that area to show how good they were.

NorthAg from North to South consisted of the 1st Dutch Corps, 1 German Corps, 1st British Corps and the 1st Belgian Corps under the overall command of the British through the British Army of the Rhine. So basically four Corps from four different nations under British command.

CentAg would've consisted of the II and III German Corps and the V and VII American Corps under the command of the Americans through the US Seventh Army. Two German and two American Corps with far more combat power then the NorthAg over more defensible terrain under American Command.

Then there was the French who withdrew from NATO Military Command but likely would've come in from the Southwest ideally placed to reinforce... Central and Southern Germany along with more US forces (and others) from the Continent if the conflict lasted that long.

Plus you likely would've have Greek and Turkish Operations (working together imagine that) in the south against Bulgaria and in the Black Sea, and maybe the Italians and NATO forces in southern Europe and whatnot fiddling about in Austria (while Austria was neutral it was largely assumed Austria would be on the side of NATO since it would be the Soviets attacking).

Denmark meanwhile would be preoccupied with a potential amphibious invasion of their islands and Denmark proper by swarms of amphibous/swimming Warsaw Pact AFV's. The United States Marine Corps meanwhile would've likely been used in Scandinavia to pester the Russians up north, as well as protect Norway and Denmark and Iceland and Greenland and the like instead of fighting in the desert for forty years as per OTL.

Cold War NATO Army Groups

www.globalsecurity.org

There have been wargames published on this made available on the internet, but I can't find any atm.

Back to West Germany, even though each Corps was under a different national country, it still wasn't quite that simple. For example there would've been Canadian formations operating under British or American command and when reinforcements come, you could very well see French (and Spanish) units moving into Centag or Northag and thus American or British command respectively. So at a Brigade and Division level, you'd have separate national units, but at a Corps and greater level, a unified Commander.

 

[Zachowon]

We still operate om that command to this day when doing join

 

[evilchumlee]

Ok, so I think I get it the grand scheme that anything below Brigade or Division level will be a single national force. You're not going to have a mixed-nationality platoon or squad.

Once you hit corps level, forces could become more integrated.

Now let me ask this. Let's say this war goes on for quite some time and forces all around are getting strained. At what point, if ever, might we see lower units become mixed? Could things get to the point that manpower is running so low or whatever logistical issues are going on would cause a mixed company? Or platoon? Is there any scenario where you might well end up with a mixed nationality squad?

 

[Husky_Khan]

Ok, so I think I get it the grand scheme that anything below Brigade or Division level will be a single national force. You're not going to have a mixed-nationality platoon or squad.

Once you hit corps level, forces could become more integrated.

Now let me ask this. Let's say this war goes on for quite some time and forces all around are getting strained. At what point, if ever, might we see lower units become mixed? Could things get to the point that manpower is running so low or whatever logistical issues are going on would cause a mixed company? Or platoon? Is there any scenario where you might well end up with a mixed nationality squad?

In the Ralph Peters book Red Army which actually depicts a more successful Russian offensive towards the Rhine River and done from a Soviet point of view, it has Russian Airborne forces dropped behind enemy lines in West Germany engaging in combat with mixed units consisting of reinforcing British infantry coordinating (with some difficulty) with West German tanks. So such things could happen right off the bat to be honest since units could just get mixed up especially at the beginning of a sudden conflict.

 

[evilchumlee]

In the Ralph Peters book Red Army which actually depicts a more successful Russian offensive towards the Rhine River and done from a Soviet point of view, it has Russian Airborne forces dropped behind enemy lines in West Germany engaging in combat with mixed units consisting of reinforcing British infantry coordinating (with some difficulty) with West German tanks. So such things could happen right off the bat to be honest since units could just get mixed up especially at the beginning of a sudden conflict.

That makes sense. So something of a "there IS a solid plan", but also war is confusing and sometimes you can't plan for everything, so... as long as you're on the same side, we can potentially make it work.

 

[Marduk]

Ok, so I think I get it the grand scheme that anything below Brigade or Division level will be a single national force. You're not going to have a mixed-nationality platoon or squad.

Once you hit corps level, forces could become more integrated.

Now let me ask this. Let's say this war goes on for quite some time and forces all around are getting strained. At what point, if ever, might we see lower units become mixed? Could things get to the point that manpower is running so low or whatever logistical issues are going on would cause a mixed company? Or platoon? Is there any scenario where you might well end up with a mixed nationality squad?

There are multinational battalion battle groups right now, with individual countries providing companies or even single platoons or squads for smallest ones.

NATO Enhanced Forward Presence - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[The Whispering Monk]

That makes sense. So something of a "there IS a solid plan", but also war is confusing and sometimes you can't plan for everything, so... as long as you're on the same side, we can potentially make it work.

War is chaos. It's gonna happen that units will get absorbed by other nationalities due to everything from units sent to the wrong place to battle damage.

 

[evilchumlee]

There are multinational battalion battle groups right now, with individual countries providing companies or even single platoons or squads for smallest ones.

NATO Enhanced Forward Presence - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ok! That's almost exactly the type of thing I was looking for.