Alternate History World War III: 1988, aka "The War of '88"

[Tiamat]

You Americans are so proud in your castles, arrogantly casting your shadow across the world as you starve the masses and fill your fat capitalist bellies with the riches that so deservedly belong to the proletariat. Do you think us to be blind? Does the world not know of your imperialist aggression against the people of Mexico? Your slaughter of the heroic Cubans, Libyans, Sandinistas, and yes, even of our fellow Soviet brothers in arms? Your jackboot fascist Nazi dreams of imperial ambition upon the proletariat of the world?

Let this quote from Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice", something you decadent bourgeois are familiar with, illustrate what we mean.

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

Our revolutionary brothers and sisters continue to grow, and to train, and to prepare for the eventful day.

Your day is coming, capitalists of America. Your empire will burn.

---Anonymous note delivered to U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy, January 12, 1988, 1st Anniversary of the U.S. Invasion of Mexico.
The source of the note, while remaining unknown, was attributed to the radical leftist terrorist group Red Brigades.

The note followed reports and rumors of a number of terrorist groups including the Red Brigades, Red Army Faction, Action Direct, Revolutionary Cells, 17 November Group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Shining Path, and Japanese Red Army among others having begun to scale back their attacks for unknown reasons.

 

[Tiamat]

So....as it turns out, the F-117 Nighthawk may have undergone experimentation to have a limited air-to-air capability. 😮

"F-117s Had An Air-To-Air Capability With Secondary Mission To Shoot Down Soviet AWACS" Former Stealth Pilot Says

A former Stealth Jet pilot provided some details about a previously unknown role of the F-117 during a recent interview at the Fighter Pilot Podcast. And

theaviationist.com

Read the link and judge for yourself. And yes, there is a reason I'm bringing this up, but I won't say anymore to avoid spoilers.

 

[Yuzuriha]

F-117 Nighthawk may have undergone experimentation to have a limited air-to-air capability.

Reading the link and the comment from Tyler, I'm skeptical it had actual practical value.
Since an Aim 9M is relatively short range which may be close enough for it to be detected by the Soviet AWACS. It could of swing either way though.

 

[Tiamat]

Reading the link and the comment from Tyler, I'm skeptical it had actual practical value.
Since an Aim 9M is relatively short range which may be close enough for it to be detected by the Soviet AWACS. It could of swing either way though.

I admit, the capacity for an air-to-air role would be limited with mainly the AIM-9, but it would grant it that capability regardless. If they were indeed exploring this capability, it would ironically not be unlike a few scenes Tom Clancy wrote in his novel "Red Storm Rising" (which was written in 1983, no less) where a fictional U.S. stealth aircraft is used to down the Soviet's Mainstay AWACS in several key areas allowing the US and NATO air forces to launch raids into the Soviet rear.

For it to be successfully used against IL-76 Mainstays, it would require some skill by the pilots and direction by friendly AWACS assets, but I think it could be done. Preferably at night of course, daylight would be too dangerous. Night attacks were usually preferred for the Nighthawks, hence the camo scheme, and the name.

IMO it would not surprise me at all if this capability were indeed built into the F-117 aircraft in this timeline, as an upgrade package and/or built-in with further F-117 batch orders...

 

[Tiamat]

Hope to have the next chapter "Red Room" up soon.

In the meantime...here's another Soviet design that may be giving some NATO tankers nightmares in the coming war...

"Object 490" prototype tank with 152mm cannon...now that's a big gun.

 

[Evilutionary]

Hope to have the next chapter "Red Room" up soon.

In the meantime...here's another Soviet design that may be giving some NATO tankers nightmares in the coming war...

I vaguely remember reading about this oddball a long time ago but iirc it had a lot of technical problems that the Soviets were not up to solving. More of a testbed to try to stay on the curve for the next generation of tanks rather (using the 'build a little, test a lot design philosophy') but even without looking I'm sure that turret was a engineering nightmare (especially for an early 80s tank).

<google> Yup, while it had a powerful engine for it's weight and an couple new armor advances it never fired a shot because of the turret challenges (honestly given from what I remember I doubt the US could get a similar system that worked reliably either even with piles of cash to throw at the problem). The 490A used a 125mm main gun in the external turret as a side note.

 

[Tiamat]

I vaguely remember reading about this oddball a long time ago but iirc it had a lot of technical problems that the Soviets were not up to solving. More of a testbed to try to stay on the curve for the next generation of tanks rather (using the 'build a little, test a lot design philosophy') but even without looking I'm sure that turret was a engineering nightmare (especially for an early 80s tank).

<google> Yup, while it had a powerful engine for it's weight and an couple new armor advances it never fired a shot because of the turret challenges (honestly given from what I remember I doubt the US could get a similar system that worked reliably either even with piles of cash to throw at the problem). The 490A used a 125mm main gun in the external turret as a side note.

I will admit, the Soviets had some rather neat ideas. Their execution of said neat ideas, on the other hand...kind of hit and miss.

From what I read they originally planned a 125mm gun for the main cannon but decided if they were going to produce it, it would be upscaled to a 152mm cannon they had supposedly been toying with instead. And with the screwy and complicated engineering involved with this design it’s likely there won’t be many of this particular beast fielded, perhaps no more than 100 total by the end of the war.

 

[Aaron Fox]

I will admit, the Soviets had some rather neat ideas. Their execution of said neat ideas, on the other hand...kind of hit and miss.

From what I read they originally planned a 125mm gun for the main cannon but decided if they were going to produce it, it would be upscaled to a 152mm cannon they had supposedly been toying with instead. And with the screwy and complicated engineering involved with this design it’s likely there won’t be many of this particular beast fielded, perhaps no more than 100 total by the end of the war.

The reason that a 152mm cannon would be chosen is that... we're hitting the upper limit with current propellant technology. Quite literally. At the end of the day, there isn't much you can do with current smokeless propellant tech to increase gun power outside, well, making the guns bigger thanks to chemistry and physics. That is why the USN was pouring money into its ETC program towards the end of the Cold War: the propellants aren't simply good enough for what is being demanded of them. If you want to push the rounds to a point where they break 2km/s+ reliably, you'll have to crack out the ETC propellants.

That is why you've been hearing a lot of 'is it time to up gun the tanks?' arguments flying around in the tank world right now... because we simply can't get more out of our gun propellants. We're hitting the ceiling as it were. With ETC technology still brand spanking new and been largely languishing since the ETC program was shut down in the '90s...

 

[Tiamat]

Sorry for the delay folks, have had quite a busy month, but things are a bit more manageable now. Hope to have the next chapter up soon. In the meantime, here's a quote that should give a hint about the next upcoming piece:


"The Moscow Special Academy for Women? Ah yes...that is what they liked to innocently call it, like so many lies, though the title itself was more of an obfuscation. It was indeed a state-sponsored academy, for women. But we would know it as the Red Room. They would take their best, their brightest and beautiful, like I was, I suppose, to this place...and they would train us. Not to simply be productive women of the proletariat, no....no, far more. We were to become weapons...the tip of the spear, but the one unseen. Not just the blade in the dark, no....but the woman you see that smiles and bats her eyelashes at you, who you fall hopelessly in love with...before she draws her blade and cuts your throat. And...to achieve that, they did things to us....they get inside your mind, you see? They poke, and prod...and poke...and they make you do things...and you learn to....to like it....I...I'm sorry, can I stop for a minute, please...?"

- Interview with Subject # BW6237, conducted by Central Intelligence Agency HUMINT interrogation team, January 23, 1989.
Subject # BW6237 was one of a handful of former KGB "Widow" operatives that managed to defect during the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the '88 War.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Given how bad they are with the economy, I really gotta wonder how they manage to make such good assassins and secret agents

 

[Aaron Fox]

Given how bad they are with the economy, I really gotta wonder how they manage to make such good assassins and secret agents

Because 1) Stalin kept killing/Gulag'ing the actual experts and thus left him with only party leaders (Trotsky and Stalin were going to do the same thing, it's just that Trotsky was going to have the State take a more hands-off approach to the economy and leave it to the experts... as long as they were loyal to the cause and don't do anything 'stupid') and 2) the Russian Empire was one of the kings of espionage, particularly HUMINT, and the Bolsheviks took as many of them as possible (this, alongside the Bolsheviks controlling the royal tea warehouses and allowing the old Imperial officer corps that sided with them to train their army, allowed them certainty in the Civil War) and those former Imperial agents built what would become the Soviet intelligence apparatus which ran circles around everyone else.

 

[ATP]

Because 1) Stalin kept killing/Gulag'ing the actual experts and thus left him with only party leaders (Trotsky and Stalin were going to do the same thing, it's just that Trotsky was going to have the State take a more hands-off approach to the economy and leave it to the experts... as long as they were loyal to the cause and don't do anything 'stupid') and 2) the Russian Empire was one of the kings of espionage, particularly HUMINT, and the Bolsheviks took as many of them as possible (this, alongside the Bolsheviks controlling the royal tea warehouses and allowing the old Imperial officer corps that sided with them to train their army, allowed them certainty in the Civil War) and those former Imperial agents built what would become the Soviet intelligence apparatus which ran circles around everyone else.

That.And they had tons of useful idiots, which after coming to soviets told fairy tales about happy soviet people.
For example,Wallace in 1945 saw Gulag in Magadan /without security towers/ with NKWD thugs cosplaing as happy prisoners, and said about that in USA.Others lied about Holodomor,or 1937 purges.
If you see Hollywood films about soviets made during WW2,you would die from laugh.

 

[Typhonis]

Like the series Why We Fight. No mention whatsoever about the Soviet invasion of Finland in the series only how the Soviets were our friends while we fought the Nazi's and Japanese.

 

[Tiamat]

Like the series Why We Fight. No mention whatsoever about the Soviet invasion of Finland in the series only how the Soviets were our friends while we fought the Nazi's and Japanese.

On that note...Finland may not be able to stay neutral for long in the upcoming war when certain events come into play...and the Japanese SDF may find themselves rather busy too...

 

[MelancholicMechanicus]

That.And they had tons of useful idiots, which after coming to soviets told fairy tales about happy soviet people.
For example,Wallace in 1945 saw Gulag in Magadan /without security towers/ with NKWD thugs cosplaing as happy prisoners, and said about that in USA.Others lied about Holodomor,or 1937 purges.
If you see Hollywood films about soviets made during WW2,you would die from laugh.

Like that one movie saying the Stalin Purges were made up by Nazi and Japanese Diplomats to slander the USSR, man the shit they did to work together in WW2.

 

[Typhonis]

"China has never launched a war of Conquest" Why We Fight. Wartime propaganda at it's best.

 

[Tiamat]

Well...without getting too in-depth, I personally consider this particular paraphrase of another famous quote my personal viewpoint in regards to geopolitics:

"The Enemy of My Enemy...is my Enemy's Enemy. No more, and no less."

 

[Kujo]

"The Enemy of My Enemy...is my Enemy's Enemy. No more, and no less."

is pragmatic and mostly true, the overtly paranoid in me prefers:

"The Enemy of my Enemy may not be my Enemy today, but they will surely be my foe if not in the morning then by the next day!"

US/UK lend-lease to the Soviet Union showed this in spades! If we had only kept those supplies and equipment with the WEST, the fascist and communist blood shed would of been vastly more and yet the world would of been a better place as the two most evil LEFTIST Ideologies would of to paraphrase Falkenhayn "would of bled white".

Patton would of been at Lwow by the time the Soviets would of secured Kiev, the Soviets would have battalions in place of divisions (and most would be at 50% or less strength) while the Wehrmacht would be regiments in place of corps. With Monty and Bradley being at least neutral George could of ended the Leftists once and for all... Charity to evil is still enabling evil (see China).

Don't think the West under Reagan will have these issue in this story, can't wait until the next chapter!!!

 

[Aaron Fox]

is pragmatic and mostly true, the overtly paranoid in me prefers:

"The Enemy of my Enemy may not be my Enemy today, but they will surely be my foe if not in the morning then by the next day!"

US/UK lend-lease to the Soviet Union showed this in spades! If we had only kept those supplies and equipment with the WEST, the fascist and communist blood shed would of been vastly more and yet the world would of been a better place as the two most evil LEFTIST Ideologies would of to paraphrase Falkenhayn "would of bled white".

Patton would of been at Lwow by the time the Soviets would of secured Kiev, the Soviets would have battalions in place of divisions (and most would be at 50% or less strength) while the Wehrmacht would be regiments in place of corps. With Monty and Bradley being at least neutral George could of ended the Leftists once and for all... Charity to evil is still enabling evil (see China).

Don't think the West under Reagan will have these issue in this story, can't wait until the next chapter!!!

Wow, that speaks of some serious ignorance in logistics. If Lend-Lease wasn't a thing, the Soviets would be forced to split their industry to cover the lack of logistics which includes locomotives. I kid you not, Lend-Lease included locomotives which are an outright requirement for the USSR to utilize its industrial capabilities it retained to the fullest.

You forget it was the US railroads that ensured that the arsenal of democracy was not only getting the raw materials needed for the factories to said factories, but it also ensured that the products of those factories get used be intermediate materials like armor, powders, cases, and projectiles or finished products like canned food, ammunition, spare parts, and vehicles of all sorts. Without that... well... the Germans would have retained Ukraine and the West would have to fight far stiffer resistance.

It didn't help that the West fueled the paranoia of the USSR during the Civil War nor did having someone like Stalin in charge.

 

[ATP]

Well...without getting too in-depth, I personally consider this particular paraphrase of another famous quote my personal viewpoint in regards to geopolitics:

"The Enemy of My Enemy...is my Enemy's Enemy. No more, and no less."

As far as i knew, that was words of Cortez when his lieutnant told him ,that Tlaxallan are their allies against Aztecs.
Back to topic - Poland was commie state,and except sending 2 armies to Germany,we would also send our entire fleet and marine troops to take Denmark.
Poor sods, USA troops there would sink most of them.