Red Storm Rising
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Image:Red storm rising.jpg Red Storm Rising is a 1986 techno-thriller novel by Tom Clancy and Larry Bond about a third world war in Europe between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces, set around the mid-1980s, probably in 1986 or 1987. Though there are other novels dealing with a fictional World War III, this one is notable for the way in which numerous settings for the action - from Atlantic convoy duty to shooting down reconnaissance satellites to tank battles in Germany - all have an integral part to play on the outcome. This one of two novels that has no association with Clancy's others, as it does not fall in the Ryanverse.
Azerbaijani terrorists destroy a new oil-production facility in the Soviet Union, severely crippling Soviet oil production and threatening to wreck the Soviet economy. Facing a perceived need to make crippling concessions to the West to survive the crisis, the Politburo chooses a different path: war. The Politburo decides to seize the Middle East by force to secure a new source of oil. According to the Carter Doctrine, any attack on the Persian Gulf is an attack on a vital strategic interest of the United States, and will be treated as such, meaning a military response: To prevent NATO's combined reaction, they first launch a KGB operation to split NATO by making it appear as if West Germany launched an unprovoked terrorist attack on the U.S.S.R., followed by an invasion of Europe in response to that 'attack' that will tie down remaining NATO forces there, if not knocking them out.
Unfortunately, the KGB operation has limited success: the coming Soviet attack on Germany is detected a few days in advance, giving NATO time to start mobilization and providing sufficient evidence to prevent the fracturing of NATO. Nonetheless it scores some success as several countries are successfully convinced that this is a "German-Russian disagreement" that they refuse to be involved in. This removes the threat to the Soviet Union's southern front (Turkey is unwilling to launch an offensive alone) and the war quickly becomes a meat-grinder in Germany: NATO forces slowly give ground while inflicting terrible losses on Warsaw pact armies.
One of the strategic masterstrokes of the Soviet Union's opening moves in the war is their seizure of Iceland, capturing the NATO air station at Keflavík. This disrupts the GIUK SOSUS line (American seabed hydrophones), expected to prevent the Soviet Navy from operating effectively in the Atlantic by making it impossible for their ships and submarines to enter the Atlantic undetected. The Soviet Navy becomes an offensive weapon, and the Warsaw Pact seriously damages NATO's war effort by interdicting resupply convoys coming from North America.
In West Germany, the battle becomes a war of attrition that the Soviets expect to win, having greater reserves of men and material. NATO holds the Warsaw Pact forces to small but continual advances only through the profligate expenditure of every weapon at hand.
As the Warsaw Pact advance fails to achieve its planned breakthrough, the Politburo considers the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Eventually, the general in charge of the Western European theatre (the Politburo keeps relieving and shooting unsuccessful generals) recognizes the slippery slope, and stages a coup, replacing most of the Politburo with three junior members who opposed the war at the beginning.
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Analysis
An important part of this techno-thriller is the examination of a conventional ground war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Clancy suggests that several conventional doctrines about a modern ground conflict between modern armies are wrong or underestimated. For example, Clancy plausibly suggests that munitions expenditures would be far higher than projected; that combat helicopters like the Apache and the Hind are not nearly as survivable as projected; that the mobility granted by modern armor means that the Soviet doctrine of a massed thrust achieving a breakthrough of the enemy lines is a fiction--the enemy can withdraw and reform its lines too easily to break; also, modern air power can only dominate a battlefield in the absence of an opposing modern air force.
Clancy also correctly guessed that the United States operated a small number of stealth aircraft, whose existence was highly classified at the time the novel was written. However, the stealth fighters which appear in the novel are F-19s, not the F-117 Nighthawk of our world.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq (although far more of a mismatch than a mid-1980s NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict would have been) did provide some evidence for Clancy's hypothesis. The US Army's Apaches proved more vulnerable to ground fire than had been predicted beforehand, and by the war's end the majority of close air support was being delivered by heavily armoured A-10 Thunderbolt II ground attack aircraft. Fittingly, Clancy identifies the A-10 as being a key weapon in his Red Storm Rising scenario. His predictions on the high rate of munitions expenditure also appears to have been borne out - even though the initial attack on Iraq was short, it drained US arsenals to an alarming extent, forcing the Pentagon to undertake a crash programme to rebuild stocks of smart weapons.
The theory of the high expenditures of munitions was also shown much earlier in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, where both sides consumed munitions so quickly that within one week of the start of combat, both the United States and the Soviet Union had to airlift munitions to their respective client states (Israel for the U.S., Egypt and Syria for the Soviet Union) to avoid a collapse of their respective armed forces.
Another point of interest is the use of America’s Iowa-class battleships, which in the novel are sent to Iceland to support the United States Marines during their amphibious landing. The effective use of battleships in modern war was proven during the 1991 Gulf War, when Missouri and Wisconsin shelled shore based artillery sites, anti-ship missile facilities, and Iraqi troop concentrations arrayed along the coast of Iraq and Kuwait, and on Faylaka Island.
Military studies
Red Storm Rising is basic literature at many military academies inside and outside the United States, as are several other books by Tom Clancy. It is also frequently referred to by military scientists and is widely regarded as being one of the most realistic scenarios of an East-West war.
Board game
In 1989, TSR, Inc. released a board game designed by Douglas Niles, based on the book. The game won the Origins Award for Best Modern-Day Boardgame of 1989 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Boardgame of 1989.
Computer game
There is also a computer game based on the book's scenario produced and released by MicroProse in the late 1980s. The player has a nuclear submarine in his command. It features adventure elements and a plot in addition to the simulation. The skill level can be changed by changing some of the initial conditions of the scenario. The game was released for the Amiga (released in 1990), Atari ST (1989), Commodore 64 (1988) and IBM-PC (circa 1989) home computers.
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