"Tell them we can WIN this thing...

... if the Navy gets their shit together!"

I vehemently disagree with the proposal that Soviet armor was impervious to NATO anti-tank weaponry as late as the mid 80s.

Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 saw tank vs tank action, with massive casualties on the part of the Lebanese armor corps. The resistance in Afghanistan used shoulder launched weapons against Soviet armor throughout the 80s with success. (Keep in mind, Mujaheddin (sp?) foot soldiers did NOT fear Soviet armor... They feared Soviet helicopters.) In the armor battle of the Golan Heights during the Yon Kippur war, two Israeli Centurion tanks destroyed an entire armored battalion of Syrian/Soviet armor.

Even IF the reactive Soviet armor proved successful, it was a one time shot. A second shot in the same location penetrates. One thing the M60 and the early M1s had in abundance was decent fire control, something the Soviets were known to lack. Another thing NATO had that the Soviets weren't big on was a coordinated combined arms doctrine that heavily favored the defensive campaign a European war would have demanded. Throw in an absolute overwhelming air supremacy factor and there's little wonder why the Warsaw Pact stayed behind the Iron Curtain.

Now I am not poo pooing the Red Army, but lets keep some perspective here. The army that faced the Russians in 85 was not qualitatively different from the same army that faced Saddam Hussein in 90-91, and look at how that turned out, stealth or no stealth. The quality of the Russian equipment speaks for itself both historically and tactically. The greatest threat the Soviets represented in a shooting war with NATO was closing the North Atlantic, a scenario Clancy maps out better than anyone ever in Red Storm Rising, and even THAT depended on the fall of Iceland and the loss of SOSUS... Something strategically NATO would not allow.