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I s There a Tank Gap? Comparing NATO and Warsaw Pact Tank Fleets Malcolm Chalmers and Lutz Unterseher Alongside the giant 60-tonne German, British and American war machkes, Russian tanks look positively tiny. In addition, NATO tanks have sophisticated thermal imaging and fire-direction systems. One Leo can take care of several of theirs, says a German tank officer, and the Americans grin self-assuredly.’ There is still widespread publicity given in the West to the claim that the Soviet Union and its allies have conventional forces that are substantially more powerful than those of In recent years, however, the certainty with which this view has been held has eroded considerably, particularly in the academic debate. Although the methodologies used vary, a growing number of commentators now argue that there is rough overall parity in conventional forces. Several others argue that, at most, the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO or Warsaw Pact) has a margin of advantage insufficient to give it a high probability of victory were it to launch an offensive against Western E ~ r o p e . ~ This article is a revised version of a paper first published in October 1987 as a Peace Research Report by the School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, United Kingdom. The authors would particularly like to thank Malcolm Dando, Member of the Bundestag Hermann Scheer, and David Stevenson for their encouragement and support. Malcolm Chalmers is a Lecturer in the School of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, United Kingdom. Lutz Unterseher is Chairman of the European Study Group on Alternative Security Policy (S.A.S.), and works in Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany. 1. Siegfried Thielbeer, ”Why not invite the Russians? The West’s biggest tank contest,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 June 1987, p. 5. 2. After the NATO summit in March 1988, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared that ”the Warsaw Pact enjoys substantial superiority over NATO in conventional forces.” ”NATO Summit, Brussels,” House of Commons Debates, Volume 128, No. 108 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office [HMSO],1988).Her remarks accord with those of General JohnGalvin, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander (Europe) who stated recently that: ”While analysts may argue over the various aspects of the conventional balance, it is clear to me as a military commander that the current conventional military situation is unfavorable.” General John Galvin, Statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 2, 1988, p. 9. 3. Some of the most important recent contributions to this school of thought include Andrew Kelly, The Myth of Soviet Superiority: A Critical Analysis of the Current Balance of Conventional Forces on the Central Front, Peace Research Report No. 14 (Bradford,UK: School of Peace Studies, 1987); Senator Carl Levin, “Beyond the Bean Count: RealisticallyAssessing the Conventional Military ~~ International Security, Summer 1988(Vol. 13, No. 1) 0 1988by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 5 International Security 13:1 I 6 In this article we hope to make a contribution to this debate by looking at what is commonly believed to be the most important single category of equipment currently held by ground forces: the tank. Because we have focused on this single weapon category, and have not attempted an assessment of other ground forces equipment-such as artillery and other armored vehicles-one cannot easily draw more general conclusions from our data, either about the conventional balance overall or even about ground forces taken as a whole. The compensating benefit of our approach, however, is that it has allowed us to examine in more detail qualitativefactors that often tend to be lost in more aggregative ~tudies.~ Our study is given added relevance because of the tank’s role as perhaps the most important symbol of Soviet politico-military power in Europe. In the early 1940s, high quality Soviet tanks were produced in large numbers, and they played a central role in achieving victory over Germany in the Second World War.5Thereafter tank forces have continued to be seen by the Soviet military as a key element in their preparations for warfare in Europe. Perhaps partly as a result of their symbolic importance, it is generally assumed that the Pact retains...

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