The 1985 time period would have been one of the worst times for the WP to fight NATO for several reasons. It goes beyond just air to air capability.
1) Sub vs sub combat greatly would favor NATO. All of the Soviet subs were noisey and the Soviets were just learning about it from the walker family. US subs had a passive detection range advantage of 10:1 over WP SSNs.
Walker was caught in 1986, he had been passing info to the Soviets since 1968 and the y were already aware of how noisy their SSN and SSBN were. The Victor III were in service, which were waaay quieter than earlier classes.
2) Every CVBG had at least one aegis cruiser.
There were 3 in service by 1985 – Ticonderoga, Yorktown and Vicennes.
3) Ground combat would have been harsh on the WP. The US Army had the M-1 Abrams, the UK had the Challenger and West Germany had the Leopard. These three tanks outclassed the T-72 and older Soviet armor. Can you imagine the horror the Soviet Army would feel when they discovered the HEAT rounds nor ungsten-carbide sabots would not penetrate Chohbram armor, as in PGW#1. That DU sabots could penetrate but, only at ranges around 1,700 meters or less. The Soviets also under estimated the effect on a battlefield of the MLRS in countering ‘tube artillery’.
Battlefield distances in central Europe were mainly under 1700 m, so it wouldn’t have made a difference.
The MLRS had entered service in 1983 with US Army, and with NATO in 1989 – numbers would have been low in 1989.
4) NATO had an advantage of an 8:1 ratio in helicopters. The USAF had many A-10’s while the Su-25 existed in smaller numbers.
8:1! Cannot be stuffed looking up numbers but the USSR had many Mi-24 Hind. The AH-64A entered service in July 1986. The US Army had day-only AH-1 in service, with other NATO countries even worse off. The Pact had many air defense systems which could out-range the TOW missile.
A-10 are brilliant, but proved vulnerable during GW1 to heavy ground fire.
5) In air superiority, no Su-27’s in the V-VS (just a couple squadrons in the PVO), just a couple squadrons of MiG-29’s. The WP’s air superiority fighters would be the MiG-23 with assist from the MiG-21’s, against over 500 F-15’s, 1,000 F-16’s, 450+ F-14’s, Tornados and, F-4 Phantoms.
Major problem that Frontal Aviation faced in 1970s were the manufacturing deficiencies of the MiG-23M -this limited agaility to 5G. As a result frontal aviation pilots had limited experience in dogfighting. These problems were solved in 1977 – with training much imporved in the 1980s. The much improved MiG-23ML and MiG-23MLD were in service – these would be better than the F-4 in service with NATO, had a BVR missile unlike the F-16 (at the time)
In the attack realm the USSR wasn’t too far behind NATO and ahead in other areas – the MiG-27, Su-17, Su-24 were superior to NATO aircraft in many ways with all capable of using PGM (compared with limited in NATO), ARM, etc.
6) The WP only had three squadrons of MiG-23’s that had air-refueling ability!
MiG-23 were never fitted with inflight refuelling capability.
8) If you thought the performance of the Sparrow Missile was poor, it was still far higher than the Alamo AA-10 Missile. The Sidewinder -9P & -9M outclasses any IR missile from the WP at that time.
Alamo is considered as good as AIM-7 family. Fair call on AIM-9, AA-11 Archer would only be available in low numbers.
7) NATO had over two dozen AWACS and the WP had none operational.
NATO had 18 delivered by May 1985 – France and UK came later. The USAF had 32 E-3A with around 27 available – 3 based in Alaska, 2 Japan – leaving 22 for global operations (Middle East, home defence, Korea, etc). WP had excellent GCI ground coverage. Passive tracking systems such as Ramona were entering service as well.
Soviet union also had ground based jammers to degrade the E-3.
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