Those stupid Russians never asked the experts from our forum about their chances.
They never looked, what is at hand in Central Europe alone.
Just one theatre of operations. Do someone exspect really all the US air-forces will not have participated in short notice. The chance of a surprise attack of WP was slim and fading in the 80s.
The WP had two main parts of AFs. The AD-forces and the tactical-forces. Most personal trained for a single task, which the limited amount of flying hours underlines. From the huge numbers given, a part was available for a given task only. The ratio between those forces showed, the attack-forces of NATO were rated very high. The WP-forces were hampered by IFF as the NATO too. Real BVR would have been the exception. Most of all flying would have been very low flying.
From January 1988 the SU freed its new IFF “Parol” (Erzeugnis 62D) for the WP. It was so important, that it delayed the introducion of the GDR MiG-29 after this date to incorporate it, personal was still trained.
Reading some postings, I never got the impression, that many writer know really, which way the WP-forces were operated. The SAF was trained to WP-standard by SU/WP personal. The results from 1982 were for all to see. Of course they could not transferred to an other theatre of operations 1:1.
Despite what is posted here, from the mid. 80s training and preparations showed, that a short-notice attack in Central Europe becomes more and more remote, when such danger was still promoted from both sides to keep the levels of defence-spending high.

We’rre not talking only about a surprise war but just an actual war, without either side making surprise attacks.

Arthur you are right, but you also assume that NATO would have been forced to fight without reeinforcements from CONUS. Then they fight would have been very one sided.

With F-4s, F-15s, F-16s, F18s and even 2 squadrons of F-14s (there were plans to use 2 squadrons to cover the AWACS against MiG25 attacks) things would look very different.

E-3 would probably be flying from France, Spain or even Portugal, like some German Tornados / Phantoms and other assets that would relocate to avoid the first strike of the WarPac.

I think we can say, that if the WarPac would have surprised NATO, the war would be very one.sided. If NATO could reinforce before the outbrake, then it would have been much closer.

But the airwar would have been of no importance to the outcome of the war. And the groundwar would be even more in favor of the WarPac.

Pretty much, though on the ground, the war would also be much different. Though undoubtly NATO tanks were better but the Warpact tanks were no joke either. But the biggest problem for NATO on the ground would’ve been
1)Lack of Air Superiority, without NATO air superiority, WarPact would’ve quickly overwhelmed NATO groundforces, this is where all those Warpact bombers and strikers would come in, notably the Frogfoots and etc
2)NATO was outnumbered, and as WP lead in aircraft 3:1, in armor 4:1, artillery 11:1, approximately 2:1 manpower advantage, this would’ve gone in massive disadvantage against NATO.

Srbin,
First off the MiG-27 doesn’t have any BVR weapons……it’s an attacker if you’ll remember, and it has no radar (except for current upgrades with the Kopyo but that’s moot in the realm of this topic).

I wouldn’t place all that much faith behind the huge Soviet victory scenario you’re claiming….

Ok I admitt making a mistake about teh Mig-27

NATO had quite a large array of lethal BVR shooters (remember the Skfylash and AIM-7F/M were much more dangerous than earlier AIM-7E models as well as the R-23/24 on the MiG-23), including Tornado ADV’s (Skyflash), F-15, F-14, F/A-18, F-4 (RAF, USAF, Greece, and Turkey), F-104’s (Italy), Viggens (Skyflash), Mirage F-1’s, and Mirage 2000’s (both Super 530).

Yes but how long would those airfields survive with fast, high flying Soviet bombing flying over to destroy them. Also Viggens ar Swedish and Sweden is neutral in this war, r

Then there were your dogfighters such as the F-16, which would have annhilated any MiG-21 or MiG-23 that dared get close enough.

And they would’ve mostly faced the Mig-29 which would’ve really destroyed the F-16s in dogfights

The AEW&C capabilities of NATO can’t be overlooked either with the E-2, E-3, and the Royal Navy’s Sea Kings (okay, very limited, but still there).

Big and clumsy targets those AWACS are, how long do you think they’d last if the war started.

NATO’s SEAD/EW capabilities were also incredibly good including the EA-6, EF-111, F-4G, and others….

Still limited, I am not sure how they would’ve fared against tons of WP SAMs including S-300

The F-117 entering into the equation is also a huge plus for NATO.

How many of them were there?

Then there are your strikers, such as the Harrier, AV-8, A-10, Jaguar, Tornado, F-111, Viggen, F-4, A-7, A-6, and A-4.

Yes good, but a counter attack against WP would’ve been extremely hard especially with all the WP fighters and mass SAMs

And you can’t forget the F-5’s that multiple nations had at the time and that would go a long way to helping counter the hordes of MiG-21’s.

Both Mig-21s and F-5s were obselete by the 1980s

The Su-27, MiG-29, and MiG-31 were great technological leaps for the Soviets, but there just couldn’t have been sufficient numbers of them to handle all NATO aircraft (that would include surviving BVR shots from F-15’s, F-4’s, and the others I listed above, then getting to the strike aircraft which of course are the primary targets of any defending fighter).

And the only really modern fighters that NATO had to match the capabilities of these aircraft were BVR F-15s, F-14s and I think F-18s had AIm-7, and most of them were stationed in US

The bomber equation is interesting as well with the USAF putting up the B-52, the RAF the Vulcan, the French the Mirage IV and the Russians having the Tu-16, Tu-95, and Tu-22M.

B-52? Vulcan? How many of them were there and how suitable enough were they for a counter attack against WP?

And russian missilies were still a bit behind in the early to mid 80ies. Apart from R-73 (which in early version was not very good head-on) neither the R-60 nor any version of the R13 could compare to the AIM-9L, which was standard among NATO forces.

I think the AIM-9L could have made a difference in the airwar.

Matching missiles with missiles and aircraft with aircraft is different. As long as they can hit and destroy it’s all important.

Not only, in the fighters side, NATO was heavily outnumbered but the most important thing was how could NATO survive the initial strikes of Tu-22, Tu-16 and Tu-160 bombing against NATO airfields, ammo depots, bases and etc, and not only them but they were backed by quite a few Mig-27s, Su-17s and then Su-24s.

NATO’s most numerous fighter, the F-16 was BVRless and a dogfighter, which would’ve been torn by the Mig-29s(BVR capable) it would’ve faced, the Mig-21 would’ve fared ok against it, the Mig-23 would’ve relied on it’s BVR missiles to probably stay out of dogfighting, don’t forget there just weren’t enough F-15s or even F-14s around, te F-14s would’ve probably been busy trying to hunt down Backfires and other Russian bombers than being in dogfights with other planes.

Not only were the numbers of NATO fighters much smaller than WP’s but the qualitative advantage was not really there much.