The Third World War - The Untold Story by Sir John Hackett

were of outstanding quality, and alarm and other precautionary procedures were well practised. Other NATO members followed in varying degrees of effectiveness. The great disadvantage on the Western side was the general lack of a retaliatory capability everywhere but in USAREUR. Stocks of offensive toxic agents in the US had once been high but had deteriorated, or been dispersed, or destroyed so far that by 1980 they could be said (and were, by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) to be virtually non-existent. One SACEUR after another from the late 1970s onwards had emphasized that only the availability of an adequate retaliatory capability could be considered an effective defence against Soviet CW.
    Interest lay chiefly in what is known as the binary round, a projectile in which two substances of a non-toxic nature are combined in flight and become a toxic substance before impact. Though there were technical difficulties (a short flight, for example, put obstacles in the way of effective combination of ingredients), the great merit of the binary round lay in safety of handling and storage, and a possible reduction in the sensitivity of Allied countries about hosting it in peacetime. The production of the binary round was recommended in the US in the early 1980s but it had not proved possible to store any in European countries by the summer of 1985. A useful step forward, however, had been the bilateral agreements between the United States on the one hand and Federal Germany and the UK on the other for the manufacture of quantities of such munitions for 155 mm artillery. They were to be stored for the time being in the US and brought forward when required.
    Thus the armed forces on the Soviet side were in 1985 well prepared for offensive CW action but not over-well equipped to withstand attack, and on the other side quite well (in the case of the British, very well) prepared in defence but with a retaliatory capability confined entirely to the Americans. It was unlikely that, if a Warsaw Pact attack involved early and widespread use of CW in the field, the Western allies would fail to make use of the US capability to respond. This, however, would involve delay on the Western side and give the Soviets some initial advantage. This was almost certainly what was intended.
    The Soviets would without doubt employ CW from the start of any offensive and the Western allies were well and truly warned to expect it. It was also highly probable that the two US corps would not be attacked in this way since it was a fair guess that the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) would find some way of employing the American retaliatory capability on his own authority in support of US troops, using munitions flown in for the purpose. This would be well known on the other side, as would also be the inability of other Western allies to retaliate in kind, at least for the time being, on their own behalf. Allied casualties, if war broke out, could be confidently expected but if precautions were taken and discipline prevailed they need not be high.
    In aircraft the Alliance was compelled on the whole, in the years leading up to the war, to make do with what it had, or at any rate to improve it as best it might by stretching existing capabilities a little further, rather than to try to introduce far-reaching innovations. Given the financial constraints, Allied air forces, with an immense concentration of effort, did not do too badly.
    The EF-111, for example, was an improved jammer built into an F-111 airframe, capable of Mach 2-plus speeds at height and a supersonic performance at sea level. Being also highly manoeuvrable it was a good survivor. The EF-111 carried ten high-powered jammer transmitters and a terminal-threat warning system which detected weapons-associated radar emissions and would provide flight crews with warning of impending attack from SAM anti-aircraft artillery or interceptors. These aircraft, beginning to enter service in