The Burya plan had three variants, called Red Burya, Yellow Burya, and Blue Burya. The variants had different presumptions about Soviet forces and NATO readiness. Red Burya presumed that Soviet forces would have two days to mobilize and that NATO would make little if any preparation to receive the attack. This was the ideal situation. Yellow Burya presumed that the Soviet forces would have four days to mobilize, and that NATO would begin mobilizing one to two days before the start of the Warsaw Pact attack. This situation was viewed as being more realistic by many Soviet staff planners, since many felt that the GSFG with reinforcements could not be expected to fully prepare for war operations in less than four days. Blue Burya presumed that preparation time would begin four days before the operation, but that NATO would see through the diplomatic ruse and begin mobilizing itself two days or more before the Soviet attack.
The modified variant of the Burya scheme, now code-named Buran, most closely resembled the Blue Burya plan. It assumed that NATO mobilization would be more thorough than under ideal circumstances. The main diplomatic objective of Buran was to keep the U.S. from mobilizing its forces and beginning its major reinforcement of Europe until the last minute. The plan assumed that European NATO forces would be mobilized, even though perhaps not fully deployed forward.
Kucherenko found that the staff officers from the Southwestern Front clearly understood the basic elements of the new Buran plan, and so began to review the major tasks at hand.
First, the staffs must be prepared to mobilize their forces rapidly and with the minimum of observable traces to Western observers. The forces would have to be prepared for combat action, and then moved, at night, to staging areas on the border. Separate staff elements would be assigned to maskirovka tasks, which included both false radio traffic to suggest that the units were conducting normal routine business, and concealment plans to hide as well as possible all movements forward.
Second, the plan required that high priority be given to the neutralization of NATO tactical air forces and tactical nuclear delivery systems. For army staff officers, this meant that the army had to play its part, through the careful use of air defense forces, to blunt any NATO air attacks. It also meant that army rocket and artillery assets and special forces would be used to attack NATO air bases and nuclear storage areas. Soviet forces were to be prepared to operate in contaminated areas resulting from strikes on storage areas, although no actual use of Soviet tactical nuclear weapons was presumed. Possible Soviet use of chemical weapons should be kept in mind, and troops would be issued stern warnings about remaining prepared for the use of chemical weapons.
Third, the foremost objective of the army forces would be the neutralization of NATO tactical defenses by skillful use of fire and maneuver by Soviet armed forces. This would be accomplished at the following norms. The initial NATO defenses would be overwhelmed and breached in two to three days of fighting at depths of fifty kilometers. It was presumed that divisional forward detachments, such as independent tank regiments, would be committed on B+2 or B+3 to begin the exploitation of breaches in NATO forward defenses. By B+3, the Soviet Armies would begin to commit their Operational Maneuver Groups (OMGs), in the form of reserve tank divisions, to further exploit any successful penetrations by divisional forward detachments. Front OMGs, in the form of Unified Army Corps (UACs), would be committed at the discretion of front commanders when the forward detachments and OMGs had successfully ruptured the NATO defenses. The OMGs and UACs would be the shock forces that would spearhead the Soviet forces' deep penetration, followed by additional Soviet units for the encirclement and destruction of NATO armies.
The Southwestern Front would launch its attack out of assembly areas in the Bohemian Forest in western Czechoslovakia, into Bavaria. The first echelon would consist of 1st Army and 4th Army, each with two motor rifle divisions and one tank division. Each army had about 1,000 tanks, and more than 1,500 other armored vehicles of various types. Front reserves, or second echelon, would be the 38th Army, which would be in place by B+2 with three more divisions. Additional reinforcements would be available under some circumstances. These nine Soviet divisions would face from five to six partially mobilized NATO divisions — the U.S. 1st Armored Division, the German 4th Panzergrenadier, the 1st Mountain and 10th Panzer Divisions, and the French 3d and 5th Armored Divisions.
The 4th Army, the southernmost of the attacking armies, would drive toward Munich with the Alps on its left flank and the Danube River on its right. Operations from Czechoslovakia into Austria would be conducted by a separate Czech-Soviet Army. The objective of the 4th Army would be to defeat the German 4th Panzergrenadier and 1st Mountain Division in the initial defensive positions. The French 3d Armored Division could be expected to be encountered defending the approaches to Stuttgart and would probably be dealt with by a left hook by the neighboring 1st Army on B+3. The largest city in the area, Munich, would be dealt with by B+3.
The 1st Army would advance on either side of the Schabische Alps. Its right boundary with the neighboring 8th Guards Army was a line running roughly through Nurnberg to Stuttgart and then Karlsruhe on the Franco-German frontier. On B+4, in conjunction with an influx of reserves from the 38th Army second echelon, the 1st Army would swing southward into the Wurtemberg region, cutting off any retreating NATO forces from the 4th Army attacks and securing the entire Franco-German frontier in the operations zone of the Southwestern Front. Elements of the U.S. 1st Armored Division could be expected to be encountered around Nurnberg. But the main opposition was expected to come from the 10th Panzer Division and the French 3d and 5th Armored Divisions.
The staffs from the Southwestern Front were handed envelopes containing more explicit details of the operation. B-Day was scheduled to be 30 September, only a week off. The basic concepts were pretty well understood from previous staff war games using the earlier Burya plans. The attack on this front was clearly not the main one, given the relatively modest forces involved. This was in large measure due to the terrain. The main Soviet blow would come up north in the Fulda Gap region in the 2d Western Front zone of operations. But the fighting on this front would be quite intense, given the fact that German divisions would be in the initial defensive positions.
The terrain was not the easiest for mechanized operations. The initial attack would be launched out of a hilly region across an area that was heavily forested. More to the point, there were very few major east-west roads. What roads existed were likely to have heavy concentrations of trucks and logistics support equipment on them, which would make ripe targets for attacking NATO aircraft. If the Germans prepared their defenses well, infantry forces with antitank missiles could substantially delay any force moving through this region. It was also a major headache to plan logistical links across the Sudeten Mountains into Czech Bohemia. The handful of mountain roads would funnel most of the supply trucks into congested arteries that would make juicy targets for NATO fighter-bombers. The staff would have to put special emphasis on providing heavy air defense coverage in the mountains to keep out the NATO aircraft.
The aim of the first day's operation would be to clear the hilly and forested areas along the border. A difficult area would be the Rachel National Park in the 4th Army sector. Beautiful scenery, lousy battlefield!
The second day's operation would be to reach the eastern bank of the Danube River in the 4th Army sector by afternoon, in anticipation of a major river crossing operation that evening. The 1st Army would reach the Danube the following day. The Danube was a significant natural obstacle, and defenses along the river could be expected to be substantial. Breaching the Danube would be the most significant single event of the offensive. If the river could not be breached in enough depth, the attack on this front would be seriously compromised. Some of the staif recalled problems they had encountered in previous war games. In several recent war games, the 4th Army had failed to penetrate the initial border area for more than two days, and had serious problems with supply routes.