Soviet Army defectors have made it clear that the Soviet Army regularly includes in its war games and staff exercises plans to use chemical weapons against NATO. This is not particularly surprising in view of Soviet force structure, tactical doctrine, and training.
In spite of the enormous scale of Soviet preparations for the use of chemical weapons in a conventional war, doubts must still linger in the minds of Soviet planners. Chemical warfare seems like an intriguing technical solution to battlefield requirements in the calm of peacetime. But in the confusion of war, it threatens to unleash a host of devilish problems.
The scenario of the attack on Geiselhoring highlights some of these. To begin with, peacetime preparations do not always prove adequate in war. The Soviet Army might start a war with chemical defensive measures in place. But a few days of war would disrupt these. Unless chemicals were used from the outset, chemical defense preparations might begin to dissolve. Soldiers would lose or misplace their chemical protective gear. Chemical defense companies would be stripped of their personnel to serve as replacements in more critical combat functions. Decontamination trucks would be given less priority for fuel or rail transport in favor of ammunition and other essentials.
Some of these problems could be avoided by the use of chemical weapons right from the outset of the fighting. In such a case, the carefully prepared chemical defense equipment would be in place and ready to go. However, this would come at an enormous cost.
That cost would not be borne by the troops of either NATO or the Warsaw Pact, but by the civilian populations near the battlefield. Modern chemical agents are so lethal that full protective equipment is essential. It would be impossibly expensive to equip the population along the German border with this type of equipment. As a result, any chemical attack would cause massive civilian losses of a magnitude that might prompt the NATO countries to respond in kind against East German or other Warsaw Pact cities, and could very well lead to a cycle of escalation eventually culminating in a nuclear exchange. The basic premise of any Soviet attack on NATO would be to limit it to the conventional level. Any action that might eventually trigger the use of nuclear weapons would have to be avoided.
For this reason, it seems likely that the use of chemical weapons would be curtailed until their effects would fall mainly on military targets. Chemical weapons are too indiscriminate to use when military and civilian targets are mingled, as they would be at the outset of a war. Once the war broke out, however, it is likely that the civilian population would soon flee, which would remove a major constraint in the Soviet use of chemical weapons.
Another major constraint on Soviet use of chemical weapons would be concern about the performance of Soviet troops in a chemical environment. It is one thing to practice chemical warfare in peacetime; it is quite a different matter to actually use it in wartime.
Soviet peacetime training is notoriously contrived. Their war maneuvers smack more of military choreography than military training. Simple drills, like donning a chemical suit or scrubbing down a vehicle, are realistically rehearsed, and rehearsed quite often. But more elaborate exercises are needed to simulate the real pressures of war. Such exercises would include an attack under simulated chemical conditions, followed by prolonged exercises while still in chemical gear, culminating in the decontamination of the men and equipment some hours later. Full-blown exercises of this kind do take place. But the results often give Soviet officers reason to pause before using chemical weapons.
Soviet protective gear is so uncomfortable that troops have discovered ways to circumvent it during peacetime practice. According to former Soviet soldiers, it is common for them to detach the air hose leading to the filter can. This would render the mask useless in wartime, but in a peacetime exercise where no real gas is present, it makes it easier to breathe. Decontamination exercises are similarly unrealistic. The drill is often practiced on old worn-out vehicles. Usually only the outside is scrubbed down, ignoring the difficulties and dangers involved in cleaning out the interior of a contaminated vehicle. Soviet officers are undoubtedly aware of the problems with these staged exercises. The more professional officers must have doubts about how these procedures would be carried out in a real war.
As unrealistic as these peacetime war games may be, they do impress the average Soviet officer with the exhausting and time-consuming nature of chemical defense. This could be a major disincentive to the Soviet use of chemical weapons. Any Soviet attack against NATO must be based on the idea of a rapid offensive across the German plains before NATO could adequately mobilize. The use of chemical weapons would slow the pace of the Soviet advance by obligating the use of protective gear. After an attack was made, the vehicles and troops would have to be arduously decontaminated before another attack would be possible. This would disrupt the momentum of the attack and slow the pace of the advance, which is extremely undesirable from the Soviet perspective.
The Achilles' heel of the Soviet Army is its rear areas. The troops at the front may be well provided with chemical protection gear, but many of the rear area troops are not. Support troops who bring forward critical supplies, ammunition, and food are not as well prepared for chemical warfere as the fighting branches. The Soviets do not appear to have developed protective shelters that would enable command facilities to function if NATO retaliated with chemicals. Soviet command vans are usually provided with filtration systems. But the vans cannot sustain the command elements in the presence of persistent chemical agents like certain nerve gases. They have no beds, toilet facilities, or decontamination features. Chemical attack of their rear support areas would be a nightmare for Soviet military leaders. Tanks without frequent resupplies of gas and ammunition are useless scrap metal. Infantry without food and ammunition has no attacking power.
An essential element in any Soviet plans to use chemical weapons is an assessment of NATO's reaction. In the 1970s, NATO was ill prepared to handle a Soviet attack. By the 1980s, NATO had managed to make important strides in chemical defense. The permeable suit developed by Britain is one of the best examples. But there are a host of other examples as well. The U.S.
Army has developed and fielded a number of protective shelters for command centers that could be used in a chemical environment. This shows a much more realistic appreciation for the difficulties of operating in chemical contamination than the Warsaw Pact has demonstrated. NATO planning for chemical warfare in many ways has concentrated on its more mundane aspects, such as logistics and command and control. This must force the Soviets to wonder whether NATO is better prepared to fight a protracted war in chemical conditions. The Soviets might do pretty well in a short war in which chemicals are used primarily against fighting troops, but in prolonged warfare, chemical weapons could threaten many of their support troops and their logistics network.
Soviet military leaders are not unaware of the many problems associated with chemical warfare. In the mid-1980s, these anxieties became more manifest. The Soviets again began to talk seriously about arms controls to limit chemical weapons. In an unprecedented move in 1987, they permitted NATO observers to tour a portion of their main Chemical Weapons Proving Grounds at Shikany. The officials were permitted to see a selection of Soviet chemical weapons and were given limited details of the types of weapons the Soviet Army possesses.