It would have been deployed in the event of a Soviet attack. IOW, it was a defensive posture, not an offensive one. All of NATO’s orientation was defensive, all of their exercises were defensive (i.e. they were all training and simulations for a Soviet attack). AFAIK, NATO didn’t practice attacking into Eastern Europe as a preemptive strike.
BTW, I never said NATO would be ‘easy pickings’…quite the contrary. I think that history has born out that US/NATO equipment and training would have meant that any Soviet attack into Western Europe would have been a meat grinder…and that is if it had stayed conventional, which I don’t think anyone reasonably thought it would.
As to the last point, I don’t see how the Soviets could reasonably have thought that NATOs posture was anything but what it was…defensive in orientation and deployment. I don’t thing that the Soviets ever believed that NATO would come rolling across the borders in a preemptive attack geared at conquering either the Eastern Block or the Soviet Union…the West simply didn’t have the numbers or disposition for that. I concede that some of the Soviets deployment was probably more for maintaining a grip on the Eastern Bloc, and that the Soviets might have been paranoid about NATO using nuclear weapons in some sort of first strike (I doubt it, but I suppose the Soviets might have thought it possible).
Forward defense makes no sense as a purely defensive policy. It would be a mobile defense starting right at the West/East German border, with counter-attacks into East Germany and deep strikes by aircraft and emerging technologies like the ATACMS and cruise missiles to conduct Follow On Forces Attacks (FOFA) into East Germany and Poland to disrupt Soviet follow on forces before they reached the battlefield. Soviet doctrine was to attack in echelons, with for example the GSFG and the category A East German divisions providing the first echelon which would advance until they had been ground down by losses - aside from simple field repair units to patch up what damaged and disabled armor they could, there were no provisions to provide replacements to divisions in action; they would fight until ground down to virtually nothing. The next echelon would be the Polish Army and Soviet category A divisions from the Baltic States and the Western USSR, the echelon after that Soviet and Polish category B divisions which had lesser gear and would take time to mobilize, and then eventually the category C divisions with the most dated gear which would take a long time to mobilize. To paranoid Soviet eyes, forward defense sounded rather offensive in nature.
Forward defense was not simply a linear defense right on the inter-German border, such a defense would be suicide for NATO as the Warsaw Pact could just make breakthroughs in the line and run like wild into NATO rear areas. The plan for defense in depth that was replaced by forward defense involved starting the defended line at the inter-German border but extended the defended zone deep into West Germany. Breakthroughs could thus be handled and the momentum of the Soviet advance slowly ground down. A defense in depth is the traditional and most effective way to ground down and stop a mobile advance.
There was nothing unwise about forward defense, but it would involve offensive actions into Warsaw Pact territory as opportunities allowed; much as Soviet plans called for immediate attack into Western Europe to seize the initiative regardless of who or how the war was started.
@XT Reasonably there was no reason for the Soviets to think NATO was planning an invasion of Eastern Europe, but communism is virtually synonymous with paranoia. They were terrified that Exercise Able Archer 83 was in fact a cover for a planned NATO nuclear first strike.
The point that I really object to is that the force mix of GSFG is an offensive force mix and thus evidence of Soviet offensive intentions. The forces slated for Central Europe by both sides were heavy, fully mechanized formations; the TO&E of both sides formations had near the same mix and ratio of tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery. Even the dozen West German territorial army brigades were organized with either 1 tank battalion, 3 motor or mechanized infantry battalions and 1 artillery battalion or 2 tank, 2 mechanized infantry and 1 artillery battalions. It can’t be had both ways, if the force mix of the USSR is an offensive one, then so was the force mix of NATO.