Let's say the Warsaw Pact invaded Western Europe in the late 1970s.

French nuclear forces at the time, like those of the U.S., can be viewed as a triad: Land-based missiles, sea-based missiles, airplane-delivered. From this chart, France had anywhere from 36 to 235 nuclear weapons during the 1970s. I’m not sure how accurate that is; when you go through and look at the specifics of what entered service when, it seems really low for the earlier part of the decade.

Anyway, on land in the 1970s, France had two different sets of missile systems, intended for different sets of targets. Battlefield targets were handled by the Pluton missile system. Max range of ~120 km, one warhead of around 15-25 kT yield. So, not usable against Soviet cities, but adequate against invading Soviet armored columns. Total deployed according to the wiki, about 60 missiles max.

The land-based citybusters were SSBS S2 (S3 IRBM in 1980). There were 18 of them, each with one warhead, in hardened silos on the Plateau d’Albion in SE France. Range was ballpark 3000 km, enough to threaten Moscow, Leningrad, all of the Ukraine, Volgagrad, etc… Yield was 120 kT for the S2, which bumped up to ~1MT for the TN60 and 61 warhead that initially capped the S3

The main countervalue deterrent was at sea with the Redoutable-class SSBNs. Four of them were commissioned by 1979, each with 16 SLBMs. The SLBMs were initially the MSBS M-1 and M-2, (armed with the MR-41 500 kT warhead, per Dr. Carey Sublette, and M-20 (TN60/61, 1MT yield, ~3200 km range). Basically, single warhead IRBMs with around a 3000-3500 km range.

Finally, France had freefall bombs dropped either by Mirages or the Étendard naval strike aircraft. I thought their ASMP (sort of a SRAM AGM-69-lite, but ramjet instead of solid-fueled rocket) was in service then, but not according to the wiki.

So, leaving aside whether Mirage IVs could make it into the Soviet Union, the French had 18 land-based nukes to threaten Soviet cities with, and anywhere from 1-4 times 16 submarine-based nukes.

It seems to me that there was an interesting game theory problem with either the U.K. or French submarine nuclear deterrent. Specifically, if either the U.K. or French wished to sit out an incipient Warsaw Pact/U.S. strategic exchange, how could they guarantee that the Soviets would not mistake an, e.g., U.S. Poseidon or Polaris launch as coming from a French or British sub instead? In the case of the U.K., AIUI, the missiles were largely identical to those in U.S. service. The French missiles weren’t, but to Soviet early-warning satellites, wouldn’t they all just be submarine-launched missile launch signatures? I don’t see a way at first glance that the British or French could allay Soviet fears that either W. European country would renege on a promise not to attack the USSR. Well, other than by directly informing the Soviets where their own subs are. Which runs the risk of the Soviets instantly trying to destroy those subs.

Anyway to give MHO about the OP, I think you’d need to establish an existential reason for the Soviets to have attacked: something that had an absolute certainty of having the Politburo and their families swinging on ropes to induce the Soviets to start hostilities that had every chance of turning rapidly into a strategic nuclear exchange. I mean, what would it take to threaten you before you start thinking that flirting with global thermonuclear war wouldn’t be worse?

I think the figures floating around the late 70s-early 80s of five days post-invasion before strategic nuclear release were insanely optimistic. Both sides knew that, both sides felt that any nuclear explosion would lead to 10s-100s more fast, neither side wished to experience it, and so neither side wanted to do the one big thing that would probably kick it off. Besides, from the Soviet Union’s POV, world communism and socialism were on the rise in the West and the Third World, so why screw up that progress with a shooting war?

Slightly off topic

I’ve seen the same quote attributed to a French general in Barbara Tuchmans * The Guns of August * …A single British soldier , but he should be killed.

As someone who was in the game during that time period (the good old “active defense”), here’s a couple of lines I recall various seminars/courses:
[ul]
[li]If every antitank weapon we have scores a kill, we’ll be out of weapons and they’ll still have 1,000 tanks[/li][li]Once we use our tactical nukes, we’ll have hundreds of Soviet pillboxes with pissed-off occupants[/li][/ul]
It was pretty depressing, very doom and gloom. I did a tour in Korea in the same time-frame - same sense of “you’re gonna die here.” Never got that in Vietnam.

Let’s say they didn’t, because, ya know, they didn’t.

[quote=“MemoryLeak, post:43, topic:714223”]

As someone who was in the game during that time period (the good old “active defense”), here’s a couple of lines I recall various seminars/courses:
[LIST]
[li]If every antitank weapon we have scores a kill, we’ll be out of weapons and they’ll still have 1,000 tanks[/li][/QUOTE]

Obviously this statement cannot have been even CLOSE to being true. Anti-tank weapons were much more plentiful in NATO’s arsenal than tanks were in the USSR’s. The various NATO allies were quite well equipped with rocket launchers, anti-tank guns, TOW missiles, air-launched weapons, and of course, tanks, each of which carries a big anti-tank weapon with many shells.

Yeah, it’s not even close. Here is a wiki on the Soviet Army in 1990 (I know this isn’t 1970 of the OP, but I couldn’t find anything quick and dirty that wasn’t in a PDF format for an OOB for the Soviets in that time…I’m sure it’s out there but not worth the effort for me):

My emphasis. So, the Soviets had around 55k tanks, many of which were old or even ancient crap. I don’t have a good cite on exactly how many NATO had, but I know the Russians had literally millions of RPG-7s and various variants, so it would be incredible if NATO only had 54k combined. I also had heard the old saw about ‘If every antitank weapon we have scores a kill, we’ll be out of weapons and they’ll still have 1,000 tanks’ but it was never supposed to be taken seriously, merely as an illustration that the Soviet Union and it’s allies had a boatload of tanks (mostly old crap, as noted…and it’s doubtful they could have gotten all of them deployed and actually working and fighting without some percentage of them breaking down).

[quote=“MemoryLeak, post:43, topic:714223”]

As someone who was in the game during that time period (the good old “active defense”), here’s a couple of lines I recall various seminars/courses:
[ul]
[li]If every antitank weapon we have scores a kill, we’ll be out of weapons and they’ll still have 1,000 tanks…[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]

I think MemoryLeak’s instructor was probably referring to army-attached ATGMs. Depending on when the seminar was held, NATO tank cannon may not have been perceived to be the vehicle annihilators that Desert Storm showed them to be. Of course, gyro-stabilized M68 105mm and M256 120mm cannon firing DU sabot rounds in a wide open desert environment, against poorly constructed and armed export-versions of WP equipment, is going to have slightly better results than M60A1 shooting steel against the latest T-64 and T-72 models, probably while under massive artillery fires. At least the M60s wouldn’t hopefully have to be doing it while on the move.

Or his instructor was using hyperbole to make a point that’d it’d be, “a come as you are war”, because well, there were thought to be an awful lot of Warsaw Pact (WP) tanks that’d be coming at them, not a lot of great ways to kill them, and no faith that there’d be anymore goodies coming from supply before everybody started glowing in the dark. See, e.g., this 1979 (?) declassified assessment of WP armor and NATO weapons for defeating same, by USA MajGen Paul Gorman, U.S. Intelligence and Soviet Armor, where Gorman lists the amount of active unit WP tanks as 16,480. In retrospect, it wildly overstates the effectiveness of WP armor and understates the effectiveness of ATGMs like TOW and its upgrades, but it’s not like we knew much better at the time. Another example of that is the love affair the paper has with the Dragon, a missile system that’s been universally hated by every US Army soldier I’ve ever talked to who’s ever had to use it.

From your list, Rick, the only thing I’d have confidence in, were I a NATO soldier in 1979, and expecting the Air Force to show up when it felt like it, were the TOWs. And that because of how far away the Israelis showed you could kill WP tanks with them.

Speaking of France, the French Army was organized at the time for operating on a battlefield in Central Europe where nuclear weapons were going to be used; French Army divisions were actually organized more as large brigades of ~7,000 men. In 1977 the Army had changed its military organisation in accordance with a short war-fighting strategy in Europe, and divisions lost their component brigades. The US Army had toyed around with a similar concept in the Pentomic divisional structure.