By the end of the Cold War, the Soviets had 4,200 tanks in East Germany, and another 8,200 armoured vehicles, and these behemoths would have been the steel fist of the Soviet punch through Western Europe. If the Soviets had ever taken the valley, after all, they would have been halfway to Frankfurt – with a major US airbase tantalisingly close by.Īnd how would the Soviets have managed it, had they ever received orders from Moscow to give the Yankees hell? If you’d asked that question to experts at the time, they’d probably have laughed. Snuggled amid the fields and woodlands of Hesse, the Fulda Gap doesn’t look like much – but the US had a point. If the Cold War ever went hot, the US was sure, this would be the spot that their communist enemies would choose to invade West Germany. Andrea Valentino speaks to Brigadier General Ross Coffman, director of the US army’s Next-Generation Combat Vehicles (NGCV) Cross-Functional Team and Dr Corde Lane, director of the human research and engineering directorate at the US Army Research Lab, about what the tank of the future might look like – and how it’ll have to contend with new cyber enemies.įor much of the 20th century, a single valley, in a sedate corner of Central Europe, obsessed and terrified Nato planners more than any other. But examine what’s rolling down the pipeline and that couldn’t be further from the truth. With the Cold War over for decades, it’s easy to imagine that old-fashioned battle tanks will soon be consigned to history’s dustbin.
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