Having spent a bit of time as a youngster in the BAOR area there was lots of talk of 1 (BR) Corps being a speed bump on the way to Rotterdam/Antwerp/Calais.
With hindsight looks like Ivan would have run out of gas / ammo/ rations somewhere on the Luneburg heath whilst being harassed by stay behind SAS and German grannies angry that the BMPs had driven over their rose beds.
The how the heck was that he had a decent personal knowledge and good contacts plus a brain that could pull together little bits of information to surmise the whole.
I believe somewhere in the foreword that it basically started as a war gaming exercise with a narrative put around certain aspects.
That’s why some of the military operations bits have that realism & it’s something he replicated in other warfare heavy novels.
Some of the details / tactics would have been classified at the time, & not just “RESTRICTED.” Similarly, the addition of all the “maybe not just close enough to be classified” items, when added up, certainly pushed them into a higher level.
Sandbag story - at RAF Bruggen, although I was an instructor in the Tornado Sim, my war task was “attack controller.” This basically meant allocation / monitoring of generation / arming of aircraft / wpns & then giving approval to launch them off (with stn cdr’s say so!) to meet the NATO tasking. One of the prime tgts was a major Soviet-run airfield in East Germany.
Jump ahead to Germany unification day - we drove to the border, stayed the night - 5 car loads of us - all the gasthouses were full - publican had mattress / blankets - a great night was had by all. Next day, off we went to Colditz Castle, via Weimar. Fantastic history - so much atmosphere (it was a mental health institution at the time, so we went round from area to area, being locked in).
On the way back, by pure luck, we drove by the major Soviet-run airfield. Loads of aircraft / equipment out in the open - brief stop, lots of photos, run away! 
Next day, I put the films in for a one hr processing at Roermond & then took the photos into the Int section. Guess what I have?!?! They were drooling all over them & couldn’t believe that they had only been taken the day before. They certainly did an operational assessment but I never got the feedback.
Two weeks later, all Germany = friends together, there was a mountain of tgt package shredding & burning!!
That’s an excuse to get by any classified info that might have “inadvertently” crept in.
The late Tom Clancy’s factual book Submarine is well worth a read, illustrates the differences in how the RN and the USN operate. Add in Ian Ballantine and Ryan Ramsey’s books about submarines, both definitely worth a few hours reading.
Amazon Prime series, How to command a nuclear submarine, detailing the ‘Perisher’ course.
The best book on RN submarine operations is The Silent Deep by Hennessy and Jinks. The authors had good access throughout its preparation and Hennessy is a master of his craft. Pretty much from the horse’s mouth.
For a wider examination of maritime operations and what drives them, I recommend British Naval Intelleigence Through The Twentieth Century by Andrew Boyd. In fact I would go as far saying it is essential reading.
Finally you may find Edward Hampshire’s The Royal Navy in The Cold War Years useful. The author is an academic and whilst clearly accomplished in sifting through the national archives he sometimes lacks the empathy of Boyd. It’s a mighty tome, some 600 pp plus another 200 odd of appendices and index, but worth persevering with.
exmpa
Hunt for Red October was just on one of the freebie channels - lots of memories of St Mawgan (42 Sqn) flooding back.
In the late 1970’s, on Nimrod Mk 1 aircraft, things were rather basic, with Jezebel sonobuoys (passive only, no directional capability) & rather large (said to be the cost of a Mini car!) Mk 1C active & passive sonobuoys. The Jezebel sonobuoys could be set for shallow or deep, & with a couple of time settings - you didn’t want the associated radio channels to be max’d out later on in a sortie if you had managed to pinpoint a submerged tgt, think there were about 30 channels?? They could be dropped from 2 pressurised containers from medium / higher altitude, or, via an un-pressurised 6(?) shot rotary device.
When closing in for an attack solution, you would drop a pattern of 3 x Mk1C active buoys (about a mile apart?) with a passive Mk1C (& normal sonobuoy) dropped jointly in the middle with the active one; these boys only had a one hr lifespan. The active Mk1C sent out a ping, waited a set time (10 secs??) for a returned ping bounce (which would give you a range), then rotated about 15 degs, ping again, etc. The passive version rotated (I think in also steps) to give a passive bearing. Distance from the active buoy or 2 maybe 3 distances fixes to calculate a point) + / or bearing from the passive = attack solution, run down the bearing if feasible & either attack on the fix, or hope to get a “MAD” mark (magnetic anomaly detection) from the big sting on the tail = attack with either Mk46 active or Mk44 passive torpedo (or the WE177A nuclear bomb).
There was also a bathythermograph buoy - this was often dropped at the beginning of a search in order to assess the sea temperature, & more importantly, if there was a thermocline; if a submarine was below the thermocline, & the sonobuoy microphone was above it, it would highly unlikely to detect an submarine noises. Some basic sound / water theory - in principle, sound can travel a long way in a straight under the sea in deep water - you needed to be able to have a prediction / assessment of the direct path (DP) range of your tgt. If it was say 10 miles, then you would space your 8 or so sonobuoys in la ine initially at about 18-20 miles, 90 degs to the expected mean line of advance (MLA). If the tgt transited between 2 buoys, you would get a “closest point of advance” (CPA) & use this to calculate probable direction; sounds picked up (& printed on the thermal-sensitive paper (it stank to high heaven!) would give a probable indication of speed. Then you would advance down the MLA track, & drop a 2 line pattern, with closer spacing with a slight overlap - contact on 2 - 3 sonobuoys will refine the track / speed.
For water areas that were warmer / shallower / saltier (such as the Mediterranean), the sound waves wouldn’t go in a straight line for easy DP detection. Typical DP range would be very short, less than 5 miles? The sound from a tgt would bend downwards, then curve back upwards, then down, then up, etc, etc. Think a lot of concentric circles - this “bounce” could be say every 10 miles repeated 8 - 10 times!! The width of the detection "ring"would vary depending on water conditions but could be perhaps 5 - 10 miles across. This posed a huge problem in monitoring sonobuoys & then isolating which one was picking up the submarine - but where?? If there was contact on 2 buoys, the inter-locking rings could be one of many! We had an USN exchange officer who was very surprised that us Brits didn’t have suitable monitoring plan - let me talk with a friend… A few days later, yes, we had a plan - for sonobuoy pattern, distances between buoys & monitoring schedule depending on the convergence ranges / zones. Incidentally, for the disappearance of the Malaysia Air MH370 aircraft in the Indian Ocean, it is very possible that the data recorder pinger was being heard under convergence conditions = impossible to pinpoint.
We did a week operating from Gibraltar, working with NATO ships & subs in a typical exercise. One tasking was to locate HMS Dreadnought (an old & comparatively noisy early generation nuclear attack sub - but still a lot quieter than Soviet boats). With the convergence zone conditions, the search condition were going to be radar / ESM / visual; Dreadnought was meant to stick up a mast every 30-40 mins & /or squirt her radar for about 10 secs. This meant that the sonics team were surplus to requirements = tea makers + visual lookouts in port & starboard beams. I was in the port beam, marvelling at the lovely blue water…when we went right over a submerged sub, travelling in our direction. Woo hoo!! “Mark, mark, submerged tgt, on our track!!” A retro-flare was fired - very clever device - it fired backwards as same forward speed of the aircraft = dropped right below.
Action Stations was called by the captain - we circled around, ran down the track towards the flare, we got a MAD mark - for cost savings, I think for each exercise sortie, we were only allowed to drop one active Mk1C & one passive (plus the normal Jezebel). As this was an exercise against one of our own subs, we also dropped 2 ASTIs - “Air to Submarine Tgt Indicators” - mini-depth charges. Successful “attack” - the order was given to close up the camera crew (me in the port beam still, open up the window) - as we came around the captain said “uh oh” as the same time that the AEO said we had received a radio call from Dreadnought - saying “Missed!”
I took some lovely pictures of a Russian Foxtrot Class diesel powered sub, including one of a crew member in the conning tower waving their fist!! Oh dear! No-one was aware that a Foxtrot had sneaked into the Med - especially Dreadnought. So, down to me, we bombed a Russian sub! However, the Jezebel buoy got perfect sound of them making an emergency blow for surfacing.
Equipment / capabilities / tactics / resources have changed markedly over the last 50+ yrs & what I can indicate from back then has been published in open-source documents. Sonobuoys are exceptionally sensitive / versatile compared to then & the analysing equipment on modern ASW is incredibly complex & probably 1000+ times more capable than the stream-driven stuff that I used. The ASV21 radar on the Nimrod Mk1 was literally a WW2 design! Round screen & lots of dots!
The basic concept was that a tgt of interest would be known to leave the Northern Fleet in Murmansk, transit around northern Norway & enter the Atlantic via the Iceland / Faroes Gap. Tracking would be conducted by the Norwegians, then the Brits, possibly the French & Spanish, then the Americans from Lajes. SOSUS might come into play for the Gap. Reverse order when the submarine was returned from deep Atlantic to base.
When I joined the Nimrod fleet, the tracking was always covert & the handover to the next aircraft / country was also covert - this involved dropping an arrow of sonobuoys which would hopefully become “hot” shortly after the new aircraft came on task. The direction / spacing of the arrow gave MLA & speed. At some stage, someone high up decided that the final handover between countries would be overt - in other words, hit the submarine with lots of sound!! See what thye will do.
The first few months, wow, this was a huge surprise to the Soviet submariners - they would go into full evasive speed / manoeuvres, with the associated noises (props, cavitation, nuclear reactor, generators, etc), being picked up / recorded. Captains & navs would try to plot the expected MLA & second-guess which sortie might be the one to bid for; we didn’t care if it was a launch at 2359 hrs, it might be worth it. However, there was always the faint possibility that there would be a “hold” on active drops as that normally meant that the Red sub had a Blue follower…
After a while, the Russians had obviously been briefed that in around a certain geographical area, e.g. when the Noggies handed over to the Brits, expect to be disturbed! No big changes carried out. Back to boring.
Happy days of the Cold War!
Thoughts about what will come from tomorrow’s summit in Alaska?
I’m half expecting a new Ribbentrop Pact.
Apparently, Trump might offer Putin some of the valuable minerals in Alaska. Absolutely insane that Putin invades Ukraine and may end up getting bits of America out of it!
More and more I believe that the Russians do indeed have compramat against Trump.
Trump being a “man of the deal” I can imagine him “exchanging” some of the minerals in Alaska for some of the ones in Donbass.
I think he’d happily screw over Alaska if it meant he can secure a good deal. We’re back into the territory of end the war at what ever cost necessary.
I don’t believe Putin is really interested in stopping and that this whole exercise is designed to 1) kick the can up the road 2) embarass Trump by agreeing and reneging.
I hope to be wrong.
Probably not the greatest strategy, that
Nope - neither was invading Ukraine, but here we are.
Aliens looking down on earth 
I’m still hoping to wake up to Drumpf doing an Elvis.
Bought the book - caution - its a rather small font (even with reading glasses!).