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The Fulda Gap 1989: The Battle for the Center

The Fulda Gap 1989: The Battle for the Center is a unique simulation conversion modification project for WARNO. It offers a dynamic campaign series for the simulation of a hypothetical conflict between WARSAW and NATO forces. The multiplayer simulation game mode is a standout feature, allowing players to customize their experience through adjustable difficulty settings. The project also includes changes to gameplay elements such as units, decks, timelines, and availability, all designed to accurately represent each country's military capability.

Each country's Battle Group Deck is meticulously modified to represent a division or Brigade Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E). In multiplayer games, players engage in corporate or Army Operational-Level engagements. The numerical values of unit packs are not arbitrary but are modified to match those from military reference sources, ensuring an accurate representation of the respective armies' war-fighting capabilities. The project also utilizes ARMY (SHAPE) planning doctrine documentation and its assessment of the threat posed by the Warsaw Pact forces to NATO as research materials.

The campaign simulation timer began in 1975, a pivotal year in history. This was the year the Russians would have decided to launch an attack against NATO forces in Europe, based on their estimates of low U.S. morale and numerical troop strength in Europe following the Vietnam War. The simulation models the political scenario in which STAVKA is permitted to begin planning an attack against the NATO force in West Germany in 1975. The chance of a Russian attack across the Fulda gap diminishes every year by approximately seven percent (~7.143%) until 1989 when a general withdrawal of Soviet forces in east Germany is announced, and the reunification of Germany begins.

The named locations listed represent peacetime barracks positions. Before hostilities, all units would deploy according to their wartime General Defense Plan (GDP). Three wartime scenarios affect settings for multiplayer or campaign games. The first was a Warsaw Pact attack directly out of their barracks locations with only a few days of preparation; depending on strategic surprise, NATO would have had about 48 to 72 hours' warning. This was the scenario NATO feared the most, injecting a palpable sense of tension and uncertainty. The second scenario involved a 7 to 10-day warning, with REFORGER units moving into place and the Soviets mobilizing for 2 to 3 weeks. The last scenario models a full deployment for both sides. A nuclear exchange is a high probability in the 11th and 13th pre-generated campaign scenarios.

Other game simulation modification factors influence the general disposition of forces and their deployments. The campaign simulation models the engagement scenario, where the Soviets launch an assault with no warning from their station areas through the Erfurt-Eisenach region. This corridor, which begins at the gap between the two mountain basins, opens into a vast grassy region of farmland that crosses the Border into the Phillipstal-Rasdorf sector (the sector of the American 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 2nd Panzer Grenadier Division). From there, it runs west to the gap between the Vogelsberg and the highlands north of the autobahn.

The broad corridor that begins at that gap and runs astride the autobahn to Frankfurt and the Rhine is explicitly known as the Wetterau Corridor. When you reflect on the last month of World War II, you will recognize that the Wetterau Corridor and what we now know as the Fulda Gap served as the primary avenue for the drive of the Third U.S. Army from its Rhine bridgehead near Frankfurt onward to Leipzig and the heart of Germany. (At one point in April 1945, the Third Army HQ was in Hersfeld.).