I Fought World War III Against Russia In a Simulation. The Results Were Shocking.

Michael Peck

Security,

How would a T-80 tank fare against an M-1 Abrams? A Soviet motorized rifle division against a U.S. armored cavalry regiment? These are the questions that make military buffs drool and made the late Tom Clancy a rich man.

Had the Cold War turned hot, the friction of war would have burned bright.

Forget politics. Forget history. Who knows why the Soviets invaded West Germany in 1989? Perhaps it was a bad grain harvest in the Ukraine. Perhaps they feared the U.S. would strike first.

Or, maybe the Soviets simply decided—like many an empire or perhaps even a certain North American republic—that the only way to demonstrate they were not a declining superpower was by going to war.

What difference does it make now? The Soviet armored armada has just crossed the German border, racing for the Rhine and then the English Channel. And now it's time to find out just what all the trillions of dollars and rubles sacrificed by the capitalist and the proletariat taxpayers actually paid for.

Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, from Matrix Games, attempts to answer the biggest military what-if since 1945. What would have happened had the balloon gone up, the tripwire been tripped, and the Soviets had invaded West Germany in 1989?

How would a T-80 tank fare against an M-1 Abrams? A Soviet motorized rifle division against a U.S. armored cavalry regiment? These are the questions that make military buffs drool and made the late Tom Clancy a rich man.

It’s the war that—thank God—never was. By that time, both sides had fielded enormous numbers of advanced technologies, from stealth aircraft and reactive armor to night vision systems. Many of the tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, helicopters and missiles went on to fight in Desert Storm and are still in use today.