Documents / FOIA release
This JPRS translation, dated 1 May 1993 and released by the Central Intelligence Agency, reproduces an article by Col. Marian Kopczewski of Poland's Higher Officers School of Antiaircraft Defense. The article appeared in a Polish air force and air defense journal. Kopczewski assesses the military threats Poland faces from its neighbors after the Warsaw Pact dissolved. He argues for restructuring Polish air defense into separate peacetime and wartime systems. He notes that during the Cold War any unidentified flying object was once taken as the start of World War III.
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# Concatenated JPRS Reports, 1993 Document 2 of 19 Vistula line. 18. The Western Direction. The German Air Force consists of 630 aircraft. Their current basing 50-100 km in the interior (plus monitoring and guidance elements 10-20 km in the interior) makes possible the execution of surprise attacks from two directions: the sea and Berlin. 19. An assessment of the dangers in the event of a conflict prompts the following conclusions: 20. -In peacetime, financial and organizational actions should be focused on building strong air-defense systems in regions of special danger (the Pomeranian Military District an the coastal air-defense zone). 21. -The military districts that include regions directly threatened in the event of a conflict should operate with strong and maneuverable air-defense units. 22. -Troop air defense should be chiefly in the nature of direct air defense. 23. Directions of Change in Air Defense; Aspects of the Polish Air Defense Model 24. Until recently, the air-defense systems of the countries of Central Europe were an integral component of the air-defense system of the Warsaw Pact. That meant that priority was given to the aims and tasks of the Warsaw Pact over the tasks of protecting the national territory. Such a hierarchy of the aims and tasks of air defense was not conducive to the formulation of a sovereign military policy by the individual member countries. The air-defense system of the Warsaw Pact countries represented clearly defined elements of the overall aims and organizational structure of the coalition system. Poland, by virtue of its geographical position, served to protect the northern wing of the coalition and focused the efforts of its own air-defense system on the Baltic seacoast, upon committing considerable investment outlays for that purpose. Similar tasks and priorities obliged the other member countries of the coalition. But, however objectionable that situation may have been, it would be a mistake to overlook the fact that the division of effort within the coalition rationalized the outlays on air defense of Poland, the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria and was conducive to mutual security. 25. That situation changed radically with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. What used to be good as part of the coalition whole
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 9 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.