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 air defense in the Polish system of national defense and, partially, also in the European military system. As a consequence, the organizational and operating requirements for a Polish air-defense system have to be adapted to future needs by developing and testing different models of that system. 49. The present-day Polish air-defense system includes a broad variety of specialized means of counteracting potential air strikes. The jurisdiction over those means varies. Generally speaking, the objectives of broadly interpreted air defense are being accomplished: by the Air Force and the Air Defense Troops, which have been merged into a single branch of armed forces; the antiaircraft troops, as a branch of operational service; radio-electronic warfare units and subunits, and the antiaircraft units of the Navy. That organizational fragmentation is counterproductive. Too many decisionmakers, using the same kind of resources, want to do the same thing in Polish airspace. The current Polish air-defense system is adapted to accomplishing Warsaw Pact objectives rather than those of a conceptual model of Polish national air defense. ## 50. * * * 51. To sum up the reflections on a conceptual model of the Polish air-defense system, it can be stated that: 52. -The nature of that system is determined by the magnitude of its combat potential, the manner in which it is used, and the nature of the threat. 53. -The magnitude of combat potential should ensue from the needs (requirements) for counteracting the air threat. 54. -The operating procedures and organizational structure (including division of labor) should be optimized in the interest of the Polish air-defense system as a whole rather than of its selected elements (such as the Antiaircraft Defense Troops, the Air Force and Air Defense Troops, and others). 55. -Air defense should be extended to the entire Polish territory, along with all objects present thereon, on varying the pattern of deployment of the combat resources, depending on the degree of threat and the importance of objects. 56. -Given the proposed model of the Polish air-defense system, allowance should be made for two basic categories: zonal air defense and direct air defense. That differentiation is required by the differences in the threat posed to air defense by different kinds of airborne means of attack. In accordance with that division, the
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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.