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 Polish air-defense system should be divided into two separate but mutually complementary parts: a national air-defense system in charge of zonal air defense and a military air-defense system in charge of operational direct air defense for the purposes of troop support. 57. -The organizational structures of air defense themselves should be simplified, especially as regards the chain of command, which should be reduced to a minimum (while at the same time assuring a sufficient variety of equipment for each structure). 58. -The basic elements of direct air defense should be the reconnaissance-command-fire team (artillery battalion, battery). That kind of defense should be, like antitank defense, propagated throughout the military. 59. -Air defense in all of its aspects should be subordinated to the overall national defense system, which in practical terms will mean that the territorial division of zonal air defense would correspond to the design of organizational structures and the scopes of competence. 60. -In peacetime, a part of the resources of Polish air defense should be used to monitor the airspace and as a deterrent. Allowing for the requirements of modern air defense and the directions of its development, it can be argued that the role of air defense will steadily grow, and its effectiveness will be a fundamental criterion for evaluating the defensive capability of a country or a coalition of countries.
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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.