Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum of 18 December 1961, sent to the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, encloses a verbatim translation of a Soviet article from the top secret 1960 first issue of the special collection of Military Thought. In the article, Colonel-General A. Gastilovich argues that nuclear missiles call for revising Soviet military doctrine. He favors short blitz operations, smaller ground forces and new rescue troops. It mentions "flying saucers" only as ground effect machines for army aviation.
“The Advance”5 pages
Above all, it' is tia to repudiate the very concept and expression
"strike group" (u ,rnaya gruppirovka) as antiguated and harmful. Any
grouping formed wi h the personnel and materil of ground troops
threatens to bec a good target for an enemy nuclear strike and to
bear extra, unwarra ted losoes.
In place of th creation of "strike groups" in all types of
operations, it is necessary to instill the concept of "concdntration
of the efforts of nuclear/missile weapons". The activities) after
all, of ground troops both in -the offensive and in defense must take
place ovcr brood zones, approximtely the same for large units in
- offense as in defense. This, incidentally, was recently taken into
account by our probable enemies.
The bases of contemporary operations are rapid maneuver and
shift attacks by smll groupings (of division size), from different
- directions, not shoulder to shoulder, and anking use of their own
nuclear strikes. Even these Ytle groupings are dispersed after a -'-
successful attack. A strike group in contemporary meaning spells
death, since it forms a compact and good target for a high-yield
nuclear weapon.
Contemporary offensive and defensive operations muat differ -
from one another by the quantity of nuclear warheads alloted to their
implementation and not by the number of divisions. Both in offensive
and defensive ground troop operations the primary activities are 'e .
nuclear strikes, swift maneuver, and short assaults With tanks and
personnel. The difference rests in the fact that in offensive
operations there must be a strong first eche'Lon which permits swift
destruction of the opposing enenag; in a defensive operation it- is
- expedient to have a weaker first echelon and to designate it for
- holding certain transportation centers, important areas or position I
sectors behind large natural barriers, with the aim of slowing the
tempo of the enemy offensive;-~defense as a whole should be based ,.
.aneuver and strikes with forces located in the sone of interior,
- even with the loss of territory, in order to win time and concen-
trate essential nuclear/missile weapons.
It appears to us that under current conditions, it is un-
necessary to have second echelons, in the previous meaning of this
term, either in defense or in offense. They were always thought
of as a potential strike group which could be brought into battle
in a new direction. At present it is much more expedient to
consider everything located behind the first echelon,which is. en-
gaged in battle, as reserve, dispersed over the entire field of
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 23 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.