Documents / FOIA release

III-018 “The Theory of Military Art Needs Review,” by Col. Gen. A.I. Gastilovich and Lt. Gen. I.A. Tolkonyuk, special collection of Military Thought, top secret issue No. 1, 1960, CIA/DP Clandestine Report Special Collection, 18 December 1961,

Central Intelligence Agency · 23 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

I. " .
be misile strikes in edbarkation and dobarkotion arcas; vhi.e enroute
at seg it is again more expedient to annihlate landing forces by
strikes with missiles having nuclear chargea of several megatons.
After the discovery of the landing forces at sea, these attacks can
be calculated on the basis of their passage of a definite point (area).
Certain Questions of the Develop-nt and rganization of the -
Types of Arred Forces
The changing of certain stratcie and operational points of view
is unavoidably bound up in the review .of the prograns for development
and orcanization of the different types of armed forces. ' his
dovelop:nt :ust, first of all, evolve only from the need- of the
initial poriod of the war, since " lons, drawn-out nuclear/missile
struwgle is ix.oasiblej secondly, it must develop under the banner
- of the indubitable priority of nuclear/missile troops. In this
respect it is expedient to develop prinarily missile troops of the
VGK, capable of using hiesiles of megaton yields.
rissila troops of all types -" VG operational, and tactical --
- must develop in the directions ofi -
- increasing their firing rate. (skoroatrelnost); in this respect
the introduction of solid missile fuels has decisive signitficance
missiles must be pe ga ready projectiles, fully assembled and
requiring only the establishment of the flight program
- - perfection and automation of the process of tying in the launching
mounts (carriers) to the' terrain;
- perfection of missile guidance systems, not subject to 3amming;
" . - perfection of missile carriers capable of changing the launch
area quickly; in this. respect an important role must be played
principally by "air-surface" type missiles on seaplanes ( drosaolt),
missile-carrying submarines, and missile trains (poyezd) for '
- #ttrategic :issiles);
- perfection of the system of centralized ccnd of launching
missiles from widely separated com:nd points.
It must be acknowledged directly.that in their present state,
missiles of tactical and operational designation are still not nut-
ficiently suitable for the missions assigned to themi because of their
1.3a)(4)

Not linked to a story yet.

About this file

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.