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.
,,. multi-million-man armies. o _ Advocates of multi-million-rn anmies allude to the experience of all twentieth-century wars, which showed that the growth of the destructive force of weapons in armed combat with an eneny of equal strength never brought about a decrease in the armed forceid during war, but rather caused their increase. They forget that this experience is based on entirely different means of armed combat and methods of its conduct. For this reason, analogies cannot be made - in this mattor. Under current conditions can operations unfold in the old mnner? Can they, having begun with a relatively smell mber of regular - corbat-ready troops then continually broaden by dint of the arrival . of fully mobilized large units, -and-finally change into engagements of numzrous fronts and of multi-million-man armies? Under current conditions this is. firstly impossible, and secondly, unnecessary. It is impossible because nothing ill arrive from the depth of the country in tims, and possibly will never arrive. It is unnecessary - because after the first nuclear strikes the remaining forces of the - enemy in the border zones also cannot be numerous; it is necessary - ' to crush quickly the remina of these forces and to occupy the enemy country and, for this, operations of a completely different nature . will be required from thoae which we are now studying. --- At the present time, of the 61 divisions within the' composition of the Allied ground troops of the European military bloc, there are 5 American divisions, 4 British divisions, and 8 est cermen divisions; the remaining divisions: 14 french, 10 Turkish divisions, and other countries - 20 divisions. - - - The first obliterating strike by missile formationa of the Y.K - can be directed against the enemy in such a canner that only a border strip with a depth of several.tens of kiloneters (in the interest of the safety of our troops) will remain undestroyed. Tbe taking of this strip will then become the primary mission of the advancing divisions of the first echelon; it must be accomplished also by their wide-use of nuclear missiles of tactical and operational designation. After taking the border zone, the mission confronting the troops be chiefly the speedy taking over of ,zones of a greater or . lesser. degree of destruction. and radiation resulting from the measive strike of strategic missiles.-"Unde these conditions, the mobili- zational build-up of the enemy or the approach of his large _1 - ._____ .. a~4 _7- . it~(a4
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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.