Documents / FOIA release
This is an October 1968 contribution by the Central Intelligence Agency's Office of Strategic Research to National Intelligence Estimate 11-14-68 on Soviet and East European general purpose forces. It covers Warsaw Pact war plans for Central Europe, the effects of the Czechoslovak crisis, and the doubling of Soviet forces on the Chinese border since 1965. It also assesses ground, tactical air, naval and coastal defense forces. The text does not mention UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.
“The Advance”9 pages
appear-to have different meanings depending on the context. The Soviets are consistent, however, in their statements that only two categories of units in the bordor dirtri~tJ wculd bo inas la ula, operations. These units are generally spoken of as being available in a few days after beginning of mobilization. This concept is entirely consistent with our understanding of Czech and-Polish peacetime military strengths and contingency plans for war. These countries maintain only two categories of units in their peacetime establishment, and both categories are intended to be available for military operations in less than ten days. The first category is probably manned at between 70 and 100 percent of war strength and is fully equipped. The second category is at low strength (15 to 30 percent in the case of the Czechs) and must mobilize much of its equipment from the civilian economy. There is no evidence that either the Soviets or East Europeans expect to delay the deployment of these low-strength units any longer than the time required to fill-them out with re- servists and requisitioned vehicles. Assuming that equipment levels are related to strength, the evidence on specific divisions inside the USSR supports the existence of three manning levels but does not clarify terminology. The term "cadre" has been used to describe skeletal divisions which had only officers and has also been used for divisions at low strength but with some assigned enlisted men. Our assessment of equipment holdings confirms that divisions fall into three groups as to equipment levels. One group has a range of 2,000 to 2,600 major equipment items, averaging around 2,300. A second group has between 1,200 to 1,600 and averages 1,400. All of the divisions in armies in the western USSR appear to fall in these first two groups. A third group, of which only a few examples have been studied, has an average of about 800 items. None of the third group is believed to exist in either the Belorussian or Carpathian MD's, or in armies in any of the MD's studied thus far. TE28 -
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 115 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.