Documents / FOIA release
This is Volume II of National Intelligence Estimate 11-14-79, Warsaw Pact Forces Opposite NATO, issued by the Director of Central Intelligence and dated January 1979. The National Foreign Intelligence Board concurred with it. It was the first comprehensive estimate of Pact forces facing NATO since 1971. It covers Pact doctrine, the ground, air, naval, nuclear and chemical forces, command and control, and campaign plans for war in Europe. It judges that Central Europe would be the decisive arena, and it lists Pact weaknesses in pilot training and antisubmarine warfare. The document contains no UFO material.
“The Advance”37 pages
Top et 8. In considering a future war with NATO, Soviet THEATER COMMANDS strategists envision widespread combat operations encompassing all of Europe and extending into the The Soviets define a theater of war (teatr North Atlantic. Accordingly, they plan to divide the voyny-TV) as the territory of any one continent, Western TV into three land TVDs in which they together with the sea areas adjoining it and the expect Pact and NATO forces to come in conflict. (See airspace above it, on which hostilities may de- figure 111-4.) velop-for example, the European Theater of War. A TV usually includes several TVDs. An- - The Northwestern TVD. Based on the Soviet other TV presumably would be established in the Leningrad Military District, this theater would eastern USSR against China and enemy forces in encompass the Scandinavian Peninsula and im- the Pacific region. Not all of the national forces mediately adjacent waters. would be detached from national control. Re- - The Western TVD. This theater would include, sidual forces would be retained under national on the Pact side, Soviet and East European forces control as territorial defense forces for rear area in East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia security and as strategic national reserves. and Soviet forces in the western USSR; and, on A theater of military operations (teatr voyen- the NATO side, West Germany, the Benelux nykh deystviy-TVD) is defined as a particular nations, Denmark, and possibly France and territory, together with the associated airspace northern Spain. Pact operations in the western and sea areas, including islands (archipelagos), Baltic Sea also would be included in this TVD. within whose limits a known part of the armed - The Southwestern TVD. Soviet planners envi- forces of the country (or coalition) operates in sion military operations against Greece and Tur- wartime, engaged in strategic missions which key and probably northern Italy and Austria. ensue from the war plan. A TVD may be ground, This theater would also include the Black and maritime, or intercontinental. According to their Mediterranean Seas. military-political and economic importance, TVDs are classified as main or secondary. 9. The Soviets also expect major naval operations against NATO in the North Atlantic to occur in conjunction with a conflict in Europe. The equivalent Unlike NATO, the Warsaw Pact does not have theater of the TVD in Soviet maritime strategy is the MTVD, headquarters in being in peacetime. Hardened com- the Maritime Theater of Military Operations. We are mand posts have been constructed for at least some less certain about the approximate boundaries of Pact wartime headquarters, however. MTVDs than we are about those of TVDs. Operations, exercises, and documentary evidence suggest that the Western Theater of War: The Warsaw Pact High Soviets would regard an area in the Norwegian Sea Command north of the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (G-1-UK) gap as an MTVD. 7. Arrangements for exercising control of Pact forces within what the Soviets call the Western (or Fronts European) Theater of War have been evolving over 10. Regardless of what echelons of command are the last few years. Although ultimate control of all created to integrate wartime theater-level and strate- Pact operations continues to be the VGK and the gic operations, the senior tactical command would be Soviet General Staff, we now have evidence that the front. Although not directly comparable to any indicates the commander in chief of the combined Western organization, the front would be similar to armed forces of the Warsaw Pact would control all the NATO army group in size, level of command, and Pact forces in this theater in wartime. We are less function. A front would usually consist of three to five certain of how he would do this-whether the High ground armies, each including three to five tank or Command of the Warsaw Pact would become a motorized rifle divisions, and an air army of as many component of the Soviet High Command with the as several hundred tactical aircraft. A front operating responsibility for operational control over forces with- in a maritime sector might also control any naval in the Western Theater or whether it would form a elements which were chiefly devoted to that front's separate command entity. mission. The ground forces of the front would also 111-3 Tap aLa
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 201 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.