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
as 1969 or 1970. missile. The Backfire is well suited for the peripheral strike mission and greatly improves the payload and penetration capabilities of Soviet bomber forces tar- geted against NATO. The mobile SS-20 force, when fully deployed, will have greater survivability and destructive power than the present peripheral missile 169. Missile warhead storage capacity in Central force. Europe appears adequate, provided the higher esti- mates of capacity are correct, but bomb storage 171. Elements of all the Soviet strategic attack capacity appears to be insufficient to satisfy the forces-the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF), Long reuirements for tactical nuclear operations Range Aviation (LRA), and the Soviet Navy-have the mission of carrying out nuclear strikes against NATO Soviets are estimated to have storage capacity or only targets. (See table II-12.) These include medium- and 200 to 605 bombs in East Germany, 70 to 185 in intermediate-range ballistic missiles (SS-4 MRBMs, Poland, and 30 to 95 in Czechoslovakia. They prob- SS-5 and SS-20 IRBMs), LRA bombers (Badger, ably plan to move additional bombs and warheads into Blinder, Backfire), and ballistic missile submarines the forward area from the numerous tactical nuclear (G-class and IH-class). Only a relatively small portion weapons storage sites in the western USSR before or of the USSR's ICBMs and modern ballistic missile during hostilities. submarines would be likely to be used to strike targets in NATO Europe, and the 150 strike-configured Bear and Bison bombers in LRA are intended mainly for intercontinental missions. 172. Medium- and Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles. The major portion of the land-based ballistic missile force that would be employed for peripheral Soviet Peripheral Strike Forces " attack consists of 416 SS-4 MRBM and 80 SS-5 IRBM launchers located at 54 complexes in the European 170. For strategic forces the most significant devel- and south-central USSR. (See figure II-28.) This force opments have been the deployment of the Backfire includes 11.8 silo launchers and 378 aboveground bomber and the SS-20 intermediate-range ballistic launchers with fixed launch pads, a mode of deploy- ment which makes them vulnerable to attack. Of these E This section summarizes the current status of Soviet peripheral launchers, 445 are believed to be aimed against NATOstrategic forces intended for use against NATO. A more detailed description of the deployment patterns and technical characterisitics and other targets on the western periphery of the of these systems is contained in NIE 11-6-78, Soviet Strategic Forces USSR. The remaining 51 launchers probably are for for PeripheralAttack, use against targets in Asia and the Middle East. 1-49 opt
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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.