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Warsaw Pact Forces opposite NATO, NIE 11-14-79, Volume II, the Estimate, CIA/NFAC, 31 January 1979

Central Intelligence Agency · 201 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 114 …recently halted Soviet air operations from Conakry. These developments will obviously force the 257. Many officers…
  • p. 115 …order to keep other in establishing effective air cover over supporting lines units operational. of communication…
  • p. 185 …The Soviets could elect to provide combat forces scale commitment of manpower and materiel which to…
  • p. 187 …This force is occasionally aug- forces could not be safely transported by sea or air to…
  • p. 188 …a war, but they couldsome naval and air force weapons (including a few recently introduced Flogger…
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Assessments of Backfire's Capability Against Peripheral Targets Figure Il-30a
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-F fYY 7 t. a tr av ya S.S
- DI/rm/i Force raiu (245 nm)*MS
Note: r"Thes asess ent asu ha t the Bakfire flies a tagtln neuld iso ihb m s sona piu ihattd
Thrig u e c ited h r ret dif rtf o th s representing th subson c i h -lit d mi si n d e ic e inf figur l3 b
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" LRA base "SNA base
___CIA radius (1,450-1,750 nm)
-- DIA/Army/Air Force radius (2,450 nm)
Note: These assessments assume ihat the Backfire flies a straight-line unrefueled mission with bombs, is on an optimum high-altitude
flight profile to and from the vicinity of the target area, but flies the last 200 nm to and from the target at a subsonic speed at low level.
The figures cited here are different from those representing the subsonic, high-altitude missions depicted in figure ll-30b.
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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.