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Warsaw Pact Air Forces: Support of Strategic Operations in Central Europe, CIA/DI/SOVA Intelligence Assessment, January 1985.

Central Intelligence Agency · 95 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence assessment, dated January 1985, examines how Warsaw Pact air forces would support large strategic operations in Central Europe. It concludes that the Soviets see NATO air power as the greatest threat to a Pact ground offensive. They revised their air supremacy plans in 1980 and 1981 to use sector-concentrated raids and a defensive air operation. The assessment also finds that heavy aircraft losses and limited deep attack capability would remain serious problems. The document has no UFO content.

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Participants;The initial air defense operation would to anticipate far enough in advance the approximateinvolve more aircraft than any other operation, as it timinos.uh quent massed NATO air raids.probably would use all Pact fixed-wing aircraft and
ground-based air defense forces in the TMO0. We
estimate that the Pact probably would have available With extensive reinforcement, however, including afor the first phase of the operation about 3,000 total of five first-echelon fronts, no nuclear reserveaircraft at the start of a war, assuming a force force, and the inclusion of medium bombers based indisposition of three first-echelon fronts and two sec- the USSR, the first massed sortie could conceivablyond-echelon fronts, remnforced by the Legnica and contain more than 4,000 aircraft. In contrast, with noVinnitsa air armies. We believe that the first phase reinforcement and a large nuclear reserve force, asprobably would have to be conducted without th few as 2,000 aircraft could-Darticipate in the firstmedium bombers of the Smolensk air army and tAe massed sortie (table 2)
Baltic Fleet, but that later phases could include over J
500 additional aircraft from these forces. Participa-
tion of medium bombers in the later phases of the air
defense operation would depend on the Pact's ability
Top Secret 20

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 95 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.