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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.
“Headquarters”10 pages
To Lcreit Warsaw Pact Air Forces: Support of Strategic Operations in Central Europe Key Judgments Soviet military writings confirm that the Soviets have a high regard for [Iifrmali,,n ai~lae NATO's air forces and apparently believe that they constitute the greatest as is i~ this report. potential threat to the success of a Warsaw Pact ground olTcnsivc in a conventional war in Central Europe. Accordingly, senior Soviet military authorities have stressed the need to establish theaterwide air supremacy at the outset of a conventional war and have implied that its attainment would be second in importance only to preempting the first major NATO nuclear strike Authoritative Warsaw Pact military writings indicate that in the mid- 1970s the Pact planned to defeat NATO's air forces in an intense battle of attrition during the first two days of a war. It intended to win this brief air war by conducting an olTensive air operation that would rely on surprise and overwhelming force to deliver a series of three crushing blows against NATO's airbases in Central Europe. Soviet military writings suggest that by the late 1970s, however, the Soviet General Staff had concluded that the existing Pact plans for the air supremacy campaign were no longer viable. These writings noted that it would be difficult to achieve sufficient surprise to catch most of NATO's aircraft on the ground in the airfield attacks. Moreover, senior Soviet military officials stated that the Pact air forces lacked sufficient firepower to accomplish their tasks, probably reflecting an altered Soviet perception of the Central European air balance that occurred during the late 197 0s. This perceived shift in the air balance-probably caused by a combination of closer French cooperation with NATO, NATO's force modernization, and a possible Soviet switch to more conservative estimation techniques- had, in Soviet calculations, evidently turned a clear Pact advantage into a situation of near parity. Authoritative Soviet military writings suggest that " near parity in the air balance would deny the Pact the overwhelming force necessary to launch a theaterwide air operation with high expectations of success Revising the OffJensive Air Operation. The Soviets changed their force employment concepts and reorganized their forces in 1980 and 1981- probably in large part to improve their prospects for attaining theater air supremacy. Senior Soviet military officials had cited their limited prospects of achieving air supremacy as a weak link in the Pact's ability to win a war in Central Europe. Classified Pact military writings indicate that by 1981 the Soviets had created a new variant of the offensive air operation that would achi.:ve temporary localized force advantages by concentrating the 1'oIecret 5 ,'-OV 0CX Janury~r A98
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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.