Documents / FOIA release
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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To pSecret Figure 10 (continued) capable of participating without first deploying to forward airbases would be medium bombers flying at high altitudes (and thus vulnerable to air defenses) or The illustrated medium and heavy bomber flight profiles are heavy bombers. optim i.ed for defense Penetration and are similar to missions panned bya Badger regimenl secordingw The area that would be brought inder attack in each assume that the bombers wou t cu uet avo NATO radar individual massed air raid would be substantialli detection by operating entirely at low altitudes on both the inbound narrower if the Soviets chose to concentrate theirand outbound segments of their missions while over NApTO ry and most of the GDR and western Czechislovakia. attacks in sectors to compensate for near parity in the Soviet planners consider the Fencer to have TMO-wide air balance. Soviet writers have referred a maximum practical operational flight radius of nearly 700 km. to these sectors only as "operational axes," withoutbut that the aircraft would have to ly at high altitudes, thereby making themselves vulnerable. to reach targets at that distance. US specifying the extent of the area covered by each. We technical assessments, however. suggest that the Fencer could fly doubt, however, that they are referring to axes as considerably farther. For a discussion of the differences between small as the six land axes noted in figure 5. WeSoviet operational planning factors and US technical estimates of maximum capabilii.- estimate that the most effective plan would be to divide the TMO into two sectors separated near the boundary between AAFCE's 2ATAF and 4ATAF A standart fhght-route structure is likely to be used by USSR- (see appendix C), because two sectors would reduce based bombers to sin sifv airs ace manaemnjt verPaut erms. the burden of airspace management by providing rV. room for atsecond penetration corridor in each sector, scmtms nnltour penetratton cor1Uors assume a TMO-ide allow greater use of front aviation by casing basing air raid. constraints, and ensure that each sector contained Ts scca~i enough high-value NATO airfield targets to warrant committing the force of an entire massed air raid to it.Location and Timig ofAttack nearly all of the attacks during at least the first few massed air raids of an initial If the TMO were divided into two sectors, we estimateconventional air operation in the Western TMO prob- that the Soviets would probably prefer an attack ably would be concentrated in the mid-European sequence in, which they alternated between the twostrategic zone and the North Sea. Most primary sectors a series of operational phases of two massedNATO targets lie in this area within 150 to 400 km of air raids apiece. Although the Soviets clearly couldthe FRG-GDR border and can be struck by strategic increase their effectiveness if they were to hit theand naval aviation medium bombers flying low-alti- same airfields in several consecutive massed air raids,tude defense penetration fight protiles and by for- we doubt that they would want to conduct more thanward-deployed strategic aviation Fencer light bomb- two-or conceivably three-consecutive raids in ancrs flying somewhat less advantageous profiles one sector. (figure 10). The Soviets also may intend to attack deeper targets, such as key airbases in France and Britain during the initial conventional air operation. Recent military writings state that the operation would cover an area about 1,000 km deep and 1.000 to 1,500 km wide- which would include almost all of Britain and most of France. The Soviets probably envision conducting most of the attacks against the deeper targets during The timing of the individual massed air raids would the later phases of the operation, however, because, be influenced by several operational constraints. Sovi- according to Soviet planning factors, the only aircraft et military writers often have noted that achieving some degree of tactical surprise could be critical to success, because it would allow the Pact to catch 33 g r t
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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.