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

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individual massed air raids in sectors, rather than attacking across tihe full
width of the theater. This variant would permit the Pact to launch a
synchronized ground and air offensive in the theater with only near parity
in the overall theater air balance but by definition would entail greater risk
of failure in the battle of attrition
Moreover. statements by senior Soviet military oflicials indicate that by
1980 the General Staff viewed the air operation as a more protracted
campaign that would consume a substantially greater share of their eflorts
in the theater. We estimate they expected that they would have to increase
the number of massed air raids in the operation twofold to threefold and
that they would tiive to dedicate to it at least four or live times as much
firepower as had been planned in the mid- 1970s. Accordingly, the Soviets
improved the Pact's ability to quickly concentrate firepower in the
operation by doubling the number of bomber regiments assigned to
strategic aviation opposite NATO. modernizing those regiments with
bombers having greater action radii, and assigning ground forces artillery
and missile forces a greater role in conventional air defense suppression.
Developing the Defensive Alternarire. Classified Warsaw Pact military
writings indicate that the Soviet General Staff had become concerned in
the mid-19 70s that the Pact air offensive was vulnerable to disruption by a
preemptive NATO olensive counterair campaign. Accordingly, by 1980
the Soviets established the so-called air defense operation-rather than the
offensive air operation---as the most likely form of air combat for the
Warsaw Pact at the start of a war if NATO seized the initiative in the air.
According to classified Pact writings, an air defense operation would
combine a coordinated theaterwide maximum air defense effort with
numerous small-scale airbase attacks. Its purpose would be to blunt the
NATO air ofTl'ensive and destroy enough NATO aircraft to create a
substantial Pact advantage in the air balance, thereby allowing the Pact to
seize the initiative with an offensive air operation to complete the defeat of
NATO's air forces.
Additionally, the Soviets made major changes in their command and
control system in 1980 and 1981 that probably were intended to alleviate
serious execution problems that they had encountered with the Pact air
defense operation Authoritative Pact
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