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.
“Sea”15 pages
Aot.Secret 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 To'Scrt iv
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 95 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.