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.
“Mission Control”9 pages
Top ecret sion strike support duties in the_initiaLmassed nucear begin with NATO conventional offen-strike could also be used sive operations, the initial massed nuclear strike most oviets normally do not frequently occurs about two to three days after theasktheir ront ai force reconnaissance aircraft with Warsaw Pact counteroffensive begins, as Warsaw a nuclear delivery role. Soviet writings indicate that Pact ground forces break through the defense lines ofall reconnaissance aircraft would be needed to per- NATO's first-echelon army corps about 60 to 120 kmform final reconnaissance tasks in support of the into the FRG. The initial massed n lcar strike occursstrike. y the time warsaw Pact Forces reach the Rhine River (typicallyExecution five or six days into the Warsaw Pact offensive).=In Soviet writing NATO usually is portrayed as initiating the escalation to nuclear war by being the first to begin final strike preparations, Nuclear Alert Forces. The Soviets would place mostwhich implies that the Soviets strongly prefer to fight of the SRF and the ground forces SRBMs and athe war entirely with conventional weapons. Soviet smaller fraction of their nuclear delivery aircraft onmilitary writers nevertheless state emphatically that it nuclear alert during periods of increased threat of waris imperative to disrupt NATO's preparations and to and during conventional operations, as a quick-re-preempt NATO's first nuclear strike with their own. sponse force to preempt a surprise first strike byIf they should fail to preempt, the Soviets believe they NATO. Military writings indicate that both the sizemight still avoid suffering disproportionately heavy of the nuclear alert force and its degree of readinesslosses and losing the strategic initiative if they could would vary according to the Soviet assessment of thelaunch their strike before NATO's weapons.detonate. likelihood that NATO would soon use nuclear weapons the Soviets probably we estimate that Pact command-cenve-rneirint igence system could detect NATO crs wou l typically place roughly 10 percent of theirpreparations in time to permit the Pact to execute a operationally ready ground attack aircraft in nuclearpreemptive or nearly simultaneous strike in response. reserve status during a period of increasing threat ofWe believe the Soviets have the technical capability to war and during the initial stages of a conventionalmake such a preemption, but that they might not be conflict. This would include about 12 aircraft perable to execute it successfully. Since the mid-1970s, fighter-bomber division, eight or nine aircraft perthe frequent occurrence 7of nearly light bomber division, and about six aircraft persimultaneous exchanges an instances o NATO medium bomber divisionu Some evidencstriking first, rather than successful Pact preemptions, suggests, however, that no nuclear reserve mightsuggests that the Soviets also have grave doubts about their ability to act on intelligence warning of NATO's n Nuclear reserve planning factors for the medium bombers of what final strike preparations in time to prepare their own is now the Smolensk strategic air army declined from 60 to 70 nuclear strike forces for a full-scale preemptive strike. accenoi the id- iso pe inihe el 97 ra cn ntemi- st 3ccommodatethe requirements ofrthetinitial conventional air operation. We postulate that this figure subsequently may have been lowered to a value closer to current front air force norms in response to the increased number of IRBM warheads provided byTiming. The timing of the initial massed nuclear deployment of ihe SS-20 (and ihe pronounced improvement in iheirstrike in the Western TMO has varied accuracy over the older SS-4 ande-5 and continued dissatisfac- rom the outset of war to after as tion with the effectiveness of the planned air supremacy campaign. rrmenis-a-lnof conven tional comba t. Soviet if this reduction hasnot already occurred, a substantial reductionr n gsasa te that N Aof conv o l mbo t. vieto in strategic aviation nuclear reserve requirements could beachievedwritings stale that NATO would be most likely to during ihe latier half of the 1980s if ihe Soviets deploy the initiate the transition to nuclear operations when SSC.X-4 long-range GLCM asprojected. confronted with a crises such as the loss of important defense lines, the destruction of major forces, or the threat of losing key economic areas - Top :secret 46
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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.