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.
“The Advance”13 pages
Top Sceret extend beyond the Benclux countries and northeastern airborne operations arc bold undertakings that would France (sec figure 10). There is some evidence, how- be conducted only in decisive situations because they ever, that the Sovicts have contingency plans to use involve great risk and require extensive support by Legnica air army Fencers in air operations against transport and combat aircraft. Major airborne opera- Britain. According to Soviet planning factors, the tions would be conducted to achieve such objectives as Fencers would first have to rebase to captured NATO blocking the withdrawal of enemy forces to make airfields in the western FRG to conduct attacks possible their encirclement and destruction, establish- against Britain or deep into France. Such rebasing ing bridgeheads in support of major river crossings, requirements indicate that the deeper air operations blocking or disrupting the approach of a large enemywould not include Fencer light bombers until the reserve force to sustain the momentum of a break- second stage of the first strategic operation in the through, seizing maritime straits or ports, and de- TMO. The medium bombers of the Smolensk air stroying key rear area targets such as major nuclear army would be able to fly low-altitude flight profiles forces and important command posts.j against targets in those areas if they rebased to vacated Pact airbases in the GDR, Poland, and Participants. Operational airborne operations could Czechoslovakia. involve the insertion of less than a regiment to as much as a full division of airborne troops. They would Potential Problems. The problems associated with be dropped by the transport aircraft of Military subsequent air operations would probably be similar Transport Aviation (VTA), which, like the airborne to the problems encountered in the Allied bomber troops, is a reserve of the Supreme High Command. offensive in World War I. On the average, bomber We estimate that probably no more than two or threeattrition would have to be limited to cluse to the of the seven Soviet airborne divisions would be made historical-I-percent level on each air raid if sustained available for operations in the Western TMO in a operations were to be conducted. The level of attrition general war, as the others would probably be assignedwould depend to a large degree on the extent to which missions in other theaters or be held in reserve. NATO air defenses were weakened by the initial struggle for air supremacy or by the initial massed nuclear strike. The Soviets would also be confronted Soviet planning probably emphasizes airborne opera- by the classic problem of finding and destroying tions by airborne force groupings of regimental size orenough high-value targets to justify continued deep smaller, rather than the more complex division-size attack missions on the basis of a trade-off between landings, Division-size airborne operations typically bomber attrition and the extent of the damage inflict- would be conducted at greater depth and over a longeredt period of time, thereby risking substantially higher Pact aircraft losses than would the smaller operations.Major Airborne Landing Operations Moreover, according to Soviet military writings, The major airborne o crationt n, about 300 to 500 VTA transports would be required are classified by the Soviets to drop an airborne division in a single massed sortie, as operationa air orne operations" because they are which would require the participation of practically intended to directly support the operations of a single all such aircraft based in the western USSR (seefront." Soviet military writings assert that major figure 14). By contrast, only about 130 transport sorties would be required to conduct a regimental-sizeSoviet doctrine also acknowledges the possibility of strategic dropairborne operations that would directly support the objectives of the Supreme High Command or a TMO high command. These ill- defined and seldom mentioned operations could involve multiple Soviet writing suggest that the extentairborne divisions and would pursue such strategic objectives as the of support by other air orces for a division-size capture of a major national capital, important economic areas, or key military facilities in the deep rear areas. They have been airborne drop could total between 250 and 350 front mentioned only in the context of exploiting major nuclear strikes. We assume that, if they were conducted, strategic airborne opera- tions probably would use employment concepts similar to those in Srational airborne operations, but ona grander scale 51 o- Se4crct
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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.