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.
“Headquarters”10 pages
Top Secret Appendix B Use of the Smolensk Strategic Air Army in the Western Theater of Military Operations The Smolensk strategic air army, equipped with to compensate for wartime attrition. We believe that medium bombers, probably is intended to support each of these regiments probably has only 22 to 24 operations throughout the European theater of war, Badger G strike aircraft in active flying status, and but, lacking direct evidence, we can only estimate the we estimate that roughly 25 to 30 of the 169 Badger likely extent of its participation in operations in the G's listed in table 7 probably are in flyable storage. Western TMO. Moreover, our estimates contain some For an estimate of the full weapon delivery potential uncertainty due to incomplete information on the of the Badger regiments, we would also have to composition and primary roles of the Smolensk air consider the possibility of reconfiguring Badger H army's component units. chaff droppers for a secondary missionocidelicrin free-fall bombs, Force Composition and Primary Roles ettimate that the Badger The Smolensk strategic air army is composed of 12 s rike regiments in the Smolensk air army may strike reg ments, two reconnaissance regiments, and contain a total of about 25 to 35 of these aircraft. one electronic warfare support regiment, but we are uncertain of the exact mix of aircraft types within each regiment and the primary roles of-many of the Each of the three Blinder strike regiments has been aircraft. These uncertainties stem from the Soviets' shown to contain two Blinder B widespread practice of producing numerous strike and strike squa rons and one squadron of what we call s u p p rt a rints of t ei r b o m e rsB li ndser A 's. C o ntra ry to m o st c urre nt tec hn ica l e sli- suggest that the Blinder B probabl can Carry either bombs or an ASM. Morenv~er suggest Strike Regiments t at the so-ca lcdB inder A squadron is probably a there are probably two Badger G strike mixture of unidentified Blinder variants that have squadrons and one Badger HJK electronic counter- ECM support as theironrimary mssion measures (ECM) support squadron in each of the six Badger strike regiments (one of which is presently upgrading to Backfire). The Badger G is capable of we estimate that perhaps about five carrying air-to-su lacemissilesJASM .ndAdrn n- of the Blinder A's in each regiment could be dedicated free-fall bombs, jammers. The enormous chaff corridors that arc sown by Blinders indicate that some of the Binder 's probably have chaff-laying as their primary mission (like the Badger H). We contin- ue to estimate, however, that most or all of the Blinder A's probably have either a residual bombing capability or can be readily reconfigured for a second- ary free-fall bombing role. Many of these redistributed Badgers ap- pear to have been placed i,, flyable storage at the operational bases, however, and may be intended only 65 To p 'Seret
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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.