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

Central Intelligence Agency · 95 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

  • p. 20 Top\Secret Of these missions, the Soviets place greatest emphasis Emergence of the Iritial Air Operation…
  • p. 45 …A more immediate tactical require- duties to perform other missions, such as attackingment, however, would be…
  • p. 46 …Its mission which would be used to maintain air cover in thewould-be-to establish the…
  • p. 54 …missions. We cannot rule out the possibili-TMO high command's area of direct control in…
  • p. 58 …Even in circumstances where final reconnaissance missions could be flown before the strikes, Soviet radio communications…
  • p. 59 …The targets ofappendix A for a brief discussion of these missions). subsequent air operations would in…
  • p. 70 …Soviet control of the key Pact command posi- front missile and artillery forces, front air defensetions…
  • p. 72 …forces missions, rather than the depth of the army offensive operation-typicallyas separate missions. about 150…
  • p. 92 …forces, command and control centers, and other rear area installations in the area of the planned…
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
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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.