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

TopScret
to obtain sector air balance advantages. Our analysis lank sectors-especially airfields housing units with
of the air balance indicates that sufficient advantages nuclear roles-to justify expending ful-scale massed
could be achieved easily by dividing the Western air raids on them. Nevertheless, with a substantial
TMO into several relatively narrow "operational reinforcement advantage, the Sovicts probably could
axes," such as the five or six that the Soviets describe devise a set of three attack sectors that would permit
in their writings about front and army operations (as favorable air balance advantages in each sector by
shown in figure 5). We believe the Soviets plan to use distributing the targets more evenly. Moving the air
no more than three sectors in the air operation, operation sector boundaries away from the front
however, because their military writings state that sector boundaries would, however, be done at the
they expect to conduct only six to eight massed air expense of a more complex command and control
raids in the operation and that repeated attacks must arrangement.
be made against each target airfield (and hence
against each sector), Using more than three attack Our preliminary analysis indicates that the Soviets
sectors would, according to our analysis, also run are more likely to favor a system of two attack sectors
counter to other operational considerations. Each of than they are a set of three sectors, regardless of
four or more sectors probably would be too narrow to whether the Pact has three or four first-echelon
accommodate more than one major air defense pene- fronts. A two-sector scheme probably permits the
tration corridor. We believe the Pact airspace man- Pact to achieve its best possible combination of air
agement system would be overwhelmed if the Pact balance advantages in all sectors, because most or all
tried to funnel through a single corridor a massed air of the powerful Soviet front air forces in the center of
raid of the magnitude contemplated in Soviet writ- the TMO could participate in both attack sectors. It
ings. Mijor reductions in the size of the raids would also has the advantage of reducing to a minimum the
necessarily prolong the operation. Moreover, the number of massed air raids (and hence the length of
greater the number of sectors used, the longer it time) required to subject NATO's nuclear forces in all
would take the Pact to subject the NATO nuclear sectors of the TMO to intensive air attacks. Similarly,
forces in all of the sectors to intensive air attacks.E it allows repeated airfield attacks to be made in each
sector of the TMO in the shortest possible time. A
two-sector system also could case airspace tanage-
The Soviets could simplify command and control of mient burdens somewhat by increasing the spacing
the massed air raids by using three air operation between the penetration corridors to match that envi-
sectors that correspond with the sectors of responsibil- sioned by the Soviets in TMO-wide massed raids (as
ity of their typical three first-echelon fronts, but we illustrated in figure 10). Additionally, command and
believe this advantage would be overshadowed by control might be simplified in a four-front disposition
failure to satisfy their air balance requirements. Coor- if the boundary between the air operation attack
dination and airspace management could be simpli- sectors was made to correspond with the boundary
fled by using only a single front air force in each separating the objectives of the two fronts in the
massed raid and by drawing on the same front for all center. Despite all of the benefits inherent in a two-
the other joint forces front participants. According to sector system, however, in our calculations (figure 19)
our air balance calculations, this scheme would allow the Pact still must achieve a distinct reinforcement
the Pact to easily achieve doctrinally favorable air lead over NATO to create better than a marginally
balance advantages in the coastal and southwestern favorable sector air balance advantagd
front sectors, but it would result in almost no chance
of obtaining a suflicient advantage in the critical
central front sector (figure 18). In our calculations,
this is because the central sector would contain over
70 percent of the NATO air forces' combat potential
in the TMO. We believe this scheme also is flawed
because here may be too few airfield targets in the
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