|
Soviet Union [USSR] Operational Art
Operational art involves the translation of strategic goals
into military objectives in TVDs by conducting decisive theater
campaigns. Although a single military strategy existed for the
Soviet armed forces, each of the five armed services had its own
operational art and tactics. Three enduring concepts that have
shaped Soviet operational art since the 1920s have been the concept
of the TVD, the principle of combined arms, and the theory of deep
offensive operations.
TVDs divided the world into manageable military-geographic
sectors. In l983 the Soviet Military Encyclopedic Dictionary
defined a TVD as part of a continent or an ocean "within the
boundaries of which are deployed strategic groupings of the armed
forces and within which military operations are conducted." Around
its periphery the Soviet military recognized five continental TVDs
with their surrounding seas: the Northwestern, Western,
Southwestern, Southern, and Far Eastern. Oceanic TVDs were located
in the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic oceans
(see
fig. 27).
The combined arms concept is a major principle of Soviet
military art. It means that all services are integrated and
coordinated to achieve victory in a war, an operation, or a battle.
The concept originated in the 1920s, when Marshal of the Soviet
Union Mikhail N. Tukhachevskii understood combined arms primarily
as the cooperation between artillery and infantry in land warfare.
Since then, as the Soviet armed forces have added new weapons
systems such as tanks, aircraft, submarines, and ballistic and
cruise missiles, combined arms acquired a new meaning as it began
to mean the interaction of all services of the armed forces to
attain strategic goals.
The deep offensive operation theory evolved in the 1920s and
1930s as an outgrowth of the combined arms concept. The deep
offensive operation called for the destruction of the enemy to a
substantial depth of its deployment, for the use of mobile groups
in the enemy's rear, for a breakthrough of tactical defense, and
for encirclement and subsequent destruction of enemy troops. During
World War II, Soviet commanders stressed coordination of troops,
operational maneuver, and operational breakthrough, as well as the
necessity of conducting an operation with combined forces on
several fronts. New types of operations emerged, such as air and
antiair operations, and combined operations of the Ground Forces,
Air Forces, and Naval Forces. In the l950s, the increased mobility
of armor and the striking power of nuclear weapons bolstered the
concept of the deep offensive operation.
Nuclear weapons produced fundamental operational changes. The
scope and depth of an operational offensive grew, and its violence
intensified. Soviet military thinkers believed that they could
achieve a decisive victory by delivering preemptive nuclear strikes
on objectives deep in the enemy's rear and, subsequently, by
encircling, cutting off, and destroying the enemy's troops with
nuclear and conventional munitions. Soviet military writers soon
began to point out, however, that radioactive contamination, fires,
and floods caused by massive nuclear strikes could interfere with
the success of operations.
In the 1970s, the Soviet Union built up its conventional forces
in Europe and adopted new operational concepts for the conduct of
a deep offensive operation using both conventional and nuclear
weapons. A conventional phase was to precede the nuclear phase. By
the early 1980s, the Soviet military had developed an allconventional option for a deep offensive operation in a TVD
(see Soviet Union USSR - Offensive and Defensive Strategic Missions
, this ch.).
Data as of May 1989
|
