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Soviet Union [USSR] Tactics
Tactics is the aspect of military art concerned with the
preparation and conduct of offensive and defensive combat actions
by elements of the armed forces on land, in the air, and at sea.
Soviet military writers distinguish four basic tactical combat
actions: offense, the meeting engagement (in which both
belligerents meet while advancing), defense, and withdrawal. They
view defense as a temporary action, for only offense can bring
about a complete rout of the enemy and victory.
In the early l960s, nuclear weapons became the "basic means of
destruction on the field of battle." Soviet tacticians believed
that nuclear strikes during an engagement would help the Soviet
armed forces to seize and retain the initiative on a tactical level
and achieve victory in battle. The new emphasis on nuclear weapons
led to changes in tactical concepts. Instead of massive
concentration of forces on the main direction of attack, theorists
advocated concentration of nuclear strikes and maneuver by troops
and by nuclear missiles.
Soviet military theorists came to realize that use of nuclear
weapons by both belligerents could complicate offensive tactical
combat by slowing down the Soviet advance while strengthening the
enemy's defense. Because increased mobility and high rates of
advance formed the most important Soviet operational and tactical
principles, the Soviet military began to perceive nuclear weapons
as problematic. Thus, in the late 1960s and the 1970s, Soviet
military planners began to reorient tactics away from reliance on
nuclear weapons toward reliance on new conventional weapons.
Concepts such as the concentration of forces on the main axis,
partial victory, and economy of force again assumed their
prenuclear importance.
Soviet tactics in the l980s has experienced a resurgence, in
part because improved conventional weapons with greater ranges and
accuracies became available. Also, the 1979 Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan provided a training ground for tactical conventional
combat in mountainous and desert terrain and drew the attention of
Soviet military theorists to the importance of tactics in warfare.
Two revised editions of Lieutenant General Vasilii G. Reznichenko's
Tactics were published in the 1980s: one in 1984 and a
revised and augmented one in 1987. Reznichenko described tactics as
the most dynamic component of contemporary military art, a
component that could influence the operational and even the
strategic levels of war. In the 1987 edition of Tactics,
Reznichenko included new defensive concepts but emphasized the
offensive, supported by air superiority, fire superiority, and
electronic warfare. He favored conventional rather than nuclear
preemption, for, if used preemptively, long-range precision-guided
munitions could predetermine the outcome of a combined arms battle.
Data as of May 1989
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