|
Soviet Union [USSR] Offensive and Defensive Strategic Missions
Traditionally, the overall mission of the Soviet armed forces
has been to deter war in peacetime and to defend the Soviet Union
and the socialist states allied to it in wartime. Should war break
out, the Soviet armed forces were expected to fight decisively and
to achieve victory. Soviet unified military strategy, common to all
services, was primarily offensive, and defense was only a temporary
expedient. The primacy of strategic offense over strategic defense
appeared indisputable. Since the advent of nuclear weapons,
however, strategic offense and defense have become intertwined, and
offensive and defensive strategic missions frequently coalesced.
The combined arms concept was expressed in this growing
interdependence between offense and defense in Soviet unified
strategy because many strategic missions involved overlap and
cooperation and would be performed by more than one service
(see Soviet Union USSR - Military Art
, this ch.). The Soviet military envisaged most
strategic operations, both offensive and defensive, as mutually
reinforcing components of a single strategic plan. In the 1980s,
Soviet strategists believed that the synergistic effect of combined
arms would maximize the armed forces' potential to achieve
unambiguous victory.
To reinforce the combined arms concept on a strategic level,
the Soviet military reorganized the Soviet armed forces. It
centralized command and control, established theater commands in
TVDs directly responsible to the Supreme High Command, and improved
early warning systems
(see Soviet Union USSR - Main Military Council
, ch. 18). The new
Soviet command infrastructure would enable the Soviet military to
change speedily from a peacetime to a wartime footing.
Data as of May 1989
|
