Air University Review, November-December 1983
Dr. Albert L. Weeks
The new Soviet Military Encyclopedia (1976-80) boasts of one of the Soviet Air Force’s firsts: the Ilya Muromets, a four-engine bomber designed by Igor Sikorsky and first flown in 1913, during the reign of Nicholas II. 1 Under General Mikhail Vladimirovich Shidlovsky, these aircraft proved themselves the world’s first heavy bombers, participating in 422 World War I raids, some of which involved four and one-half-hour sorties. Seventy years later, as the Soviets prepare to celebrate the 66th anniversary of the establishment of the Red Air Force, they can boast of a forthcoming major addition to their long-range bomber force--the Nato-designated Blackjack, a manned bomber capable of speeds in excess of mach 2.2 This plane, which is 20 percent larger that our B-1B, can fire air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs) or penetrate air defenses to drop gravity weapons. The Tupolev plant could be producing as many as 100 of these planes a year by 1986. Photo reconnaissance satellites detected the aircraft in 1981; currently it is undergoing tests at Ramenskoye. The Blackjack could be operationally deployed with the Soviet Air Force—the Voyenno-vozdushnye sily or VVS by 1987.
The old Muromets and the new Blackjack should remind us of a recurrent theme in Soviet strategic planning: the capability to deliver ordnance as far as possible from the landlocked frontiers of Mother Russia, thus expanding her frontiers at minimal risk to the "spark" of the world revolution. V. I. Lenin appreciated the importance of a strong air force to the future of world revolution. All succeeding leaders—including today’s General Secretary Yuri Andropov— have renewed their commitment to Lenin’s position.
Although long-range aviation as epitomized by the four-engine bomber has been a part of the VVS since the surviving Muromets were drafted into the Red Air Force, and despite the strategic importance of keeping war as far as possible from Russia, the Soviets have seldom attempted to develop more than a modest air-breathing capability in this area. Why? Although Soviet revolutionary expansionism is linked to the military power necessary to achieve Lenin’s goals, Soviet expansionist ambitions—until the 1950s— outpaced their mastery of aerial technology. Not even the great Russian aircraft designer Andrei N. Tupolev (1888-1972), whose first long-range bombers were manufactured in limited quantities in the early 1930s, could convince Stalin of the wisdom of heavy bombers. Furthermore, engines for such aircraft were too small or too unreliable to meet Tupolev’s advanced airframe designs.3 Thus, the country that led the world in heavy bombers in 1917 spent the next 18 years struggling with technology in an attempt to regain her leadership and was without a new, indigenously produced four-engine bomber for virtually the entire period. The Soviets again achieved their pre-eminence in the field in 1935, but it was short-lived because of the role that Stalin played.
Josef Stalin has often been accused of paranoia, and that paranoia was perhaps best evidenced in his suspicion of the professional military and the intelligentsia. The purges of the general staff and the senior officer corps in the later 1930s attest to the more dreadful side of his nature. Tupolev fell from favor not for any failings of his scientific work but because Stalin suspected him—as he did Marshals M. N. Tukhachevsky and V. K. Blyukher, army commanders I. P. Uborevich and I. E. Yakir, and many scores of thousands of others—of being Nazi sympathizers. One theory holds that the Gestapo passed incriminating "evidence" to tsarist émigrés in Paris who gave the information to NKVD agents who then passed it on to Stalin. Whatever the reason, the purges removed the brain trust of Soviet aviation. Most were never to reappear, but, fortunately for the U.S.S.R., some were merely put into cold storage. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Tupolev, like many other Soviet scientists, was released from prison and brought back into the defense fold.
Despite this turn of events, the use of long-range bombers was never fully accepted by Stalin as a viable method of waging war. Nor have many Soviet professional soldiers or uniformed strategists accepted it until recently. For example, the contemporary Soviet officer’s library textbook, Military Strategy, edited by a team of military thinkers headed by Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky, vehemently rejects the recommendations of Italian theorist Giulio Douhet.4 The latest edition of the Soviet Military Encyclopedia echoes Sokolovsky:
. . . Douhet’s theories suffer from the bourgeois disease of fear of the revolutionization of mass armies [by] commending the use of bomber aviation . . . to decide the outcome of war. The experience of World War II proved the complete unsupportability of Douhet’s views on air war; the experience learned from later local wars [since World War II] also exposes the groundlessness of the Douhet point of view.5
Although some large Tupolev-designed airplanes like the Maxim Gorky were produced in the early years of the Soviet state, they were not part of a concerted effort to produce a strategic force of heavy bombers. Aviation theory in the Stalinist era stipulated the use of air power primarily in close coordination with ground forces and for transport of troops and supplies. In large measure, technological shortcomings—particularly in engine design—inhibited the development of heavy bombers, so that the Russians did not keep pace with the British and Americans. The small number of large aircraft produced in the Soviet Union in the 1930s were primarily used for display over Red Square (for foreigners) and on tour (for the native population), to garner propaganda benefits and achieve specific aviation records.
At first glance, one is tempted to point to the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country," the ideological manifestation of Stalinist communism, as inhibiting long-range bomber development. Some have interpreted the expression of this doctrine as evidence that Stalin had renounced Trotsky’s and Zinoviev’s—indeed the Communist International—goal of revolutionizing the globe and reforming it in the Soviet image. Stalin, however, rejected this interpretation:
The very development of world revolution . . . will be that more rapid and thorough the more Socialism strengthens itself in the first victorious country [the USSR], the faster this country is transformed into a base for the further unfolding of world revolution, into the lever for the further disintegration of imperialism. . . . The development of world revolution will be that more rapid and thorough, too, the more effectively aid is rendered the workers of other countries by the first Socialist country.6
Thus, Stalin did not reject but, rather, wholeheartedly endorsed Lenin’s admonition to revolutionize the world. The echo of Stalin’s statement has been heard and heeded by each succeeding generation of Soviet leaders, and Yuri Andropov has said that he adheres to the same commitment.
Neglect of the long-range heavy bomber arm of the Soviet Air Force until the 1950s did not stem form " socialism in one country" or any "abandonment" of Leninist goals for world revolution. Rather it resulted from a combination of factors including Stalin’s predilection for ground forces and a traditionally Russian commitment to defense in depth. There were also technological limitations which, despite the brilliance of many of the early Soviet aircraft designers, were not overcome until after the Second World War. Finally, there was the effect of the purges on the professional and technical classes.
The Soviet VVS was not born like an Athena full-blown from the brow of Zeus—or even Lenin. Lenin’s military advisers, including Leon Trotsky, wanted to exploit and adopt whatever they found to be useful in the tsarist military. Besides co-opting the Ilya Muromets, Lenin’s ad hoc "Bureau of Aviation Commissars" began rounding up as many spetsy (tsarist aviation specialists, including pilots and mechanics) as they could find in December 1917. Within two years the Red air arm included 500 aircraft, 270 qualified pilots, enough ground crews to suffice, and sufficient knowledgeable technicians to establish a number of aviation schools.7 Former tsarist officers made up 80 percent of the pilots, 60 percent of the detachment commanders, and 62 percent of the frontal and army air commanders. Some 40 percent of the enlisted ground crew had served in the old Imperial Army.
Aviation proved crucial in defeating the White and Green forces* as well as the interventionist forces during the Russian Civil War. Later, the Red Air Force assisted in the tremendous task of sovietizing the whole of the vast tsarist empire, including the non-Russian borderlands such as the Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, central Asia, and the Tatar regions, areas that comprised nearly half of the former imperial population.
*The Greens were originally those who evaded the White "draft." Later the term referred to White deserters who banded together and defied Red attempts to control disputed territory in 1919-20.
From its earliest period until the mid-1930s, aviation contributed to the emerging Soviet state in a number of ways. Among significant firsts were the original over-the-pole flight to the United States in 1937. Politically, the quest for air power helped lay the foundation for an elaborate Soviet-German collaboration, which continued until the Nazi legions poured across the Soviet border on 22 June 1941.
In the interwar period, while the Soviets generally lagged in bomber development, they kept pace with or led most Western countries in the development of fighters and light bombers (though a good deal of their equipment was of foreign design).8 More important, Soviet strategists developed a viable doctrine for coordinating air and ground forces. To some degree, they have the Germans to thank for progress in this area. After Junkers built its factory in Fili outside Moscow in 1922 to avoid the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, the Soviets began enjoying the best of all possible arrangements: Not only did they get the direct benefits of aid from German technicians but they were also able to send officers to Germany for extended sojourns. The training of Russian aviation technicians and military personnel proved a significant by-product of this symbiotic relationship that lasted, in one form or another, for nearly twenty years.
The expansiveness of the vast Russian Steppes facilitated the testing of airplanes and, incidentally, rockets. On the Steppes the Russians constructed their aerodromy and testing facilities. In charge of this effort was Andrei Vasiliyevich Sergeyev (1893-1933), a former tsarist flyer who headed the Main Directorate of the Air Fleet in 1921 and 1922.
Under Sergeyev, who was to become a central figure in the development of Soviet aviation, and subsequent administrations, the Red Air Force began to field planes that were a credit to their Russian designers. Between the early l920s and the mid-l930s these designers produced an ever-improving series of fighters including the I-2, I-3, I-4, and I-5.* These designers also produced a reconnaissance aircraft of considerable capability, the R-3, and two heavy bomber versions, the TB-l and TB-3.9**
*I is the abbreviation for istrebitel' or fighter/pursuit aircraft.
**R is the abbreviation for razvedchik (reconnaissance) while TB stands for tyazhyolyy bombardirovshcik (heavy bomber).
In the early 1930s, with the aircraft industry firmly established, Soviet military strategists began to focus on an air strategy. Two traditions emerged. First, there was to be close coordination between tactical support aircraft and the developing armored component of the Red Army. Unlike other air forces of that time, the Red Air Force did not move toward independence as a separate service. Second, long-range aviation continued to stagnate.
The period was rich in innovation. There were significant improvements in the parachute, which had first appeared in tsarist Russia in 1913.10 In 1926, the BICh-3,*** the world’s first "flying wing," was flown.11 Soviet pilots set a number of international long-duration flight records.12 Finally, the Soviets formed the world’s first paratroop and airborne divisions, with the enthusiastic support of Red Army Marshals K. Y. Voroshilov and M. N. Tukhachevsky.13
***BICh is an acronmy for Boris Ivanovich Cheranovskyy.
Still, it was the development of close cooperation between the tactical air components and the ground units that dominated this period. These developments enjoyed not only the blessings of army commanders like Tukhachevsky (whose exhaustive writings reveal some amazing anticipations of current Soviet doctrine and strategy) but also had the benefit of the innovative thinking of Soviet designers and inventors who contributed their own creative notions. Not only was there A. N. Tupolev but also K. E. Tsiolkovsky, pioneer rocketeer, as well as N. N. Polikarpov and D. P. Grigorovich, fighter designers, and literally dozens of other engineers who were perhaps not so well known but just as important to the future of Soviet aviation. Together, each in his own way, these designers worked to keep the Soviet Air Force thinking about airlifting heavy loads, flying long distances with significant payloads, and, above all, in combining and coordinating the air arm with the ground forces.
As noted earlier, the purges took a tremendous toll among the Soviet General Staff and from the commanders of the various services. During the first purges in 1934, the Red Army was left relatively unscathed, but in 1937 the Soviet dictator turned his full fury against the professional officer corps. Of the 75,000 senior and field grade officers in the Red Army, 30,000 were either executed by the NKVD or imprisoned. The purge claimed 90 percent of the general officers and 80 percent of the colonels.14 Three of the five Soviet marshals were executed, among them Marshals Tukhachevsky and Blyukher. A similar portion of the Red air command was also swept away.
Combined with the setbacks it suffered in the latter days of the Spanish Civil War and the embarrassment of its performance in the Winter War with Finland in 1939 and 1940, the Red Air Force faced significant problems on the eve of the war with Germany. On paper, however, the Soviet military seemed impressive. The defense-centered five-year plans had produced an awesome military-industrial complex by the late thirties. The Red Air Force was larger than any of the capitalist air forces;15 the Russians accomplished this by doubling the number of aircraft to be produced under each successive five-year plan starting in 1928. Just before the German invasion in 1941, the Soviets were mass-producing Yak-l, LaGG-3, and MiG-3 fighters, Pe-2 and Pe-8 light bombers, and I1-2 Shturmovik single-engine attack planes, but this was too little, too late.
When the German war machine rolled across the Soviet frontier, the Red Air Force consisted of an imposing 8000 to 10,000 aircraft in 12 air divisions. Unfortunately, despite advances in fighter design, much of the fighter strength of the Red Air Force consisted of obsolete I-15 and I-16 aircraft of Spanish Civil War vintage. Furthermore, the German attack caught most of the Red Air Force on the ground. Soviet pilots who engaged the Luftwaffe found that Me-109s and Me-110s generally outclassed their fighters. Ignoring the effect of the purges, the greater skill of the German aircrews, and the technological superiority of the German machines, Chief Marshal of Aviation Pavel S. Kutakhov, the present Commander in Chief of the VVS, insists that the losses suffered in the summer and fall of 1941 were due primarily to German planning and surprise. It was these factors that, according to Kutakhov, enabled the Germans to achieve air superiority over the crucial sectors. Despite this handicap, Kutakhov notes, Soviet airmen flew some 6000 sorties "which inflicted serious damage to the enemy’s tank forces as well as to the Luftwaffe, which lost 200 aircraft" early in the war.16
Kutakhov also points out that the early losses prompted sweeping measures "aimed at reconstructing the Soviet aircraft industry, strengthening the VVS, upgrading the preparedness and training of aircrews." Soon to follow were new aircraft including the Yak-3 and Yak-9, the La-5 and La-7, the two-seat Shturmovik I1-2, and new Ilyushin, Petlyakov, and Tupolev bombers. Kutakhov notes that significant improvements were made in airborne armament and ordnance; aerial photography; air navigation equipment; radio communications and ground-based radar; and in optics and other technologies. However, Kutakhov fails to mention that the few heavy bombers in the VVS fell behind their Western counterparts by lacking such advanced equipment as radar aids to navigation.
Above all, Marshal Kutakhov’s article stresses the usefulness of deployments of "air armies" (vozdushniye armii) during the latter phase of the war. According to the Marshal, after deploying their air assets to the greatest advantage for supporting the advancing Red Army. Soviet airmen struck enemy airfields and destroyed many German planes on the ground. Nevertheless, throughout the advance the Air Force "gave constant attention to supporting the infantry, to massing air forces in conjunction with combat actions of the ground forces."17
Modern Soviet aviation theory has gone through a number of phases roughly conforming to the phases through which Soviet military strategy has passed.
During Stalin’s reign, the Red Air Force served as an arm of the ground forces. Reflecting the tactical and strategic thinking of Frunze, Tukhachevsky, and others, the Red Air Force formed part of the "combined operations" aspect of Soviet war-fighting. Accordingly, the Soviets continued to fill their inventory with fighters, medium bombers, and transports.* The few heavy bombers they had played only a small role in prosecuting the war against the Nazis.
*The Soviets produced more than 125,000 aircraft during World War II; this number was supplemented by several thousand aircraft from Great Britain and the United States. The U.S. total of approximately 14,000 Lend-Lease aircraft to the U.S.S.R. included 9000 P-39/40/63 types, about 4000 A-20 and B-25, and 700 C-47. No heavy bombers were included.
In the late forties, Soviet science took a quantum leap with the development and detonation of nuclear weapons and the building of the Tu-4 heavy bomber. Tupolev copied the Tu-4 from three U.S. Army Air Forces’ B-29 bombers that made emergency landings in Siberia after raids on Japan in 1944. Since the U.S.S.R. was not at war with Japan, the bombers were interned and then exploited by Tupolev and his engineers. By the end of Stalin’s reign, the Soviet Air Force had over 1200 Tu-4s. At the same time, mass production of the Tu-4 may have seemed like a mistake just when Soviet inventories of the aircraft were skyrocketing. Imagine the consternation in the VVS when the Korean War proved the B-29 defenseless against Soviet MiGs! While the MiG-15, as an interceptor, was superior to anything the United States had operational, the B-29 was also superior to the Tu-4. Hence, just when the U.S.S.R. had developed a significant bomber capability, their advantage evaporated overnight.
Production of the Tu-4 ceased after Stalin’s death. In the early fifties a new generation of bombers, including the Tu-16 Badger medium-range jet, the Mya-4 Bison long-range jet, and the Tu-95 Bear long-range turboprop bombers entered the Soviet inventory. It seems that intercontinental bombers like the Bison and Bear were seen as a temporary expedient until rockets of sufficient power and reliability could be developed.18 During this period, American intelligence overreacted and overestimated the prospective size of the Soviet bomber fleet to prompt an illusory "bomber gap."19
With the death of Stalin, Soviet military thinkers enjoyed new freedom to be innovative. This led to an all-out effort to build missiles capable of carrying nuclear and thermonuclear warheads. Soviet strategy, previously subject to the whims of Stalinist dogmatism, began to develop along more logical lines.
Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, a GRU intelligence officer executed in 1962 for spying, discussed the increased vitality in Soviet strategic and military thinking in the post-Stalinist period in the famous Penkovsky Papers. In the midfifties, Penkovsky notes, a decision was made to move away from heavy bombers and to concentrate on building the Strategic Rocket Forces as an independent branch of service.20 While it is difficult to determine the order in the relationship between technological innovation and political-military planning and doctrine (and, specifically, which drive which), it is clear that in the post-Stalinist period—and especially since Khrushchev’s fall in 1964—doctrine and strategy have worked synergistically with technology.
As the capabilities of the Soviet Air Force and the Strategic Rocket Forces grew in the late fifties and into the sixties, the Soviets continued to support Marxist-Leninist revolutions throughout the world. Even though Khrushchev announced in January 1961 that the Soviets would confront the West through wars of national liberation, the importance of a strategic striking force not only remained but perhaps grew in importance. While missile development was emphasized in this period, long-range bombers continued to play a role in the VVS.21
Soviet air doctrine calls for the VVS to support the army, defend the homeland from bomber and missile attack, and maintain transports to deploy troops to overseas hotspots. Traditionally, although they have great theoretical value, long-range bombers have played only a minor practical role in Soviet strategy. Why then has the U.S.S.R. opted to build a new supersonic intercontinental bomber?
The answer to this question is to be found in how the Soviets might use the Blackjack. The bomber may be the result of a major change that took place in Soviet military thinking at the end of the sixties and in the early seventies when Soviet planners began thinking in terms of waging large-scale conventional as well as nuclear war.22 The Soviet concept of protracted war is that warfare might go through several prolonged stages.* It might start as a conventional war and move into nuclear conflict and revert to a form of warfare that would include the use of both conventional and nuclear weapons. The development of the Blackjack suggests that the Kremlin’s strategists have accepted the view that their bomber—like the American B-1B—could perform as an ALCM-carrier or be used to deliver either conventional or nuclear weapons in the period after the initial nuclear exchange. Certainly the Blackjack—unlike a missile—has the advantage of being recallable, and the ability to recall a strategic striking force means that the force can be used with greater flexibility to intimidate or demonstrate resolve during crises.
*On the declaratory policy of propaganda level, Soviet civilian writers, when discussing controlled escalation and the U.S. strategy of "flexible response," criticize the notion of phased escalation, attributing it to a "capitalist plot" to legitimize nuclear war.
Yet another possibility is that Blackjack, with its long-range capability, may be part of a new Soviet effort to enhance their force projection potential. If, for example, the U.S.S.R. were to acquire additional basing rights in the Western Hemisphere—perhaps in the Caribbean island of Grenada, where a new long runway is under construction "for civil purposes," or elsewhere in Central America—Blackjack would be able to deploy with ease and perform missions from these bases which would have the bomber ranging all over the hemisphere. Furthermore, the Blackjack could be used in the European theater to strike crippling blows in the opening phases of a conflict and do so with blinding speed. The Soviets seem to have adopted what they call the "Douhet philosophy" previously rejected with vehemence. Certainly there is evidence to suggest that Soviet military thinkers are once again examining their World War II experience from the standpoint of aerial bombardment and its uses in nonnuclear conflict.
For the present, the main tenets of Soviet aviation doctrine are likely to remain unchanged:
• Support ground forces in mass attacks of conventional, partly nuclear, or totally nuclear constitution;
• Carry out a variety of theater or intercontinental missions involving transport and bombing raids;
• Intimidate potential foes throughout the world; and
• Gain aerial supremacy in any military confrontation.
To these ends, the Soviets seem to be restructuring their strategy to develop their own version of flexible response.
The latest innovation in air force organization in the U.S.S.R. reveals a reassessment of the assignment of air forces and their organization by fronts, military districts, and so on. New aircraft such as the Su-25 Frogfoot close-air-support fighter and the Su-24 Fencer interdiction fighter-bomber promise new flexibility across the battle front and extending to the enemy’s rear.23 Helicopters will play a large part in any Soviet blitzkrieg attack into Asia or Europe. Choppers like the Mi-24 Hind, under the direct control of ground commanders, will provide assets for a form of close air support that has the advantage of being able to move with the offensive and, if required, provide continuous air coverage for a unit.24 Furthermore, we might expect the Soviets to overhaul their air forces to combine the command of long-range aviation with that of the Strategic Rocket Forces to create an entity that would more closely resemble the U.S. triad.25
The Soviet view remains as it has since the 1960s and 1970s and echoes Stalin’s behest that the first socialist state must hold the initiative at every stage and be prepared to go to war with the capitalist powers. Moreover, Soviet military literature abounds with terms like frustrate, preclude, crush, forestall, etc., a nuclear attack. Indeed, both the "short war" thesis and the "long war" thesis are but alternate parts of the arsenal of Soviet strategic thought. In either or both scenarios, tactical and strategic air power occupy very important niches. The VVS has a varied and rich history, and it most certainly seems to have a promising future.
New York University
Notes
1. Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai V. Ogarkov, editor, Sovetskaya voyennaya entsiklopediya (Soviet Military Encyclopedia) (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1977), vol. 3, p. 512. Henceforth referred to as SVE.
2. Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft 1982-83, pp. 232-33. A picture of Blackjack, formerly known as Ram-P, appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology, Fall 1982.
3. Air Vice-Marshal S. W. B. Menaul, Russian Military Power (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), p. 61.
4. Harriet Fast Scott, editor, Soviet Military Strategy by V. D. Sokolovsky (New York: Crane, Russak and Company, 1968). See pp. 266, 270, 390, and 54344 for discussion.
5. SVE, vol. 3, p. 276.
6. J. V. Stalin, Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), vol. 6, pp. 415 and 418. These and similar statements are compiled in Albert L. Weeks and William C. Bodie, War and Peace: Soviet Russia Speaks (National Strategy Information Center, 1983).
7. Colonel General I. M. Moror, editor, V. I. Lenin i sovetskaya avzatsiya (V. I. Lenin and Soviet Aviation), (Moscow: Military Publishing House, 1979), p. 179. Figures on the percentages of tsarist officers and men in the Red Air Force are found in this work on p. 180.
8. Harriet Fast Scott, "Soviet Air Commanders," Air Force, March 1982, p. 53.
9. Edgar O’Ballance, The Red Army (London: Faber and Faber, 1964), p. 115.
10. Soviet Military Review, No. 2, 1982, p. 24. The inventor’s name was G. Ye. Kotel’nikov (1872-1944).
11. SVE, vol. 4, under "letayushcheye krylo" (flying wing), p. 626.
12. O’Ballance, p. 114.
13. The Germans were keenly aware of the Soviet mastery of this technique, yet they were baffled as to why the Soviets had not used paratroops throughout the war on the (Russian) western front. (Note: The Russians did make use of airborne landing in their one-week war with the Japanese later in 1945.) Cf. B. H. Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk (New York: Quill, 1979), p. 222.
14. Boris I. Nikolaevsky, editor, "The Crimes of the Stalin Era Special Report to the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union," New Leader, 1962, pp. 39-40.
15. Chief Marshal of Aviation P. S. Kutakhov, "Voyenno-vozdushnye sily," [Soviet Air Force], in SVE, vol. 2, p. 203. Succeeding statistics are also drawn from this article.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 204.
18. Menaul, p. 64.
19. Mark E. Miller, Soviet Strategic Power and Doctrine: The Quest for Superiority (Miami: Advanced International Studies Institute, 1982), pp. 43, 44.
20. Oleg Penkovsky, The Penkovsky Papers (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1965). For discussion, see Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott, The Armed Forces of the USSR, second edition (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981), pp. 75-76.
21. See successive editions of Soviet Armed Forces Review (Gulf Breeze, Florida: Academic International Press, 1981 and 1982) for discussion by Alfred L. Monks. For example, between 1980 and 1981, aircraft within Long Range Aviation—The Soviet Air Force bomber arm—decreased by 76 airframes. The Backfire-B strategic bomber seems to have a dual role: as a tactical weapon (in an open "conventional war" phase of a European Theater conflict) and as an intercontinental bomber (requiring, however, in-flight refueling). The former appears the more important role.
22. Harriet Fast Scott and William F. Scott, pp. 53-56.
23. Colonel Lynn M. Hansen, USAF, "Soviet Airpower: Behind the Buildup," Air Force, March 1981, pp. 68-72; Colonel William F. Scott, USAF (Ret), "Continuity and Change in Soviet Military Organization and Concepts," Air Force, March 1982, pp. 43-48.
24. Hansen, p. 72.
25. Scott, "Continuity and Change in Soviet Military Organization and Concepts," p. 47.
Contributor
Albert L. Weeks
(M.A., University of Chicago; Ph.D., Columbia University) has taught politics and history for the past 25 years at New York University and is a member of the Advisory Council of the National Strategy Information Center, Inc. He served in the USAAF as a navigator during World War II. Dr. Weeks has written for numerous professional journals, civilian and military, and is International Affairs Editor of Defense Science 2001+.Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor