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Purpose
The main purpose for this handbook is to acquaint United States military
personnel with Soviet principles for organizing and conducting battles and
operations at the division, army, and front levels and the staff
procedures used in this process. The handbook will also serve as an
intelligence reference book on the form and content of major Soviet combat
documents and on the content of information, norms, and calculations used by
Soviet headquarters officers. The handbook may serve as a guide for individuals
preparing to take the role of Soviet command and staff in war games and field
exercises and for simulation designers building Soviet decision processes into
computer simulations.
Scope
Since the handbook is intended primarily to acquaint military personnel with
Soviet headquarters activities in organizing and executing combat, it does not
include information on administration, military justice, counter intelligence,
political affairs, peacetime garrison and training activities or much detail on
logistics. The material is organized as follows:
Chapter One contains Soviet general concepts about combat, the battlefield, and
how to organize to fight. This information is generally applicable to decision
making and planning at all three levels discussed in subsequent chapters.
Chapter Two contains information about Soviet decision making and planning at
division level and regimental levels. The duties of division and regiment
commander and staff are listed and the procedures used to organize, plan, and
conduct combat at tactical level are described.
Chapter Three contains information about Soviet decision making and planning at
army level. The duties of army commander and staff are listed and the
procedures used at the army level to organize, plan, and conduct combat are
described.
Chapter Four contains information about Soviet decision making and planning at
front level. The duties of the front commander and staff are
given, along with the procedures used at operational level to organize and
control combat.
Chapter Five contains examples of Soviet norms, nomograms, formulas, tables,
and other related information used as part of calculations in support of
decision making and planning.
Chapter Six contains samples of the documents prepared and used at all three
levels of command.
In the future we hope to develop the computer programs required to enable
officers to emulate Soviet planning methods in a less time consuming manner.
This material is based on information acquired by the principal authors during
their many years of study at Soviet military academies and daily work with
Soviet officers. They have compared their understanding of Soviet staff
procedures with information contained in more recent Soviet military literature
and with documents describing Soviet procedures dating back to World War Two.
While the nature of the battlefield is constantly changing in response to
revolutionary developments in technology, the essential continuity of Soviet
staff methods for employing this technology to accomplish combat missions is
quite striking. Due to time and fiscal constraints, the content of this
handbook has been limited to offensive combat. Even with that limitation it has
not been possible to include in one book the vast amount of material available
on Soviet planning methods, but only the most important basic information. The
authors hope that at a future date the increasing interest in how the Soviet
army will conduct defensive combat will enable them to have the opportunity to
prepare a similar handbook covering the defense.
Terminology
The handbook is prepared primarily for personnel with little or no knowledge of
the Russian language. Therefore detailed explanations of Russian terminology
and frequent transliterations are avoided. Nevertheless, to enable the reader
to develop a facility for "thinking Red", the authors have attempted
to preserve as much of the Soviet style to their descriptions of Soviet methods
as possible. In those cases where no direct U. S. Army equivalent term exists
or where American terms are inadequate to express the nuances of Soviet
concepts we have provided a fuller description or discussion. For instance,
there is a full discussion of the various Soviet terms all subsumed in the
English "assembly area", since Soviet terms convey explicit meanings
which otherwise might be lost. We use the Soviet term for "unit" to
mean a regiment or separate battalion, the term "large-unit" to mean
a division, and "formation" to mean a corps, army, or front.
A "grouping" refers to a deployment of forces in a configuration for
combat, regardless of size. We have used Soviet map symbols in all
illustrations and sample planning maps. The use of a very rich set of symbology
is a central part of the Soviet ability for "graphical thinking". It
would not bne possible to convey the full meaning of such Soviet maps without
using their symbols. Readers should consult the glossary of map symbols
included in this handbook as a reference or the large books provided by the
Defense Intelligence Agency and others. Ultimately it is just as important that
those who seek to "think Red" for war gaming learn to use Soviet maps
as it is that they use Soviet decision making processes or write Soviet style
operations orders.
Preparation
This handbook was written under contract to R&D Associates, who in turn
support the U. S. Army Battlefield Command Training Program at Ft. Leavenworth,
Kansas. We wish to thank Mr. William Connor and Mr. Ron Marlow for their
practical and moral support in seeing this project through to publication.
Thanks also is due to them and many other members of R&D Associates and the
officers of the BCTP OPFOR team for commenting on drafts of this book. We also
thank Dr. Graham Turbiville and Lt. Colonel Lester Grau of the Soviet Army
Studies Office for their contributions and support.
The content is in part a compilation of previously prepared material presented
in a series of lectures for the U. S. Army Intelligence Threat Analysis Center
and lectures given by the authors at the National Defense University and
elsewhere. This has been supplemented by considerable newly written
descriptions and documents. The focus is on practical aspects of command and
staff work. A number of sections treating theoretical aspects of operational
planning have been extracted and/or adapted from the Materials from the
Voroshilov Academy, which is a set of volumes currently being published by
the National Defense University Press. These volumes are a direct translation
of one of the authors's transcription of Soviet General Academy Lecture texts
and textbooks. Only the minimum theory thought to be essential for the reader
is included here and readers are urged to read the complete
Materials... as it is published. Additional material on calculations
of various kinds has been taken from individual articles appearing in the
Soviet military press, especially the journal Voyennaya Mysl' - Military
Thought. Most of the examples of tactical calculations were taken from the
Soviet book Tactical Calculations by Vayner. This book is available in
translation from JPRS and formed the basis of the sections on calculations in
the British publication Sustainability of the Soviet Army in Battle.
We have provided operational examples for the same calculations.
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