Soviet Assessments of North American Air Defense
Abstract
The report uses Soviet assessments of U.S. weapons and strategy to investigate how the Soviets perceive the U.S. threat, how they respond to it, and what this may tell us about Soviet weapons and strategy. Three principal questions are asked: (1) How do the Soviets assess U.S. weapons and strategy, and what reactions do these analyses prompt? (2) Does the Soviet military press use descriptions of U.S. weapons and strategies as surrogates for Soviet weapons and strategies? and (3) By understanding how the Soviets assess Western weapons, can we understand how they design and assess their own weapons and strategy? Soviet military publications from the mid-1960's to the present were analyzed to determine the nature and extent of coverage of U.S. continental air defense. Three areas were chosen for detailed examination: air defense control systems (SAGE-BUIC), AWACS, and air defense interceptors. Particular attention was paid to disparities between Soviet and U.S. assessments of U.S. weapons and strategy. Differing assessments were closely examined to determine whether they represented misunderstandings or errors on the Soviet part, or unique Soviet perspectives and biases. Finally, articles on Soviet strategy and air defenses in the restricted circulation Soviet General Staff journal Military Thought were compared with Soviet assessments of U.S. air defenses, to establish whether the same themes were found in both sources. Keywords: Threat evaluation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 1986
- Accession Number
- ADA223378
Entities
People
- John W. Lepingwell
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology