MILITARY THOUGHT (USSR): A UNIFIED ORGAN FOR PROTECTION AGAINST WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION IS NOT NECESSARY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP10-00105R000302130001-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 11
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: July 12, 1976
• Content Type: MEMO

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20505
12 July 1976
MEMORANDUM FOR: The Director of Central Intelligence
FROM William W. Wells
Deputy Director for Operations
SUBJECT
MILITARY THOUGHT (USSR): A Unified Organ
for Protection Against Weapons of Mass
Destruction Is Not Necessary
1. The enclosed Intelligence Information Special Report is
part of a series now in preparation based on the SECRET USSR
Ministry of Defense publication Collection of Articles of the
Journal "Military Thought". This article criticizes a proposal
to make the control organs of the chemical troops into a special
service responsible for protecting troops against weapons of mass
destruction, from the standpoint that to do so would expand,
rather than streamline, the organization for this function. The
author argues further that the troops already have their own
means of protection, and must be responsible for protecting
themselves; thus it would be better to concentrate certain
appropriate protective functions in the chemical troops' control
structure and improve protection capabilities among the troops,
rather than establish a separate protection service. This article
appeared in Issue No. 2 (75) for 1965. 50X2-WMD
2. Because the source of this report is extremely
sensitive, this document should be handled on a strict
need-to-know basis within recipient agencies. For ease of
reference, reports from this publication have been assigned
50X2-WMD
50X2-WMD
William W.
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Distribution:
The
The Director of Central Intelligence
The Joint Chiefs of Staff
The Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
The Assistant to the Chief of Staff for Intelligence
Department of the Army
Director, National Security Agency
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director for Intelligence
Deputy Director for Science and Technology
Deputy to the Director of Central Intelligence
for National Intelligence Officers
Director of Strategic Research
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TCYP-St-C-REL
COUNTRY USSR
DATE OF
INFO. Mid-1965
SOURCE
Intelligence Information Special Report
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SUBJECT
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50X2-WMD
DATE 12 July 1976
MILITARY THOUGHT (USSR): A Unified Organ for Protection
Against Weapons of Mass Destruction
Is Not Necessary
?
Documentary
Summary:
The following report is a translation from Russian of an
article which appeared in Issue No. 2 (75) for 1965 of the SECRET
USSR Ministry of Defense publication Collection of Articles of
the Journal "Military Thought". The author of this article is
Colonel A. Kolgushkin. This article criticizes a proposal to make
the control organs of the chemical troops into a special service
responsible for protecting troops against weapons of mass
destruction, from the standpoint that to do so would expand,
rather than streamline, the organization for this function. The
author argues further that the troops already have their own
means of protection, and must be responsible for protecting
themselves; thus it would be better to concentrate certain
appropriate protective functions in the chemical troops' control
structure and improve protection capabilities among the troops,
rather than establish a separate protection service.
End of Summary
Comment:
The author also wrote "The Use of Statistical Data in Researching
the Organization of Troop Control Organs"
1966 and contributed
Up the Automation of Control Processes in
Formations" in Issue No. 3 (85) for 1968
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in Issue No. 1 (77) for
a portion of "Speeding 50X2-WMD
Ground Forces
T -5 r 1E
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TOP?SEER-ET?
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A Unified Organ for Protection Against Weapons of
Mass Destruction Is Not Necessary
by
Colonel A. Kolgushkin
At the present time an idea hich is being persistently put
forward is that of transforming the control organs of the
chemical troops into the control organs for the protection of the
troops against weapons of mass destruc'Aon, with the goal of
increasing the effectiveness and reliability of this protection,
of reducing the number of personnel connected with it, and also
of releasing the staffs, directorates and branches of the branch
arms and services from carrying out protective functions. The
latter commands the attention and arouses doubt.
It is known that protection against weapons of mass
destruction includes a large complex of measures which are
carried out by various elements of the control organs and by the
troops themselves under the direction of the commander and his
staff. For example, radiation, chemical, and bacteriological
reconnaissance and warning are conducted by chemists, medical
personnel, and operations officers; the dispersal and rotation of
troop location areas are planned by operations officers; the
exploitation of protective terrain features, the selection of
methods for crossing contaminated zones and the providing of
protection for personnel during actions on contaminated terrain
are carried out by operations officers, engineers, chemists, and
medical personnel. Operations officers, chemists, engineers,
medical personnel and various services of the rear organize the
supplying of troops with means of protection and elimination of
the aftereffects of the enemy's use of weapons of mass
destruction.
Analysis of statistical data shows that the extent to which
the directorate of the chemical troops of a front participates in
the protective measures of the field headquarters of the front
may reach 30 percent. If the remaining functions also are
transferred to the directorate of the chemical troops, on the
basis of which it has been proposed to establish a protection
service, then the directorate would have to be enlarged about
three times. The authors of the idea of establishing a special
?11,19?SEG44T--_
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service, in striving to eliminate a certain parallelism in the
work, did not foresee such an increase in the personnel of this
service; they ignore the fact that to transfer all or a
significant part of the functions to one organ is practically
impossible. For example, the intelligence directorate can
transfer only an insignificant part of its duties to the new
service, but the directorate itself, owing to the specific
character of its work, will not be able to be released from these
duties in the integrated performance of reconnaissance tasks in
the interests of protection as a whole.
Let us assume that the duties of collecting, processing, and
disseminating information about enemy nuclear strikes are taken
on by the proposed unified protection organ. But this will not
release the operations and intelligence directorates, and the
staff of the rocket troops and artillery, from these duties.
Similar information will inevitably come to them from subordinate
staffs, such as the main component part of reports concerning the
.situation. A specific analysis of these data will be carried out
by all directorates and services concerned, independent of the
"overall" analysis conducted by the special service by way of
mass servicing, which, in our opinion, will be incapable of
completely satisfying anyone, since it will be directed toward
specific purposes.
Matters concerning the dispersal of troops or the rotation
of troop location areas cannot be transferred to the new organ.
This function is connected with the general combat readiness of
the troops; it is purely operational and cannot be carried out by
anyone except the operational staff. The transfer to the
protection service of sanitary-hygiene and preventive measures
will not release the medical organs from planning, materiel
support and the proper fulfilment of these same measures.
It is either impossible or undesirable to transfer many
functions to this service, because they are organically connected
with other basic functions and can be more successfully carried
out only in a system with them. These examples show how the
reasons for the increase (not the curtailment!) in the table of
organization, and the appearance (not elimination!) of
parallelism in the work are created. In this manner, the table
of organization of the proposed organ in comparison with the
directorate of the chemical troops, can of course be increased,
Mr-SECRET-
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but compensation for this increase with a corresponding decrease
in other elements of the directorate will hardly be successful.
Having set to work, the protection service would immediately
be met with certain difficulties. It will not be in a position
to independently plan, organize and conduct a single important
measure without coordination with the staff and the other
directorates and services possessing materiel and technical means
of protection. The protection service apparently will not have
these means, otherwise it would have to have a considerable
number of supply organs transferred to it.
Operations officers, chemists, engineers, medical personnel
- this is the list of the main persons who have to plan and
organize the protection of the troops against weapons of mass
destruction under the direction of the chief of staff in
accordance with the commander's decision. In our opinion, we
cannot count on any real increase in the effectiveness and
reliability of the protection of troops in connection with the
establishment, in essence, of an organ having no rights, the
chief of which would be given no titles.
Would not be better for those protective functions which it
is actually useful to unite, to be concentrated for the time
being in the directorate (branch) of the chief of the chemical
troops? The allocation of an essentially new organ can be
justified, in our opinion, only when it can be proved desirable
to establish special protection troops, which are in need of
centralized rather than autonomous control. We will examine the
matter concerning the desirability of establishing such troops.
As is known, protection is carried out through a broad range
of measures not only against the effects of weapons of mass
destruction -- nuclear, chemical, and bacteriological, but also
against the conventional types of armament of the ground and air
enemy. Protection is carried out by all troops and control
organs in all forms of combat actions, and comprises an integral
part of them. Therefore, the troops cannot be released from the
functions of protection and self-protection, and the functions
cannot be concentrated in one place. It is impossible to devise
some sort of universal special troops which would take this
diverse task away from the rest of the troops and take it 1.1-2_wmp
themselves.
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We are convinced that to establish such troops will lead to
the weakening of the responsibility of the commanders and staffs
of all levels for protection, to the formal right to think that,
once these troops have been established, it is they who should
protect all the remaining troops, releasing them from the duties
of self-protection. To establish such troops might lead to
curtailment of a front's protection operations. The latter,
being some of the most important, and organically fused with the
other duties of all the troops and control organs, will be
reduced from a general problem to a narrow, specific task.
The protection troops, in the opinion of those in favor of
establishing them, should consist of chemical, engineer, and
medical units. Two groups from each branch arm will be formed -
one, subordinate to the chief of its own branch arm, and the
other subordinate to the chief of the protection troops. This
undoubtedly will lead to an undesirable scattering of the troops.
For this reason, protection cannot be carried out by special
units alone.
The subunits, units, and large units of all the branch arms
should carry out the basic volume of work themselves: camouflage,
dispersal and rotation of areas, entrenching, evacuation of
wounded, administering of self-help, mutual aid, and medical
first aid, partial decontamination treatment of personnel and
decontamination of armament and combat equipment, extinguishing
of fires, clearing of barriers, restoration of engineer
installations which have been destroyed, and replenishing of
armament and materiel. The field troops repel enemy attacks
while eliminating a center of destruction, they replace troops
who are not combat-effective with those who are combat-effective,
they restore battle formations -- this has already outgrown the
functions of protection and is a field of the tactics of combat
actions. It is clear that the protection troops will be unable
to carry out all these functions without the field troops.
The protection of the troops against weapons of mass
destruction should be carried out first of all by the troops
themselves. In other words, the troops should protect
themselves.
The motorized rifle and tank troops of modern organization
from the regiment on up include in their composition everything
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needed for protection against weapons of mass destruction,
including engineer, chemical, and medical subunits and units,
i.e., so-called protection troops. For this reason, no other
special troops are required. The task is to teach all the troops
to cooperate with each other properly to fulfil the unified,
integrated task of protection.
Protection is not bad because there is a lack of special
troops, but because there is no proper organization in this
matter. The staff should organize protection, but the troops
themselves should implement it. Accordingly, the chemical units
and subunits included in the composition of the field troops will
play an important role and will carry out the duties which are
peculiar to them at the present time.
Certain authors allude to the foreign armies, particularly
the West German Bundeswehr, which has so-called troops for
"anti-nuclear, anti-bacteriological, and anti-chemical
protection" in the form of ABC companies and battalions. These
essentially are regular chemical companies and battalions,
equipped with decontamination vehicles and heavy protective suits
for working in centers of contamination, and having narrower
functions than the corresponding subunits and units of the Soviet
Army. There are no universal protection troops in a single army
in the world who even roughly answer their purpose.
In our opinion, the most expedient solution for this problem
is to be found by increasing the resistance of the troops
themselves to the casualty-producing elements of the means of
mass destruction and their capability for independent protection,
for the elimination of the aftereffects, as well as for working
out more perfect methods of combating means of mass destruction.
Any element of the battle formation or operational
disposition of the troops, including the protective means
themselves, may be subject to destruction. Therefore, the
protection of the troops should not be made dependent on special
subunits which cannot always arrive at the center of destruction
on time. The greater the independence of the combat subunits and
units in resolving matters of protection and elimination of
aftereffects, the higher their combat effectiveness. Each
battalion, regiment and division should have its own appropriate
means of protection for subunits, control organs and the rear.
7013--SEGRE.T.,_
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The foregoing does not deny the desirability of having means
in the division, army, and front for rendering assistance to the
troops who have been subjected to mass destruction, mainly by
means of the advance reinforcement and allocation of chemical,
engineer, and medical units and subunits, in the course of combat
actions.
In order to attain independence and take the initiative
concerning protection and the elimination of the aftereffects of
the enemy's use of weapons of mass destruction, the troops should
complete comprehensive training even in peacetime; they should
know beforehand under what circumstances, by whom and to whom,
and with what forces and means help will be rendered. The troops
instructed in this way will display judicious initiative in any
situation, including even one which is unforeseen, without
waiting for instructions and help from above and thus losing
precious time and with it their combat effectiveness.
In conclusion, we will note that, in our opinion, it has not
been proven necessary to establish a special control organ for
the protection of troops against weapons of mass destruction and
to establish special protection troops. The command of the
protection troops should be exercised by the formation commander
or commander, but the planning, executive, and coordinating organ
will be the combined-arms staff. The organization of the troops,
especially at the tactical level, is in need of improvement from
the standpoint of increasing their capabilities for effective
self-protection against weapons of mass destruction.
In the course of an operation, the formation of temporary
composite detachments designed to render assistance to the troops
in eliminating the aftereffects in the centers of the heaviest
destruction, cannot be ruled out. Such detachments will be
established on the basis of units and subunits of chemical and
engineer troops, and the medical service. At the operational
level, they can be allocated from the provost traffic control
subunits, which have been appropriately equipped and instructed
beforehand.
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