THE B TEAM REPORT ON SOVIET OBJECTIVES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83M00171R001200210004-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 14, 2001
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: February 14, 1977
• Content Type: MF

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IC 77-2427
14 February 1977
MEMORANDUM FOR: Distribution
Acting L.111ei-, I'IVUU~_t.._t.~r.~l t?~u~~:11?L4
and. Improvement Division
SUBJECT: The B Team Report on. Soviet Objectives
I. asked PAID to give him an
independent assessment of the B Team critique of the
Community' s performance.
2. Attached is a draft response t.ha.t is based
on our review of the relevant estimates since 1.960.
3. We would appreciate your comments.
Attachment:
Draft Response
Distribution:
1 -
,y iS{ ,l t!
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Intterna1 Distribution:
.-Y - D/OPEI
1 - C:/PAID
I - PAID Subject
I - PAID Chrono
I - CWB Chrono
DCI/IC/PAID/
/ty/6875/14 Feb 77
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DRAFT
THE B TEAM REPORT
Soviet Strategic Objectives:
Alternate View
Introduction:
The purpose of this memorandum is to briefly assess
the value, validity and significance of the B Team
Report. It attempts to give some judgment on the
contributions of the B Team exercise and to determine
whether the report should be revered damned and dis-
carded, or taken as a useful but unsteady step in the
right direction.
The B Team report, "Soviet Strategic Objectives:
An Alternative View" was requested to provide an
independent look at the data available for the drafting
of NIE 11-3/8-76. The study was designed to determine
whether or not the data could reasonably support an
alternative,,more thrcatening,view of Soviet strategic
objectives and intentions than that developed by the
traditional NIE process. This approach was recommended
by the PFIAB a year. ago as a way of assessing the
credibility of some anxiety over Soviet behavior on
the part of a growing element of responsible US ob-
servers of Soviet military and foreign policy.
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The membership of the B Team was selected by design
from the group of critics who strongly believe that
We long run goal of Soviet military policy is more
threatening than generally recognized and fully consistent
with the Marxist-Leninist expectations of Communist-
world domination. The hope was that, with reasonable
scholarship, such a. team might be able to develop from
the same body of data available to NIL: drafters a logical
and well-documented basis for their alternative view.
Unfortunately, this did not come to pass.
The B Team has produced an alternate view; but
it is asserted, not documented. Even when it scores
debating points by challenging the weak underpinnings
of present ?.nd past NIEs, the B: Team memorandum
offers little in the way of well-referenced, authoritat-
ive bases for its contrary interpretations. Moreover,
the report lacks perspective and reflects little
understanding of the intelligence process and the in-
fluence of changing priorities and source materials
that tend to channel analytic efforts. Nevertheless,
we find the B Team report to'be a disturbing portrayal
of the intelligence record, one that calls for careful
review and corrective action by all members of the
Intelligence Community.
Our review of Soviet military estimates since
1960 and knowledge of the Community's analytic output
in the more recent years support much of the Team B
criticism Their assessment does lack documentation,
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and their charge that intelligence consistently under-
estimated Soviet objectives and intentions is far too
simplistic. But the central theme of their protest
against the Intelligence Community is close to the
mark: intelligence does not put enough
effort into analysis of the pertinent available data
to try to understand the Russian mentality and the
motivations that lie behind Soviet military policy.
The B Team Position
The causes of the Community's failure to understand
Soviet long run objectives are, in the eyes of Team B
members, endemic to the intelligence system and procedures
that have been operative over the past 25 years. The
Team B report notes five important causal factors for
the Community's inaccurate appreciation of Soviet intentions
A brief comment on each follows:
(1) Lack of attention to soft data.
Hard data is generally taken to mean demonstrable
fact, as noted in photography, intercepted communica-
tions and telemetry, o.r.unambiguous documentary
information on government decisions and policy. Soft
data, on the contrary, lacks precision, is incomplete,
and is usually open to various interpretations. The
writings of Soviet military commentators, much
clandestine reporting and SIGINT data, and most open
source material fall-in this category. Soft data
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requires substantial amounts of analysis and molding
with hard. data in order to develop reliable inter-
pretations. Even so, controversy prevails where
uncertainty remains.
Soft data is the guts of the evidence on
Soviet strategy and intentions, and much of the
Team B critique is based on. the accusation that
the Intelligence Community pays only slight attention
to it. A review of the estimates since 1960 indicates
a cyclical treatment of soft data, in both estimates
and analytic memoranda and reports. There was a
substantial deemphasis on the study of soft data
during the latter 1960s, and a reemphasis during
the 1970s. The return to soft data analysis was
due in part. to:
? pressure from Andy Marshall, Jim Schlesinger,
and others.
? a desire to provide more credible inter-
pretations of the hard data.
? more "reliable" documentary information,
most, notably on Soviet ground forces.
? sensitivities of the US/Soviet military
balance put premiums on analysis of force
effectiveness, doctrine and intentions.
Since the early 1970s both DIA and CIA have
restructured analytic entities to focus more resources
on military issues demanding more attention to soft
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data. But the rebound in analytic capability has
been slow because data bases and skilled manpower
had. atrophied over the years. Moreover, as
indicated in our recent Semiannual Review of
Intelligence Production, the consumer continues
to demand "hard fact" reporting and this alone
absorbs the efforts of a sizeable portion of
the available analytic manpower.
(2) Mirror-imaging distorts US intelligence aI)raisals
of Soviet objectives.
In general, mirror-imaging means that the military
goals and policy decisions of other countries are brought
about by the same factors, aspirations and values that
motivate US policy decisions. Specifically, Team B
accuses the Intelligence Community of seeing both Soviet
and US leaderships appalled by the obvious destructive
outcome of a strategic nuclear war and therefore both
leaderships motivated to:
o prevent nuclear war through policies of assured
destruction of the other side.
e limit the size of nuclear forces-beyond that
level which guaranteed a sizeable retaliatory
capability--either parity or sufficiency.
e press for arms control agreements.
mutually satisfactory
e move toward a/balance of US/Soviet forces and
a policy of detente.
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Team B states that US intelligence has wrongly imputed these
notives to Soviet force planners and that, to the contrary, any
comprehensive study of the data available on Soviet strategy and
intentions will show that the Soviets believe in the eventual superiority
of Soviet forces and the creation of a war-winning (as opposed to
deterring) strategic force posture. While such a conclusion may be
open to discussion, the charge of mirror.-imaging is sustained in our
review of past estimates. Again, the US fallback on mirror-imaging,
where applicable, to describe Soviet motives can be blamed on deficient
analysis of soft data that can often provide a more realistic appreciation
of Soviet motivation and objectives. For example, the Community did
incorrectly assess the prevailing Soviet military thinking on the
requirements for Soviet missile forces. The estimates viewed the
Soviets as wedded to a policy of assured destruction and estimated
that this would lead the Soviets to be satisfied with a general parity of
strategic forces. In retrospect, we now know, from more recent
review of the soft data then available, that the Soviets had toyed with
a doctrine of assured destruction in the Khrushchev period but had
discarded it in the middle 1960s in favor of more traditional Soviet
military strategy and doctrine. (Had we paid more attention to the
development of the Soviet Rocket Forces as an extension of artillery--
in soft data- -we would have been more prone to anticipate a Soviet
desire for preponderance rather than parity. ) To a degree, mirror-
imaging also affected the US assessments of Soviet civil defense and
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the probable constraints of defense costs on expansion of Soviet military
forces. There are, on the other hand, specific areas in which the
t
B Team perceived mirror-imaging which is not substantiated by the
IC Staff review. For example, the estimates rather freely discussed
the differences between the US and Soviet approaches to some weapons
and program strategies---ASW and directed energy, for example--and
reached conclusions at odds with the findings. of Team B, not because
of uncritical mirror-imaging, but on the basis of analysis.
(3) Piecemeal assessments of Soviet weapons programs.
There is validity to the B Team finding that there
is rarely an integrated overview of the interrelationship among
the various Soviet weapons programs. There are two aspects to the
issue, however, that have affected the Community's performance.
Because of the size and complexity of the Soviet military
establishment, and the disparate needs of US consumers, separate
estimates have to be made on the different forces--naval, ground,
air, rockets, etc.--in order to create fairly compact. statements
on each force on a timely basis, usually annually in response
to the Administration's demands over the past several years,
rr '
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separate force
each of these/estimates has become a fairly complex
package with a. concentration on capabilities and
op'brations rather than on objectives. There have
been few attempts during the 1970s to develop an
estimate of Soviet military policy and objectives--an
overview of a Soviet long run military plan--primarily
because there was little demand for it, Defense seemed
satisfied with comprehensive force estimates and NSC
Staff and State expressed disinterest in the Community's
views on Soviet policy--a fact we noted in our recent
Semiannual Review of Intelligence Production.
But the more telling aspect of the B Team critique
is their view that Community estimates of Soviet military policy an
were not very useful because they failed to analyze
the available data. There is truth to this finding.
There are few Community experts on Soviet affairs and
they can rarely find time to dig deep and reflect on
the relevant documents on Soviet military developments.
Our review of the policy estimates--especially the 11-4
series on Soviet policy and objectives--finds them
to be rather descriptive essays with little in the way
of penetrating, rigorous analysis of the forces at
play. The best that can be said is that the readers
of an 11-4 estimate become aware of an unrelated array
of Soviet force improvements. This is not to say that
the B Team analysis of Soviet objectives is correct;
a
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is to say that the necessary incisive analysis of the
.rattler sizeable quantities of information on Soviet
policy has not been carried out.
(4) Unsupported net assessments.
Net assessments in the context of the B Team report are
defined as judgments on the balance between US and Soviet
military capabilities based either on static indicators
or dynamic analysis of wargaming scenarios. The B Team
is right in saying that such assessments are made both
implicitly and explicitly in the national estimates without
the benefit of supporting analyses. But not all net
assessments in the estimates are unsupported. Our review
of several r~--"cent estimates shows reasonable support for
the net judgments in about half of the occurrences. For
example, NIE 11-3/8-75 states: "We believe the Soviets
would conclude that the US could preserve the survivability of
most of its alert bombers against attacks by SLBMs through-
out the next ten years." There was no explicit support
for this assessment and, in particular, no analysis of
Soviet capabilities to deny reasonable warning time. On
the other hand, the assessment of a growing Soviet threat
to US ICBM silos was based on quantitative analysis of
specific numbers of R/Vs per silo and a range of force projections.
Q
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 ern rT
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There was a tendency in the early 1970s to become quite
liberal in scattering assessments, often unsupported,
in the Key Judgments section of estimates. There appears
to:h,ave been a feeling within the Community that the
user deserved simplified statements relevant to the
significance of a very complex mass of data. The
Community was well aware that such judgments were often.
not supported by specific analyses but the analytic
components were reluctant to take on the appropriate
detailed studies because they require special competence,
.are time-consuming and rely heavily on US military data.
More recently, the Community has behaved more responsibly,
and in the 1976 estimates has done reasonable job of
explicitly stating the basis of its net judgments. And,
of course, the DCI's memo to PFIAB on this subject two weeks
ago stipulated that NIE judgments based on net assessments
should be clearly labeled as such, and that the basis for
the net judgments should be clearly specified.
(5) IC Bias.
It is difficult to accept the Team B charge of
implicit collusion with policy leadership. Team B finds
that "on some occasions the drafters of NIEs display an
evident inclination to minimize the Soviet strategic
build-up because of its implications for detente, SAL
negotiations, Congressional sentiments as well as for certain US
forces
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While it is true that the NIEs over the past several years have
incorrectly
contained a number of statements that/minimized the Soviet
strategic build-up, the explanation can be as much a result of
shortsighted concern on the part of the estimators with the analysis
of the near-term build-up of Soviet forces as a reflection of policy
pressure. For example, the minimization of the eventual Soviet
missile build-up during the latter half of the 1960s was based on
a variety of well-assessed factors that were considered operative
at the time. The analysis relied heavily on the duration of the extant
deployment programs, the obsolescence of the missile systems being
deployed, the observed R&D programs, the anticipated requirements
for qualitative modifi.catio xs to the existing forces, and the deiritaands.
of competing programs. It was these factors, not political pressure,
la.~
that underly what turned out to be inaccurate projections of Soviet
forces. If there was a problem, it was that there were hypotheses
as to why the program would cease but no data and little analysis
to actually gauge operative constraints within the Soviet armament
industry- -a condition that still exists because of the general lack of
attention to this sort of analysis.
The B Team is more lenient with its criticism of the estimates
during the 1970s and finds no suggestion of bias. Presumably, if the
judgments are "correct1t in the eyes of the B Team,. the methodology
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is faultless. Our review of the estimates showed no clear change
r
in analytic and estimating methods during this period, but it did
detect a slow change in the Community appraisal of the Soviet threat.
The estimates changed, not at the speed demanded by the apprehensive,
but slowly in response to a continuous and perhaps more rigorous
review of the evidence. It is difficult to find a reasonable cause for
the changing intelligence estimates on the Soviet threat other than
constant reappraisal of the evidence at hand.
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