NATO's Changing Strategic Agenda by Colin McInnes

Author:Colin McInnes [McInnes, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367612405
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2021-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Ogarkov revolution

During the early to mid-1980s the Soviet military hierarchy became increasingly aware that modern warfare was changing. Two successive Chiefs of the General Staff, Marshals Ogarkov and Akhromeyev (Chiefs of the General Staff 1977–84 and 1984–8 respectively) began referring to a ‘revolutionary transformation in military affairs’. The result was what became knbwn as the ‘Ogarkov revolution’.

As Chief of the General Staff, Ogarkov was officially second in the military hierarchy behind the Minister of Defence. But his forthright writings, interviews and television appearances made him the dominant military figure of the early 1980s and drew considerable attention from the West (Scott and Scott 1988, p. 99). Ogarkov’s concerns were not exclusively doctrinal. He was critical of arms control, argued for further increases in the military budget, and pressed for greater military influence in defence decision-making. His successor, Akhromeyev, was rather more circumspect in his political pronouncements, but appeared to share many of Ogarkov’s concerns, particularly on doctrine (Herspring 1986, pp. 524–31).

Both Ogarkov and Akhromeyev appeared to place less emphasis on nuclear weapons. Escalation remained possible, and conventional forces had to remain ‘nuclear scared’, but strategic parity and new conventional force multipliers made nuclear war less likely and less necessary respectively. The General Staff publicly rejected Sokolovskiy’s 1962 belief that war would inevitably escalate. Rather they appeared concerned with limiting nuclear use, and replacing nuclear weapons with new conventional technologies for some missions. The greatly improved range, accuracy and firepower of conventional weapons allowed them to be used with confidence against targets throughout the entire depth of NATO’s force deployments (Goure 1987, pp. 154–5; Herspring 1986, p. 528).

These improvements in conventional weapons, coupled to improvements in nuclear and electronic systems, constituted a revolution in military technology. But as important as the systems themselves was the fact that the pace of technological change was accelerating, and that the modern battlefield was dominated by high-technology weapons systems. In addition there was the prospect of entirely new weapons systems based on ‘new physical principles’. The implication seemed clear. Numbers were no longer sufficient. The Soviet Union had to match the West’s accelerating rate of technological change and had to become more technologically aware in order to compete on the modern battlefield (Goure 1987, pp. 154–5; Herspring 1986, p. 526; Scott and Scott 1988, p. 114).

This recognition of a revolution in military affairs affected Soviet thinking about war and consequently organization for war. Ogarkov was clear that technological changes would increase the tempo and destructiveness of war. Accordingly the size of military operations and the requirement for close coordination between all services were to be increased. The result was not Just a belief in dynamism, manoeuvre and the need to seize and retain the initiative, but the creation of a new command structure to better coordinate operations on the modern battlefield. As technology increased the range of weapons, so operations would be conducted at a level higher than that of front or even groups of fronts. Similarly, to coordinate the actions of a number of services a high-command post had to be established.

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