In the last war the forward detachments pierced the enemy’s defences with dozens of spearheads at the same time, and the main body of troops followed in their tracks. The forward detachments then destroyed in the enemy’s rear only targets that were easy to destroy, and in many cases moved forward quickly enough to capture bridges before they were blown up. The reason the enemy had not blown them up was because his main forces were still wholly engaged against the main forces of the Red Army.
The role played by forward detachments has greatly increased in modern warfare. All Soviet military exercises are aimed at improving the operations of forward detachments. There are two very good reasons why the role of the forward detachments has grown in importance. The first is, predictably, that war has acquired a nuclear dimension. Nuclear weapons (and other modern means of fighting) need to be discovered and destroyed at the earliest possible opportunity. And the more Soviet troops there are on enemy territories, the less likelihood there is of their being destroyed by nuclear weapons. It will always be difficult for the enemy to make a nuclear strike against his own rear where not only are his own forces operating, and which are inhabited but where a strike would also be against his own civilian population.
A forward detachment, rushing far ahead and seeking out and destroying missile batteries, airfields, headquarters and communication lines resembles spetsnaz both in character and in spirit. It usually has no transport vehicles at all. It carries only what can be found room for in the tanks and armoured transporters, and its operations may last only a short time, until the fuel in the tanks gives out. All the same, the daring and dashing actions of the detachments will break up the enemy’s defences, producing chaos and panic in his rear, and creating conditions in which the main force can operate with far greater chances of success.
In principle spetsnaz does exactly the same. The difference is that spetsnaz groups have greater opportunities for discovering important targets, whereas forward detachments have greater opportunities than spetsnaz for destroying them. Which is why the forward detachment of each regiment is closely linked up with the regiment’s reconnaissance company secretly operating deep inside the enemy’s defences. Similarly, the forward detachments of divisions are linked directly with divisional reconnaissance battalions, receiving a great deal of information from them and, by their swift reactions, creating better operating conditions for the reconnaissance battalions.
The forward detachment of an army, usually led by the deputy army commander, will be operating at the same time as the army’s spetsnaz groups who will have been dropped 100 to 500 kilometres ahead. This means that the forward detachment may find itself in the same operational area as the army’s spetsnaz groups as early as forty-eight hours after the start of the operation. At that point the deputy army commander will establish direct contact with the spetsnaz groups, receiving information from them, sometimes redirecting groups to more important targets and areas, helping the groups and receiving help from them. The spetsnaz group may, for example, capture a bridge and hold it for a very short time. The forward detachment simply has to be able to move fast enough to get to the bridge and take over with some of its men. The spetsnaz group will stay at the bridge, while the forward detachment runs ahead, and then, after the main body of Soviet forces has arrived at the bridge the spetsnaz group will again, after briefing, be dropped by parachute far ahead.
Sometimes spetsnaz at the front level will operate in the interests of the army’s forward detachments, in which case the army’s own spetsnaz will turn its attention to the most successful forward detachments of the army’s divisions.
Forward detachments are a very powerful weapon in the hands of the Soviet commanders, who have great experience in deploying them. They are in reality the best units of the Soviet Army and in the course of an advance will operate not only in a similar way to spetsnaz, but in very close collaboration with it too. The success of operations by spetsnaz groups in strategic warfare depends ultimatelyon the skill and fighting ability of dozens of forward detachments which carry out lightning operations to overturn the enemy’s plans and frustrate his attempts to locate and destroy the spetsnaz groups.
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Notes
[1] See Appendix D for the organisation of spetsnaz at strategic level.[Return]
[2] See Appendix A. [Return]
[3] See Appendix В. [Return]
Chapter 13
Spetsnaz and Deception
Secrecy and disinformation are the most effective weapons in the hands of the Soviet Army and the whole Communist system. With the aim of protecting military secrets and of disinforming the enemy a Chief Directorate of Strategic Camouflage (GUSM) was set up within the Soviet General Staff in the 1960s. The Russian term for ‘camouflage’ - maskirovka - is, like the word razvedka, impossible to translate directly. Maskirovka means everything relating to the preservation of secrets and to giving the enemy a false idea of the plans and intentions of the Soviet high command. Maskirovka has a broader meaning than ‘deception’ and ‘camouflage’ taken together.
The GUSM and the GRU use different methods in their work but operate on the same battlefield. The demands made of the officers of both organisations are more or less identical. The most important of these demands are: to be able to speak foreign languages fluently; and to know the enemy. It was no coincidence that when the GUSM was set up many senior officers and generals of the GRU were transferred to it. General Moshe Milshtein was one of them, and he had been one of the most successful heads the GRU had had; he spent practically the whole of his career in the West an an illegal. [1] Milshtein speaks English, French and German fluently, and possibly other languages as well. He is the author of a secret textbook for GRU officers entitled An Honourable Service. I frequently attended lectures given by him about operations by Soviet ‘illegals’ and the theory upon which the practice of disinformation is based. But even the briefest study of the writings of this general in Soviet military journals, in the Military-Historical Journal (VIZ) for example, reveals that he is one of the outstanding Soviet experts in the field of espionage and disinformation.
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The GUSM is vast. It is continually gathering a colossal number of facts on three key subjects:
1. What the West knows about us.
2. What the West shows us it does not know.
3. What the West is trying to find out.
The GUSM has long-term plans covering what must be concealed and what must have attention drawn to it in the Soviet Army and armaments industry. The experts of the GUSM are constantly fabricating material so that the enemy should draw the wrong conclusions from the authentic information in his possession.
The extent of the powers given to the GUSM can be judged from the fact that at the beginning of the 1970s REB osnaz (radio-electronic warfare) was transferred from the control of the KGB to the control of the GUSM, though still preserving the name osnaz.
There are very close links existing between the GUSM and the GRU and between spetsnaz and the REB osnaz. In peacetime the REB osnaz transmits by radio ‘top-secret’ instructions from some Soviet headquarters to others. In time of war spetsnaz operations against headquarters and centres and lines of communications are conducted in the closest co-operation with the REB osnaz, which is ready to connect up with the enemy’s lines of communication to transmit false information. An example of such an operation was provided in the manoeuvres of the Ural military district when a spetsnaz company operated against a major headquarters. Spetsnaz groups cut the communication lines and ‘destroyed’ the headquarters and at the same time an REB osnaz company hooked into the enemy’s lines and began transmitting instructions to the enemy in the name of the headquarters that had been wiped out.
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Even in peacetime the GUSM operates in a great variety of ways. For example, the Soviet Union derives much benefit from the activities of Western pacifists. A fictitious pacifist movement has been set up in the Soviet Union and Profe
ssor Chazov, the personal physician of the General Secretary of the Communist Party, has been made head of it. There are some who say that the movement is controlled by the Soviet leadership through the person of Chazov. Chazov, in addition to being responsible for the health of the General Secretary, is a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, i.e. one of the leaders who has real power in his hands. There are very few people who can manipulate him.
The mighty machinery of the GUSM was brought into operation in order to give this Communist leader some publicity. General Moshe Milshtein himself arrived in London in April 1982 to attend a conference of doctors opposed to nuclear warfare. There were many questions that had to be put to the general. What did he have to do with medicine? Where had he served, in what regiments and divisions? Where had he come by his genuine English accent? Did all Soviet generals speak such good English? And were all Soviet generals allowed to travel to Great Britain and conduct pacifist propaganda, or was it a privilege granted to a select few?
The result of this publicity stunt by the GUSM is well known -the ‘pacifist’ Chazov, who has never once been known to condemn the murder of children in Afghanistan or the presence of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, and who persecutes opponents of Communism in the USSR, received the Nobel Prize.
‘But,’ as Stalin said, ‘in order to prepare new wars pacifism alone is not enough.’ [2] That is why the Soviet leaders are preparing for another war not only with the aid of the pacifists but with the help of many other people and organisations which, knowingly or unwittingly, spread information which has been ‘made in the GUSM’.
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One of the sources spreading Soviet military disinformation is the GRU’s network of agents, and in particular the agents of spetsnaz.
In the preparation of a strategic operation the GUSM’s most important task is to ensure that the operation is totally unexpected by the enemy, particularly the place where it is to take place and the time it is due to start; its nature, and the weapons the troops will be using; and the number of troops and scope of the operation. All these elements must be planned so that the enemy has not prepared to resist. This is achieved by many years of intensive effort on the part of the GUSM at concealment. But concealment is twofold: the GUSM will, for example, conceal from the enemy advances in Soviet military science and the armaments industry, and at the same time demonstrate what the enemy wants to see.
This would provide material for a separate and lengthy piece of research. Here we are dealing only with spetsnaz and with what the GUSM does in connection with spetsnaz. GUSM experts have developed a whole system aimed at preventing the enemy from being aware of the existence of spetsnaz and ensuring that he should have a very limited idea of its strength and the nature of the operations it will conduct. Some of the steps it takes we have already seen. To summarise:
1. Every prospective member of spetsnaz is secretly screened for his general reliability long before he is called into the Army.
2. Every man joining spetsnaz or the GRU has to sign a document promising not to reveal the secret of its existence. Any violation of this undertaking is punished as spying - by the death sentence.
3. Spetsnaz units do not have their own uniform, their own badges or any other distinguishing mark, though it very often uses the uniform of the airborne troops and their badges. Naval spetsnaz wear the uniform of the naval infantry although they have nothing in common with that force. Spetsnaz units operating midget submarines wear the usual uniform of submariners. When they are in the countries of Eastern Europe the spetsnaz units wear the uniform of signals troops.
4. Not a single spetsnaz unit is quartered separately. They are all accommodated in military settlements along with airborne or air-assault troops. In the Navy spetsnaz units are accommodated in the military settlements of the naval infantry. The fact that they wear the same uniform and go through roughly the same kind of battle training makes it very difficult to detect spetsnaz. In Eastern Europe spetsnaz is located close to important headquarters because it is convenient to have them along with the signals troops. In the event of their being moved to military settlements belonging to other branches of the forces spetsnaz units immediately change uniform.
Agent units in spetsnaz are installed near specially well-defended targets - missile bases, penal battalions and nuclear ammunition stores.
5. In the various military districts and groups of forces spetsnaz troops are known by different names - as reidoviki (‘raiders’) in East Germany, and as okhotniki (‘hunters’) in the Siberian military district. Spetsnaz soldiers from different military districts who meet by chance consider themselves as part of different organisations. The common label spetsnaz is used only by officers among themselves.
6. Spetsnaz does not have its own schools or academies. The officer class is trained at the Kiev Higher Combined Officers’ Training School (reconnaissance faculty) and at the Ryazan Higher Airborne School (special faculty). It is practically impossible to distinguish a spetsnaz student among the students of other faculties. Commanding officers and officers concerned with agent work are trained at the Military-Diplomatic Academy (the GRU Academy). I have already mentioned the use made of sports sections and teams for camouflaging the professional core of spetsnaz.
There are many other ways of concealing the presence of spetsnaz in a particular region and the existence of spetsnaz as a whole.
In spetsnaz everyone has his own nickname. As in the criminal underworld or at school, a person does not choose his own nickname, but is given it by others. A man may have several at the outset, then some of them are dropped until there remains only the one that sounds best and most pleases the people he works with.
The use of nicknames greatly increases the chances of keeping spetsnaz operations secret. The nicknames can be transmitted by radio without any danger. A good friend of mine was given the nickname Racing Pig. Suppose the head of Intelligence in a district sent the following radiogram, uncyphered: ‘Racing Pig to go to post No. 10.’ What could that tell an enemy if he intercepted it? On the other hand, the commander of the group will know the message is genuine, that it has been sent by one of his own men and nobody else. Spetsnaz seldom makes use of radio, and, if the head of Intelligence had to speak to the group again he would not repeat the name but would say another name to the deputy commander of the group: ‘Dog’s Heart to take orders from Gladiolus,’ for example.
Before making a jump behind enemy lines, in battle or in training, a spetsnaz soldier will hand over to his company sergeant all his documents, private letters, photographs, everything he does not need on the campaign and everything that might enable someone to determine what unit he belongs to, his name, and so on. The spetsnaz soldier has no letters from the Russian alphabet on his clothes or footwear. There may be some figures which indicate the number he is known by in the Soviet armed forces, but that is all. An interesting point is that there are two letters in that number, and for the spetsnaz soldier they always select letters which are common to both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets - A, K, X, and so forth. An enemy coming across the corpse of a spetsnaz soldier will find no evidence that it is that of a Soviet soldier. One could, of course, guess, but the man could just as easily be a Bulgar, a Pole or a Czech.
* * *
Spetsnaz operates in exceptionally unfavourable conditions. It can survive and carry out a given mission only if the enemy’s attention is spread over a vast area and he does not know where the main blow is to be struck.
With this aim, drops of large numbers of spetsnaz troops are not carried out in a single area but in smaller numbers and in several areas at the same time. The dropping zones may be separated from each other by hundreds of kilometres, and apart from the main areas of operation for spetsnaz other, subsidiary areas are chosen as well: these are areas of real interest to spetsnaz, so as to make the enemy believe that that is the area where the main spetsnaz threat is likely to appear, and they are chosen as carefully as the main
ones. The decision as to which area will be a prime one and which a subsidiary is taken by the high command on the very eve of the operation. Sometimes circumstances change so rapidly that a change in the area of operation may take place even as the planes are over enemy territory.
The deception of the enemy over the main and subsidiary areas of operation begins with the deception of the men taking part in the operation. Companies, battalions, regiments and brigades exist as single fighting units. But during the period of training for the operation, groups and detachments are formed in accordance with the actual situation and to carry out a specific task. The strength and armament of each group is worked out specially. Before carrying out an operation every detachment and every group is isolated from the other groups and detachments and is trained to carry out the operation planned for that particular group. The commander and his deputy are given the exact area of operations and are given information about enemy operations in the given area and about operations there by spetsnaz groups and detachments. Sometimes this information is very detailed (if groups and detachments have to operate jointly), at others it is only superficial, just enough to prevent neighbouring commanders getting in each other’s way.
Sometimes the commander of a group or detachment is told the truth, sometimes he is deceived. A spetsnaz officer knows that he can be deceived, and that he cannot always detect with any certainty what is true and what is a lie.
Spetsnaz Page 19
