WORLDWIDE BRIEFING SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 29 JANUARY 1986 HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE, 30 JANUARY 1986 HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE, 4 FEBRUARY 1986

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP89G00720R000600740012-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 31, 2011
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: February 3, 1986
• Content Type: MISC

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3 Feb 1986
1100 hrs.
Senate Armed Services Committee, 29 January 1986
House Armed Services Committee, 30 January 1986
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, 4 February 1986
Intelligence must not only report developments around the world as
they occur. It must also step back to discern patterns, linkages, and
strategies that may work to endanger the United States and its interests.
During 1985, the pattern of challenges and threats to our strategic interests
broadened, sharpened and intensified.
The main thrust still comes from the Soviet Union, which is increasingly
posing a many dimensioned global challenge to the United States and the Free
World. This threat resides:
(1) in the military might the Russians are piling up on the Eurasian
land mass,
(2) in its steady acquisition of geopolitical bridgeheads in Asia,
Africa and Latin America, and
(3) in the development, linking and use of these bridgeheads for
growing Soviet naval and air operation and to further enlarge
the Soviet geopolitical position.
The Soviets continue the modernization and expansion of their military
forces both conventional and strategic. The conventional weapons threat from
the Warsaw Pact countries was the first element of this threat to emerge.
It has been intensified in recent years and has now progressed to the point
where the Pact enjoys huge military advantages, and is now developing more
exotic arms for the future.
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In the European Central Region, the Pact maintains a three-to-one
advantage in tanks and artillery, and more than two-to-one in armored vehicles
and aircraft.
While NATO has historically had the qualitative edge in military weapons,
this edge is eroding.
The newest Soviet tanks are at least the equal of those in NATO's arsenal.
In some aspects, such as firepower and armor protection, they are superior.
The fielding of more self-propelled artillery is boosting the
maneuverability, survivability, and tactical nuclear firepower of Soviet
ground forces. Soviet bridging equipment to cross the rivers of Europe
is so good that our army has reverse engineered to field models of Soviet
design.
Soviet aircraft are among the world's finest. Newer fighters and fighter-
bombers have improved performance, larger payloads, and better avionics--though
the latest US aircraft still maintain leads in sortie rate and avionics.
The Soviets have developed and used in Afghanistan fuel-air explosives
which inflict massive destruction without crossing the nuclear threshold.
We know that the Soviets are working to acquire the technology to develop
aircraft and cruise missiles employing stealth features, and remotely piloted
vehicles for attacking armored vehicles. At the same time they are developing
their own anti-tank warheads with increased penetration ability, precision
guided munitions with enhanced accuracy, and a new generation of fighters,
some with multiple target look-down/shoot-down capability.
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The Soviet Union maintains the world's largest chemical warfare
capability--with an agent stockpile nearly three times larger than ours.
The Soviet armed forces are trained and equipped to operate on battlefields
contaminated by nuclear and chemical weapons.
These Soviet developments add up to a dominance in land warfare which
requires the West to count on its maritime reinforcement capability to counter
and on its strategic forces to deter.
Some of the Soviets' greatest strides have been in submarine production.
In the last three years, they have introduced three new types of nuclear
attack submarines which are quieter, faster and able to dive deeper than ours.
They have also launched a 65,000 ton aircraft carrier, and in their naval
deployment and naval exercises have brought US-Soviet competition into Atlantic
and Pacific waters where until now we have enjoyed a near monopoly.
The second element of Soviet military power to emerge is its strategic
force and over the last 10 years it has at least caught up and probably
surpassed ours. By the mid-1990s, nearly all of the Soviets' currently
deployed intercontinental nuclear attack forces--land- and sea-based ballistic
missiles and heavy bombers--will be replaced by new and improved systems.
The number of deployed strategic force warheads will increase by a few thousand
over the next five years, with the potential for greater expansion in the 1990s.
The Soviets are protecting their missile force by making much of it
mobile. They have already deployed their first new mobile ICBM and will
soon begin deploying a second.
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Follow-on missile programs--with improved accuracy, greater throw weight
potential and probably more warheads--will begin flight-testing in the 1986-90
time period.
Major improvements are also under way in Soviet ballistic missile
submarines and bomber forces.
We expect the Soviets to complete improvements to their operational ABM
defenses at Moscow by 1987. This provides them with all the components necessary
for a much larger, widespread ABM defense, including transportable engagement
radars, above-ground launchers, and a new high-acceleration short-range
interceptor.
The distinction between missions for surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and
ABMs is becoming increasingly blurred as the result of technology improvements
to SAMs such as the SA-X-12. That system's capabilities against tactical
ballistic missiles gives it the potential to function in a missile defense role.
The Soviets have long been working on technologies basic to our own
Strategic Defense Initiative. Their work on directed-energy and kinetic-energy
weapons goes back many years with more than 10,000 engineers involved.
We estimate that between 1980 and 1983, the cost of the Soviet space
program nearly doubled. The costs of their military space activities alone
are about the same as those for their strategic offensive forces. Soviet
space systems are likely to be an integral part of any strategic missile
defense system the Soviets might develop and deploy.
The five-year plan which Gorbachev will soon propose to the Party Congress
will call for an 80 percent increase in the investment in machine building.
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There will also be ambitious goals for high tech support industries. This will
include the microelectronics and computers essential for developing the more
complex weapons systems the Soviets plan for the next decade. We believe the
current high level of military spending will continue to grow at the rate
that has prevailed for the past ten years.
Even at a time of economic difficulty and a reordering of domestic
priorities, Soviet defense programs have been protected. For example, during
the next five year plan we expect ICBM production to increase substantially
over the 1981-85 plan, submarine production to be up about 20-25 percent,
and tank production to jump well over 50 percent. There will be some 4,000
fighters and helicopters and a few hundred new strategic bombers produced
during this period. While the number of aircraft are somewhat lower than in
the preceding five-year period, the new aircraft will be substantially more
technically advanced and capable. Thus, the prospect is for continuation of
the steady 20-year expansion and modernization of Soviet strategic and conventional
forces. The cumulative effect of this buildup is so great that the United
States has only begun to catch up.
Because of accumulated earlier investment and defense industrial capacity,
the number of weapons systems that they will be able to buy over the next
five years will be substantially greater than what they acquired the past
five years.
Despite the much increased US spending for arms of the past five years,
only recently has the US begun to catch up with Soviet weapons acquisition;
until then, we simply were not falling behind as fast as we had been.
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The important thing is not how much the Soviets spend on arms, but the
quantity and quality of arms they get for their money. When you compare
US and Soviet procurement of major weapons systems, from 1974-1984, the
Soviet advantage in:
ICBMs and SLBMs is roughly about 3 times
IRBMs and MRBMs is roughly about 6 times
Surface-to-Air missiles
is roughly about 9 times
Long and Intermediate
Range Bombers is more than 50 times
Fighters is roughly about twice
Helicopters is more than twice
Submarines is more than twice
Tanks is more than 3 times
Artillery pieces is more than 10 times
The steady growth of Soviet weapons procurement from the high level of
the last decade will give the Soviets a massive cumulative inventory of
weapons, and they will continue to substantially modernize their forces in
the next five years and buy larger numbers of weapons.
This huge military force and its continued growth may never be used
against the United States or NATO--although the Soviets clearly are prepared
to use it if their vital interests are threatened. The mere existence of
this force not only validates the Soviet Union as a superpower, but has an
intimidating effect on countries around the world helping the Soviets expand
their presence, influence, and power. It represents the backdrop for an
aggressive challenge being played out worldwide, but most particularly
on the ground in the Third World and in the vicinity of critical sea lanes.
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The Mediterranean segment of this Soviet global network is anchored at
Libya and Syria. About 6,000 Soviet Bloc advisors support facilities in
those countries, which include air, naval and air defense facilities.
Similarly, this network threatens Western sea lanes in the Red Sea-
Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean from bases in Ethiopia and South Yemen. Over
7,000 Soviet and Cuban military personnel and about a quarter million Ethiopian
military support this segment, as well as Soviet Bloc personnel in South Yemen
and Mozambique.
Finally, Soviet naval and air forces operating out of Cam Ranh Bay and
Da Nang in Indochina not only command the economic lifelines of Japan, Taiwan
and South Korea, but linked with Soviet naval and air bases in Siberia are a
threat to US bases in the Philippines, so critical to our position in the
Pacific Ocean. Thousands of Soviet military personnel man the infrastructure
of this second largest Soviet military complex outside the Warsaw Pact.
Beyond the consolidation and linking of positions in these Soviet outposts,
there is the spread of Soviet subversion--with active measures, with support to
insurgent forces, by destabilizing countries friendly to the West, and by
exploitation of economic hardship and political instability. All this is
supported by a flood of weapons pouring out of the great arms depot at Nikolaev
on the Black Sea to pro-Soviet regimes and insurgent groups all over the world.
To build the foundation and further project this far-flung program, Moscow
maintains an extensive military advisory presence in 29 Third World countries.
This presence ranges from 5 military specialists in Benin to about 6,000 in Vietnam.
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There are something like 3,000 in Syria, about 2,000 in Ethiopia, Libya and
Afghanistan, and 1,200 in Angola and South Yemen, and 800 in Mozambique.
In some of these countries--Ethiopia, Angola, Afghanistan--Soviet officers
exercise command and control and in others they have great leverage and influence.
The Soviets and their surrogates provide support to Communist or radical
insurgents in some ten countries. They help some seven Socialist-oriented
client regimes suppress insurrections of their own. All this involves 335,000
combat troops, over 65,000 advisors, extensive political and military training,
a heavy flow of weapons, and various levels of political support. The 335,000
combat troops occupying other countries include 120,000 Soviet soldiers in
Afghanistan, over 130,000 Vietnamese in Cambodia and 45,000 in Laos, and over
40,000 Cubans in Africa.
The principal Soviet targets in supporting insurgencies are:
- El Salvador and Guatemala, supported from Cuba and Nicaragua;
- Chile, in which Cuba, Nicaragua, the Soviet Union and several
East European countries have been training and providing weapons for
violent opposition and funding of the Communist party;
- Colombia, where three insurgent groups receive support from some
combination of Moscow, Cuba and Nicaragua;
- Namibia, where weapons and military training for the insurgents
of the Southwest Africa Peoples Organization comes from the Soviet
Union, Libya and Cuba; and
- Sudan, Somalia, Chad, and Zaire, where Libya, Ethiopia and Cuba
help insurgents.
- Yemen and Oman from time to time where the Soviets and Cubans support
rebels, and we expect developments in South Yemen to renew this.
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During the decade of the 70s, people all over the world were flocking
to join Communist insurgencies. This has been reversed and today some half
million people around the world are fighting in resistance movements against
Communist regimes. In Afghanistan, there is virtually a nation in arms
fighting against 120,000 Soviet troops; in Angola, Savimbi has some 60,000
fighters in all parts of Angola. In Ethiopia, Eritrean and Tigrean rebels
fight the Marxist Mengistu government and the largest army in Africa with
its Cuban and Soviet advisors. In Indochina, 50,000 insurgents fight
170,000 Vietnamese soldiers. In Nicaragua, 20,000 resistance fighters
are in a standoff with 120,000 Sandinista troops and militia.
In this contest, the Soviets have proclaimed the Brezhnev doctrine
which says once Communist always Communist. There is every indication that
Gorbachev has adopted and is applying that doctrine vigorously with renewed
and increased weapons and Soviet and Cuban involvement against the growing
effectiveness of the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, Savimbi in Angola, and the
contras in Nicaragua. We are witnessing a sudden and forceful application
of this doctrine in South Yemen right now. The Soviets succeeded in establishing
a Marxist regime and a Russian naval and communications center in that country
in the 1970s. Recently, All Nasser, the President of that country, began to
draw away a little from the Soviets and seek some help elsewhere. Two weeks
ago, the more pro-Soviet elements in his government and President Ali Nasser
had a shootout and a civil war broke out between military and tribal elements
loyal to the President and those loyal to the more pro-Soviet elements. The
Vice President was out of the country and he flew to Moscow. The Soviets sat
and watched for a few days evacuating Soviet citizens from the country.
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Neighboring countries, North Yemen and Ethiopia, moved to help the South Yemen
government. After a few days, it appeared that the rebels were gaining the
upper hand, the South Yemen Politburo met and declared the Vice President in
Moscow the head of a new government, Moscow warned North Yemen and Ethiopia
not to help the government forces and Soviet fliers in MIG-21s given to
South Yemen joined in pounding beleaguered government forces and Soviet
transport planes started bringing in weapons for rebel forces. This follows
the examples of Amin of Afghanistan in 1979 and Bishop in Grenada in 1982, as
warning that leaders installed by the Communists seek relations with the West
at their peril.
Now I'd like to turn briefly to areas of great instability where US and
Western political and strategic interests are at risk and which offer the
potential of enormous gain to the Soviets. The Philippines, Sudan and elsewhere
in southern and Central Africa are prime examples.
These soft spots may have largely indigenous causes, but they offer
tempting opportunities to the apparatus I have been describing. The most
critical situation is that of the Philippines where a Communist-led insurgency,
the NPA, controls an increasing proportion of the country's villages and
rural areas. It has shown an ability to conduct urban violence in the second
and third cities, Davao and Cebu, and substantial preparation and potential
for bringing violence into Manila itself. Whatever the outcome of the February
election we are likely to face rising challenges to US interests in the
Philippines. The Soviets have been very careful to date, dealing with Philippine
establishment figures there, not openly associating itself with the NPA--
but definitely in touch covertly with various revolutionary groups.
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If the NPA's fortunes improve, as seems likely, we can expect the Soviet
role to grow. Meanwhile, political and insurgent pressures on US basing
facilities are likely to grow. The Soviet base at Cam Ranh Bay is only
120 minutes away from our bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay.
Another soft spot is Sudan. Its severe political and economic disarray
is compounded by Libya's strenuous efforts to gain predominant influence there.
At the moment, insurgents of the Sudanese Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA)
are supported primarily by Ethiopia. Recent reporting suggests that the
Soviets may be increasing their contact with the SPLA and providing some
arms assistance through the Ethiopians. We believe that East Germans and
Cubans have been training Sudanese insurgents inside Ethiopia. Resulting
pressures have led the Sudanese to withdraw from joint military exercises
with us, revoke access rights for US forces, and question the future status
of prepositioned US military equipment. Additionally, the Libyans have been
given rights of air passage over Sudan enabling the Soviets to hook up more
easily their presence in Libya and Ethiopia. US interests will be further
jeopardized if radical elements pull off a successful coup in Khartoum, or
if the general situation becomes one of near anarchy, or if a weak elected
government should draw closer to Libya. Stronger Libyan and Soviet influence
and presence in Sudan would face Egypt with a hostile force on the west and
the south--and pro-Soviet elements in the Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Yemen
would hover over the southern approaches to the Suez Canal.
This combination of subversive aggression and soft spots around the
world has been gravely compounded by the radical Arab states of Syria, Libya
and Iran. All of them share the common objective of expelling the United States
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from the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia. They all have
radically diverging interests, personalities, and style, but they share
critical characteristics. They oppose nearly all aspects of US policy in
the region. They want to weaken or destroy moderate Arab leadership. They
are in active opposition to the US peace process. And they practice and
sponsor terrorism to attain political goals.
The activities of these states are not necessarily or always directed
by the USSR, but their policies serve Soviet interests by damaging both
Western interests and moderate forces. The Soviets provide major military
support to two of the three--Syria and Libya.
Syria is the most effective of the three. While its goals are more
limited than the other two, its leadership is tactically brilliant and
generally successful--qualities which hardly describe Iran or Libya.
Iran's attentions are largely consumed by the Gulf war and by Shia politics
in the Gulf. But it does have broader long-term interests in propagating
Shia fundamentalism in the world. Its role in Lebanon was a critical factor
in stimulating the US exodus from that country in the face of unremitting
Shia attack.
In Libya, Qadhafi's interests and ambitions parallel those of the USSR
in so many respects that the disruptive effects are not measurably different
from what they would be, with Qadhafi a total surrogate of Moscow's.
No other state outside the Soviet Bloc has a geographic range of subversive
activity to match that of Libya. Qadhafi's ambitions are mirrored in subversive
meddling which now ranges from Chile to the Caribbean, to South Africa, across
the Middle East to East Asia, Indonesia, and New Caledonia in the Southwest
Pacific.
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Libya has significant military forces. Its threat to its immediate
neighbors of Chad, Sudan, Egypt, and Tunisia is very real. Libya is the
greatest stockpiler of weapons in the world with billions of dollars worth,
including hundreds of T-72 tanks (far more, for example, than Poland has),
and hundreds of sophisticated Soviet jets.
Qadhafi's explicit ambitions with respect to Malta and the air and air
defense weapons the Soviets have provided make Libya a threat to the Mediterranean
sea lane.
I will not dwell in detail on international terrorism this afternoon,
but I do wish to stress the relationship of the USSR and its associates
to terrorism.
The USSR and its Eastern European allies support a host of Near East and
other Third World terrorist groups. The Eastern European hand is the more
pronounced, the Soviet hand more disguised. Their combined support takes
many forms: training, arming, the providing of communications and documentation,
safehaven, and so on. Many of the most notorious terrorist leaders--including
Carlos and Abu Nidal--have for years circulated fairly freely in Eastern Europe.
These problems we have highlighted this morning by no means exhaust the
threats that will increasingly confront the US. I can assure you that the
Intelligence Community is deeply involved on a priority basis with alerting
policymakers to hazards and opportunities in numerous other categories.
These include, for example, developments concerning Soviet domestic problems,
the Iran-Iraq war, China, Japan, the Korean Peninsula, LDC debtors, nuclear
proliferation, CW proliferation, BW proliferation, technology transfer, drug
trafficking, oil futures, ecological problems, resource problems, and so on.
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All these questions will continue to receive our close attention. But
in planning US defenses and military assistance, we believe, now and in
the future, the broad, linked threats that I have stressed today demand and
deserve the closest attention. The backdrop of growing Soviet military
power, the Soviet network of assets and facilities abroad, and Soviet promotion
of disorder in the Third World are together creating an increasingly
interrelated threat of growing proportions. Growing Soviet global reach,
Soviet basing facilities, developing military infrastructures, Soviet military
air lanes, and growing Soviet or Soviet client proximity to target countries
and to sea lane choke points are all combining to confront the United States
with rising challenges for the future.
We have a tendency too often to focus on specific events as they come
along, and to be skeptical about drawing linkages and relationships between
events. In this view of the world in 1986 and the threats awaiting us in
the future, I have tried to lay out for you how US intelligence sees the
challenges which our country will have to face in the years ahead. It is
only through understanding these emerging patterns and relationships that
the United States can shape effective strategies for meeting these challenges.
Thank you for your attention. I have with me Larry Gershwin, NIO for
Strategic Programs; Doug MacEachin, Director of Soviet Affairs; George Montgomery,
Assistant NIO for General Purpose Forces; and Bob Vickers, NIO for Latin America.
My colleagues and I will be pleased to entertain any comments or questions
you may have.
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