There are a few other new
details Maksim Tokarev provided that, while unrelated to the topics I discussed yesterday, I find
highly enlightening.
For one thing, a Soviet Naval Air Force raid
commander possessed a considerable degree of local tactical decision-making
authority:
But what is
still valid for that is that the strike leader (one of the regiments CO in the
air) had - the other side of the coin - very vast authority to create his own
tactical changes according to the present situation. For example, [he might
order exchanging] the roles of the RUG [Ed. note: Reconnaissance-Attack Group;
the pathfinders] and part of UG [Ed. Note: the main attack group].
However, one of a raid’s chief
vulnerabilities was its local communications:
This means that
the VHF circuits between parts of the strike should have been solid and
redundant, and this was in reality the weakest point of the doctrine. It is
impossible to [maintain] radio silence if you haven’t [found] the target where
it should be, nor [have] the time to seek and destroy.
Communications from surface
tattletales (whether they were combatants or auxiliaries) to the Soviet Ocean
Surveillance System were somewhat ‘stronger’ in a relative sense as they could
‘take refuge’ in frequencies the U.S. Navy would probably have been loath to
jam prior to the outbreak of hostilities:
The USN EW in
this case, if it was intended to jam the Soviet naval frequencies (if [known
to] them), should have been aware that the tracking messages could be passed [via]
500 kHz or 2182 kHz, [which] are the international maritime distress channels
and to jam those is not very good choice from the general safety standpoint.
One could make the same case
about preemptively jamming fishing boats’ use of commercial satellite
communications to make contact reports to an ocean surveillance system today.
Lastly, the Soviet Navy’s
professional career-path stovepipes would likely have affected how its forces
attempted to employ tactical deception in combat.
In Soviet Navy
each officer [was], from his cadet's years, an avid specialist in one of the
naval warfare segment[s], and [usualy stayed] in this professional community
for [an entire] career. If the officer [was] educated in EW, it [meant] that he
started this pipeline at the age of 18-19 while [a] Naval College cadet, along
with the bachelor's degree process, and simultaneously it [meant] that he
[would] never achieve command at sea or even XO appointment. On the other side,
the future ADMs, COs and XOs, being almost always craftsmen in navigation, or
(not "and") artillery/missiles, or mine-torpedo realms (they all [were]
different specialties in Soviet-era naval education with very moderate
cross-studies in the others), [would] have never had the EW or recco/intel
service time during [their] whole career - [regardless of whether they were] in
[the] surface or subsurface communities. [It was] easier to change [one’s naval
branch specialty from] ships to subs and back, than to change [one’s] professional
community and become the gunner or navigator if [one]had been educated as the
radio communication means officer.
This presents a good example of
why an Unrestricted Line Officer should be well-rounded in terms of tactical
and technical expertise, and why basic information warfare principles and
concepts need to be understood throughout the entire Unrestricted Line.
The career stovepipes also might
have made it more difficult to employ deception effectively:
So the question
of deception was subdivided in deceptive approaches of every specialty, and
sometimes the surface cruiser's missile people, who can substitute the whole
salvo by the one-by-one launches, if the two nearby SSGNs were doing the same
(making those three+ axis of attack, coinciding with the courses of incoming
Backfires), could have been interferred by the submarine staff's torpedo
officers, who could try to hide the fact that the two Victors are tracking the
CBG and can try to hit the carrier with long-range torpedoes first, and then
allow the missile attack.
In other words, attacks of
different types by two different combat arms could conceivably interfere with
each other due to the different planning staffs’ relative areas of expertise
and different chains of command. This in turn reinforces the importance of a
unitary operational chain of command.
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