Issue 21: Is the Soviet Bear’s Bark Greater Than Its Bite

So much for credibility. The real victim of this incident was again the overall credibility of the Soviet air defence system’s ability to respond to a threat and deal with it in a logical and successful manner.

The 007 debacle appears to be a blunder from the start. Why did it take over two full hours for the Soviets to successfully intercept the 747, hardly a stealth aircraft by any standard? When interception was finally made why did the Soviet pilots not close to sufficient range to adequately identify the 747, after all it did have its strobe lights flashing so how could any self-respecting fighter pilot believe it to be anything other than a civilian aircraft? B-52s, RC-135s and SR-71 would hardly overfly one of the most sensitive areas in the world with their navigation and collision avoidance lights ablaze, would they? The 747 is a uniquely identifiable aircraft by its unique silhouette and sheer size. Furthermore, why did the Soviet radar units not identify the aircraft as a 747 by its radar signature when it first approached the Kamchatka Peninsula several hours earlier? It is hard to believe that the Russian radar technology is so far behind the times that their most sophisticated stations cannot even classify aircraft types by signature as do the Western systems. Also, do we believe that the Soviets do not monitor each passing commercial airliner on track over the northwestern Pacific? The Soviets claim they were aware of the presence of a USN P-3 Orion and a USAF RC-135 in the region so how could they have taken a 747 to be anything other than a 747?

The entire incident again served to illustrate how totally ineffective the Soviet Ground Controlled Intercept (GCI) system is in the real world. To many in Europe, this will be worthy of a sigh of relief as NATO faces a vastly more significant threat from the Warpac air forces than it did a decade ago. How effective would the Soviets, and their clients, be in an all-out assault on NATO? Based on the lack of success with GCI throughout the world (the Israelis versus the various Soviet-trained Arab states is a prime example) and the significant lead that the US has in electronic warfare then one can rest a little easier on the belief that there is no substitute for a highly trained and motivated individual, or crew, acting on their own experience and initiative.

The entire Soviet social system is, of course, based on being part of a larger entity and not as an individual man or woman acting on their own talents. Each Russian military unit, ship or squadron has its relevant KGB officers who in turn often have more say in what transpires than does the acting commander. Politics transcend everything in the Soviet Union. This is why Soviet fighter pilots are trained as a team of one man in the air and one on the ground. The ground controller, who is also a pilot, tells the pilot when to jettison his drop tanks, where to vector and what navigation parameters to follow and in combat when to fire his missiles, which ones and what tactics to employ. The pilot might as well not be there other than to operate the systems and the basic aircraft controls.

In a real-world air battle, you then get the situation where the first thing that is done is to disrupt the ground-to-air communications of the Soviet pilots. The ease with which the Israelis did this in the 1982 Bekaa Valley conflict is mute testimony to the future of GCI, which to say the least has not had a viable track record in recent times. So when, and if, the Warpac armies ever roll westward their covering air forces may learn the hard way that there is no substitute for individualism. The last thing Ivan in his Flogger may hear might well be an ear full of static.

The paradox is that the Soviet system cannot change, it is formally locked into the GCI system for political purposes so that at all times ground control has total control over their respective aircraft. While this may be one way of limiting embarrassing defections, it certainly may well also be the best thing the West particularly NATO, has going for it in the years to come.