Abstract
In 1985 the Soviet Air Forces (SAF) were equipped with some 10,000 modern fixed-wing aircraft and 4,000 helicopters.1 The Soviet aviation industry was producing a further 1,800 planes each year. The result was that Soviet air power was a vitally important element in any assessment of the military balance between East and West and, moreover, was increasingly permitting the Soviet Union to demonstrate a potential for military influence far from its own national boundaries. Indeed, the comparative growth in Soviet air power since 1945 far exceeded that of any other country. Its progress, generally shrouded in secrecy but occasionally exposed for dramatic international effect, has often been both underestimated and overemphasised. Problems of contemporary analysis remain, but its evolution from the aftermath of the Second World War, through the debates of the Khrushchev period followed by the expansion of the 1970s to the re-equipment and reorganisation of the 1980s is now much more clearly discernible.
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Notes and References
Alexander Boyd, The Soviet Air Force since 1918 (London: Macdonald & Jane’s, 1977) p. 111.
V. D. Sokolovsky, Military Strategy, Soviet Doctrine and Concepts (London: Pall Mall, 1963) p. 158.
I.V. Timokhovich, The Operational Art of the Soviet Air Force in the Great Patriotic War (Moscow, 1976) pp. 8–9.
J. Alexander, Russian Aircraft since 1940 (London: Putnam, 1975) p. 18.
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Quoted in T. W. Wolfe, Soviet Power and Europe, 1945–1970 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970) p. 63.
A. Yakovlev, The Aim of a Lifetime (Moscow: Progress Press, 1972).
N. Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers (London: André Deutsch, 1974) p. 39.
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As quoted by W. Sweetman, International Defence Review, 1/1984, p. 37.
See the comprehensive summary by Captain J. E. Moore in Erickson and Feuchtwanger (eds), Soviet Military Power and Performance (London: Macmillan, 1979).
W. Schneider Jr., ‘Soviet Military Airlift’, article in Air Force Magazine, March 1980.
I. Sidelnikov, ‘Peaceful Co-existence and the People’s Security’, Red Star, Moscow, 14 August 1973.
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JCS 1725/1, 1 May 1947 quoted in T. H. Etzold and J. L. Gaddis (eds) Containment, Documents on American Policy and Strategy 1945–50 (New York: Columbia, 1978) p. 302.
R. F. Futrell, Ideas, Concepts Doctrine: A History of Basic Thinking in the United States Air Force 1907–1964 (Alabama: Air University Maxwell Air Force Base, 1974) p. 109.
Beaufré, NATO and Europe (London: Faber & Faber, 1967).
R. N. Rosecrance, Defence of the Realm (New York: Columbia, 1968) p. 160.
Air Commodore J. H. Knoop, NATO’s Fifteen Nations, April/May 1971, p. 70.
General Maxwell D. Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper & Row, 1960) p. 145.
Quoted by W. W. Kaufman, ‘The McNamara Strategy’ in Head and Rokke (eds), American Defence Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1973) p. 73.
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© 1985 Sir Michael Armitage and R. A. Mason
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Armitage, M.J., Mason, R.A. (1985). Soviet Air Power 1945–84. In: Air Power in the Nuclear Age, 1945–84. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17964-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17964-0_6
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