Paladin Press Guerrilla Cccp Red Army The Inside Story Special Forces Spetsnaz

1、Top of Form : Bottom of Form . (engl)- Translated from the Russian by David Floyd First published in Great Britain 1987 by Hamish Hamilton Ltd ISBN 0-241-11961-8 OCR: 28 Dec 2001 by MadMax Origin: -Viktor Suvorov. Spetsnaz.The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces To Natasha and AlexanderChapter

2、 1. Spades and Men Every infantryman in the Soviet Army carries with him a small spade.When he is given the order to halt he immediately lies flat and starts todig a hole in the ground beside him. In three minutes he will have dug alittle trench 15 centimetres deep, in which he can lie stretched out

3、 flat,so that bullets can whistle harmlessly over his head. The earth he has dugout forms a breastwork in front and at the side to act as an additionalcover. If a tank drives over such a trench the soldier has a 50% chance thatit will do him no harm. At any moment the soldier may be ordered to advan

4、ceagain and, shouting at the top of his voice, will rush ahead. If he is notordered to advance, he digs in deeper and deeper. At first his trench can beused for firing in the lying position. Later it becomes a trench from whichto fire in the kneeling position, and later still, when it is 110centimet

5、res deep, it can be used for firing in the standing position. Theearth that has been dug out protects the soldier from bullets and fragments.He makes an embrasure in this breastwork into which he positions the barrelof his gun. In the absence of any further commands he continues to work onhis trench

6、. He camouflages it. He starts to dig a trench to connect with hiscomrades to the left of him. He always digs from right to left, and in a fewhours the unit has a trench linking all the riflemens trenches together.The units trenches are linked with the trenches of other units. Dug-outsare built and

7、communication trenches are added at the rear. The trenches aremade deeper, covered over, camouflaged and reinforced. Then, suddenly, theorder to advance comes again. The soldier emerges, shouting and swearing asloudly as he can. The infantryman uses the same spade for digging graves for his fallenco

8、mrades. If he doesnt have an axe to hand he uses the spade to chop hisbread when it is frozen hard as granite. He uses it as a paddle as he floatsacross wide rivers on a telegraph pole under enemy fire. And when he getsthe order to halt, he again builds his impregnable fortress around himself.He kno

9、ws how to dig the earth efficiently. He builds his fortress exactly asit should be. The spade is not just an instrument for digging: it can alsobe used for measuring. It is 50 centimetres long. Two spade lengths are ametre. The blade is 15 centimetres wide and 18 centimetres long. With thesemeasurem

10、ents in mind the soldier can measure anything he wishes. The infantry spade does not have a folding handle, and this is a veryimportant feature. It has to be a single monolithic object. All three of itsedges are as sharp as a knife. It is painted with a green matt paint so asnot to reflect the stron

11、g sunlight. The spade is not only a tool and a measure. It is also a guarantee ofthe steadfastness of the infantry in the most difficult situations. If theinfantry have a few hours to dig themselves in, it could take years to getthem out of their holes and trenches, whatever modern weapons are useda

12、gainst them. _ In this book we are not talking about the infantry but about soldiersbelonging to other units, known as spetsnaz. These soldiers never digtrenches; in fact they never take up defensive positions. They either launcha sudden attack on an enemy or, if they meet with resistance or superio

13、renemy forces, they disappear as quickly as they appeared and attack theenemy again where and when the enemy least expects them to appear. Surprisingly, the spetsnaz soldiers also carry the little infantryspades. Why do they need them? It is practically impossible to describe inwords how they use th

14、eir spades. You really have to see what they do withthem. In the hands of a spetsnaz soldier the spade is a terrible noiselessweapon and every member of spetsnaz gets much more training in the use ofhis spade then does the infantryman. The first thing he has to teach himselfis precision: to split li

15、ttle slivers of wood with the edge of the spade orto cut off the neck of a bottle so that the bottle remains whole. He has tolearn to love his spade and have faith in its accuracy. To do that he placeshis hand on the stump of a tree with the fingers spread out and takes a bigswing at the stump with

16、his right hand using the edge of the spade. Once hehas learnt to use the spade well and truly as an axe he is taught morecomplicated things. The little spade can be used in hand-to-hand fightingagainst blows from a bayonet, a knife, a fist or another spade. A soldierarmed with nothing but the spade

17、is shut in a room without windows alongwith a mad dog, which makes for an interesting contest. Finally a soldier istaught to throw the spade as accurately as he would use a sword or abattle-axe. It is a wonderful weapon for throwing, a single, well-balancedobject, whose 32-centimetre handle acts as

18、a lever for throwing. As it spinsin flight it gives the spade accuracy and thrust. It becomes a terrifyingweapon. If it lands in a tree it is not so easy to pull out again. Far moreserious is it if it hits someones skull, although spetsnaz members usuallydo not aim at the enemys face but at his back

19、. He will rarely see the bladecoming, before it lands in the back of his neck or between his shoulderblades, smashing the bones. The spetsnaz soldier loves his spade. He has more faith in itsreliability and accuracy than he has in his Kalashnikov automatic. Aninteresting psychological detail has bee

20、n observed in the kind ofhand-to-hand confrontations which are the stock in trade of spetsnaz. If asoldier fires at an enemy armed with an automatic, the enemy also shoots athim. But if he doesnt fire at the enemy but throws a spade at him instead,the enemy simply drops his gun and jumps to one side

21、. This is a book about people who throw spades and about soldiers whowork with spades more surely and more accurately than they do with spoons ata table. They do, of course, have other weapons besides their spades.-Chapter 2. Spetsnaz and the GRU It is impossible to translate the Russian word razved

22、ka precisely intoany foreign language. It is usually rendered as reconnaissance or spyingor intelligence gathering. A fuller explanation of the word is that itdescribes any means and any actions aimed at obtaining information about anenemy, analysing it and understanding it properly. Every Soviet mi

23、litary headquarters has its own machinery for gatheringand analysing information about the enemy. The information thus collectedand analysed about the enemy is passed on to other headquarters, higher up,lower down and on the same level, and each headquarters in turn receivesinformation about the ene

24、my not only from its own sources but also from theother headquarters. If some military unit should be defeated in battle through itsignorance of the enemy, the commanding officer and his chief of staff haveno right to blame the fact that they were not well enough informed about theenemy. The most im

25、portant task for every commander and chief of staff isthat, without waiting for information to arrive from elsewhere, they mustorganise their own sources of information about the enemy and warn their ownforces and their superior headquarters of any danger that is threatened. Spetsnaz is one of the f

26、orms of Soviet military razvedka which occupiesa place somewhere between reconnaissance and intelligence. It is the name given to the shock troops of razvedka in which there arecombined elements of espionage, terrorism and large-scale partisanoperations. In personal terms, this covers a very diverse

27、 range of people:secret agents recruited by Soviet military razvedka among foreigners forcarrying out espionage and terrorist operations; professional units composedof the countrys best sportsmen; and units made up of ordinary but carefullyselected and well trained soldiers. The higher the level of

28、a givenheadquarters is, the more spetsnaz units it has at its disposal and the moreprofessionals there are among the spetsnaz troops. The term spetsnaz is a composite word made up from spetsialnoyenazhacheniye, meaning special purpose. The name is well chosen. Spetsnazdiffers from other forms of raz

29、vedka in that it not only seeks and findsimportant enemy targets, but in the majority of cases attacks and destroysthem. Spetsnaz has a long history, in which there have been periods ofsuccess and periods of decline. After the Second World War spetsnaz was inthe doldrums, but from the mid-1950s a ne

30、w era in the history of theorganisation began with the Wests new deployment of tactical nuclearweapons. This development created for the Soviet Army, which had alwaysprepared itself, and still does, only for liberation wars on foreignterritory, a practically insuperable barrier. Soviet strategy coul

31、d continuealong the same lines only if the means could be found to remove Westerntactical nuclear weapons from the path of the Soviet troops, without at thesame time turning the enemys territory into a nuclear desert. The destruction of the tactical nuclear weapons which render Sovietaggression impo

32、ssible or pointless could be carried out only if thewhereabouts of all, or at least the majority, of the enemys tacticalnuclear weapons were established. But this in itself presented a tremendousproblem. It is very easy to conceal tactical missiles, aircraft and nuclearartillery and, instead of depl

33、oying real missiles and guns, the enemy candeploy dummies, thus diverting the attention of Soviet razvedka andprotecting the real tactical nuclear weapons under cover. The Soviet high command therefore had to devise the sort of means ofdetection that could approach very close to the enemys weapons a

34、nd in eachcase provide a precise answer to the question of whether they were real, orjust well produced dummies. But even if a tremendous number of nuclearbatteries were discovered in good time, that did not solve the problem. Inthe time it takes for the transmission of the reports from thereconnais

35、sance units to the headquarters, for the analysis of theinformation obtained and the preparation of the appropriate command foraction, the battery can have changed position several times. So forces hadto be created that would be able to seek out, find and destroy immediatelythe nuclear weapons disco

36、vered in the course of war or immediately beforeits outbreak. Spetsnaz was, and is, precisely such an instrument, permittingcommanding officers at army level and higher to establish independently thewhereabouts of the enemys most dangerous weapons and to destroy them on thespot. Is it possible for s

37、petsnaz to pinpoint and destroy every single one ofthe enemys nuclear weapons? Of course not. So what is the solution to thisproblem? It is very simple. Spetsnaz has to make every effort to find anddestroy the enemys nuclear armament. Nuclear strength represents the teethof the state and it has to b

38、e knocked out with the first blow, possibly evenbefore the fighting begins. But if it proves impossible to knock out all theteeth with the first blow, then a blow has to be struck not just at theteeth but at the brain and nervous system of the state. When we speak of the brain we mean the countrys m

39、ost importantstatesmen and politicians. In this context the leaders of the oppositionparties are regarded as equally important candidates for destruction as theleaders of the party in power. The opposition is simply the states reservebrain, and it would be silly to destroy the main decision-making s

40、ystemwithout putting the reserve system out of action. By the same token we mean,for example, the principal military leaders and police chiefs, the heads ofthe Church and trade unions and in general all the people who might at acritical moment appeal to the nation and who are well known to the natio

41、n. By the nervous system of the state we mean the principal centres andlines of government and military communications, and the commercialcommunications companies, including the main radio stations and televisionstudios. It would hardly be possible, of course, to destroy the brain, thenervous system

42、 and the teeth at once, but a simultaneous blow at all threeof the most important organs could, in the opinion of the Soviet leaders,substantially reduce a nations capacity for action in the event of war,especially at its initial and most critical stage. Some missiles will bedestroyed and others wil

43、l not be fired because there will be nobody to givethe appropriate command or because the command will not be passed on in timedue to the breakdown of communications. Having within its sphere an organisation like spetsnaz, and havingtested its potential on numerous exercises, the Soviet high command

44、 came tothe conclusion that spetsnaz could be used with success not only againsttactical but also against strategic nuclear installations: submarine bases,weapon stockpiles, aircraft bases and missile launching sites. Spetsnaz could be used too, they realised, against the heart and bloodsupply of th

45、e state: ie. its source and distribution of energy - powerstations, transformer stations and power lines, as well as oil and gaspipelines and storage points, pumping station and oil refineries. Puttingeven a few of the enemys more important power stations out of action couldpresent him with a catast

46、rophic situation. Not only would there be no light:factories would be brought to a standstill, lifts would cease to work, therefrigeration installations would be useless, hospitals would find it almostimpossible to function, blood stored in refrigerators would begin tocoagulate, traffic lights, petr

47、ol pumps and trains would come to a halt,computers would cease to operate. Even this short list must lead to the conclusion that Soviet militaryrazvedka (the GRU) and its integral spetsnaz is something more than theeyes and ears of the Soviet Army. As a special branch of the GRU spetsnazis intended

48、primarily for action in time of war and in the very last daysand hours before it breaks out. But spetsnaz is not idle in peacetimeeither. I am sometimes asked: if we are talking about terrorism on such ascale, we must be talking about the KGB. Not so. There are three goodreasons why spetsnaz is a pa

49、rt of the GRU and not of the KGB. The first isthat if the GRU and spetsnaz were to be removed from the Soviet Army andhanded over to the KGB, it would be equivalent to blindfolding a strong man,while plugging his ears and depriving him of some other important organs,and making him fight with the inf

50、ormation he needs for fighting provided byanother person standing beside him and telling him the moves. The Sovietleaders have tried on more than one occasion to do this and it has alwaysended in catastrophe. The information provided by the secret police wasalways imprecise, late and insufficient, a

51、nd the actions of a blind giant,predictably, were neither accurate or effective. Secondly, if the functions of the GRU and spetsnaz were to be handedover to the KGB, then in the event of a catastrophe (inevitable in such asituation) any Soviet commanding officer or chief of staff could say that heha

52、d not had sufficient information about the enemy, that for example a vitalaerodrome and a missile battery nearby had not been destroyed by the KGBsforces. These would be perfectly justified complaints, although it is in anycase impossible to destroy every aerodrome, every missile battery and everyco

53、mmand post because the supply of information in the course of battle isalways insufficient. Any commanding officer who receives information aboutthe enemy can think of a million supplementary questions to which there isno answer. There is only one way out of the situation, and that is to makeevery c

54、ommanding officer responsible for gathering his own information aboutthe enemy and to provide him with all the means for defeating his own enemy.Then, if the information is insufficient or some targets have not beendestroyed, only he and his chief of staff are to blame. They must themselvesorganise the collection and interpretation of information about the enemy,so as to have, if not all the information, at least the most essentialinformation at the right time. They must organise the operation of theirforces so as to destroy the most i