Page 624 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

624 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Warsaw Pact multilateral military intelligence estimates
on NATO’s war plans and military exercises

Jordan BAEV

he proposed paper aims to compare and analyze the estimates and considerations
T discussed during the Warsaw Pact multilateral Military Intelligence sessions about
the largest NATO joint military exercises in the last Cold War decades. From 1964 until
1990 senior experts of Military Intelligence strategic, operational and radio-electronic
branches met regularly (twice in a year) especially for exchange of intelligence informa-
tion on Wintex/Fallex and some other larger annual/biannual NATO exercises. Of spe-
cial interest were also the bilateral operations of Bulgarian Military Intelligence services
with their Hungarian and Soviet partners for reconnaissance of NATO drills in the South
European Flank (the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean).
The research was based on the formerly top secret records of Bulgarian Military
Intelligence services, which were made available in the last three years according to a
Law of December 2006 for declassification of all Intelligence and Security archives for
the whole Cold War era (1944-1991). Of special importance were the collections of the
protocols, information reports, and expert papers of all multilateral Military Intelligence
annual meetings (started in 1964), including those of specific thematic issues like stra-
tegic, agent-operational and radio-electronic departments. The author of the proposed
paper had a chance to be one of the first historians who received access to those newly
declassified archival records. The revealed information could contribute for the clari-
fication of the levels of knowledge and some essential topics of thinking and decision
making inside the two adversary military blocs in the postwar years.
The strategic doctrines and views of the both military blocs were tested and proved
usually by annually multinational staff and forces exercises. The largest NATO drills –
such as Fallex/Wintex biannual exercises – were used as main tool for training allied
armed forces from the Northern Atlantic to the Eastern Mediterranean in massive joint
and combined operations, usually divided in several phases. Logically, the Warsaw Pact
authorities tried to gather as much as possible about the actual military plans and inten-
tions of the adversary bloc. The most influential instruments for such a priority task were
the East European military intelligence services.
While the foreign intelligence activity was subject of more public and expert atten-
tion, the military intelligence information and estimates were slightly known due to the
fact of relatively scanty access to their records. Perhaps the only East European military
intelligence service that was studied closely through its authentic documentary base was
1
the NVA Verwaltung Auklarung of the GDR . In the last few years there appeared new

1 Wegmann, Bodo. Die Militäraufklärung der NVA: die zentrale Organisation der militärischen Aufklärung
der Streitkräfte der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin: Verlag Dr. Koster, 2006)