Page 627 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

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mentary East German report for clarifying some data on Central European War Theater.
Due to the conclusions that some important data was missing and the process of the in-
formation exchange was disturbingly slow, the MI chiefs agreed on organization of two
meetings annually on assessment of FALLEX exercises – one in advance for coordina-
tion of the joint intelligence measures, and second – in February or March for discussing
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the results of the NATO exercises .
The first session to discuss the results of FALLEX-66 results was held in Prague in
early February 1967. The representatives of Czechoslovakia and the GDR informed
about the scenarios of the three phases of the NATO exercises in Central European
War Theater, the Bulgarians delivered obtained information about the developments
on Greek and Turkish territory, while the Hungarians reported about the results of the
NATO exercise on Italian territory. According to the information, the second phase of
the exercise (code name “Jolly Roger”) was held under the conditions of general nuclear
war, while the last phase (code name “Full Moon”) prescribed NATO active counterat-
tack operations. The Polish head of MI Information Department confirmed that their
data did not differ from the intelligence information, shared by the other East European
services. However, the GRU representatives pointed out the existence of several distinc-
8
tions in the reports about the stages and the number of staff personnel .
The organized discussions in 1966 – 1967 showed a new problem of the Warsaw
Pact MI coordination. During the initial Prague session of Information and Radio Tech-
nical Departments of September 1966 and at East Berlin annual meeting in November
the Romanian representatives categorically refused to participate in joint tasks, such as
reconnaissance of FALLEX exercises, and even to discuss any Strategic Intelligence
issues. Because of their reaction, at the session in Prague in February 1967 Romanian
military intelligence delegation was not even invited. Thus, the task for distribution of
all requested information about the situation at the “Balkan Strategic Direction” was
transferred only to the Bulgarian MI service, which had no sufficient technical capac-
ity and equipment to conduct electronic reconnaissance toward the Mediterranean area
and the US Sixth Fleet activity. In order to surmount the gap, in February – March 1967
Bulgarian MI chiefs initiated discussion both with the chiefs of GRU in Moscow and
of the Intelligence Department of Odessa Military District. The agreement was reached
that twice in every year a group of Odessa Military District Radio Technical Intelligence
unit (usually between 10 and 40 servicemen) with modern Soviet electronic equipment
will be send to Bulgaria for support of reconnaissance during NATO FALLEX, DAWN
PATROL and other large joint and combined exercises. A new agreement was signed
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in November 1975, and renovated in 1989 ; its purpose this time was oriented to WIN-
TEX/CIMEX, AUTUMN FORGE, and DISPLAY DETERMINATION exercises in the
Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean. Though the agreements contained a special para-
graph of “temporary disposition” of Soviet electronic equipment on Bulgarian territory,
actually, most of the radio transmitters and radar finders were left to the Bulgarians after

7 COMDOS, VR, MF No. 01288, (A.E.) 1051, 1052, 1054.
8 COMDOS, VR, MF No. 01288, A.E. 1053.
9 COMDOS, VR, Inventory No. 3056.