Soviets armed 915 missiles to destroy American carriers
By Vera Kessler ·
US carrier task forces were tracked by a secret network of Bear aircraft and nuclear submarines as the Soviets gambled on saturation tactics to avoid naval inferiority.
Soviet propaganda of the mid-century routinely disparaged the aircraft carrier as an "antiquated and vulnerable weapon system." In official publications, the carrier was framed as an "oppressor of national liberation movements," a tool for projecting power in the Third World. However, the internal logic of the Soviet Navy, as captured in a May 1972 intelligence report from the CIA's Office of Strategic Research, reveals a far more respectful—and fearful—assessment of the American carrier's combat potential.
This record, sourced from OCR-extracted text in the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room, describes a Soviet naval strategy born of a specific vulnerability: the USSR lacked its own carriers and thus operated its surface forces without air cover on the open ocean. To counter the threat of nuclear-armed aircraft based on US carriers, the Soviets did not attempt to match the West in carrier construction. Instead, they bet on the cruise missile.
Cruise Missiles and Saturation
The Soviet decision to avoid building their own carriers was pragmatic. The report notes that the Soviets had no experience with such vessels and estimated it would take six to eight years to develop the necessary ships, aircraft, and escorts. More importantly, such a program would have pitted the USSR against the West in an area of "greatest strength," where they faced significant qualitative and quantitative inferiority.
Instead, the Soviets adopted the long-range antiship cruise missile, which they viewed as a "revolutionary" weapon. The strategic goal was simple: destroy the carriers before they could launch their aircraft. This was to be achieved through "saturation tactics," ensuring that even if many missiles were intercepted, at least one would reach the target.
By 1972, this mission had fundamentally shifted the Soviet Navy from a coastal defense force to one that actively sought out targets on the high seas. The report highlights that while the Soviets viewed amphibious landings on their own territory as a low concern, they remained deeply worried about US antisubmarine warfare (ASW) barriers in the restricted waters that their submarine fleet had to traverse to reach the open ocean.
Bears and Bisons
A cruise missile is only as effective as the data guiding it. The 1972 report details a sophisticated reconnaissance apparatus designed to locate and track carrier task forces. The process began with the interception of electronic emissions via long-range radio direction finding. Once a general location was established, the Soviets deployed the TU-95 Bear D, a maritime reconnaissance variant of the heavy bomber.
Since the introduction of the Bear D in 1965, nearly all aircraft carrier transits in the Atlantic and Pacific were subjected to aerial reconnaissance. The report describes a typical pattern: a pair of Bear aircraft, with a second pair in backup, would approach the carrier. Depending on the mission, they might overfly the vessel for photography or remain 100 to 200 nautical miles away, relying on passive sensors and Elint equipment.
This aerial surveillance was supplemented by intelligence collection ships (AGIs), which the report notes were deployed worldwide and had monitored operations in the Gulf of Tonkin. While AGIs lacked the speed to trail a carrier, nuclear submarines were used for trailing in the eastern Mediterranean and establishing barrier patrols in the Norwegian Sea and northwest Pacific.
1 May 1972
The report provides a specific snapshot of the Soviet anticarrier order of battle as of May 1, 1972. The USSR had deployed a total of 915 launchers across nine different antiship missile systems. The force was distributed as follows:
- Cruise missile submarines: 40 nuclear-powered and 20 diesel-powered. Of these, 58 carried missiles that required the submarine to surface before launch, primarily the 220-nm SS-N-3. Nine were armed with the 30-nm submerged-launch SS-N-7.
- Missile-armed aircraft: 275 Badger medium bombers. 165 carried the 110-nm AS-2, and 110 carried the 120-nm AS-5 or the new 300-nm AS-6.
- Missile-armed surface ships: Eight cruisers armed with a 150-nm version of the SS-N-3, three patrol craft with the 150-nm SS-N-9, and five ships with the 25-nm SS-N-10.
Supporting these strike forces were roughly 300 long-range reconnaissance aircraft and free-fall bombers, and over 200 torpedo attack submarines. The report emphasizes the Northern and Pacific fleets as the primary concentrations of these forces, with a permanent presence also maintained in the Mediterranean.
Despite this buildup, the report identifies a critical dependency on reconnaissance systems. Without accurate targeting data—preferably provided by a Bear D—the coordinated strikes required to saturate a carrier's defenses would be impossible. The record concludes its detailed breakdown by noting a lingering gap in intelligence: one Soviet submarine carried an unidentified missile, believed to be submerged-launched, with a range exceeding 100 nautical miles.