Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces

by Viktor Suvorov

  companies with 126 dogs in each company, making 504 dogs in each unit.

  Altogether during the war there were two special service regiments formed

  and 168 independent units, battalions, companies and platoons.

  The dogs selected for the special service units were strong and healthy

  and possessed plenty of stamina. Their training was very simple. First, they

  were not fed for several days, and then they began to receive food near some

  tanks: the meat was given to them from the tank's lower hatch. So the dog

  learned to go beneath the tank to be fed. The training sessions quickly

  became more elaborate. The dogs were unleashed in the face of tanks

  approaching from quite considerable distances and taught to get under the

  tank, not from the front but from the rear. As soon as the dog was under the

  tank, it stopped and the dog was fed. Before a battle the dog would not be

  fed. Instead, an explosive charge of between 4 and 4.6 kg with a pin

  detonator was attached to it. It was then sent under the enemy tanks.

  Anti-tank dogs were employed in the biggest battles, before Moscow,

  before Stalingrad, and at Kursk. The dogs destroyed a sufficient number of

  tanks for the survivors to be considered worthy of the honour of taking part

  in the victory parade in the Red Square.

  The war experience was carefully analysed and taken into account. The

  dog as a faithful servant of man in war has not lost its importance, and

  spetsnaz realises that a lot better than any other branch of the Soviet

  Army. Dogs perform a lot of tasks in the modern spetsnaz. There is plenty of

  evidence that spetsnaz has used them in Afghanistan to carry out their

  traditional tasks -- protecting groups from surprise attack, seeking out the

  enemy, detecting mines, and helping in the interrogation of captured Afghan

  resistance fighters. They are just as mobile as the men themselves, since

  they can be dropped by parachute in special soft containers.

  In the course of a war in Europe spetsnaz will use dogs very

  extensively for carrying out the same functions, and for one other task of

  exceptional importance -- destroying the enemy's nuclear weapons. It is a

  great deal easier to teach a dog to get up to a missile or an aircraft

  unnoticed than it is to get it to go under a roaring, thundering tank. As

  before, the dog would carry a charge weighing about 4 kg, but charges of

  that weight are today much more powerful than they were in the last war, and

  the detonators are incomparably more sophisticated and foolproof than they

  were then. Detonators have been developed for this kind of charge which

  detonate only on contact with metal but do not go off on accidental contact

  with long grass, branches or other objects. The dog is an exceptionally

  intelligent animal which with proper training quickly becomes capable of

  learning to seek out, identify correctly and attack important targets. Such

  targets include complicated electronic equipment, aerials, missiles,

  aircraft, staff cars, cars carrying VIPs, and occasionally individuals. All

  of this makes the spetsnaz dog a frightening and dangerous enemy.

  Apart from everything else, the presence of dogs with a spetsnaz group

  appreciably raises the morale of the officers and the men. Some especially

  powerful and vicious dogs are trained for one purpose alone -- to guard the

  group and to destroy the enemy's dogs if they appear.

  ___

  In discussing spetsnaz weapons we must mention also the `invisible

  weapon' -- sambo. Sambo is a kind of fighting without rules which was

  originated in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and has since been substantially

  developed and improved.

  The originator of sambo was B. S. Oshchepkov, an outstanding Russian

  sportsman. Before the Revolution he visited Japan where he learnt judo.

  Oshchepkov became a black belt and was a personal friend of the greatest

  master of this form of fighting, Jigaro Kano, and others. During the

  Revolution Oshchepkov returned to Russia and worked as a trainer in special

  Red Army units.

  After the Civil War Oshchepkov was made senior instructor in the Red

  Army in various forms of unarmed combat. He worked out a series of ways in

  which a man could attack or defend himself against one or several opponents

  armed with a variety of weapons. The new system was based on karate and

  judo, but Oshchepkov moved further and further away from the traditions of

  the Japanese and Chinese masters and created new tricks and combinations of

  his own.

  Oshchepkov took the view that one had to get rid of all artificial

  limitations and rules. In real combat nobody observes any rules, so why

  introduce them artifically at training sessions and so penalise the

  sportsmen? Oshchepkov firmly rejected all the noble rules of chivalry and

  permitted his pupils to employ any tricks and rules. In order that a

  training session should not become a bloodbath Oshchepkov instructed his

  pupils only to imitate some of the more violent holds although in real

  combat they were permitted. Oshchepkov brought his system of unarmed combat

  up to date. He invented ways of fighting opponents who were armed, not with

  Japanese bamboo sticks, but with more familiar weapons -- knives, revolvers,

  knuckle-dusters, rifles with and without bayonets, metal bars and spades. He

  also perfected responses to various combat combinations -- one with a long

  spade, the other with a short one; one with a spade, the other with a gun;

  one with a metal bar, the other with a piece of rope; one with an axe, three

  unarmed; and so forth.

  As a result of its rapid development the new style of combat won the

  right to independent existence and its own name -- sambo -- which is an

  abbreviation of the Russian for `self-defence without weapons' (samooborona

  bez oruzhiya). The reader should not be misled by the word `defence'. In the

  Soviet Union the word `defence' has always been understood in a rather

  special way. Pravda formulated the idea succinctly before the Second World

  War: `The best form of defence is rapid attack until the enemy is completely

  destroyed.

  Today sambo is one of the compulsory features in the training of every

  spetsnaz fighting man. It is one of the most popular spectator sports in the

  Soviet Army. It is not only in the Army, of course, that they engage in

  sambo, but the Soviet Army always comes out on top. Take, for example, the

  championship for the prize awarded by the magazine Sovetsky Voin in 1985.

  This is a very important championship in which sportsmen from many different

  clubs compete. But as early as the quarter finals, of the eight men left in

  the contest one was from the Dinamo club (an MVD lieutenant), one from the

  mysterious Zenit club, and the rest were from ZSKA, the Soviet Army club.

  The words `without weapons' in the name sambo should not mislead the

  reader. Sambo permits the use of any objects that can be used in a fight, up

  to revolvers and sub-machine-guns. It may be said that a hammer is not a

  weapon, and that is true if the hammer is in the hands of an inexperienced

  person. But in the hands of a master it becomes a terrible weapon. An even

&
nbsp; more frightful weapon is a spade in the hands of a skilled fighter. It was

  with the Soviet Army spade that we began this book. Ways of using it are one

  of the dramatic elements of sambo. A spetsnaz soldier can kill people with a

  spade at a distance of several metres as easily, freely and silently as with

  a P-6 gun.

  There are two sides to sambo: sporting sambo and battle sambo. Sambo as

  a sport is just two men without weapons, restricted by set rules. Battle

  sambo is what we have described above. There is plenty of evidence that many

  of the holds in battle sambo are not so much secret as of limited

  application. Only in special teaching institutions, like the Dinamo Army and

  Zenit clubs, are these holds taught. They are needed only by those directly

  involved in actions connected with the defence and consolidation of the

  regime.

  ___

  The spetsnaz naval brigades are much better equipped technically than

  those operating on land, for good reasons. A fleet always had and always

  will have much more horsepower per man than an army. A man can move over the

  earth simply using his muscles, but he will not get far swimming in the sea

  with his muscles alone. Consequently, even at the level of the ordinary

  fighting man there is a difference in the equipment of naval units and

  ground forces. An ordinary rank and file swimmer in the spetsnaz may be

  issued with a relatively small apparatus enabling him to swim under the

  water at a speed of up to 15 kilometres an hour for several hours at a time.

  Apart from such individual sets there is also apparatus for two or three

  men, built on the pattern of an ordinary torpedo. The swimmers sit on it as

  if on horseback. And in addition to this light underwater apparatus,

  extensive use is made of midget submarines.

  The Soviet Union began intensive research into the development of

  midget submarines in the middle of the 1930s. As usual, the same task was

  presented to several groups of designers at the same time, and there was

  keen competition between them. In 1936 a government commission studied four

  submissions: the Moskito, the Blokha, and the APSS and Pigmei. All four

  could be transported by small freighters or naval vessels. At that time the

  Soviet Union had completed development work on its K-class submarines, and

  there was a plan that each K-class submarine should be able to carry one

  light aircraft or one midget submarine. At the same time experiments were

  also being carried out for the purpose of assessing the possibility of

  transporting another design of midget submarine (similar to the APSS) in a

  heavy bomber.

  In 1939 the Soviet Union put into production the M-400 midget submarine

  designed by the designer of the `Flea' prototype. The M-400 was a mixture of

  a submarine and a torpedo boat. It could stay for a long time under water,

  then surface and attack an enemy at very high speed like a fast torpedo

  boat. The intention was also to use it in another way, closing in on the

  enemy at great speed like a torpedo boat, then submerging and attacking at

  close quarters like an ordinary submarine.

  Among the trophies of war were the Germans' own midget submarines and

  plans for the future, all of which were very widely used by Soviet

  designers. Interest in German projects has not declined. In 1976 there were

  reports concerning a project for a German submarine of only 90 tons

  displacement. Soviet military intelligence then started a hunt for the plans

  of this vessel and for information about the people who had designed them.

  It should never be thought that interest in foreign weapons is dictated

  by the Soviet Union's technical backwardness. The Soviet Union has many

  talented designers who have often performed genuine technical miracles. It

  is simply that the West always uses its own technical ideas, while Soviet

  engineers use their own and other people's. In the Soviet Union in recent

  years remarkable types of weapons have been developed, including midget

  submarines with crews of from one to five men. The spetsnaz naval brigades

  have several dozen midget submarines, which may not seem to be very many,

  but it is more than all other countries have between them. Side by side with

  the usual projects intensive work is being done on the creation of hybrid

  equipment which will combine the qualities of a submarine and an underwater

  tractor. The transportation of midget submarines is carried out by

  submarines of larger displacement, fighting ships and also ships from the

  fishing fleet. In the 1960s in the Caspian Sea the trials took place of a

  heavy glider for transporting a midget submarine. The result of the trial is

  not known. If such a glider has been built then in the event of war we can

  expect to see midget submarines appear in the most unexpected places, for

  example in the Persian Gulf, which is so vital to the West, even before the

  arrival of Soviet troops and the Navy. In the 1970s the Soviet Union was

  developing a hydroplane which, after landing on water, could be submerged

  several metres below water. I do not know the results of this work.

  ___

  Naval spetsnaz can be very dangerous. Even in peacetime it is much more

  active than the spetsnaz brigades in the land forces. This is

  understandable, because spetsnaz in the land forces can operate only in the

  territory of the Soviet Union and its satellites and in Afghanistan, while

  the naval brigades have an enormous field of operations in the international

  waters of the world's oceans and sometimes in the territorial waters of

  sovereign states.

  In the conduct of military operations the midget submarine can be a

  very unpleasant weapon for the enemy. It is capable of penetrating into

  places in which the ordinary ship cannot operate. The construction of

  several midget submarines may be cheaper than the construction of one

  medium-sized submarine, while the detection of several midget submarines and

  their destruction can be a very much more difficult task for an enemy than

  the hunt for the destruction of one medium-sized submarine.

  The midget submarine is a sort of mobile base for divers. The submarine

  and the divers become a single weapons system which can be used with success

  against both seaborne and land targets.

  The spetsnaz seaborne brigades can in a number of cases be an

  irreplaceable weapon for the Soviet high command. Firstly, they can be used

  for clearing the way for a whole Soviet fleet, destroying or putting out of

  action minefields and acoustic and other detection systems of the enemy.

  Secondly, they can be used against powerful shore-based enemy defences. Some

  countries -- Sweden and Norway for example -- have built excellent coastal

  shelters for their ships. In those shelters the ships are in no danger from

  many kinds of Soviet weapon, including some nuclear ones. To discover and

  put out of action such shelters will be one of spetsnaz's most important

  tasks. Seaborne spetsnaz can also be used against bridges, docks, ports and

  underwater tunnels of the enemy. Even more dangerous may be spetsnaz

  operations against the most expensive and valuable ships -- th
e aircraft

  carriers, cruisers, nuclear submarines, floating bases for submarines, ships

  carrying missiles and nuclear warheads, and against command ships.

  In the course of a war many communications satellites will be destroyed

  and radio links will be broken off through the explosion of nuclear weapons

  in outer space. In that case an enormous number of messages will have to be

  transmitted by underground and underwater cable. These cables are a very

  tempting target for spetsnaz. Spetsnaz can either destroy or make use of the

  enemy's underwater cables, passively (i.e. listening in on them) or actively

  (breaking into the cable and transmitting false messages). In order to be

  able to do this during a war the naval brigades of spetsnaz are busy in

  peacetime seeking out underwater cables in international waters in many

  parts of the world.

  ___

  The presence of Soviet midget submarines has been recorded in recent

  years in the Baltic, Black, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian and Caribbean seas.

  They have been operating in the Atlantic not far from Gibraltar. It is

  interesting to note that for this `scientific' work the Soviet Navy used not

  only the manned submarines of the Argus class but also the automatic

  unmanned submarines of the Zvuk class.

  Unmanned submarines are the weapon of the future, although they are

  already in use in spetsnaz units today. An unmanned submarine can be of very

  small dimensions, because modern technology makes it possible to reduce

  considerably the size and weight of the necessary electronic equipment.

  Equally, an unmanned submarine does not need a supply of air and can have

  any number of bulkheads for greater stability and can raise its internal

  pressure to any level, so that it can operate at any depths. Finally, the

  loss of such a vessel does not affect people's morale, and therefore greater

  risks can be taken with it in peace and war. It can penetrate into places

  where the captain of an ordinary ship would never dare to go. Even the

  capture of such a submarine by an enemy does not involve such major

  political consequences as would the seizure of a Soviet manned submarine in

  the territorial waters of another state. At present, Soviet unmanned

  automatic submarines and other underwater equipment operate in conjunction