ABSTRACT
Before discussing the development of the Soviet Air Force’s theories, we must turn to a brief discussion of how the Soviets understood the concept of operational art in the 1920s and 1930s. This is necessary for several reasons. First, because the subject of this work is the employment of the air force, primarily at the operational level, it is necessary to provide a working understanding of how the Soviets understood this level of war. Second, this overview discusses it from the perspective of land warfare, both because Russian and Soviet understanding of the operational level of war first arose regarding land warfare, and because the activity of the Soviet Air Force was expected to be directly related to the activity of the Soviet Army, though on occasion the extent of the tie between them was a source of contention. Since the Soviet Army increasingly utilized the concepts of operational art and successive deep operations, the activity of their Air Force is not comprehensible without reference to that framework. An understanding of the operational level of war is also necessary for understanding Soviet concepts of independent air operations as well. Thus, this chapter begins with the rise of the notion of the operational level of war in Russia and the Soviet Union, then discusses how the Soviets understood the concept as it evolved, moving on to the outline of how they expected the Air Force to fit into Army operations, as a prelude to the close examination of the development of the Soviet Air Force’s theories that follows.
