86 
should their liberation movement succeed. In late 1973, Northern 
Fleet aircraft flew reconnaissance from Conakry which, with Cuba, 
now completes the Atlantic air surveillance triangle. The Soviet Navy’s 
first visit to neighboring Sierre Leone in May 1971 again served 
to bolster the existing regime. Base facilities in this area would give 
the Soviet Navy access to the Cape Verde ocean basin and to the 
U.S. Navy’s line of communication with the Mediterranean. 
By 1971, 10 years after the decision to move forward in strategic 
defense, a steady and sustained level of deployment had been reached 
in the “inner” areas of the Norwegian Sea and the Mediterranean. 
By 1972 this was also achieved in the N.W. quadrant of the Indian 
Ocean, although at a more modest level. Additional forces are 
deployed to all three areas in matching response to Western opera- 
tional initiatives. Meanwhile, Soviet naval units continue to visit Cuba 
and to pay attention to small West African states. By 1972, the 
pattern of forward deployment was complete, although the full struc- 
ture was still not in place. 
Although this general explanation of the initial shift to forward 
deployment is now widely accepted, many are reluctant to concede 
that the second phase followed the same strategic plan. But unless 
we are to allow pure coincidence, there are too many diverse facts 
to be accommodated satisfactorily by any other explanation. For exam- 
ple: the clear-cut geographic pattern; the political (but not strategic) 
insignificance of the small states being courted in West Africa; the 
heavy political cost of insisting on naval support facilities in Egypt, 
the absence of any Soviet naval presence in the South China Sea. 
These and other more ambiguous bits of evidence all fit snugly into 
the stragetic hypothesis, but will not support an influence-building 
one. More detailed arguments are given in Appendix A. 
One of the most frequent objections to this hypothesis is the asser- 
tion that the Russians must realize that it is impossible to deploy 
an effective counter to Polaris, an assertion which relies upon Western 
statements of the system’s invulnerability. This objection ignores the 
fact that since 1963 the Soviet Union has rated the destruction of 
Polaris submarines as the navy’s ‘“‘most important task.” It ignores 
the many examples of Soviet willingness to expend substantial 
resources where the defense of the country is at stake, on projects 
where the chances of success are small, and the return on success 
is low. It ignores the Soviet Navy’s own experience on the success 
of Western antisubmarine measures, which would have given them 
a rather different understanding of the odds in 1963. And it also 
ignores the growing evidence that the Soviet Union has devoted con- 
siderable research and development to her attempts to solve this 
problem. 
SHIP AND WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT 
The tempo of the shift to forward deployment appears to have 
been largely dictated by the availability of the appropriate forces. 
In 1961, the Soviet Navy was at a low ebb because of the cut- 
"2V_ D. Sokolovskij, ‘‘Voennaya Strategiya”, Voenizdat, Moscow, 1963, pp. 365-366. In August 
1964, a long and authoritative article on general military matters referred to the destruction of 
Polaris submarines as the navy’s ‘foremost task”; ‘“‘Krasnaya zvezda”’, Aug. 25 and 29, 1964, two- 
part article by Marshal Sokolovskij and General Cheredichenko. 
