It almost certainly started when I was in Berlin during the mid-1980s. I was one of the air defence staff with NATO’s Tactical Leadership Programme (TLP) based at Jever in Germany’s Lower Saxony, which schooled NATO aircrew in the art of multinational air defence and strike missions. As part of my role, I’d expanded the ground school to encompass the opposing Soviet weapons and tactics, which inevitably led to analysing the quality of its training and the skill of its pilots.
Reading everything I could find on Russian history, religion, politics and their way of life, I came across a book penned by a Soviet defector under the pseudonym Viktor Suvorov. Titled Inside the Soviet Army, he wrote that the West had it all wrong, perceiving the threat from the communist country’s Central Region as being a huge Soviet air army supported in some way by its smaller East European-based air forces. However, when you considered the Soviet Order of Battle (ORBAT) at the time, you’d see a complete second air army spread across Eastern Europe.
While in Berlin, I often worked with the 6912 Electronic Support Group, which helped operate a large listening station perched on top of the Teufelberg, the enormous mound o…
