"Shield-83" - combined-arms exercises of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries, held in the summer of 1983.
The exercises Comrades in Arms-80 , Soyuz-83 , and Shield-83 practiced offensive operations from the very beginning of the conflict, on the principle of "Offensive is the best type of defense." All scenarios were based on the fact that NATO commits aggression [1] .
Content
Training Course
The exercises were held on the territory of the Byelorussian SSR , in Porechye . The airborne regiments of the 106th airborne division and the 76th airborne division (guard division commander Colonel Georgy Shpak ) were part of the 234th , 104th paratrooper regiments, the 1140th artillery regiment , and the 165th anti-aircraft division , combat engineer battalion, reconnaissance reconnaissance 237th regiment (company commander of the guard captain Alexei Lebed ).
At these exercises, the reconnaissance reconnaissance regiment of the 237th regiment, for the second time in the history of the Airborne Forces, landed and captured the Tu-22 heavy air bombers ( Baranovichi ) - the first time was during the Great Patriotic War . In addition to bombers, tankers and fighters were based at the airport at that time. The landing of the units of the 104th parachute regiment took place in the area of the Belorussky mound [2] .
Preparation for the exercises was appropriate: Only at Kresty airfield, about five training jumps were completed with the completion of all subsequent capture operations. Each fighter clearly knew his task [2] .
Actions also took place in the Lithuanian SSR , where scouts of the 4th separate special-purpose brigade imitated border crossing by enemy saboteurs. And the units of the Armed Forces, in turn, were engaged in their search and neutralization [2] .
A large landing ship Orsk [3] [4] was also involved in the exercises. Units of the communications troops operated in the area of the city of Legnica in the Polish People’s Republic .
Secrecy
As part of measures to maintain secrecy, the actual names of military units were changed to conditional. So, on operational maps, the 76th Guards Airborne Division is designated as the 86th Airborne Division , and its 104th Regiment, respectively, as the 114th and so on.
World Situation
During the Shield-83 exercises, a major international scandal occurred. The United States expelled two Cuban representatives to the United Nations from the country for allegedly "inappropriate behavior." All this happened just shortly after the celebration in Cuba of the 22nd anniversary of the failure of American aggression in Playa Giron . “World Report”, Issue 13, 1983 ( World affairs report ) - Edition of the California Institute for International Studies calls it a provocation from the Cuban side and links it with the shield-83 exercises.
The United States, in turn, conducted the exercises “Global Shield-83” ( US 'Global Shield-83' Exercise ), which ended on June 21, 1983.
Notes
- ↑ Grinevsky O.A. Tell me the truth ... // Fracture. From Brezhnev to Gorbachev . - M .: OLMA PRESS Education , 2004. - P. 309. - 622 p. - (Dossier. Russia: Declassified Materials). - ISBN 5-94849-616-3 .
- ↑ 1 2 3 Shield-83 (inaccessible link) . Desantura.ru (2009). Archived on August 5, 2013.
- ↑ Black Sea Fleet . Information resource
- ↑ Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation: The large landing ship Orsk of the Russian Black Sea Fleet is 40 years old (inaccessible link)