Samson Aboulkheir
Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov was major figure of the Soviet military; he was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1977 and was Chief of the General Staff of the USSR between 1977 and 1984. Ogarkov’s concept of nonlinear warfare (очаговый бой) is rooted in the acknowledgment that surveillance and long-range strike capabilities have become sophisticated enough to make ground troops’ concentration obsolete. In the early cold war, the growing development of the nuclear tactical arsenal endangered the resort to the concentration of troops. Initially, the Red Army’s response was to increase the mobility of its forces to address this challenge – this was one of the core goals of Georgy Zhukov’s reforms in the 1950s. However, innovations in the 1970s in surveillance, targeting, and deep-strike capabilities ultimately rendered troop concentrations obsolete.
A modern army equipped with such sophisticated weapons and devices could target and destroy an enemy’s concentration of troops even before it reached the frontline. Furthermore, the long-range strike weapons became so precise and deadly that the mobility factor wasn’t enough to keep a great number of forces, concentrated on the ground, still relevant. The concept of nonlinear sought to address this growing challenge between the 1970s and the 1980s, by proposing an overhaul of the Red Army’s structures and doctrinal thinking.
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