Struggle for the First Salvo [borba za pervy salp]
Soviet military leaders demanded from the forces entrusted to them from the very moment the anti-ship missiles appeared in the arsenal of the Navy - that they win the fight for the first volley. Soviet admirals said: win the fight for the first volley in order to strike first. It was not the superiority in numbers that matters, but the superiority in the salvo - more missiles, the missiles must be better, the struggle for the first salvo must be won. Missile combat is impossible without reconnaissance. With quality intelligence, the weakest can defeat the strongest. That's what the rockets gave.
Nikolai Gerasimovich Kuznetsov was the first people's commissar of the Navy, the youngest people's commissar of the Soviet Union, a career naval commander, a graduate of the Soviet naval education system, who made a dizzying career as an administrator. He commanded the cruiser "Chervona Ukraine" [at the end of 1933], on which, under his leadership and with active participation, the movement "Struggle for the first salvo" began. The purely artillery concept of "first salvo" was turned into a general naval, strategic one, which has made it possible to significantly increase the combat readiness of naval formations. For the first time, gunners began to use the aircraft to correct firing at an invisible target. The newspaper "Red Fleet" noted: "In the Navy, many people started talking about the methods of organizing combat training" according to the Kuznetsov system".
The Soviets judged that their naval forces would fare best if they won the 'battle of the first salvo,' catching the United States and its allies by surprise and throwing them off balance with massive coordinated attacks. Naval interactions were usually dissimilar in that the Soviet reaction to a carrier launch cycle was usually to report the launch and track the aircraft, and the American reaction to resupply flights was similarly to track and report them. Both actions, however, carried an implication of an ability to attack or otherwise halt the air action if need be. This was especially true since these tattletales were not judged to have a combat life of more than a few minutes after hostilities began. This tended to make the entire engagement a precipitous “battle of the first salvo.”
During the Cold War with its prospect of nuclear annihilation and the increased probability of a battle of the first salvo in which disproportionate advantage accrued to whomever fired first, it was no longer anticipated that war would be formally declared. Accordingly, the standard for “enemy” was one who took “hostile action” or who demonstrated “hostile intent,” a situation worsened by the perceived need to treat attacks on one unit as an attack on all units or potentially a general attack on the homeland.
The US Navy "The Maritime Strategy, 1986" noted "The United States must be in position to deter the Soviets’ “battle of the first salvo” or deal with that if it comes.... maritime forces must counter a first salvo, wear down the enemy forces, protect sea lines of communication, continue reinforcement and resupply, and improve positioning... Antisurface warfare involves carriers, submarines, cruise missile–equipped surface ships, and land-based forces eliminating forward-deployed Soviet surface ships at the outset of conflict. This requires appropriate rules of engagement at the brink of war to avoid losing the battle of the first salvo which is so important in Soviet doctrine."
To withstand the Soviets' threatened "battle of the first salvo", the US Navy must have sufficient mass and mobility to combat enormous firepower, and the resilient mobility to re¬group. To counterattack, it must have sufficient mobility to engage or avoid, and firepower that can combat not only the Soviets' expendable navy, but critical targets ashore as well.
The Soviet mission, then, was to survive just long enough to deliver a devastating blow to the enemy. Delivering a first-strike was given special importance in October 1973 Naval exercises, reflecting the Soviet “battle of the first salvo” doctrine. In the unpublished personal journal of Captain First Rank Yevgenii V. Semenov, one-time chief of staff of the Soviet Fifth Eskadra (the Mediterranean squadron), on 08 January 1973 Semenov wrote of an officers’ briefing on anticarrier warfare: “Ship attack groups need to use all weaponry for assaults on aerial attack groups: missiles, artillery, torpedoes, jet-propelled rockets—the whole lot![—] since it is unlikely that anything will remain afloat after an air strike. We are kamikazes.” A retired Soviet submarine officer recalled the doctrine in similar terms: “Of course, it was assumed that we would be fighting for the ‘first salvo.’ This was very important, to be the first to deliver the blow, before the other side could send its aviation into the air. It’s difficult for me to judge whether we could have delivered the first blow or not, but we were ready for it.”
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