MILNET: Former USSR Intelligence Agencies
The Soviets are known for their unprecedented spending on arms, some 60% of their GNP in the years between 1950 and 1970. This twenty year buildup produced a like buildup of arms thorughout the world. It is against this Soviet Threat that the U.S. has spent billions in what has been coined, "the arms race".
Following the lead in military spending, the Soviets also built up an incredible intelligence network, based upon the two sister intelligence organizations, the KGB and the GRU, the KGB being the "civilian" intelligence agency, and the GRU being the military intelligence agency. Both however, have authority to work within and without their own territory and are feared by the Russian people.
- NOTE:
- Both intelligence agencies have gone through many changes since the breakup of the former Soviet Union. However, it is clear that both organizations, while operating under new names and possibly slightly different missions, never-the-less remain dangerous antagonists. Espionage continues today, and it would be naive to think that all the KGB and GRU agents of the past have gone home or that there are no longer any recruiting attempts made throughout the world.
KGB, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security) - organized into five numbered "Chief" directorates, several large un-numbered directorates, and a number of directly reporting deparments. According to Viktor Suvorov in the book Soviet Military Intelligence, the mission of the KGB is "...not to allow the collapse of the Soviet Union from the inside...". Of course this stated mission does not prevent the KGB from mounting missions anywhere in the world.
GRU, Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye (Chief Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff. According to Suvorov, the GRU's role is "...to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union from an external blow...".
The Soviets, like the U.S., employ satellites to garner technical intelligence as part of their own C3I system.