In Friday’s Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye, Viktor Litovkin claimed, the day before, President Dmitriy Medvedev visited the inner sanctum of Russia’s Aerospace Defense (VKO or ВКО) – the Central Command Post (ЦКП) of the 3rd Independent Air Defense (Missile Warning) Army in Solnechnogorsk. Now Litovkin admits VKO doesn’t technically exist yet. But preparations are underway, and he suggests, besides PVO, SPRN, PRO, space monitoring, etc., it will even include the RVSN. Litovkin maintains tests of this system are ongoing, and Medvedev came to inspect it. He watched troops track all three of Thursday’s SLBM and ICBM launches, and saw the missiles’ warheads land on their respective targets. And, according to Litovkin, the point was to demonstrate the reliability of Russia’s nuclear missile capability to Medvedev as new SNV treaty limits loom.
Could the shrinking RVSN be subsumed under VKO as a new service or branch? Could this explain the fairly rapid command shifts from Solovtsov to Shvaychenko to Karakayev?
Russian Defense Policy 
Pingback: Interesting Times in the Far East « Theoptimisticconservative's Blog