On with Krasnaya zvezda’s peep into the Defense Ministry’s organizational and force development document . . .
What about strategic nuclear forces in the future:
“Their further development will support a guaranteed counter to forecast changes in the strategic balance of forces, connected in the first place with the deployment of a U.S. global anti-missile system, but also the growing potential of U.S. and NATO highly accurate weapons.”
The three-component structure of the SYaS (land, sea, and air) will be preserved. And the plan repeats earlier assurances that the SYaS will be 70 percent modern by 2015, and 100 percent by 2020, as a result of the GPV.
Does the composition of the armed forces meet today’s threats?
The document says, despite everything, the threat of aggression against Russia has receded, and there’s no need to maintain a multimillion-man army. But it sounds like they’re still trying to convince people. Then there’s this.
Russia can still mobilize. The document offers reassurance that, in wartime, storage bases can outfit a significant number of new formations and units. The districts have preserved a mobilization base, and mobilization deployment plans. This comes after the Defense Ministry has spent a good bit of time and effort denigrating the old system of hollow cadre-level units. Who is manning storage bases and cadre units after recent downsizing, cuts, and consolidations?
The document re-runs the rationale for four MDs / OSKs. It calls the MD an inter-service strategic territorial large formation [объединение]. The old MD system didn’t correspond to existing military threats. To repulse aggression, a large formation of the troops and forces of several districts and fleets is needed. On strategic axes, there were no organs to unite ground, air, and naval forces. In a crisis, temporary, uncoordinated inter-service command and control organs were established. The army lacked commanders capable of planning and conducting operations in TVDs. Old MDs didn’t correspond to air defense boundaries. New MD / OSK commanders are personally responsible for security in their regions, and uniting forces under them has shortened their response times and increased their striking power.
What about command and control? There’s an emerging two-pipe system — the military plans for the use and development of the armed forces on the one hand, and civilians plan for their support on the other. The new three-level command system works like this — main commands of services, armies, and brigades answer for tactical issues, and the General Staff, OSKs, and armies answer for operational issues. The army-level command looks like an important hinge in this scheme. In days past, their staffs were never very large. The General Staff has lost duplicative functions and become a full-fledged strategic planning organ.
Where is the line drawn between the main commands of the services and the OSKs:
“The main commands of the services concentrate their efforts on the organizational development of the services, the organization of combat training, junior specialist [i.e. conscript] training, planning of peacekeeping activity and support in special aspects.”
“The unified strategic command of the military district is becoming the inter-service command and control organ, dedicated to planning and controlling all armies, brigades and military units in the inter-service troop grouping on the strategic axis, with the exception of those in the composition of strategic nuclear forces.”
Now any MD / OSK commander worth his salt will want to train and exercise the forces he’ll fight with. He may impinge on the diminished role of the main commands to the extent that he does it.
KZ’s review of the document finishes up talking about combat possibilities and combat potential. It claims that, far from just cutting, the TO&E of formations and units has been optimized and their combat possibilities increased. The example given is the new Western MD vs. the old Leningrad MD. It says the combat potential of the former is 13 times greater than the latter. Not exactly tough since the latter didn’t have a single combined arms army. Finally, it says resources reclaimed by cutting units give a “chance for real rearming of the army and fleet, and not endless modernization and repair of obsolete and worn-out armaments and military equipment.”
Russian Defense Policy 