Category Archives: Force Modernization

Industry More Important Than Army

Posted on February 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

Konstantin Makiyenko (photo: Dmitriy Lebedev/Kommersant)

Commenting in today’s Vedomosti, Konstantin Makiyenko of Moscow’s Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (ЦАСТ), also a member of the Duma Defense Committee’s Scientific-Expert Council, addresses the recent tendency of Russian military leaders, especially Air Forces and Navy, to criticize and even reject the OPK’s homegrown products.

He notes VVS CINC Zelin’s publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the pace of work on the S-500, and the Navy’s ‘slap in the face’ to Russian shipbuilding over consideration of the Mistral and German conventional subs.  He claims the oboronki themselves sensed Defense Minister Serdyukov’s bias against them and rushed to confess their problems.

And Makiyenko concludes the criticism is well-founded, as many OPK enterprises and companies are in pitiful shape, and the management of a number them leaves a lot to be desired.  However, he asserts, the OPK’s post-Soviet decline is not as great as that of the armed forces.  And restoring Russia’s ‘normal’ military potential is a higher priority task than preserving or adding to the OPK’s scientific-industrial potential.

Makiyenko believes Russia’s place as the number 2 or 3 arms exporter in the world indicates the OPK’s real potential.  Even more so since the economic conditions in which the OPK operates are worse than those of its competitors.  So, for all its problems, the OPK is still number 2 or 3 in the world, according to Makiyenko, while the army, nuclear weapons aside, is capable only of defeating the lilliputian armies of the former Soviet republics.

Makiyenko believes the degradation of the Soviet Armed Forces was occurring as early as the 1970s, while the Soviet OPK was reaching the peak of its capabilities at the end of the Soviet epoch.  It had practically overcome any lag with the U.S. and was building competitive products.  So, Makiyenko concludes, the OPK, rather than the Soviet Army, was the advanced guard in the last stage of the Cold War.  And Russia’s arms market successes would have been impossible without the Soviet OPK legacy.

Makiyenko suggests that the OPK should have priority over the army because, not only can it play a role in national development, but, with some effort, it can be restored in 5-10 years, while if it is [completely?] lost, it could take one or two generations to rebuild.  And even if Serdyukov builds the best army in the world, it won’t be able to provide for the country’s security without the basis of national defense–Russian industry.

So, without orders from its own army, without financing for basic research or RDT&E for the last 15 years, the OPK isn’t always able to meet demands for low priced, high technology goods on tight schedules to help Serdyukov rearm the armed forces quickly and effectively.  But this is no reason to call oboronki thieves and junk dealers.  Makiyenko calls for a long-term perspective and systematic evaluation of the situation instead of nearsightedness.

This is all well and good.  Makiyenko’s a smart guy and makes valid points, and he’s done an admirable job of defending the OPK.  But let’s remember that he tends to shill for arms sales.  Russian weapons sold abroad have had more than their share of problems in recent years.  And the Soviet technology in them grows older and older.  Also, there appears to be no cogent program for fixing the OPK anywhere in sight.  Nor is there even any clear analysis of how buying arms abroad will affect the OPK.

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Posted in Air Forces, Defense Industry, Force Modernization, Navy

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Rastopshin on OPK’s Problems

Posted on February 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

In yesterday’s Vremya novostey, Mikhail Rastopshin recalled how President Medvedev reproached the OPK last year for lagging in the production of new types of weapons to rearm Russia’s military. Medvedev said, if Moscow’s enemies possess superior weapons, no strategy or tactics will help Russia.

Rastopshin asks why the rearmament tasks laid down in documents like the National Security Concept and Military Doctrine remain unfulfilled? These documents seem like they did nothing to slow the degradation of the OPK and the army.

Among other basic state documents, Rastopshin mentions the Federal Goal Program (FTsP or ФЦП) Reform and Development of the Defense-Industrial Complex (2002-2006), but it didn’t bring the desired results. The first Russian State Armaments Program for 1996-2005 (GPV-2005) was in ruins a year after it was adopted. The second, the GPV for 2001-2010 (GPV-2010), and the current GPV for 2007-2015 (GVP-2015) are coming to naught.

According to Rastopshin, this attests to an inability to forecast arms and equipment development tens year out. There’s not only a lag of technological generations in traditional armaments, but an absence of entire classes of new weapons based on different physical principles.

After the Georgian war, Medvedev apparently ordered Serdyukov to prepared proposals on outfitting the army with modern combat support equipment. This amounted to ‘reloading’ the GVP. One can suppose that serious proposals didn’t ensue since Medvedev had to return to this problem in late 2009.

Weapons from yesterday are not infrequently put forth as our modern armaments. But there’s no other place to get them since military science and design bureaus are in a steep decline. The insolvency of the domestic defense system can be followed in the munitions sector, which hasn’t produced artillery shells since 2005. Russia lacks war reserves of ammunition, and an army without munitions is no longer an army. The sector has been producing poor quality powder, making it likely that fragmentation shells won’t reach their targets and armor-piercing ones will lose their penetration capability.

Taken as a whole, the existing armaments development system can’t provide a high tempo of rearmament, nor quality which continues to drop in both domestic and export orders. Complaints from foreign buyers are increasing, but domestic complaints are concealed. The fall in quality places doubt over future weapons. And there’s a huge divergence between the army’s demand for new weapons and the OPK’s ability to provide them, according to Rastopshin.

The quality problem won’t be resolved because OPK management is so complicated. The OPK has been reformed 8 times in the past 15 years. The lack of quality restructuring at the top exacerbated problems at the bottom. Management could not bring order to NIIs, KBs, or factories, failure above gave birth to technical breakdowns below. Rastopshin says in today’s RF Government, the Department for OPK Industries has the same status as the Communal Services Department, a situation tantamount to simply ignoring the country’s defense capability.

The creation of industrial holdings was chosen as the path to improved OPK management. Uniting in these holdings enterprises that use old production equipment, lack sufficiently qualified personnel, have eliminated quality control, testing, standardization, and military acceptance offices cannot bring the desired results.  It results only in old weapons unsuited for combat in today’s conflicts.  Rastopshin recommends returning to a Ministry of Defense Industry [sounds a little like one more reform at the top that doesn’t influence the situation below].

Rastopshin sees a gulf between the army’s ‘new profile’ structure and supplying it with new arms.  For this reason, he says, the combat readiness of the new TO&E brigade with old armaments remains extremely low.

He points to NATO’s superiority in conventional arms to say that Russia couldn’t hold out two weeks.  Russia would have to resort not only to strategic, but also tactical nuclear weapons.  So Rastopshin concludes Russia needs to revisit the issue of producing nuclear-armed intermediate and shorter range missiles, and leaving the INF Treaty.  He sees Moscow as having little choice since it’s left choosing between conventional defeat or strategic nuclear conflict.

Rastopshin sums up, it’s time to stop giving the army old, ‘modernized’ weapons, the life cycle of which was long ago used up.  Medvedev himself has said this more than once.

Sadly, Rastopshin offers more criticism than solid answers (except for seeing an INF withdrawal as one path for Russia).  Science and applied science need to be improved as does personnel training for the OPK.  New requirements need to be put on the OPK.  He’d also like to see some of those who have reorganized the OPK punished for irresponsible actions that have damaged the country’s defense capability.

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Golts Looks Under the Hood of PAK FA

Posted on February 1, 2010 | 6 comments
PAK FA in First Test Flight (photo: RIA Novosti)

In today’s Yezhednevnyy zhurnal, Aleksandr Golts turns his skeptical eye toward the PAK FA, Russia’s 5th generation fighter aircraft which just took its first test flight.

Golts says, looking a little like the F-22 and even more than the Su-27, PAK FA called forth a storm, a waterfall of success reports.  He notes that Prime Minister Putin cited it as proof of the wisdom of creating the United Aircraft-building Corporation [UAC or OAK] four years ago. 

Those in charge of the project are breathing easier.  After the Bulava SLBM failures, getting the new fighter off the ground was a matter of principle, especially since the leadership promised that it would fly every year since 2005.  Golts believes the Bulava failures combined with the 5th gen fighter delays caused people to discuss whether Russia could modernize, and whether it could develop high-tech products.  One thing Bulava and PAK FA have in common is that both are truly Russian projects, ones that are being implemented without dependence on significant leftover Soviet-era resources.  Their results could enable observers to question whether the OPK is being managed correctly, whether it was smart for Putin, [Sergey] Ivanov, and Chemezov to herd hundreds of enterprises into several gigantic OPK kolkhozy. 

Golts says some aviation industry leaders worried that OAK was created, not to concentrate resources to build PAK FA, but for Moscow bureaucrats to get their hands on profits from foreign aircraft orders [doesn’t ROE do this already?].  And Golts reminds that around 2000 then-Minister of Industry Ilya Klebanov said PAK FA development would cost $1.5 billion, but as we’ve learned the pricetag was closer to $10 billion over ten years. 

And it had to fly no matter what, and so it did.  But what actually flew, Golts asks.  One thing for sure, the first new airframe in 25 years.  And that’s it.  Everything else–speed, max and min ceilings, radars, weapons systems–all remain to be seen. 

As for the engines, Golts says we just don’t know.  Years ago the engine producers fought it out to be the designer and builder.  NPO ‘Saturn’ won out.  And, according to Golts, its director started to lie.  Putin and Ivanov both recognize that the engine problems will take some time to work out.  But on the day of PAK FA’s first test, the managing director of ‘Saturn,’ who directs the PAK FA program for the United Engine-building Corporation [ODK], claimed the new fighter has the newest engine, not an improved version of the Su-35’s engine, as the press and specialists have written. 

So what Putin and Ivanov worried about was secretly resolved by NPO ‘Saturn’ and the new engine is ready.  This is great news for Air Forces CINC Zelin.  Just four months ago he said that the PAK FA engine couldn’t be foreseen in the near future.  He said it would fly with a ‘Saturn’ engine, the 117S, a ‘deeply modernized’ version of the AL-31F. 

So, according to Golts, either ‘Saturn’ decided to pawn off on the Motherland an engine it demonstrated four years ago or, worse, having pocketed the contract, it simply decided to put old engines in a new aircraft. 

Golts concludes honestly that he can’t say whether PAK FA will be a true 5th generation aircraft, but it has taken off in a thick fog of lies.  And here’s the distinction between it and Bulava; there’s no way to hide Bulava’s failures since the U.S. gets the telemetry and people in other countries can see evidence of an unsuccessful test launch.  There aren’t the same limits on lying about PAK FA. 

So PAK FA is a “cat in a sack.”  You can’t say much for sure about the cat, but don’t worry, it’s a 5th generation sack.

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Putin’s Voronezh Trip and Military C3

Posted on January 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

It takes a while to digest the press devoted to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 18 January trip to Voronezh and Sozvezdiye, or the state-owned communications conglomerate based on the Voronezh Scientific-Research Institute of Military Communications.  Sozvezdiye is the holding which encompasses 16 other enterprises involved in C3, radio, and electronics.

Watch this NTV coverage of Putin at Sozvezdiye.

Sozvezdiye had a big demo set up outside for Putin.  But as the video shows, Putin was wearing his supremely bored look.  Moskovskiy komsomolets picked up on this, noting that Putin gave a cursory look at everything, and inside the display tent, he apparently picked up the mic on a video link system and tried to use it, but the soldier on the other end couldn’t hear the Prime Minister.

The Voronezh trip was the latest in a series of meetings on the state of the OPK.  Putin started by stating the obvious, noting that C3I is a decisive factor in the combat capability of a modern army, and a precondition for the use of highly accurate weapons.  He said it’s difficult to imagine an effective transition to a modern organizational structure without the right C3.  He called C3 a key priority for defense and noted that significant budget money will be spent on them.

Putin proceeded to chide his C3 producer audience, saying that Russia can’t modernize what it’s got; it needs an entirely new generation of systems.  He said C3 producers suffered from poor leadership, organization, and coordination of efforts.  Finally, he had to admit that they basically ignored his 2000 presidential decree on development of a new C3 system.

Specifically, Putin said:

“…we need not only to conduct a fundamental modernization of existing complexes and systems.  We have to say plainly that they unfortunately have already aged greatly.  And become obsolete, and even their technical condition often leaves much to be desired.  Therefore our focus for the coming years is to give the troops new generation equipment, to take a qualitative step forward.  It is precisely on this that I ask you to focus.”

“Our enterprises have a good scientific-technical pool for resolving this task, we need to use it wisely.”

Noting that dozens of OPK organizations work on C3I, he said:

“I ask that you turn attention to precise coordination of their activity, and also concentrate on working out agreed approaches and requirements for product development.”

“Besides this, I would like to turn attention to this, to this time a number of decisions adopted earlier have not been carried out.  So, to the present day, a general designer for development of an automated C2 system for the armed forces has not been appointed.  An integrated structure which would develop and implement a unified scientific-technical policy in this sphere has not been formed.  A special comprehensive program which would allow us to concentrate resources, to reduce and to optimize, to increase the effectiveness of budget expenditures has not been developed.”

Find the text of Putin’s address here.

Different media outlets reached the same conclusion about Putin’s Sozvezdiye visit and whether his words can fix the OPK’s problems and increase the sluggish pace of military modernization.  Segodnya.ru concluded:

“…the fact that Vladimir Putin directly participates in the problem of modernizing the technical outfitting of the army and promises to give the troops new generation equipment in coming years, inspires some optimisim.  Although the sensation remains that loud pronouncements about modernization traditionally hang in the air.”

Writing in Nezavisimaya gazeta, Viktor Myasnikov called it Putin’s “latest attempt to mobilize the military-industrial complex to equip the armed forces with quality modern products.”  Making note of Putin’s exhortations to the C3 producers, Tribuna said, “We’d like to believe they heard him.”  Newsru.com summed it up simply, Putin demanded that they modernize C3, but how to do it is not clear to anyone.

What exactly did Putin order in 2000?  According to Denis Telmanov writing for Gzt.ru before the Voronezh visit, Putin ordered the development of the Unified Tactical Level Command and Control System [ЕСУ ТЗ or YeSU TZ]. 

What’s it supposed to do?  It is supposed to be a large part of a system tying the armed forces together in one modern C2 network, and enabling them operate in a netcentric fashion.  Several media items reported that the Defense Ministry believes YeSU TZ will provide 2 or 3 times the capability of its predecessor. 

Tribuna noted that the Russians have the individual pieces of equipment, bought with a considerable allocation of money, but they haven’t managed to pull them together into one, integrated and modern C2 system.  According to Segodnya.ru, experts believe only Russia’s strategic forces possess a functioning, albeit increasingly obsolete, C2 system.  The armed services and branches, MDs, fleets, and armies have local automated C2 that isn’t necessarily integrated or compatible with other commands.

At the operational-tactical (battalion-brigade) level, Russia has reportedly fallen 20 years behind Western armies in C2.

Testing of YeSU TZ began in 2006 and continues.  In December, troops at Alabino used the equipment in a battalion tactical exercise.  But Telmanov concludes the military is in no hurry to adopt the system because it’s problem plagued and has obsolete elements.  It’s also hard to integrate with the army’s old comms gear. 

Izvestiya on 20 January reported that the system may be too complex for soldiers and sergeants, but even for some officers.  Myasnikov noted that the equipment suffered a lot of breakdowns at Alabino. 

But Sozvezdiye denies the criticism, saying YeSU TZ is reliable and no more difficult to use than a mobile phone.

Nikolay Khorunzhiy writing in Vremya novostey had said back in November that the Akatsiya system was tested during Kavkaz-2009 but could not be fully employed because operator training was deficient.  Combat situation data had to be input by hand and orders sent out by voice radio, defeating the purpose of automation.  Myasnikov also wrote that Akatsiya isn’t working out.

A little nomenclature is in order here.  It’s difficult to square all the press, but it seems Akatsiya is a name for YeSU TZ, but it’s also known by the name Sozvezdiye, a little confusing since this is the C3 production conglomerate’s name as well.  Apparently, Akatsiya is either based on or relies on the Akveduk satellite radio [?] system as one of its component parts.  These in turn evolved out of Polet-K and Manevr before them.  A couple press pieces said one problem with the system is what was basically a radio comms enterprise was put in charge of the broader C2 system effort which required other expertise as well.

A few other issues from the Voronezh visit bear mentioning…

Many press items cited the 2008 five-day war with Georgia as putting attention on C3 weaknesses.  Vremya novostey recalled the image of a wounded 58th Army commander, the recently dismissed, Khrulev borrowing a satellite phone from a journalist to communicate with Moscow.  Several papers cited a Sozvezdiye deputy director saying the holding ‘got raked over the coals’ for South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  He noted that Georgian forces used Harris equipment from the U.S. and it was better than Russian analogues in a number of ways.

Regarding this technological lag, there’s some dispute.  Moskovskiy komsomolets indicated Putin was told “we’ve approached NATO standards” in computerized C2.  Izvestiya, however, cited an industry source saying that there’s no appreciable lag between Russian and U.S. and Israeli systems.

Nezavisimaya gazeta and Izvestiya tackled the cost issue.  First Deputy Sozvezdiye Director Vasiliy Borisov was widely quoted to the effect that equipping one brigade with the new C2 system will cost 8 billion rubles.  Nezavisimaya multiplied this by 85 ‘new profile’ brigades for a price of 680 billion rubles, or when higher echelons have to outfitted as well, the total cost is probably more like 1 trillion rubles, or the price of one complete year of the State Defense Order (GOZ).  Izvestiya quoted Borisov saying the price to outfit a company commander would be 150,000 rubles, and 50,000 for individual soldiers.  The paper concluded that the new equipment won’t be replacing mobile phones any time soon at these prices.

Nezavisimaya also noted that one can’t do C2 properly without the right navigation system, and GLONASS is not up to the job.  It cited 17 operational GLONASS satellites, but press services today noted that 18 are now functioning.  Still, not enough.  Nezavisimaya compares work on C2 to Bulava and GLONASS–other military programs that defense industry is having a hard time bringing to fruition.  Tribuna makes the same point that a fully functioning and reliable GLONASS system is a ‘sine qua non’ for effective C2.

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Fifth Generation Fighter Maiden Flight Today

Posted on January 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

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What 3 Billion Stolen Rubles Could Buy

Posted on January 29, 2010 | Leave a comment

Viktor Baranets

On Wednesday, Komsomolskaya pravda commentator Viktor Baranets recapped Sergey Fridinskiy’s latest military corruption report, but Baranets also gave examples of what the Defense Ministry might have bought with the 3 billion rubles [$100 million] lost to corruption.

  • 50-55 T-90 tanks
  • 75-80 BMPs
  • 3 or 4 Su-27 or MiG-29 fighters
  • 8-10 Mi-28N attack helicopters
  • 1 light frigate or corvette
  • 1 or 2 Topol [SS-25] ICBMs
  • 3 or 4 reconnaissance satellites
  • 300-400 apartments
  • food for an MD (130,000 personnel) for a year
  • uniforms for 300,000 or 350,000 conscripts, or 1/3 of the army

So corruption brings a significant opportunity cost in the form of foregone or lost procurement, and ultimately reduces combat capability.  Bear in mind this is, of course, only uncovered corruption.  The real amount is undoubtedly larger, but who knows how much.  And this kind of army corruption didn’t start this year.  It’s been delivering this kind of blow to efforts to operate, maintain, and reequip the armed forces year in and year out for a long time.

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Posted in Crime and Corruption, Force Modernization

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Will the Army Survive the Reforms of 2009?

Posted on January 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

Military commentator Anatoliy Tsyganok gives some of his familiar answers to this question in Polit.ru.

He lists three important factors that will determine the state of Russia’s defenses over the next 10-15 years (without necessarily fully exploring each):  information security, demographics, and weapons development.

He’d like to see “information troops” as a branch of the armed forces.  Not sure he could write his columns if they existed the way he describes them.  More interestingly, he asserts, by 2011-2012, the number of 18-year-old Russian males will be less than the number of conscript billets in the armed forces.  So something has to give.

Then Tsyganok spins off into a variety of interesting and familiar directions.

Regarding the shift to 3 levels of command, Tsyganok maintains it doesn’t improve the control over forces and it actually reduces combat readiness.  He questions whether the MD can transform itself from an administrative command into a warfighting front under modern conditions when it will have little time and may already be under attack.  Later he gives officer manning figures for the old regiments vs. the new brigades.  The former had 252 officers and more than 100 warrants against 900-1,800 soldiers and sergeants.  The latter has 135 officers against as many as 3,800 troops, so control is worse.

On the issue of tanks, Tsyganok says the reduced reliance on tanks might be right for a small war in the Caucasus, but a larger tank force remains useful elsewhere since not every war will be of the local variety.  With only 2,000 tanks, Russia would have only 285 for each MD and the KSDR, or 2 brigades and an independent battalion’s worth for each.

Tsyganok says the U.S. Army’s ratio of combat to combat support brigades is 1:3 and Russia’s is 1:0.88, leaving the latter deficient in combat support.  Without adequate combat support, the Russian brigade can’t cover the same kind of territory as its American counterpart, according to him.

Nor is the Russian brigade terribly mobile.  Tsyganok says, in Zapad-2009, one brigade rail marched 450 km in 7 days, while he claims a Chinese regiment exercising at the same time covered 2,400 km in 5 days.

Tsyganok is not impressed by Russia’s armaments program.  He asks why Russia should build new ships when it can’t maintain what it’s got.  He claims Russia’s ‘new’ corvettes will be outfitted with 20-year-old weapons.  Tsyganok complains that updating the electronics on 30-year-old Su-24, Su-25, and Su-27 aircraft doesn’t produce sufficiently combat capable platforms for today.

Turning to training and education, he runs through the familiar and modest results for 2009 (60 percent of the ‘new profile’ brigades got satisfactory evaluations) and reductions in the number of officers studying at the Combined Arms and General Staff Academies.

Tsyganok then tackles the formation of OAO Oboronservis to replace most of the army’s rear services.  According to him, it is quite a behemoth valued at perhaps more than a trillion rubles or 2-3 percent of Russia’s GDP.  He cites VVS CINC Zelin’s criticism of the high cost of capital aircraft repairs by its Aviaremont holding.

On military housing, Tsyganok says, the Defense Ministry’s claims notwithstanding, servicemen received less than 30,000 apartments in 2009.

He ends by discussing military corruption, which he describes as theft which knows no limits.  Officially, losses from economic crimes in the armed forces amounted to 2.5 billion rubles in 2009, adding to the 2.2 billion in 2008.

Tsyganok says:

“The prosecutor and other law enforcement mainly fight against low-level corruption, but they don’t touch its ‘apex.’  To increase the number of cases uncovered, they seize on rank and file corruption, but they don’t conduct a systematic fight against corruption in the ranks of the highest leadership.  Attempts to create special control organs still haven’t brought success:  in a thoroughly corrupt system, uncorrupted structures either don’t work or else quickly become corrupted themselves.  To ‘purge’ the main corrupt people, political will is needed, and we still don’t have it.”

It will be interesting to see if there is some kind of move against corruption in the Defense Ministry and other high places in the armed forces, as rumored during last week’s command changes.  The rumor probably shouldn’t be believed until some solid evidence appears.

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Posted in Command and Control, Crime and Corruption, Force Modernization, Serdyukov's Reforms

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Is Russia Ready for Netcentric Warfare?

Posted on January 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

Is It Really This Simple?

Dmitriy Litovkin addressed this recently in Izvestiya.  He defines netcentric war as generals in the Arbat controlling not only armies but individual soldiers in real time via a military Internet.  He calls the U.S. concept as gathering all forces into one information space and turning the armed forces into one huge reconnaissance-strike system. 

Litovkin cites one Robert Nikolayev, who worked in an NII, probably the Voronezh Scientific-Research Institute of Communications, now known as OAO Sozvezdiye [Constellation].  Nikolayev worked on the Manevr [Maneuver] system from 1983, which was to unite all fire means in one communications system and tell field commanders what the staff wanted, where friendly forces and targets were, and what weapons to use on them.  But Nikolayev indicates the Armed Forces Communications Directorate viewed the system as a threat and killed it.  He says it was a good system and it supposedly helped the Warsaw Pact defeat Western forces in a NATO war game.  In the early 1990s, Nikolayev worked on Polet-K for the VDV and it went through testing, but wasn’t fielded.

Litovkin says a new tactical C2 system called Sozvezdiye [isn’t this the firm’s name] is in the works, but no one wants to talk about it since it’s a state secret.  He describes it as an Internet-based computer network with secure email.

Litovkin thinks buying Israeli UAVs or French ships will make Russia’s task harder since it surely won’t get SENIT-9 or SIC-21 that give Mistral its automated C3 capability.  Russia will have to provide its own.

Litovkin adds comments from Mikhail Barabanov.  He says the USSR’s lag in electronics and computing equipment during the 1980s hurt the early efforts and then its collapse stopped the development of these sectors for a while.  He thinks Russia will not only have to overcome the continuing lag in information systems, but also change its military organization, manning, and training to become netcentric.

Rossiyskaya gazeta’s Sergey Ptichkin published a similar article not long ago.  Also see this for more on Russian netcentric warfare efforts in the 2009 exercises.  It covers the comms chief’s promises about individual soldier comms by 2011.  The VDV chief of staff also talked about this for his troops in his year-ender.

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President Medvedev Gets Report from Serdyukov

Posted on January 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

Serdyukov and Medvedev at Vystrel Training Range

President Dmitriy Medvedev and Defense Minister Serdyukov met at the Vystrel training area near Moscow yesterday.  Medvedev set his priorities for 2010–nuclear forces, rearmament, and military housing.

On force modernization issues, Medvedev emphasized this year’s priority on preserving the strategic nuclear component.  Looking over infantry weapons, he said he wants Russia to create modern, effective, and economical small arms.  They should be competitive with the best foreign models, he added. 

He inspected some new wheeled vehicles and armored vehicles from KamAZ, and looked over the Tigr vehicle which will go to special operations sub-units.  He was told it was not adopted widely in the armed forces because it has a powerful American-made engine.  Serdyukov said a similar Russian engine is being developed.

Serdyukov reported that ineffective repair work was cut by 28-30 percent this year.  The Defense Ministry also significantly cut ineffective RDT&E, and savings from both were put toward buying new arms, according to Serdyukov.  He asserted that, in line with Medvedev’s direction, financing for the 2010 GOZ is beginning earlier than in the past, as early as 15 January.

Serdyukov said Russia bought 43 new aircraft in 2009, against only 2 in 2008, and 1 in 2007.  It also got 41 helicopters, against 10 in 2008, and 2 in 2007.

Serdyukov assured Medvedev that all servicemen in line would receive apartments this year.  Medvedev responded that, “No weapon will be as important in comparison with meeting the promise we gave officers to supply them with apartments.”  Serdyukov reported that the Defense Ministry met its housing target for 2009 by obtaining 45,614 apartments.

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Medvedev’s Take on Combat Capability

Posted on January 7, 2010 | Leave a comment

RF President Dmitriy Medvedev

 You may recall after the five-day war with Georgia, and before Serdyukov’s reform announcement, President Medvedev issued his own theses on combat capability.  

Though he’s not a learned military theoretician, Medvedev’s statement is obviously important.  Find coverage at Rosbalt.  

Medvedev said:  

“The development of five factors is necessary for the effective resolution of combat missions.  We are talking about improving the TO&E structure of the troop basing system.  If we speak plainly and directly, all combat formations must be transferred into the permanent combat readiness category.  Second is increasing the effectiveness of the armed forces command and control system.  It’s impossible to count on success in modern combat without this.  Third is the improvement of the personnel training system, military education and military science.  We need an army equipped with the most modern weapons–the fourth factor.  We’ll give first priority attention to this issue, but fundamentally new high-technology weapons types will have special significance.  The fifth factor is improving the social condition of servicemen.  These five factors will determine the combat capability of our armed forces.”  

This is fairly close to what our military scholar published in Voyennaya mysl.  

Medvedev went on to add that, by 2020, Russia will add to its nuclear deterrence, intelligence, air superiority, ground and naval strike, and operational troop redeployment capabilities.  Russia has planned for serial ship and submarine construction, and establishment of an aerospace defense system, according to Medvedev. 

Before becoming president, Medvedev traveled to Kaliningrad in January 2008.  He was still a first deputy prime minister in charge of ‘priority national projects,’ of which housing is (was?) one.  On that occasion, he noted that the resolution of the social problems of servicemen directly influenced the combat capability of the armed forces.  He said it was necessary to solve their housing problems, “otherwise combat capable armed forces won’t exist.” 

Next, there should be some interesting Putin comments on combat capability, also questions in many public polls on the armed forces are couched in terms of what people think about their combat capability.

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