Category Archives: Manpower

What Kind of Army?

Posted on May 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

Not again . . . but yes, Wednesday Trud asked what kind of army does Russia need in the future? 

It’s almost 20 years since the army ceased to be Soviet, and the paper asked five relatively independent experts the same question that’s been asked since 1991 –what is to be done about Russia’s Armed Forces?

Yes, it’s repetitive . . . it’s rare we hear something new, the problem is not ideas and initiatives, it’s implementing them.

At the same time, these commentaries are short and pithy.  They cover a lot of ground, and might be handy.

Korotchenko supports the Defense Ministry’s swerve back toward contractees, since there aren’t enough conscripts.  And he doubts conscripts are up to the task of handling modern weapons.  But he points to the need to end dedovshchina and other barracks violence to attract professional enlisted. 

Sharavin believes the big mobilization army is still needed, and conscription will continue alongside contract service for some time.  He wants more benefits for conscripts who’ve served, and he wants the sons of the bureaucratic elite to serve. 

Belozerov agrees recruiting 425,000 professional soldiers won’t be easy or fast.

Litovkin is harsher; he says there’s no reform, just back and forth on contract service.  He lampoons the current small-scale effort to train professional NCOs.  He ridicules thoughts of a serious mobilization reserve because of the lack of reserve training.

Makiyenko thinks a contract army is cost prohibitive, and the army numbers only about 800,000.  He likes the fighting spirit of soldiers from the Caucasus, opposes segregating them, but hopes Muslim clergymen in the ranks can restrain them. 

Igor Korotchenko:

“Of the million servicemen, ideally we should have 220 thousand officers, 425 thousand contractees and 355 thousand conscripts.   It’s true, not now, but in 10 years.  On the one hand, this is due to the physical impossibility of calling up more — there is simply no one to put under arms according to demographic indicators.  In the last call-up, the army took in 70 thousand fewer conscripts than in the preceding campaigns.  On the other hand, it’s simply scary to entrust those weapons systems, which should be purchased in the coming decade according to the state armaments program (and this is 20 trillion rubles by 2020), to people who were just driven out of the  sticks and into the army for a year.  Whether the Armed Forces want it or not, they are doomed to a certain intellectualization.  However, this is impossible if existing nonregulation relations between servicemen are preserved.  It seems that the Armed Forces leadership has started to understand this.  A program for the humanization of  service which also aims to remove the problem of dodging service (about 200 thousand men) has appeared.  Now in the Ryazan VDV School the first graduating class of professional sergeants is finishing the three-year course of study.  The eradication of nonregulation relations is connected directly with them.”

Aleksandr Sharavin:

“What kind of army to have is determined primarily by the country’s geographic situation.  If there is a potential threat to its territory from neighboring countries, we need a conscript army, through which a large mass of young men pass and allows for having a great mobilization reserve as a result.  If there is no threat, we can limit ourselves to professionals.  Russia has such threats — look closely at the map!”

“Is the transition to a professional army possible in Russia?  I suggest it’s possible, but not necessary. According to the Supreme CINC, we will transition to a new profile of the Armed Forces in 10-15 years.  For this or an even more extended period, conscription will remain.  Possibly in a much easier form — they will serve, not a year, or will call-up not 200 and some thousand, as now, but only 170 thousand men.  In the future, it would do to reduce even this number.  Moreover, reducing it will allow a certain selection and thereby improve the quality of the young men conscripted into the army.”

“In my view, a serving citizen [conscript] can’t receive the current 500 rubles [per month].  Hard military work should be well-paid, otherwise it is objectively devalued.  The rate — not lower than the country’s minimum wage!  We also need to think about other stimuli:  free higher education for those who’ve served, some kind of favorable mortgage credit, and, most importantly, we should only accept those young men who’ve fulfilled their duty to the Homeland into state service.  No references to health conditions can be taken into account.  If there’s strength to be a bureaucrat — get well and find the strength to serve in yourself!  If we need to amend the Constitution for this, we’ll amend it.  Our neighbors in Kazakhstan went this way and got a double benefit:  improved quality of the army contingent and bureaucrats who are not so divorced from the people, as in Russia.”

Vasiliy Belozerov:

“If the political decision is made, it’s possible even now, undoubtedly, to establish a fully volunteer army in Russia.  But do we need this?  I suggest it will be correct and justified if the share of professional sergeants and contractees in the army will be raised gradually.  Since it’s unclear from where a quantity of 425 thousand professionals can be gotten all at once.  They won’t fall from the sky.  We have to remind ourselves that the contingent of both current conscripts and potential professionals is one and the same:  young men 18-28.  This means we have to  create such conditions that it’s not the lumpen who go into the army, but normal men.  And worthy people need worthy conditions.  And there’s one more figure:  based on world experience it’s possible to say that in a professional army in the year for various reasons (health, age, contract termination, etc.) 5 percent of personnel are dismissed.  This means that in a 425,000-man professional corps in a year we have to recruit an additional 20 thousand men.  They also need to be gotten from somewhere.”

Viktor Litovkin:

“As is well-known, the army should know only two states:  either fighting, or preparing for war.  For us, it is either reforming or preparing to reform.  Meanwhile, there’s still no clear presentation of ​​what kind of army we want and what government resources we are prepared to give for this army.”

“In Russia, there is no coherent policy on establishing new Armed Forces.  The fact is the Chief of the Genshtab says we made a monstrous mistake and the Federal Targeted Program for Forming Professional Units failed, therefore we’ll get rid of contractees.  A half year goes by, the very same Genshtab Chief comes to the podium with the words that the country, it turns out, again needs 425 thousand professionals.  Make the basic calculations:  for this number of soldiers we need to have 65 thousand professional junior commanders [NCOs].  And now in Ryazan we have 250 men studying to be sergeants, they’ll graduate next year.  Meanwhile, there’s no data that they’ve selected the next course.  Has anyone thought about this?  And one more thing.  When we say that we need the call-up to create a trained reserve, this is self-deception.  The reserves are so unprepared!  Suppose we trained a soldiers for a year to drive a tank.  What next?  Once or twice a week after work this mechanic-driver has to work on the trainer at the voyenkomat, and every six months — drive a real tank on the range.  Otherwise, in case of war, we get not a trained reserve, but several million 40-year-old guys with beer guts who’ve forgotten which end the machine gun fires from.”

Konstantin Makiyenko:

“In my opinion, the transition to a professional army in Russia is desirable, but absolutely impossible.  A contract army is actually substantially more expensive than a conscript one.  Another thing, our announced one-million-man [army], in my view, likely doesn’t number 800 thousand men.  We have to talk about yet another problem — the coexistence of conscripts from the Caucasus and other regions in the army. Everyone remembers the wild incident, when these guys laid out the word ‘Kavkaz’ using conscripts of other nationalities.  But, on the other hand, conscripts from Dagestan, Chechnya or Kabardino-Balkaria, as a rule, stand-out for the best physical preparation and desire to learn about weapons.  Once the idea was floated to have Caucasians serve in some units, and Russians in others.  At the last session of the Defense Ministry’s Public Council, it was announced that this won’t be.  It was decided to refrain from creating monoethnic military formations of the ‘wild division’ type from the Tsarist Army.  Contradictions between conscripts called up from the Caucasus and other regions of the country will be removed by introducing the institution of military clergy of the Islamic persuasion.”

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Russia’s Fading Army Fights Losing Battle to Reform Itself

Posted on April 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

A very good article by the Wall Street Journal’s Richard Boudreaux . . . though missing a few of the most up-to-date pieces of the story, his report captures important aspects of the Russian contract service experiment that even so-called specialists overlook.

“VOLGOGRAD, Russia—Sergei Fetisov, a 23-year-old welder, signed on for one of the most ambitious projects in Vladimir Putin’s Russia: rebuilding the remains of the once-mighty Soviet Red Army.”

“A cornerstone of that effort was the creation of special combat-ready units staffed entirely by professional soldiers, not conscripts.  Mr. Fetisov volunteered to be one of them.  He enlisted for a renewable three-year stint, enticed by higher pay and the chance to learn new skills.”

“One of his first tasks, he recalls, was toiling past midnight shoveling snow and ice from a football-field-size parade ground.  The work that followed was menial, humiliating and of little practical use, he says.  Combat training consisted of two firing exercises a year, he says, and a chunk of his paycheck was routinely withheld by corrupt officers.”

“‘When I realized that being a professional soldier was just the same as serving as a conscript, I wanted to tear up my contract and get out of there,’ he says.  He quit when his commitment ended in July, he says, ‘but we had guys who simply ran away.’”

“With volunteers like Mr. Fetisov leaving in droves, the Defense Ministry has abandoned the initiative altogether.  The program’s failure shows the limits of Mr. Putin’s grand plan to transform the army from a cumbersome machine designed for European land war into a lithe force capable of fighting regional wars and terrorism.”

“Russia’s struggle to rebuild its armed forces comes as the world’s military balance is in flux.”

“Two decades after the Cold War ended, China is engaged in a military buildup that has many of its neighbors, including Russia, scrambling to bolster their defenses.  The U.S., still the world’s dominant military power, is trying to rein in defense spending—while simultaneously keeping a wary eye on China, projecting power in the volatile Middle East and dealing with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s persistent concerns about Moscow.”

“Currently, Russia is at odds with NATO’s air assault in Libya. Moscow has stayed out of the military conflict, despite its stakes in weapons deals and oil-exploration ventures with Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.  But Mr. Putin said last month that the bombing in Libya is part of a ‘steady trend’ of U.S. military intervention around the world and ‘a timely indicator that our efforts to strengthen [Russia’s] defense are justified.’”

“In February, Russia outlined a $650 billion plan to acquire new warplanes, ships, missiles and other arms over the next decade, the Kremlin’s biggest spending spree since the Cold War.”

“Mr. Fetisov’s account of poor morale in the army’s ranks, however, raises questions about Russia’s long-term ability to assert power abroad.”

“The Defense Ministry declined to comment on Mr. Fetisov’s complaints, but has acknowledged that widespread discontent among volunteers undermined its enlistment campaign.  Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has said that the program had been poorly managed and would cost too much to fix.”

“‘We cannot afford to create a fully professional army,’ he said in October.  ‘If we save funds elsewhere, we will certainly go back to this idea, but well prepared.’”

“The setback has the Kremlin in a bind.  Counting on volunteers to make up nearly half of all soldiers, Mr. Putin had bowed to public sentiment and shortened the draft from two years to one.  Now, the dearth of volunteers and a drop in Russia’s draft-age population have prompted the Defense Ministry to cancel some deferments and step up conscription of men 18 and older, risking discontent over a twice-yearly ritual that began anew on April 1 and is widely evaded.”

“Russia relies mainly on its nuclear arsenal to project power and protect its territory.  Tensions with the West have eased, but Mr. Putin sought a revival of conventional forces, which had been weakened by budget cuts, to put muscle behind his push for influence in former Soviet republics that are now independent.”

“The army’s decline became evident in the mid-1990s with its battering by separatist rebels in Chechnya.  The land, air and naval forces Mr. Putin inherited when he became president in 2000 were a pale shadow of the Red Army, five million strong at the time of the Soviet Union’s breakup in 1991.  They stand at one-fifth that size today.”

“Under the enlistment program, launched in 2004, officers were to train volunteers as career specialists and make the new combat-ready units fully operational by 2010.  The shift to professional soldiers was supposed to better enable the army to operate the high-tech weaponry Russia plans to acquire.”

“The U.S. abolished the draft in 1973, attracting volunteers through advertising, pay increases, educational benefits and re-enlistment bonuses.  By the time of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, the move was widely viewed as a success.”

“Russia’s campaign to attract volunteers, by contrast, was not as well funded or advertised.  By 2008, the army said it had signed up 99,000 volunteers for the new units, about 40,000 short of the goal.”

“Then the number began a sharp decline as most of them chose not to re-enlist or went AWOL.  That trend was evident during Russia’s clumsy but ultimately successful invasion that year of neighboring Georgia.  Conscripts were sent to fight and die there, despite Mr. Putin’s promise that only professionals would serve in hot spots.”

“Despite the shortage of volunteers, Mr. Serdyukov, the defense minister, announced at the end of 2009 that Russia’s ground forces had been reorganized into 85 brigades of ‘permanent combat readiness,’ doing away with bulkier divisions and making the army more mobile.  Only later did officials acknowledge that the brigades were made up mostly of one-year conscripts, men with few combat skills.”

“The enlistment drive’s failure puts constraints on Russia’s reach.  When ethnic rioting in June threatened to tear Kyrgyzstan apart, its president appealed for Russian peacekeepers, the kind of force Moscow once deployed routinely as a political tool.  This time the Kremlin demurred—in part, defense analysts say, because the army couldn’t spare a full brigade of professional soldiers.”

“Democratic reformers have lobbied for years to end the draft, arguing that a smaller, professionalized force could better defend the nation’s interests.  Opinion polls show majority support for the idea, and Mr. Putin endorsed it early in his presidency.”

“But tradition-bound generals favored keeping a large conscript army. Mr. Putin opted in 2003 for a compromise:  The Defense Ministry would continue to draft, but also would start recruiting for the combat units.  The government budgeted $3.3 billion for higher pay and better housing for volunteers.”

“By the time Mr. Fetisov received a draft notice four years later, the plan was faltering.  Recruiting stations, unaccustomed to any task other than rounding up draft-age men, were given no blueprint for luring volunteers.”

“The army was a tough sell, too.  Salaries for contract soldiers averaged $270 per month at the end of 2007, about half the average salary for civilians.  Housing construction at bases fell behind schedule.  Residential buildings paid for by the military were turned over without running water, plumbing or electrical wiring, government auditors reported.”

“Mr. Fetisov, who has dyed-blond hair and a passion for video games, had no interest in leaving his $370-a-month welding job.  He lived with his mother and two brothers in Volgograd, a ‘hero city’ once named Stalingrad and famed for resisting the Nazis in World War II, but he wasn’t attracted to military life.”

“Once he was drafted, however, an army contract seemed to offer advantages.  Draftees at the time served 18 months, earning next to nothing.  But they had the option to go professional six months after induction.  Mr. Fetisov, who says he was offered $400 a month, thought a contract would raise his status in the army and enable him to master new skills.”

“He reported to the 99th Artillery Regiment’s base near Nizhny Novgorod in November 2007.”

“His disillusionment began with midnight snow-shoveling duty.  ‘We worked in cleaning, construction, regular things, not serving as soldiers,’ he says.  ‘We didn’t do anything that would help us in a combat situation.’”

“Mr. Fetisov and others who served in recent years say the army’s search for contract servicemen centered exclusively on draftees already under its control.”

“The 99th Artillery, for example, had 600 volunteers on three-year contracts, including Mr. Fetisov, and 300 draftees.  Officers were under instruction to recruit as many new volunteers as possible.”

“Mr. Fetisov says they resorted to an unusual recruiting technique:  Nearly every night at 11 that first winter, conscripts were mustered on the parade ground and made to stand in formation for hours, facing superiors who sometimes were drunk.”

“‘Finally an officer would say, ‘Those willing to sign contracts, you’re dismissed.  The rest of you, stay at attention,’‘ Mr. Fetisov recalls.  ‘A personnel officer would tell stories about the great treatment contract soldiers get.’”

“‘They had to stand there in the cold until at least two or three men agreed to sign,’ Mr. Fetisov says.  ‘This went on for weeks, but they never got 100%’ of the regiment on contract.”

“Volunteers under contract lived three to a room in new barracks with televisions and DVD players.  Conscripts slept in bunk beds, 20 to a room.”

“Beyond that, the distinction seemed to blur.  Volunteers and conscripts alike were treated harshly, Mr. Fetisov says.  Sometimes a soldier who broke disciplinary rules was ordered to dig a deep pit and stay inside for days, he says.”

“His accounts were corroborated by two other contract soldiers, Artyom Pugach and Denis Pushkin, who served at the base and were interviewed separately.”

“The three soldiers say they experienced arbitrary deductions from their paychecks of $20 to $135 a month for what they say an officer described as ‘needs of the regiment.’  Some contract soldiers had to forfeit their final month’s pay in exchange for discharge papers, says Mr. Pushkin.”

“A 2008 study by Citizen and Army, a Russian human-rights group, said such deductions were widespread, amounting to large-scale misappropriation.  Mr. Fetisov says his commander had leeway with payroll money because his contract, like many others, didn’t state the salary he was promised.  He says the commander threatened to punish anyone who challenged the cuts.”

“‘We were told there were some financial difficulties with the military reform,’ he says.  ‘But we could see that the commanders got new cars.…We saw what they were driving, and it was clear what was being spent on what.’”

“Crime and coercion plagued other volunteer units.  Police in Russia’s Far East broke up gangs that extorted cash from soldiers on paydays at three bases.”

“In Kaliningrad, a military prosecutor’s inquiry led to the annulment in 2006 of 83 contracts signed under pressure, according to that city’s chapter of the Soldiers’ Mothers Committee, an advocacy group.  Elsewhere, commanders of soldiers who went AWOL kept them on the roster, pocketing their salaries, says Alexander Golts, a military specialist and deputy editor of Yezhedevny Zhurnal, an online Russian publication.”

“In 2009, Mr. Fetisov was among 160 soldiers sent to form the all-volunteer artillery battalion of the new 6th Specialized Tank Brigade.  There, he says, he injured his hand badly while cleaning the artillery barrel of a tank, and army doctors neglected it.  When his three-year contract came up for renewal, Mr. Fetisov bailed out.  At the time, he says, only 10 volunteers remained of the 160.  The rest had been replaced by draftees.”

“‘The army ran out of fools,’ his mother, Tatyana Fetisova, said recently as she listened to her son tell his story.”

“And so it went at bases across Russia.  The exodus left a handful of all-volunteer units, staffed by a few thousand contract soldiers, in an army made up overwhelmingly of conscripts, say defense officials and independent observers.”

“‘It’s no secret how the contract service was implemented,’ Mr. Serdyukov, the defense minister, told news magazine Odnako.  ‘Active duty soldiers were induced to sign contracts by all means.  Their [low] monthly salary and standard barracks life made them quit the armed forces as early as possible.  There was no systematic preparation of military specialists.’”

“Mr. Serdyukov, a former business executive close to Mr. Putin, was appointed during the enlistment effort and felt cheated by officers who resisted or mismanaged it, says Vitaly Shlykov, a retired colonel who advises him.  The minister, he says, concluded that Russia must change the culture of its officer corps before trying to switch to a professional army.”

“Backed by Mr. Putin and the current president, Dmitry Medvedev, Mr. Serdyukov is slashing the number of officers and changing the way new ones are educated.  He is training Russia’s first corps of career sergeants since the czarist era, starting with a class of 300.”

“But those leaders will take a generation to develop, Mr. Shlykov says, and meanwhile ‘Russia will have a conscription army for years to come.’”

“That is bad news for Russia, says Mr. Fetisov, the former enlistee, but at least those who serve will do so with fewer illusions.”

“‘Now everybody knows you just put up with a year of hell,’ he says, ‘and then you’re free.’”

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The Price of Military Labor

Posted on April 12, 2011 | 1 comment

Today Voyenno-promyshlennyy kuryer published what it says is the nearly complete version of new military pay and pension rates that will be reviewed by the Defense Ministry and other power ministries by 20 May, and passed on to the Duma not later than 22 June for approval.  There might, says VPK, be some changes and amendments as parliaments are want to make.  But expect the package to become law by early July at the latest.  The new pay rates will be implemented for the Defense Ministry, as long promised, on 1 January 2012, and a year later for other power ministries.

In the following graphic, VPK shows duty and rank pay for some military men.

Duty and Rank Pay

This is just a foretaste of the data presented.  Of course, duty pay is the more significant component.  It’s why some officers outside the TO&E, i.e. without duties, are hurting so badly — they don’t get this big chunk of pay.

But what it says is a sergeant who’s the upper grade of two for section commander gets 6,500 rubles for his rank and 15,000 rubles for his duty or position pay, or 21,500 rubles per month.  But let’s call this “base” pay onto which other supplements are added.  A general-colonel serving as a deputy defense minister would get 64,000 rubles in “base” pay per month.

Supplements and coefficients are calculated for years served, class qualifications, work with state secrets, service under special [usually climatological] conditions, etc.  The following graphic shows part of the list.  It actually runs up to nine different supplements and coefficients.

Supplementary Pay

Supplements are sometimes calculated on duty pay; other times on combined duty and rank pay.  Let’s say our section commander sergeant has served 10 years, has a second class qualification, works with secret information, and serves with Russian troops in Tajikistan — he would add 4,300 and 2,150 and 1,500 and perhaps 15,000 to that “base” of 21,500.  His supplemented pay becomes 44,450 rubles per month — not bad, but this would likely be an exceptional case we’ve made just for illustration purposes.

Note that items 6 and 7 on the supplement chart are Defense Minister Serdyukov’s “premium” pay supplements for outstanding performance.  They allow officers to double their duty pay or even triple their combined duty and rank pay.  “Premium” pay was a stopgap to raise military salaries until a new, higher pay system could be devised.  But VPK makes it look like this will become a permanent feature of the new system.

The draft law sets out lots of other special payments and benefits to servicemen for this and that, relocation, death, injury, dismissal, etc.

The following graphic provides some examples of what officers and soldiers will make.

Some Pay Examples

This shows the kind of lieutenant platoon commander that Medvedev, Putin, and Serdyukov have described earning over 50,000 rubles per month.  And our putative section commander sergeant . . . it lists him at about what we estimated 41,000 rubles or so, plus other supplements that take him over 50,000 too.

There’s an exemplar pension chart for those that are interested, and below is a snip of the 50-grade schedule the military uses.  If you view the entire chart, grade 50 is for a first deputy minister, there are two grades for MD commanders, and seven different ones for deputy army commanders, so on and so forth.

Grade Schedule

 What’s it all mean?  Again, this pay reform is a thing both necessary and long in coming.  It’s also going to be very expensive at a time when there’ll be lots of other outlays for the GPV, for contract enlisted, for military housing, for better military infrastructure, etc.  It won’t be easy.  But it seems to be a priority.  The difficulty is that it’s very hard to move forward on all military reform fronts at once.  We’ll have to watch to see which areas are treated with preference or, alternatively, neglected.

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Walking Back Contract Service (Part II)

Posted on April 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here are some particulars from Deputy Chief of the General Staff, GOMU Chief General-Colonel Vasiliy Smirnov’s press-conference on the spring draft — and contract service — last week.

After dropping his lower spring draft number (203,720) bombshell, Smirnov said an increase in contractees will accompany this reduction in conscripts.  The Defense Ministry will determine clear, strict criteria for selecting and training contractees, and will raise the prestige of their service (along with their pay and living conditions, of course). 

In other remarks to the press, Smirnov emphasized that conscript service will remain, and the Armed Forces will retain mixed manning (i.e. conscripts and contractees).

Smirnov listed the following priorities for contract manning:

“In 2011, we will man sergeant posts, Navy afloat personnel, Airborne Troops [VDV] formations and military units, formations deployed on the territory of the Chechen Republic, and also the most knowledge-intensive and high technology military specialties, which determine the combat capability of formations and military units, with servicemen on contract.”

Priorities for Contract Service

In the near term, according to Smirnov, the Defense Ministry will put contractees in all sergeant-squad leader billets and positions involving maintenance or operation of complex or new weapons systems and equipment.

He said training of professional sergeants in the Defense Ministry’s higher educational institutions began in six schools in 2009, expanded to 19 last year, and will be conducted in 24 in 2011.

In his Q&A with the media, Smirnov said there’s no plan to switch to large numbers of contractees immediately, but rather:

“The number of contractees will increase gradually, mainly because of the large-scale introduction of new types of armaments.”

So he linked the need for contractees to presumed future success in acquiring new equipment under GPV 2011-2020.

Smirnov told the media a pereattestatsiya was conducted last year, and only 174 thousand competent contractees remain.  He also noted (as indicated on his slide above) that Spetsnaz would also be a priority for contractees.  He said there are currently 55,000 contract sergeants in the training pipeline.

Smirnov defended the earlier contract effort in the mid-2000s, saying it was successfully fulfilled despite being only half financed at 76 billion rubles, and:

“The main Navy and VDV units and formations are half manned with contract servicemen.”

Not a stunning testament to the earlier program.

It’s interesting that Smirnov talked so much about contract NCOs when, less than two months ago, the Federal Targeted Program for Manning Sergeant Billets with Contractees, 2009-2015 was cut in half.  Financing was reduced from 243 to 152 billion rubles, and the number of contract sergeants to be trained from 107,000 to 65,000.  For stories on this, see Kommersant,  Newsru.com, or Komsomolskaya pravda.  The sources in these reports also put the number of contractees remaining much lower than Smirnov’s 174,000; they say at or just above 100,000.

One finds it hard to fathom that the Defense Ministry can find 425,000 contractees when just a half dozen years ago it failed to recruit, train, and retain 133,000.  Thus far in these early pronouncements on reinvigorating contract service nothing’s been said about what or how it will be different this time.  The Defense Ministry will have to make such a case to its political masters, the public, and the men it’s trying to sign up at some point.

Some things, like the Defense Ministry’s other priorities, are already known.  A renewed contract service effort will have to compete with a new higher pay system for a larger number of officers starting next year.  And the Defense Ministry is also at the outset of a new and expensive GPV that’s supposed to provide modern weapons and equipment which demand long-term, professional enlisted personnel (aka contractees).  And there are overdue and unfinished agenda items like the provision of permanent and service housing to officers.

Yes, your author is skeptical that the renewed push for contractees can gain traction.  We have to remember this magical 425,000 number is somewhere off in the future.  There’s no promised delivery date.  And the entire issue began with the tacit recognition that, for many reasons, Russia can only conscript so much manpower.  Keeping fewer guys from being shaved and inducted pretty much against their will is always good politics on the cusp of a presidential election year.

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Walking Back Contract Service (Part I)

Posted on April 2, 2011 | 1 comment

Anatoliy Serdyukov’s 18 March pronouncement on relaunching contract service was another painful Defense Ministry policy reversal.  He said:

“One of the important directions of Armed Forces reform is improving the manning system.  The Russian Federation President approved the Defense Ministry’s proposal to have 220 thousand officer positions and 425 thousand servicemen serving on contract in the Armed Forces.  The given changes in  numerical strength are viewed as long-range and connected with keeping a missile army and four missile divisions in the Armed Forces order of battle, increasing the number of formations in the Ground Troops, and establishing the Air-Space Defense Troops.  It is planned to increase the share of contract-servicemen by creating attractive military service conditions.  In the near future, soldier and sergeant duties will be manned on a mixed [i.e. conscript and contract] basis.”

Serdyukov’s words in 2011 sound very much like former Defense Minister Ivanov’s when he launched contract service nine years ago.  We’ve come full circle.  Russia tried professional enlisted service, declared it a failure, and returns to it as something essential and unavoidable.  The inevitability of contract service springs from the insoluble problem of the draft.  Moscow can’t man its Armed Forces with the right number and kind of conscript soldiers.

Early last year, Serdyukov was careful in his criticism of contract service.  He consistently pointed to inadequate funding as the reason for failure.  He didn’t indict the concept.  The Defense Minister said contractees would be cut, and eventually brought back up to the level of 200 or 250 thousand.  The current target of 425 thousand indicates something’s changed significantly over the past year. 

For his part, General Staff Chief Nikolay Makarov categorically condemned contract service.  In early 2010, he said:

“We are not switching to a contract basis.  Many mistakes were allowed, and that task which was given—construction of a professional army—was not completed.  Therefore a decision was made that conscript service needed to remain in the army.  Moreover, we are increasing the draft , and decreasing the contract part.”

One can hear sand crunch under Makarov’s boot as he about faced in his Academy of Military Sciences speech last week:

“You know about the recent decisions of the Supreme CINC to have 425 thousand contractees and 220 thousand officers.  We will be implementing this literally starting today.”

“We understand that these Armed Forces are created for servicemen-contractees.  Only with their training can we have a well-prepared and professional army.”

So we understand that do we?  It’s not how Makarov understood things a year ago.

Let’s summarize where we are . . . a year ago, contract service was cast off and the Defense Ministry said henceforth it would rely on conscript manpower with far less training and experience than contractees that apparently didn’t meet its needs.  Serdyukov and Makarov declared the central military personnel policy of the 2000s — Putin’s years as Supreme CINC — to be a complete and utter disaster. 

Now barely 13 months later, these men have recognized the basic reality that there simply aren’t enough conscripts and they aren’t the kind of manpower that can operate a modernized Russian Army.  So the turn back to contractees.

But still questions remain.  How will Russia create these professionals?  How will it craft a contract service policy that works?  How will it differ from what was tried previously? 

So far the answers sound familiar.  Good pay, service conditions, housing . . .  will they be more successful getting these things for contractees this time around?  Can they afford them more?  What is different this time?

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Walking Back the Draft

Posted on April 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

General-Colonel Vasiliy Smirnov

Reversing decisions made in the context of Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov’s military reforms is apparently necessary, no matter how painful.  In early 2010, Serdyukov and General Staff Chief Nikolay Makarov announced their intention to curtail professional contract service and rely on the one-year draft to man the Armed Forces.  Scarcely more than a year later, they’ve been forced to retreat from this plan.

Yesterday Deputy General Staff Chief, General-Colonel Vasiliy Smirnov said Moscow will draft only about 200,000 young men in this spring’s callup.  See Mil.ru’s transcript of the press-conference.

The Russian military has tried to conscript in excess of 270,000 men in every draft campaign since one-year service started.  But General-Colonel Smirnov said the military will now induct only 203,720 men this spring, and (not mentioning problems with numbers) he attributed the reduction to a Defense Ministry and General Staff decision to raise the quality of the callup contingent.  He added that coming drafts would also aim for about 200,000 new soldiers, plus or minus 3-5 percent.

The Russians are also refraining from measures to round up more men.  Newsru.com noted the spring callup will run only until July 15, not August 31 which would have allowed for drafting more men before they enter higher educational institutions (VUZy).  President Medvedev decided not to make technicum (post-secondary trade school) graduates liable to the draft so they can attend VUZy if they choose.  Other ideas, such as extending the upper age limit for the draft from 27 to 30, or raising the service term back to 18 months or 2 years, remain off the table.

So Moscow is facing its manpower limitations head-on.

The simple fact is a million-man Russian Army was never going to have 600,000 or 700,000 conscripts, perhaps not even 540,000 at any given moment.  Vladimir Mukhin already reported in January on the fall callup’s failure, and approximately 20 percent undermanning in the ranks.  That would put draftees at about 430,000, or at what Smirnov says they now plan to conscript each year.  Mikhail Lukanin wrote last June that the military’s conscription targets were unrealistic when the number of 18-year-olds alone won’t reach 600,000 during the next couple years.  Army General Makarov said it himself back in September when he noted that only about 13 percent of draft-liable manpower serves in the army.  His 13 percent of 3 million 18- to 27-year-olds is 390,000.

Where does all this leave Russian Army manpower?

Taking recent pronouncements on the intention to have 220,000 officers and 425,000 contractees in the future, conscripts might number 355,000 at some point in a million-man army.  Smirnov’s statement yesterday indicates they intend to have somewhat more than 400,000 at any given time for now.  Where they are today is harder.  If there are 181,000 officers and 174,000 contractees (as Smirnov said yesterday), and there are no more than 540,000 conscripts presently serving, the Armed Forces are comprised of less than 900,000 men.  How much less depends on the actual number of conscripts.  That’s at least ten percent below their authorized level.  If there are only 500,000 conscripts, that’s about 850,000, or 15 percent under one million, and so on.

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“New Profile” in Transbaykal

Posted on March 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

Nezavisimoye voyennoye obozreniye’s Viktor Litovkin wrote recently about his Defenders’ Day press pool visit to the 212th District Training Center (OUTs or ОУЦ) in Peschanka, and to the 29th Combined Arms Army in Chita.  Formerly part of the Siberian MD, they’re now in the Eastern MD or OSK East.  Litovkin set out to see how the military’s “new profile” has been implemented in the four years since he last traveled to Transbaykal.

Litovkin said the army’s future “junior specialists,” i.e. better trained conscript sergeants, aren’t just using simulators, and there’s lots of live action on OUTs ranges and training grounds.

Simulators at Peschanka (photo: V. Litovkin)

The majority of trainees were in training for a minimum of 8 hours a day, not including individual training and PT time.

OUTs Chief, General-Major Sergey Sudakov is new himself, but says much has changed at the center.  He says they’ve gotten new simulators, training buildings and barracks have been renovated, and the mess hall’s been outsourced so conscript-trainees no longer have to pull KP.

Four years ago, the Siberian MD listed 5,970 personnel without housing, but now only 120.  Those without apartments have been taken off the local books, and all their data’s been sent to the Defense Ministry’s Housing Support Department in Moscow. 

Now, however, there are rasporyazhentsy (распоряженцы), those officers, warrants, or sergeants at their commanders’ disposition, in all, more than 200 waiting for permanent apartments outside Transbaykal.  But only 2-3 per month are getting a “letter of happiness” from Moscow saying they’ve been allocated housing, and, in many cases, it’s not in the location they wanted.

The rasporyazhentsy were once commanders and chiefs but now they muster every morning to get orders from their former subordinates.  They don’t get anything serious to do.  They pull assistant duty officer for a unit once a week, or carry out a major’s orders for less than half their old pay.

Medic Senior Sergeant Zhanna Litvinenko is a rasporyazhenitsa who’s waited two years for an apartment in Rostov-na-Donu or Krasnodar Kray.  While waiting to return to “mainland” Russia, she lives on “bare pay,” without supplements, of 16,900 rubles, of which 3,200 pays for her dorm room.

Litovkin visited the officers’ dormitory to see what’s changed since 2007.  He describes familiar noisy corridors with common toilets, showers, and kitchens for officers and their families.  The building’s been renovated, old wooden window frames and the boiler have been replaced, kitchens updated, and showers divided so men and women don’t have to use them on alternating days.

One Captain Rinat Abubekirov and his wife say the load on officers has grown sharply now that there are fewer of them.  The tank training regiment had 140 officers previously, now 98, in a company, there were 7, now 5, and the number of additional duties is unchanged.  A company commander is now a captain, rather than a major as in the past.  Abubekirov has been an O-3 for five years, and no one can tell him when he might make O-4.

Litvinenko and the Abubekirovs in the Officers' Dorm (photo: V. Litovkin)

Training their conscript charges has changed.  Instead of six months, they now have three to do it.  The trainees’ education level varies greatly now — from higher education to some who didn’t finish high school.  Many conscripts arrived in poor health, and the severe Transbaykal winter doesn’t help either.  Minus forty isn’t rare, and -30° (-22° F) is the norm.  They are just not physically or psychologically prepared.  Nevertheless, OUTs Commander Sudakov says fewer are sick this winter than last.

Then, Litovkin turns to the Chita-based 29th Combined Arms Army commanded by General-Major Aleksandr Romanchuk, where the NVO editor says he sees “solid changes.”  All its units are fully manned and permanently combat ready.  In what’s become a fairly common refrain, Romanchuk believes his army’s combat potential exceeds that of its predecessor [the Siberian MD]. He said he and his deputy spent a month at the General Staff Academy learning the new automated command and control system.  He said his best subordinates can earn 100,000 rubles per month in bonuses.

Litovkin says there are questions about the introduction of new equipment in Romanchuk’s command.  It would be good if its tanks and combat vehicles could be replaced quicker.  There are no UAVs or PGMs.  The army relies on T-72B1, BMP-2, Strela-10 and towed air defense guns, and self-propelled Akatsiya and Msta-B artillery.

Litovkin concludes that, while no one believes Mongolia or China will threaten Russia’s borders today or tomorrow, this army needs to train in a real way, with equipment from the 21st century, not the last one.

But this, he continues, is not even the greatest problem.  He was told at every level that it’s simply not possible to make yesterday’s schoolboy into a good specialist in a year.  The commander of the 29th CAA’s 200th Artillery Brigade, Colonel Dmitriy Kozlovskiy, told Litovkin this spring he’ll lose 70 percent of his personnel.  New gun commanders, gunners, radiomen, and reconnaissance, topographic, and meteorological specialists will arrive and in less than a month they’ll need to work like crews, platoons, and batteries, like a unified combat mechanism.  They will learn and leave the army, and the process will begin again.

Sounds like a Russian O-6’s plea for professional enlisted and NCOs . . . .

Litovkin finishes with a story from Romanchuk.  He tells of a tank gunner conscript who hit his target [a 1 — an excellent in Russian training terms] on his 39th day of service.  He said he just did everything as he was taught, and as he did on the simulators.  In times past, according to Romanchuk, tank gunners got to fire live rounds only after serving six months, and this guy scored a 1 on his 39th day.  But Litovkin asked how his buddies did.  Romanchuk answered 2s and 3s.

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Levada Defenders’ Day Poll

Posted on February 22, 2011 | 1 comment

The widely-respected Levada-Tsentr asked 1,600 Russians in 130 inhabited points in 45 regions its usual slate of Defenders’ Day questions reflecting attitudes toward the military and military service.  Its margin of error is 3.4 percent.

Are there military threats to Russia from other countries?

This one ticked up a bit this year.  “Definitely yes, most likely yes” rose from 47 percent last year to 53 percent this year.  It’s a little higher, but not way off the norm since 2000.

Is the Russian Army capable of defending the country from a real military threat from other countries?

“Definitely yes, most likely yes” ticked down a little from 63 to 59 percent, and “most likely no, definitely no” rose from 22 to 28 percent this year.

To serve or not to serve . . . would you want your son, brother, husband, or other close relative to serve in the army?

Respondents answered 36 percent yes to service, and 54 percent no to service. This was only a slight change from last year’s 34 and 57 percent – within the error margin.

If no, why not?

Interestingly, “dedovshchina, nonregulation relations, and violence in the army” declined from 37 to 29 percent in a year when, by every official account, reported cases of barracks violence increased significantly.

Should a family member serve if called up or look for a way to evade service?

Basically unchanged from last year, 46 percent say serve, and 41 percent say look for a way to avoid it.

Lastly, a question not asked every year . . . .

How widespread is dedovshchina and abuse of young soldiers by officers and older servicemen?

“In the majority of military units” has fallen over time to 39 percent, “everywhere” has declined to 13 percent.  These two answers together in 2006 were 82 percent.  “In a small number of military units” and “isolated instances” have both increased over time and represent 27 and 11 percent respectively this year.

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In Memory of Soldiers-Internationalists

Posted on February 17, 2011 | 1 comment

Departing Afghanistan

OK, “internationalist-soldiers” is less awkward.  “Internationalist” was the CPSU’s way of describing Soviet advisors and troops abroad assisting or fighting on behalf of various regimes during the Cold War.

Tuesday’s Moskovskaya pravda had a very interesting news-essay by Natalya Pokrovskaya on the 22nd anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.  It’s entitled “The Newest History.  The Soldier Doesn’t Pick the War.” 

The completion of the Afghan withdrawal on February 15, 1989 has the same resonance for Russians as April 30, 1975 for Americans:  it represents the collapse of a crusade conducted in the context of a global ideological and military confrontation called the Cold War.  And as Pokrovskaya implies, whether sent by Leonid Brezhnev or Lyndon Johnson, Soviet and American soldiers didn’t choose the conflicts they fought in.

Pokrovskaya reports that, though long celebrated, Tuesday marked the first time Russia officially celebrated the Day of Memory of Internationalist-Soldiers:

“For too long, the Fatherland didn’t want to recognize those who defended its interests in far-away countries, fulfilling their internationalist duty.”

She notes, in 2002, the federal law on veterans was changed and participants in local wars and conflicts received the status of combat veterans.  And then late last year the law on military memorial dates was amended, and 15 February is now the Day of Memory of Russian Citizens Who Fulfilled Their Service Duty Beyond the Boundaries of the Fatherland.

Pokrovskaya says Russians typically associate “internationalist-soldier” only with those who fought in Afghanistan, but, in fact, after 1945, Soviet officers and soldiers shed their blood in the interests of their Homeland in 18 wars in 14 countries.  She includes:

  • Algeria (1962-1964).
  • Egypt (October 1962-March 1963, June 1967, 1968, March 1969-July 1972, October 1973-February 1975).
  • Yemen (October 1962-March 1963, November 1967-December 1969).
  • Vietnam (1961-1974).
  • Syria (June 1967, March-July 1970, September-November 1972, October 1973).
  • Angola (November 1975-November 1979).
  • Mozambique (1967-1969, November 1975-November 1979, March 1984-April 1987).
  • Ethiopia (December 1977-November 1979).
  • Afghanistan (April 1978-February 1989).
  • Cambodia (April-December 1970).
  • Bangladesh (1972-1973).
  • Laos (January 1960-December 1963, August 1964-November 1968, November 1969-December 1970).
  • Syria and Lebanon (June 1982). 

Soviet participation in these wars was generally a closely guarded secret, but the Afghan war was too burdensome to keep secret.  More than half a million Soviet troops passed through Afghanistan, and more than 14,000 died in nine years of fighting.

Pokrovskaya describes the end – the withdrawal of the 40th Army over the Friendship Bridge from Hairaton to Termez, five Border Guard groups providing security for the departing column, the weary-faced General-Lieutenant Boris Gromov.

She recalls bloodletting after the Soviet withdrawal [again, not unlike Vietnam], a soldier’s memories of his first time in battle, and the life of Soviet Army convoy drivers.

But Pokrovskaya saves her best for the end:

“But back Home there was sketchy news of voyenkomaty and burials which, with a few exceptions, all regions of a huge country got – a little less, others – more.  But the information vacuum didn’t allow a chance for drawing a conclusion, for citizens of a big country to realize the essence of what was happening with their sons beyond the bounds of the Fatherland.  The total ban on the truth worked impeccably during practically all ‘foreign’ campaigns.”

She thinks people began to learn about the war about four years after it began, mainly via veterans, from “Afgantsy.”  About them today, she says:

“Each of them who, in peacetime, endured the hardships and privations of war for the sake of their native state’s interests, also lives every day with the memories and pain of his combat past.  They say that the war ends on the day when the last soldier who returned from it dies.”

Pokrovskaya says the Soviet internationalists, who are now generally between 40 and 50 with families and kids, understand how thin the border between war and peace, between senseless cruelty and a peacekeeping mission is.

One hero from the Afghan war tells Pokrovskaya a story about last Victory Day when he gathered with close buddies and sang some Afghan songs with them.  He said suddenly a bunch of skinheads jumped from the bushes.  They said, “Old men we respect you!  Let’s drink, you are heroes, you killed the ‘black ones’!”

The reader can substitute whatever racist term he or she chooses for чёрные –  n*****, wog, kaffir, etc.  Again not different from the unfortunate American experience in dehumanizing enemies as slopes or gooks.

Pokrovskaya’s war hero goes on to say he was knocked unconscious in battle in 1986:

“Guys, a Tajik and an Uzbek, dragged me more than ten kilometers to a chopper.  I owe them my life!  And these ones who’ve never seen a battle, but after hearing every idea about racial supremacy, try to cozy up to me?!  We weren’t restrained to put it mildly . . . .  We conked them on their heads and sent them home to mama and papa . . . to learn their lessons.  History, for example.  They don’t even know how many Heroes of the Soviet Union we have who aren’t Slavs.  Georgians, Chechens, Tatars, Uzbeks . . . .”

 Ms. Pokrovskaya sums it all up:

 “Can it be that the state was silent for nothing, didn’t remember for so long those who honorably fulfilled their duty to the Homeland for nothing?  And is today’s gift of memory which we are giving the present-day children of the internationalist-soldiers really to teach the most recent history of a country now split by the contradictions of inter-ethnic discord?”

Yes, a grunt’s a grunt.  And the grunts and their loved ones often ask what they’re fighting for.  Or did they die for nothing.

Afghan War Memorial in Chistopol

6 Boys from Chistopol

28 Guys from Petrozavodsk

27 More

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Golts on the Sudden Increase in Officers

Posted on February 13, 2011 | 1 comment

Yezhednevnyy zhurnal’s Aleksandr Golts says Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov’s explanation that 70,000 more officers are needed because of VKO doesn’t hold water since it will be created on the basis of existing formations and units.

Golts concludes that Russian military reform has reached its next turning point.  He recalls that cutting officers to 150,000 and eliminating a large number of cadre formations and units represented the rejection of the old mass mobilization army concept.

But the reduction of so many officers could not but bring bitter opposition.  Nevertheless, Serdyukov stubbornly implemented the cuts, ignoring cries about the destruction of the country’s glorious officer corps (which Golts says hasn’t existed in a very long time).

Then suddenly the chief of the military department reversed himself.  Suddenly, it appears there are not too many officers, but a shortage.  The Armed Forces agonizingly cut 200,000 officer positions just to reintroduce 70,000!

Golts thinks there are several possible reasons.

The most obvious is the state’s inability to meet its obligations (primarily permanent apartments) to dismissed officers.  In mid-2010, there was information about 70,000 officers outside the shtat (штат or TO&E).  Later in the year, the number given was 40,000.  But says Golts:

“. . . to find out how many officers are really outside the shtat is impossible:  whatever figure Defense Ministry officials want to name, they name.  It’s possible to suppose that, having realized their inability to settle up with future retirees, the military department simply decided to put them back in the shtat.”

The second possible cause, according to Golts, is that the Defense Ministry failed to fill the officer posts it cut with well-trained sergeants and civilian personnel because the wages it offered were too low.  On the issue of more sergeants, Golts concludes:

“Sergeant training programs are failing.  Training centers simply can’t put out as many junior commanders as the Armed Forces need – they require not less than 100 thousand.  There’s no where to get them from.  And so they decided again to use officers to perform sergeant functions in combat sub-units, as rear service guys, service personnel.  If so, then this is a serious blow to reform.  Because the officer will cease being the elite of the Armed Forces, again turning into a low-level functionary.”

And Golts provides his third, worst case possibility:

“The generals convinced the president, but most of all, the premier [Putin] that it’s possible to achieve combat readiness by returning to the old mobilization model.  This is an ultimate end to reforms.  If so, then after presidential elections in 2012 the term of conscript service will inevitably be raised.  And everything will be back to normal.”

Golts concludes this concession by Serdyukov – heretofore supported by President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin – will make those who hate him conclude he’s lost support, and they will triple their attacks on reforms.  In the worst case, this will be the first step toward overturning them.

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