Colonel Oleg Ivanov
On Radioelectronic Warfare (REB or РЭБ) Specialists’ Day, Krasnaya zvezda interviewed the Chief of REB Troops, Colonel Oleg Anatolyevich Ivanov, about trends and developments in his branch of service.
Ivanov says the growth of information technology for military command and control has given rise to a new kind of confrontation–achieving C2 supremacy and it can exert a decisive influence on a war. And REB has ‘priority significance’ in this area. The basic mission of REB is gaining and holding C2 supremacy in combat actions.
Ivanov notes also REB Troops’ role in information protection. He says they exert control over the military radio transmission network and radio discipline has been pretty good; the number of violations are down.
Ivanov says formations (brigades), units, and sub-units participated in Kavkaz-2009 and Zapad-2009 to create a complex radioelectronic situation for the networks of the exercise participants. Combined arms units learned to fulfill their missions in conditions of active radioelectronic jamming. REB units and sub-units worked out their radioelectronic suppression missions against the probable enemy’s targets as well as the radioelectronic defense of their own troops. REB Troops received positive evaluations.
Asked about defense industry support to the REB Troops, Ivanov says 120 enterprises are involved, and they are largely divided, as in Soviet times, into two practically independent directions–those that work on REB systems and equipment against troop C2 on the one hand, and against weapons C2 on the other. Sozvezdiye leads the former, and Rostekhnologiya’s ‘Electronic Technologies’ the latter. He notes that Vega, OSK, and some independent enterprises are players also.
Not surprisingly, Ivanov says to accelerate the development of new EW systems ‘structural integration’ of these OPK enterprises is needed. And a lead organization to make scientific-technical decisions is needed too. Coordination of efforts will optimize the use of time and resources for creating new systems and equipment.
But Ivanov doesn’t say who his favorite to be the industry lead is.
Ivanov says Russian EW means are equal to the best foreign counterparts. They can neutralize and block the most dangerous armaments (particularly, highly-accurate weapons) in real time. Automated jamming stations from the 1980s and 1990s are serving well with modernization and are meeting current requirements [does this mean there’s been nothing new in the interval?]. But Ivanov says fundamentally new and unique multifunctional systems are being created along with incremental improvements in older systems. He can’t say more owing to their secret nature. He thinks it’s possible, however, to say they represent technological breakthroughs.
Ivanov calls EW comparable in effect to the employment of modern highly-accurate weapons, and, by some indicators, even superior to them.
KZ asks Ivanov about personnel issues, particularly one-year conscripts and young officers.
He responds that the issue of training specialists is very acute. The rapid introduction of new equipment leads to the need for mass retraining of specialists, not just soldiers and sergeants, but officers too. Officers might get a two-week retraining course, but a soldier takes several months and then only half a year remains for him to serve.
So all personnel are tested in the Inter-Service Training Center to evaluate their capabilities for assimilating the training program, then divided into training groups. Next, REB Troops are trying to keep trained specialists as contractees. Lastly, efforts are made to simplify and automate systems to ease demands on personnel. But practice shows that making a high-class specialist in a year is very difficult, but an acceptable level of skill is possible if servicemen are focused on combat training as prescribed in their programs [i.e. not busy shoveling snow or building the commander’s dacha].
Turning to officers, Ivanov says Russian EW officers have lots of opportunities in the civilian sector, so manning the officer ranks is an ‘issue of special discussion.’ The problem, he says, isn’t as acute as the late 1990s, owing to a rise in status of officers in recent years. But he doesn’t sound exactly convinced on this score himself.
Summing up the future for REB Troops, Ivanov concludes they have great possibilities, and coming qualitative changes in the development of EW forces and means must support its growth into a specific fundamental type of combat action which in many ways will determine the course and outcome of a battle.
Russian Defense Policy 