Tag Archives: Org-Shtat

Ten “New” Chemical Defense Regiments

Posted on July 5, 2015 | Leave a comment
Russian Soldier in Chemical Defense Gear (photo: Mil.ru)

Russian Soldier in Chemical Defense Gear (photo: Mil.ru)

In late June, Mil.ru provided comments by the Deputy Chief of Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense (RKhBZ) Troops, General-Major Igor Klimov. He said:

“Development of the troops of RKhB defense is currently directed at supporting conditions for an adequate response to all possible threats — radiological, chemical, and biological.”

The RKhBZ Troops are capable of completing missions for the Armed Forces and the state as a whole, according to him.

General-Major Igor Klimov

General-Major Igor Klimov

But Klimov added:

“One should note that just in 2014 alone ten regiments of RKhBZ were formed in the composition of combined arms armies.”

At the same time, the TO&E structure of the four independent RKhBZ brigades of the military districts was “optimized.”  That means, of course, reduced, cut, slashed, etc.

Klimov added:

“In 2016-2020, the composition and TO&E of formations, military units and organizations of the RKhBZ Troops will improve with the goal of guaranteeing fulfillment of RKhBZ missions for Armed Forces groupings in armed conflicts and local wars, eliminating the effects of emergency situations, and conducting research in the applied sciences (chemistry, biology, biochemistry, genetics, biotechnology).”

Mil.ru also noted that RKhBZ formations, units, and organizations will undergo a transition to new org-shtat structures as they receive new types of weapons and equipment.

The ten “new” regiments look like this:

The shift from brigades is creating regiments that aren’t really “new.”  It’s a reshuffling of existing RKhBZ units to integrate them into Russia’s combined arms armies.  They will be army- rather than MD-level assets.  

The “new regiments” are rather sparse.  Most press indicates they will have about 300-600 personnel and 100-200 pieces of equipment each.  In Soviet times, a combined arms army had several RKhBZ battalions including recon, protection, decon, flamethrower, and smoke.

TOS-1A

TOS-1A

Perhaps RKhBZ is returning to army-level control because of the growing role of thermobaric rocket launchers like the TOS-1A in Russia’s fire support plans.

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Posted in Force Structure, Ground Troops, Order-of-Battle, Shoygu's Reforms

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Serdyukov Year-Ender (Part II)

Posted on December 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

After talking GOZ-2011 and contracting with OPK enterprises, Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov fielded Rossiyskaya gazeta questions on pay, military sanatorium-resort (i.e. vacation) benefits, apartments, contractees, opposition to reforms, and MPs.

He said increased pay will more than offset the loss of vacation benefits.

The military will have acquired 135,000 apartments by the end of 2011.  It will obtain another 25,000 next year according to Serdyukov.

He rejected any suggestion officers were deceived or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin “set up” when it came to the original 2010 and 2012 deadlines for solving permanent and service apartment problems:

“No one was deceived.  You know the number of those without apartments in the army sharply increased after the transition of the Armed Forces to a new profile began.  The dismissal of servicemen accompanied this process.  Unfortunately, the registration of those needing housing was conducted badly.”

“Precisely because of this, the lists for the receipt of housing rose from 70 thousand to 170 thousand.  It’s understandable that a hundred thousand increase could in no way be “inserted” into the bounds of 2010.”

On contractees, Serdyukov said there will be 180,000 in 2012, and 50,000 will be added each year until the number reaches 425,000 in 2017.  He added the optimal ratio, in his view, is 80 percent contractees to 20 percent conscripts.  But, if financing allowed, he’d go to 90-10.  Conscripts will serve primarily as infantrymen in motorized rifle brigades where less technical skill is required.

Asked the usual question on resistance to his steps to renew the army, Serdyukov said reforms weren’t all to his credit; they were devised mainly in the Defense Ministry by uniformed officers.  He said he can’t say there was strong resistance but rather misunderstanding about changes being made.  Without prompting, Serdyukov identified personnel downsizing, dismissals, and officers placed outside the shtat [TO&E] as sources of opposition to his work.

Serdyukov claimed there would be fewer inquiries from Duma deputies if they visited units instead of relying on newspaper articles and information from the Internet.

Finally, for the first half of his interview, Serdyukov talked about launching Russia’s military police.  First, the MP garrison service will stand up, followed by disciplinary battalions and the military automobile inspectorate.  Troops from line units will no longer guard cargoes or bases, he said.  MPs will be responsible for order in garrisons.  He concluded:

“In my view, this will bring real changes in barracks life, it will fight barracks hooliganism.”

Serdyukov would say dedovshchina doesn’t exist, and he wouldn’t bring himself to say simply barracks violence.  But, in essence, he acknowledges that “real changes” in the barracks are needed. 

He said a Main Directorate of Military Police has been created and General-Lieutenant Surovikin will head it.  The MPs will have several thousand specially trained personnel, including possibly some officers now outside the shtat.

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Posted in Law, Order, and Discipline, Manpower, Military Housing, Serdyukov's Reforms

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“New Profile” Brigades

Posted on December 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Representative "New Profile" Brigade

Not long ago someone asked what Russia’s “new profile” brigades look like.  There’s a good bit available on this. 

General Staff Chief Makarov signed off on the TO&E (org-shtat) as far back as three years ago, just a couple months after Defense Minister Serdyukov’s reforms were launched. 

The org chart for a typical motorized rifle brigade shown above is inelegant.  Some elements aren’t represented due to your author’s lack of graphic skills.  Among important missing items are the artillery command recce battery and air defense radar platoon.

The sniper platoon has been part of the new TO&E, but its existence was only emphasized by the media of late.

And this post doesn’t delve into precisely how postulated Russian light, medium, and heavy brigades might differ.

The manpower looks to be under 4,400 officers and men, 327 officers and 4,066 soldiers (including 1,005 sergeants) to be exact.  Russia’s officer corps bloat doesn’t seem to apply to serving out here “in the troops,” as they say.  Officers are only 8 percent of the brigade’s personnel. 

However, this representative brigade is (or was) commanded by a general-major (O-7), and had 5 full colonels, and 29 O-5s.  There are almost as many majors (43) as captains (68), and a fairly low number of senior lieutenants (181).

In terms of equipment, battalions remain battalions — 40 tanks or armored vehicles per.  The SP howitzers are 152mm 2S19 Msta-S or 2S3M Akatsiya and/or 122mm 2S1 Gvozdika.  MRLs are the venerable BM-21 Grad, in a battalion of three batteries with six launchers per.  Antitank artillery is towed and ATGMs are Konkurs (AT-5 / Spandrel) and Shturm-S (AT-6A / Spiral).  Air defense isn’t particularly modern consisting of batteries of 2S6 Tunguska (SA-19 / Grison), Strela-10 (SA-13 / Gopher), and Osa (SA-8B / Gecko). 

Other English-language observers have looked at the same data.  This one shows the organization and manpower distribution for a brigade’s sub-units (battalion-level and lower).  This one does much the same with some guessing at tactical organization and equipment.

P.S.  One forgotten thing here is how logistics and maintenance may, or may not, have changed at the brigade level with Serdyukov’s outsourcing, Oboronservis, and taking soldiers off noncore (i.e. non-combat) duties.  But the supply and repair battalions still appear on the org charts.

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Posted in Force Structure, Ground Troops, Serdyukov's Reforms

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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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Posted in Conscription, Force Structure, Manpower, Officer Corps, Serdyukov's Reforms

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181,000 Officers in the Armed Forces

Posted on January 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

The 29 December issue of Krasnaya zvezda provides interesting personnel data points . . .

124,000 officers must have been dismissed in the past two years.  At the outset of Serdyukov’s reforms, there were 305,000 occupied officer billets, so subtract 181,000 for 124,000.  Nothing, however, is said about officers put outside the org-shtat who can’t be dismissed for lack of housing.  No word is given on where warrant officers stand; they were slated for “elimination as a class.”

The piece flat out says the state can’t draft enough men to cover the military’s requirements, and there’s little to fix the problem (going below 1 million men apparently isn’t an option).  It also says starkly that contract service was a failure, but it will be gradually resurrected anyway (certainly the right way this time).

More pains are taken to say that mobilization isn’t really dead.  Armies and brigades are freed from worrying about it, but an experiment in raising a reserve brigade will be attempted this year.

As of 1 December 2010, there are 1 million servicemen, including 181,000 officers (18.1 percent).  By 2013, the RF President’s target of 15 percent will be reached.

In 2008, there were nearly 500,000 officers and warrant officers, almost 50 percent of all servicemen in the Armed Forces.  There was an imbalance in the officer ranks.  Sixty percent of officer posts were held by senior officers.  Over the 2008-2010 period, 170,000 officer posts were eliminated.  Meanwhile, the optimal correlation of senior and junior officers was achieved by increasing the latter’s numbers.

But the article notes junior officers ranks were cut too — by stopping the acceptance of cadets into VVUZy and making some officers into sergeants.  Changes in service regulations allowed the Defense Ministry to appoint officers to lower-ranking [i.e. enlisted] duties.  The ex-officers represent a “reserve” for filling officer billets as they become available.

This year, Krasnaya zvezda concedes, the state’s military organization was not able to draft enough young men.  And the number of men reaching draft age is decreasing every year because of the continuing demographic decline.

Regarding contractees, in recent years, the state failed to raise the prestige of contract service, and decided to limit contractees to specific duties with complex equipment or those directly impacting the combat capability of military units.  But, in the future, it’s planned to increase the share of contractees as more attractive service conditions, first and foremost higher pay, are created.  This will allow for putting contractees in all sergeant and training posts, as well as those involving complex armaments and specialized equipment.

KZ says assertions that, in three years, the army will have to draft nearly 80 percent of 18-year-olds are groundless.  It says this fails to account for the fact that the army can take conscripts up to age 27.  But, it concedes, manning problems really exist because of the demographic hole.  In 2010, more than half — about 1.9 million — of the men liable to conscription had student deferments.  So, it concludes, the share of men possible to draft amounted to only 17.4 percent of those in the potential conscript pool.

In 2010, every third man was not fit for service on health grounds, and 66,000 were held back for more medical observation.  More than half had some health limits on their service, and could not be sent for physically demanding service in the VDV, Navy, Internal Troops, etc.

And the Defense Ministry doesn’t have an answer.  The article says it will sequentially increase the number of contractees, make those responsible for the draft be, well, actually responsible for it, and, of course, make military service more attractive.  Less onerous might be a more realistic goal.  And this actually seems like Serdyukov’s intent.

On 4 May 2007, the President (Putin) confirmed a “Concept of Establishing a New Armed Forces Training and Human Mobilization Resource Accumulation System.”  The new “human mobilization reserve” will be formed in stages using both Russian and foreign experience, adapted to Russian conditions and military organizational plans.  The Duma Defense Committee is working on new reserve service conditions in a law on the “human mobilization reserve.”

This article says there are plans to conduct an experiment in manning a single wartime formation [i.e. brigade] with reservists this year.

KZ makes a point of saying that mobilization work and training have been preserved, but permanent readiness armies and brigades are exempt from it.

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Posted in Conscription, Manpower, Officer Corps, Serdyukov's Reforms

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New Year’s Peep Show (Part II)

Posted on January 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

On with Krasnaya zvezda’s peep into the Defense Ministry’s organizational and force development document . . .

What about strategic nuclear forces in the future:

“Their further development will support a guaranteed counter to forecast changes in the strategic balance of forces, connected in the first place with the deployment of a U.S. global anti-missile system, but also the growing potential of U.S. and NATO highly accurate weapons.”

The three-component structure of the SYaS (land, sea, and air) will be preserved.  And the plan repeats earlier assurances that the SYaS will be 70 percent modern by 2015, and 100 percent by 2020, as a result of the GPV.

Does the composition of the armed forces meet today’s threats?

The document says, despite everything, the threat of aggression against Russia has receded, and there’s no need to maintain a multimillion-man army.  But it sounds like they’re still trying to convince people.  Then there’s this.

Russia can still mobilize.  The document offers reassurance that, in wartime, storage bases can outfit a significant number of new formations and units.  The districts have preserved a mobilization base, and mobilization deployment plans.  This comes after the Defense Ministry has spent a good bit of time and effort denigrating the old system of hollow cadre-level units.  Who is manning storage bases and cadre units after recent downsizing, cuts, and consolidations?

The document re-runs the rationale for four MDs / OSKs.  It calls the MD an inter-service strategic territorial large formation [объединение].  The old MD system didn’t correspond to existing military threats.  To repulse aggression, a large formation of the troops and forces of several districts and fleets is needed.  On strategic axes, there were no organs to unite ground, air, and naval forces.  In a crisis, temporary, uncoordinated inter-service command and control organs were established.  The army lacked commanders capable of planning and conducting operations in TVDs.  Old MDs didn’t correspond to air defense boundaries.  New MD / OSK commanders are personally responsible for security in their regions, and uniting forces under them has shortened their response times and increased their striking power.

What about command and control?  There’s an emerging two-pipe system — the military plans for the use and development of the armed forces on the one hand, and civilians plan for their support on the other.  The new three-level command system works like this — main commands of services, armies, and brigades answer for tactical issues, and the General Staff, OSKs, and armies answer for operational issues.  The army-level command looks like an important hinge in this scheme.  In days past, their staffs were never very large.  The General Staff has lost duplicative functions and become a full-fledged strategic planning organ.

Where is the line drawn between the main commands of the services and the OSKs:

“The main commands of the services concentrate their efforts on the organizational development of the services, the organization of combat training, junior specialist [i.e. conscript] training, planning of peacekeeping activity and support in special aspects.”

“The unified strategic command of the military district is becoming the inter-service command and control organ, dedicated to planning and controlling all armies, brigades and military units in the inter-service troop grouping on the strategic axis, with the exception of those in the composition of strategic nuclear forces.”

Now any MD / OSK commander worth his salt will want to train and exercise the forces he’ll fight with.  He may impinge on the diminished role of the main commands to the extent that he does it.

KZ’s review of the document finishes up talking about combat possibilities and combat potential.  It claims that, far from just cutting, the TO&E of formations and units has been optimized and their combat possibilities increased.  The example given is the new Western MD vs. the old Leningrad MD.  It says the combat potential of the former is 13 times greater than the latter.  Not exactly tough since the latter didn’t have a single combined arms army.  Finally, it says resources reclaimed by cutting units give a “chance for real rearming of the army and fleet, and not endless modernization and repair of obsolete and worn-out armaments and military equipment.”

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Posted in Force Modernization, Force Structure, Serdyukov's Reforms

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