Way behind on these.
On April 25, President Medvedev issued his most recent decree on Defense Ministry personnel. Here’s what it does.
Appoint:
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.
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.
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.
Posted in Conscription, Force Structure, Manpower, Officer Corps, Serdyukov's Reforms
Tagged Mobilization, NCOs, Org-Shtat, Personnel, Sergeants, Shtat, TO&E, VKO
Wednesday’s Argumenty nedeli looked briefly at the reversal of Defense Minister Serdyukov’s cuts in the Russian officer corps, as well as plans to increase officer pay.
AN said Serdyukov said 70 thousand officers were needed to establish Air-Space (Aerospace) Defense (VKO), but noted he didn’t say where he would find so many officers for such a complex and specialized military field.
Those thrown out of the service in the course of implementing the “new profile” can’t be brought back, and training new officers will take 10-12 years following the reform of the military education system and the liquidation of the Mozhayskiy Military-Space Academy.
And, says AN, radically increasing pay won’t be so simple. The budgets for 2011 and 2012 have been approved, so pay raises will have to wait until 2013 and 2014, after a new Duma and president have been elected. And increasing the number of contractees [also with higher pay] will be another factor in army financing problems.
A General Staff source told AN:
“The approximate manning of VKO in all duty positions, including conscripts, contractees, and officers, will be 20-22 thousand. This means the majority of duty positions will transfer there from Space Troops (KV), air defense troops and missile defense. But after the mass cuts there aren’t enough commanders on the level of company, regiment and even brigade commanders. And in all services and branches of the Armed Forces at that. Therefore, it’s incorrect to think that all 70 thousand are going into VKO.”
According to him, the establishment of any new service [if it is a service rather than a branch], especially one as high-tech as VKO, requires “decades of work by all staffs.”
AN also cites Aleksandr Khramchikhin:
“It seems to me that constant casting about on the size of the officer corps just says that military reform issues haven’t been worked out in a strategic plan.”
A short item that says a lot . . . just a couple comments:
Posted in Force Structure, Manpower, Officer Corps, Serdyukov's Reforms, Space Troops
Tagged Aleksandr Khramchikhin, KV, Mozhayskiy Military-Space Academy, New Profile, Pay, Personnel, PRO, PVO, VKO
So officers were cut too drastically, and their numbers are going to be increased.
One recalls Ilya Kramnik saying officer cuts were causing serious tension in the ranks. As if to prove the point, on Wednesday, near Novosibirsk, a drunken major living outside the “shtat” threatened to blow up his room in the unit’s dormitory. This summer Aleksey Nikolskiy said halving officers caused trouble for brigades in the Vostok-2010 exercise.
But it’s not just an officer shortage that’s led to this policy reversal. Difficulties with conscription and sergeants have forced the Defense Ministry to plug holes with more officers.
Aleksandr Sharavin talked to BFM.ru about the situation:
“I think this is connected with the fact that now the situation in the army is very tense. They cut officers from 450 thousand [sic] to 150. They cut warrant officers completely, and professional sergeants aren’t appearing, we didn’t train them, and still can’t do this. What we’ve got is a lot of conscript soldiers, few contractees, generally no professional sergeants, and a triple load laid on the remaining officers. Now we have to compensate by increasing the number of officers.”
Increasing the officer ranks wasn’t the only personnel policy reversal announced on 2 February. A preliminary decision to increase contractees in the Armed Forces was also discussed. Serdyukov said:
“This issue isn’t finally decided, but we have a proposal for an increase. The Security Council was ordered to review this issue, in the course of the month a concrete figure – how much the number of contractees will be increased from 2012 – will be determined.”
Utro.ru entitled it’s coverage of this story “Army Reform Reversed,” and reminded readers that army contract service was curtailed last winter because the military couldn’t afford it. And now apparently it can?
We don’t know how many contract sergeants might be added starting next year. In fact, no one seems to know how many there are now. Newsru.com claims the army currently has 180,000 contract soldiers, sergeants, and warrants. If that’s true, the Armed Forces are about 900,000. But if there are fewer contractees, and conscripts are less than 560,000, then the Armed Forces are that much below 900,000.
Can an about-face on the elimination of warrant officers be far behind?
As early as 27 January, Rossiyskaya gazeta reported Deputy Defense Minister Pankov said some cadets might be inducted into VVUZy in 2011. It was just back in the fall that the Defense Ministry put a two-year moratorium on them. As it is, VVUZy now have about 45,000 cadets in the classes of 2011, 2012, and 2013.
But the Defense Ministry is looking at having these would-be officers join 5,000 other former cadets as sergeants. The Defense Ministry is talking about salaries as high as 40,000 rubles a month for professional NCOs. But current NCO training efforts in VVUZy are going very slowly, and the army wants 250,000 of them, according to Nezavisimaya gazeta.
Let’s return for a bit to Medvedev’s Tuesday session on raising pay for servicemen and law enforcement. We’re talking Defense Ministry, MVD, MChS, FSB, FSO, and SVR here. Men with ranks, badges, and guns. Medvedev called higher pay for them:
“. . . an issue of state importance. In the last analysis, our efforts to reform the Armed Forces, create a new profile of the Armed Forces and, of course, reform the system of law enforcement organs, including reforming the Internal Affairs Ministry and creating police depend on it.”
The Defense Ministry is talking median pay of 50,000 rubles a month for lieutenants starting in 2012. Just a sampling . . . a cadet would get 18,200, a contract soldier 24,800, a squad sergeant 34,600, and a brigade commander 93,800 rubles per month.
NG’s Vladimir Mukhin reports the Finance Ministry believes the new military pay plan will cost another 1 percent of Russia’s GDP, taking the defense budget from nearly 3 to nearly 4 percent of GDP. All this while the government wonders whether outyear budgets will be in deficit or not.
The last couple days represent the first major defeat for Serdyukov. His military personnel policies are a complete and utter shambles. Political analyst Aleksey Mukhin commented to BFM.ru on Defense Minister Serdyukov’s prospects:
“ It’s fully possible that soon they’ll call him enemy No. 1 for the reform which is being conducted.”
If they don’t already. One guesses he’ll keep his post though.
So after flirting briefly with paying relatively few officers more money, the Defense Ministry’s going to pay more officers more money instead. And this is more officers at the same time President Medvedev’s ordered a 20 percent cut in government bureaucracy.
The fact is military reform’s gone beyond the military now and become more of a factor in domestic politics. Vlasti are just a bit nervous about social stability in the runup to elections this year and next, and are also a little worried about the guys with the guns. For the regime, the extra money is worth keeping 70,000 potential ex-officer opponents out of the streets. It may feel this provides some insurance that the guys with guns will do as they’re told.
As BFM.ru concludes, the Tunisian [or Egyptian] “virus” could spread. And the terrorist threat is high. So Russia’s leadership has to think about an effective and combat capable army.
Commentator Sergey Markov told BFM.ru that the regime wants to increase the number of officers who can fight, but it will continue cutting those in support functions and replacing them with civilians:
“But everyone understands perfectly that you can’t do without a real combat force.”
Posted in Conscription, Force Structure, Manpower, Officer Corps, Serdyukov's Reforms
Tagged Contract Service, NCOs, Pay, Personnel, Sergeants
And so it’s begun.
The first of Defense Minister Serdyukov’s major reform planks – cutting the officer corps from 355,000 to 150,000, or no more than 15 percent of the million-man army – has been reversed.
The Armed Forces’ officer manning level was apparently one topic in yesterday’s meeting between President Medvedev and his “power” ministers about plans to raise pay for servicemen in 2012.
Serdyukov told the media about the decision to increase officers in the Armed Forces by 70,000:
“A decision’s been taken to increase officer personnel by 70 thousand. This is connected with the fact that we’re deploying additional military units, establishing military-space defense, that is, an entire service (of troops), and the increase is happening in connection with this.”
First, this raised some interesting questions about VKO. Is it really going to become a service (vid or вид). After all, the Space Troops are only a service branch (род войск) right now. That’s quite a promotion. And are we really supposed to believe the expansion of VKO or the Space Troops will require 70,000 additional officers?
Of course not, it’s a convenient excuse to walk back a large part of the 50 percent cut in army officers Serdyukov announced when he launched his reforms in October 2008.
Most media outlets were pretty confused on what this means for officer numbers. They assumed the Russian Army’s at 150,000 officers right now, just add 70,000 for a total of 220,000. But it’s not so simple.
When Serdyukov started cutting officers, there were 305,000 occupied officer billets. Krasnaya zvezda said the Armed Forces had 181,000 officers at the end of last year. So a grand total of 124,000 officers were either discharged, placed outside the “org-shtat” at their commander’s “disposition,” or forced to accept an NCO billet between late 2008 and the end of 2010. Returning 70,000 to the ranks might leave us wondering only about what happened to the other 54,000. And 181,000 plus 70,000 takes the officer corps basically back to 250,000, or fully one-quarter of the million-man army.
The army officer corps has endured considerable sturm und drang in a little over two years all for the sake of shedding just 55,000 officers.
More on this tomorrow.
Nezavisimaya gazeta’s Vladimir Mukhin writes this morning that the results of the fall draft are still being tallied, but the General Staff has already announced that several regions didn’t meet their conscription plans. And so, for the first time in recent years, the Armed Forces is facing undermanned conscript soldier and sergeant ranks, while the number of contract soldiers continues its decline.
Mukhin harks back to Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov’s recent Duma session, where he admitted that the army’s demand for soldiers is not being fully met. The exact quantitative deficit is a secret, but Mukhin says even a crude estimate tells him the military is at least 20 percent undermanned.
The Armed Forces now officially have less than 500,000 conscripts, 181,000 officers, and 120,000 contractees (800,000 in all, roughly), although approved manning is 1 million.
Mukhin concludes:
“It goes without saying, undermanning affects their combat readiness. And measures taken to resolve the problem, let’s say it directly, are hard to call adequate.”
A retired VDV general tells Mukhin contractees in the Pskov-based 76th Airborne Division (VDD or ВДД) dropped from 20 percent of personnel to 12 percent in 2010. The outflow was due to low pay of 11,000 rubles per month against an oblast average of about 18,000.
Mukhin forgets to mention that the 76th VDD was the cradle of “Pskov experiment” with contract service in 2003. It led to the wider Federal Targeted Program, 2004-2007, which General Staff Chief Makarov declared a failure early last year.
The Pskov-based 2nd Spetsnaz Brigade recently received a Defense Ministry order not to extend professional contractees, and to replace them with conscript soldiers and sergeants from training sub-units (i.e. guys who’ve been in the army all of three months).
Mukhin’s ex-general says:
“We don’t have to say what Spetsnaz brigades do. Namely, as before, they carry out not training, but combat missions in North Caucasus hot spots. You can’t train a good Spetsnaz soldier in a year even, much less three months. I don’t want to be the prophet of doom, but this means the likelihood of casualties will grow in a combat situation.”
A good article by Mukhin. His general’s words will likely be borne out. Anyone who followed both Chechen wars can see the Russian Army lining itself up to relearn the bitter lessons of those conflicts when it comes to choosing between professionals and draftees.
Posted in Conscription, Force Structure, Manpower, Serdyukov's Reforms, VDV
Tagged 76th VDD, Contract Service, Contractees, Draft, NCOs, Personnel, Pskov, Sergeants, Spetsnaz
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.
Posted in Conscription, Manpower, Officer Corps, Serdyukov's Reforms
Tagged Contract Service, Draft, Mobilization, Org-Shtat, Personnel, Reserves, Reservists, Sergeants, TO&E, Warrant Officers
The RVSN’s spokesman told ITAR-TASS today that his branch is entering 2011 with a completely new high command, and he gave some figures on a general youth movement in the RVSN:
“In 2010, the RVSN commander, all his deputies, missile army and division commanders were replaced.”
“The tendency toward rejuvenating command cadres was appropriate for the RVSN. In the last three years, the average age of division commanders fell from 46 to 44 years, and regiment commanders from 40 to 38. Over this period, 92 percent of regiment commanders were newly appointed. Promising officers, who’ve gone through essential training and have the corresponding education, knowledge, and experience in leading military collectives, were appointed to leadership posts.”
“Officers of 61 nationalities serve in regiments and divisions, 98 percent of them have higher education and are professionals in their business. The average age of officer personnel is less than 33, and 45 percent of officers are less than 30.”
This report basically sums the result of several years of winnowing the officer corps under Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov. Recall that he directed the officer corps to be transformed from a top-heavy, “bloated egg” into a pyramid with many fewer generals, colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors. Essentially all officers, including those in the RVSN, had to undergo a re-qualification [аттестация] process in which their service records were reviewed to see if they were fit to continue serving. Serdyukov has also shown a tendency to send more officers into retirement immediately upon reaching the stipulated legal age limit.
Yes, we are in the throes of Russia’s holiday season and news is hard to come by.
Russian Defense Policy 