Tag Archives: VDV

Moscow Considering Italian Light Armored Vehicles?

Posted on March 6, 2010 | 2 comments

Russkiy Newsweek yesterday said a source close to the Defense Ministry claims Moscow is considering buying Italian IVECO M65 vehicles, also known  as the LMV (Light Multirole Vehicle).  The source said negotiations are in the final stage, and LMVs are reportedly being tested in Russia, but opinions on their suitability for Russian conditions are varied.

Another problem–the LMV is basically an analogue of Russia’s Tigr, produced by Arzamas Machinebuilding Plant, a company belonging ultimately to Oleg Deripaska.  The LMV is 1.5 or 2 times more expensive than Tigr and carries fewer personnel.  But it is considered more explosion resistant.  Deripaska’s people dispute this, however, saying it depends on how close the vehicles are to the explosion.

Russkiy Newsweek says the LMV was shown to Putin last year, and Medvedev this year.  It adds LMV to a list of proposed or actual Russian arms buys abroad, including British sniper rifles, Israeli UAVs, and French Mistral helicopter carriers.  The possibility that United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK or ОСК) chairman and Deputy PM Igor Sechin (a long-time Kremlin insider and Putin crony) could still derail the Mistral deal is raised, but somehow this seems unlikely now for many reasons.  Why wreck a lucrative deal when you can get a piece of it instead?

The article concludes noting that this is the logical continuation of a new Russian military-technical policy–Russia can no longer be considered a closed market and soon Russian companies will have to compete with foreign producers for this internal market, according to CAST’s Ruslan Pukhov.

But there’s more to this story than that . . . some foreign samples are always good if you can get them, some palms might get greased in the process too.  It’s not a bad idea to scare the domestic defense industries, but are they really in a condition to compete with foreign producers?  Rather than stimulate them to get better and more efficient, they could just collapse in the face of a real competition for sales.  And it really goes against everything Russian to rely on foreigners, especially when they’re part of an allegedly hostile NATO.  But mucking about in NATO’s Old European rear area isn’t bad for stirring a little alliance discord.  Just weeks ago too the Russian press had stories featuring President Medvedev with the Tigr and the VDV seems pretty committed to the vehicle.  Let’s just say many factors are in play, which will be the critical ones?

2 Comments

Posted in Defense Industry, Force Modernization, Ground Troops

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Is Russia Ready for Netcentric Warfare?

Posted on January 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

Is It Really This Simple?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leave a comment

Posted in Command and Control, Defense Industry, Force Modernization

Tagged , , , , , ,