Translated material
Hiding behind interest
In uniform
Hiding behind interest
July 1, 2013 Alexander Golts
Dmitry Medvedev only dreamed that his subordinates perceive his words "cast in granite." The current president is not necessary to dream. At the end of last week, two events occurred, which should demonstrate how seriously officials relate to everything that comes from the main head of the country. The Ministry of Defense seems to have overtaken all other departments in the field of publicity and openness. Fulfilling Putin’s demand, the military department not only among the first developed a plan for the implementation of last year's Putin’s decree on the modernization of the Armed Forces, but also posted some data on this plan on its website.
Honestly, I'm not sure that thanks to this plan, the public, as announced, can control the course of military construction. However, something can still be found out. First of all, plans related to the set of the Armed Forces are clarified. At the beginning of the year, as you know, Vladimir Putin demanded that the Minister of Defense fully equip the army, that is, to bring its number to a million military personnel. Which, in principle, is impossible in conditions when the country falls deeper into a demographic hole. In this situation, there was a danger that the military would try to row into the barracks of all who will fall by the arm. Now it is stated that the Ministry of Defense plans to close a giant shortage of 150 thousand soldiers mainly due to recruitment of contractors. Already this year, the chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said, five brigades (4 land and one landing and scraping), one regiment, 27 airborne battalions, seven marine battalions, 14 special forces detachments will be formed from contractors. Next year, all sergeant posts will be occupied by contractors, and the entire naval infantry of the Airborne Forces and special forces will become completely professional. It follows that the Russian army is preparing primarily for local conflicts, which can be defeated by professional mobile forces.
Another question is whether it will be possible to fulfill these, I am not afraid to say, grandiose plans. Indeed, in order to gain 425 thousand contractors by 2017, it is necessary to type 50-60 thousand each year. More recently, nothing said that the Ministry of Defense was ready to complete such tasks. “For a year we have a task - 1308 people. While we sent 280 to the troops. The plan for May is 140 people, and we only selected 30. We can’t cope ... ”, - Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Savchenko told Red Star the head of the selection point of military personnel under the contract in Moscow and the Moscow Region. The article was published in late May. It's about the largest region of the country. It is curious what a miracle happened that the military department in a month is so confident in the realization of its plans.
The plans for combat training are also quite specifically reflected: in the constant growth of the number of raid hours, the pilots, the day spent on campaigns, for sailors, hundreds of sided kilometers - from drivers of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.
But with plans in the field of military education, the Ministry of Defense seems to have not been decided. Only the number of cadets of military schools and listeners of the academies, which is supposed to be recruited this year. As until the next years, the military department informs only about plans to create presidential cadet corps. It is not known how many listeners and cadets will be scored even next year.
But the most crafty section is the re -equipment of the army. Instead of reporting which types of weapons and in what quantities will be annually entered in the armed forces, the plan offers a strange figure - the percentage of new equipment for each type of weapons. Naturally, this percentage should grow from year to year. But it is almost impossible to understand how much weapons will act. Which will allow you to safely hide any failures. True, the chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov still clarified that to execute the program, it is necessary to receive from 70 to 100 aircraft, more than 120 helicopters, 8-9 surface ships and submarines, and up to 600 units of armored vehicles. Since 2016, mass supply of promising weapons and equipment will begin to the troops.
The doubts that this goal is achievable are creeping when reading the materials of the conference dedicated to the election article by President Vladimir Putin “to be strong: guarantees of national security for Russia”, which came out in early 2012. The conference dedicated to the article of the chief boss published a year and a half ago, this, you see, is something new in Russian politics (more precisely, well -forgotten old). The main speaker-Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who was responsible for the defense industry, for some reason did not stay for a long time to discuss the methods thanks to which the subordinate industry will be able to fulfill such intense plans. He only listed the interest with a tongue twister, characterizing the growth of production volumes. At the same time, Rogozin did not clarify whether it was possible to keep the growth of production in the conditions of stagnation. He did not clarify and whether this growth is expressed in an increase in the number of aircraft, helicopters and tanks. Or only their cost is growing (what the Minister of Finance Siluyanov hints at). Moreover, the Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Economic Development Andrei Klepach said at all at all at the conference: “If you really analyze the financial condition of almost all of our leading defense companies, then they are either close to the state of bankruptcy or not so far from it.” But, I repeat, Dmitry Olegovich did not somehow delve into especially military production.
Instead, he began to scare. He listed several scenarios of future conflicts. From Rogozin's speeches, it followed that, even having a considerable amount of nuclear weapons, Russia is defenseless to the United States. It turns out that with the help of a quick global blow, insidious Americans are able to destroy 80-90% of Russian nuclear means. In this case, the Russian leadership, according to Rogozin, may be scared and refuse to deliver a response to the remaining nuclear means. The Deputy Prime Minister does not care that the details of this catastrophic script are at least somewhat believable. For example, he says that a blow can be delivered within an hour. It follows that it will be applied to strategic missiles (only they can reach Russian territory within an hour). And then - that the blow is carried out by approximately four thousand carriers. But this is four more strategic missiles than the Americans have.
However, this does not bother the deputy prime minister. He gradually prepares the leadership of the country, and at the same time public opinion to the next failure of the next re -equipment program. Why, they say, to try to fulfill it if the United States all the same reduces everything to its latest technologies: “The Russian economy is 10 times less than the American one. And the scientific potential of the country was actually destroyed after the collapse of the USSR. Today, the lag in a number of critical basic technologies from the leading countries of the West is ten years. ” So it turns out that all hope is that thanks to the “concentration of efforts” under the wise leadership of Dmitry Olegovich, it will be possible to invent something that compensates for American superiority. And focus on finding this miraculous means, and not at all on routine work on the implementation of the rearmament program. Moreover, it will be done for sure - just draw the desired percentage ...