| Terrorism will plague the world for another hundred years Today politicians, experts, and military personnel are talking about new threats to Russia and the world. However, if we move on to a substantive conversation, it turns out that most of them by new threats mean international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, the range of threats is much wider and they are not so standard. Who is threatening Russia today and with what? Vremya Novostey columnist Nikolai POROSKOV talked about this with the head of the Center for Military Forecasting at the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, Candidate of Military Sciences, Professor of the Academy of Military Sciences Anatoly TSYGANK.
— In first place among possible new threats to Russia, I would put the consequences of the possible collapse of communist China (few people believed in the fall of the Soviet Union either). In this case, several conglomerates from small states will be created on the border with Russia. The fact is that this country with a billion people, four hundred languages and dialects has only a hieroglyph as a connecting link. If the Uighurs, Tibetans, Mongols and other nationalities demand sovereignty, a transition to their own language, this will mean abandoning the hieroglyph, information communications will collapse, and others will follow. The danger for Russia is that a significant part of the border with China still has disputed sections. The Chinese have repeatedly emphasized that their country will not give up its ancestral territories, allegedly taken away by Russia in the 17th-18th centuries. It cannot be discounted that today the PRC has 450 nuclear warheads: 150 strategic, 150 aviation and another 150 shells for nuclear artillery.
-- In the last decade, during the demarcation of the border, Russia has already given China about 600 islands, including the blood-stained Damansky. This is evidenced by the documents of the Russian commission on border issues, which included representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and military topographers...
- The possibility of territorial claims remains. China's creeping expansion continues. Illegal migration is also explained by Russia’s overly porous border with Kazakhstan. There is one checkpoint for about a hundred kilometers of border. If the steppe is level, any of these points can be easily bypassed.
- However, with such difficult relations with China, our defense-industrial complex works for this country, supplying the latest weapons and military equipment, which the Russian army does not have (and it is unknown when it will have it)...
- The Americans do not even supply new weapons, equal in characteristics to what the US army is armed with, even to their closest comrades - Great Britain and Japan. We sell China the latest aircraft, excellent armored vehicles with three or four reserve engines. The US Congress report on the arms trade, which we recently received, states that Russian enterprises are preparing licensed production of weapons in foreign countries. And even ultra-modern 152-mm projectiles with a Krasnopol-M laser homing head. I'm not talking about stopping the sale of weapons, but there must be reasonable limits.
- Our defense industry explains this phenomenon simply: while they establish licensed production there, we will move forward - weapons are quickly becoming obsolete.
- I understand the directors of defense enterprises: they need money to support production, especially if it is city-forming, to pay off numerous debts, to plug holes. But is there a guarantee that we will produce something new over the years? It is quite possible that even in ten years we will not surpass our own invention - today's know-how.
- Especially when you consider that fixed assets, that is, the production base, are practically not updated. The same thing happens with the element base, where we have always lagged behind. But let's continue talking about new threats.
- The structure of our Ministry of Defense, the structure of military command is an anachronism of the 60s of the last century. The General Staff sends a directive to the district, the district sends it to a separate army, and from there the order goes down to the corps and division. This takes days, and the flight time of a cruise missile is calculated in minutes. Even during major exercises, representatives of the military branches act on their own. And it is necessary to create territorial directorates in peacetime, similar to the US operational commands. These structures must calculate possible threats in their directions and respond to them. Including unauthorized missile launches.
— When talking about such launches, specialists, like ostriches, bury their heads in the sand. Let's say where the rocket can come to us from.
- From Iran, which we are helping to create a nuclear center in Bushehr. And these are dual technologies. Launches are possible from Pakistan, which is coordinating efforts with China to block India - they consider it their main enemy. I don’t rule out launches from North Korea either - in a totalitarian state nothing can be predicted. North Korean medium-range missiles can reach Khabarovsk, and long-range missiles can cover Sakhalin. Based on this picture, Russia needs to have territorial commands: Southern, Asia-Pacific and, hypothetically, Western. Hypothetically, because NATO and the United States will become a real threat to us only if the communists return to power in Russia. By the way, not everyone in the West supports the expansion of the Alliance.
- Why do you think terrorism is so persistent?
— It always makes me smile bitterly when, after the terrorist attack in Moscow, boys from Dzerzhinsky’s division are stationed wherever possible. Apparently, in order to calm the population. But the money should have been spent on something else. In particular, gas analyzers that would detect the presence of explosives upon entering the metro. Such systems exist in the world. In Israel, a bus driver, responding to a signal from a gas analyzer, can not only close the armored entrance door of the bus, but also cut off the passenger compartment from the vestibule. We don't have that.
It is necessary to make gas valves inaccessible, which can be opened by anyone. Unique locks have been developed for this purpose, but there is no demand for them. Pipeline systems in Russia are practically unprotected. I have already been accused of giving instructions to terrorists, but I will repeat: 100 g of TNT is enough to cause an environmental disaster. Even a slightly damaged pipe will be ruptured by enormous pressure from the inside. Pipelines must be camouflaged, and false objects must be built next to them and are under video surveillance. Let unmanned vehicles with video cameras fly over the most dangerous areas. I think it's time to create private paramilitary security organizations. 15 years ago there was the same controversy regarding private security agencies. But today there are specially trained teams at nuclear power plants.
The Americans in Iraq have from 15 to 20 thousand former military personnel in the same uniform, with the same standard weapons, who have switched to private structures and are guarding pipelines. While driving a Hummer, they also use equipment to scan the technical condition of the pipeline. Oil and gas pumping points are also protected. Near many of them there are helipads. It is quite appropriate to talk about information security: a hacker can enter a pipeline control program and increase the pressure in the pipe several times - the consequences are not difficult to imagine.
Some time ago there were reports of power line supports being blown up. Energy security is also becoming increasingly important. To make it difficult for terrorists to undermine a power line support, it is necessary to raise it to at least a 2- to 3-meter round concrete base coated with a super-slippery compound.
- Something from the realm of fantasy.
— In the Soviet Union, when creating protective systems, they invited Ivanushka the Fool, that is, a person with illogical thinking who asks unexpected, paradoxical questions. And when testing an aircraft engine, one such Ivanushka asked the designers: “How will an aircraft jet engine work if it is stuck in a pillow?” The designers wrinkled their highly intelligent foreheads, caught the association “the fluff in the pillow is the fluff of a bird” and changed the engine parameters so that it would not fail in a collision with birds. Nowadays, security systems are not approached so carefully.
— It seems that good experience has been gained in Chechnya, measures are constantly being taken to fight terrorists, but the war continues. Maybe the group of troops is small?
- The group is the largest in Europe. The point is different: the armed forces in that situation are ineffective - the regiment commander, valuing people and equipment, simply does not remove them from the unit’s location at night. The checkpoints are also closed at night, and the police guard themselves. But even in such a situation, police departments do not have armored glass, reinforced metal doors, and sometimes even walls that could hold a bullet. Information from reconnaissance and navigation satellites is sometimes delayed by several days - the units do not have ground-based receivers. There are several million of them in the US Army, and we have several thousand for the entire army. Everything that we talked about above should be experienced where real, and not hypothetical, terrorists operate. However, the fight against them is carried out using trivial, outdated methods. Therefore, according to many experts, terrorism has a life expectancy of a century, or even more, unless an effective antidote is found. Interviewed by Nikolai POROSKOV |
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