Translated material
Caliph in an hour
According to the Ministry of Defense, the Russian army has learned to fight faster
The main task of 2009 - the formation of a new look for the Russian Armed Forces, increasing their mobility and combat readiness - has been completed. The head of the military department, Anatoly Serdyukov, announced this yesterday at an extended meeting of the board of the Ministry of Defense. And he clarified: “mostly” completed. To confirm the veracity of his words, Mr. Serdyukov cited the results of the Autumn 2009 maneuvers, and most importantly, their positive assessment by the President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Dmitry Medvedev. “This does not mean that we are completely satisfied with the effectiveness of the work done,” the minister hastened to make a reservation. “We are only saying that the formation of a new look for the army and navy is going in the direction we need.”Let us remind you: the large-scale military reform that began last year involves the formation of a new look for the Russian Armed Forces by 2012. We are talking about a radical renewal of military command and control bodies, transferring the military structure from a four-tier command system (military district - army - division - regiment) to a three-tier system (district - operational command - brigade). The number of the central apparatus of the military department and military control bodies will be reduced from almost 20 thousand people to 8.5 thousand. The officer corps will be reduced by more than half - from today's 355 thousand to 150 thousand, the institution of warrant officers and midshipmen will be eliminated.
As part of the reform, it is planned to disband a number of military units and universities. The armed forces are planned to be reduced from today's 1.13 million to 1 million people. The Ministry of Defense says: an army of 1 million is critical for Russia, and it cannot be smaller. To “pull” the army to the proper level, according to the Ministry of Defense, it is necessary to spend 2 trillion rubles. annually for ten years.
Large-scale transformations in the army and navy faced misunderstanding and disapproval of officers, veterans and public organizations. The misunderstanding is explained by the lack of complete information about the progress of the reform and the government's plans. Yesterday's extended meeting of the Board of the Ministry of Defense, which was attended by the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces, commanders of the military branches, military districts and fleets, was also intended to minimize these differences.
The Minister of Defense reminded the generals of the president’s message to the Federal Assembly, mainly about the part that talks about equipping the army and navy with modern weapons and military equipment (by 2012, the armed forces must be equipped with the latest automated control centers, information systems and switch to digital means communications) and on providing military personnel with housing. “These and other measures will make it possible to create a modern, combat-ready and mobile army,” the minister concluded.
The Chief of the General Staff, First Deputy Minister of Defense, Army General Nikolai Makarov, assessed the results of combat training in 2009 and set tasks for 2010, who made the main report. According to him, a new combat readiness system has been created in the armed forces. As a result, the time required to bring formations and units into combat readiness with regular personnel without additional staffing and additional coordination has been significantly reduced. If earlier this took a day, now it takes less than an hour in any region of the country. Such progress has also been achieved because now most of the units of the Russian army are units of permanent readiness, and from December 1 there will be no reduced-strength formations left in the country at all. In addition, property, weapons, ammunition and military equipment have now been transferred from warehouses where they were previously stored to parks in military units. (By the way, it was on the territory of the military unit in Ulyanovsk that the arsenal just exploded).
In the past year, operational-strategic (OSC) and operational commands (OC) were created. At the tactical level, all brigades have been formed (there are 85 of them), almost fully staffed, only in some units there is a shortage of 2-5%. True, there is still very little new equipment in the Russian army that corresponds to the best foreign models - only 10%.
According to the results of the reform, the military district is at the same time an operational-strategic command (by simple analogy - the front), the commander of the district troops, by decree of the president, is declared the commander of the USC in a certain strategic direction. For example, the group of troops in the Leningrad Military District in the North-Western strategic direction, covering the territory from Belarus to the Barents Sea, is subordinate to the commander of the USC, primarily in operational terms. The forces of the Air Force aviation, naval aviation, and other units and units of the armed forces located on the territory of the USC are subordinate to him.
Units of the internal troops and naval forces are independent operational formations reporting directly to the General Headquarters of the Navy or the High Command of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but in operational terms they are also subordinate to the USC. The ground forces now have no units of a central unit; they are subordinate directly to the commanders of military districts and are part of these districts.
The coherence of military units was served by a series of exercises combined into strategic maneuvers "Autumn-2009": operational-strategic exercises "Caucasus-2009", "West-2009" and "Ladoga-2009". The Ministry of Defense is preparing to hold the Vostok-2010 operational-strategic exercises at the end of June - beginning of July next year, Minister Serdyukov said yesterday. It is planned to involve groupings of troops of the Siberian and Far Eastern military districts, units and ships of the Pacific Fleet, and the economic complex of the Far East.
Anatoly Serdyukov noted that 2010 “will be mainly devoted to the training of personnel - a specific soldier, a specific officer involved in the command and control of certain troops.”
In 2010, it is planned to supply the troops with 30 sea- and land-based ballistic missiles, five Iskander missile systems, about 300 units of modern armored vehicles, 30 helicopters, 28 combat aircraft, three nuclear submarines and one corvette-class warship, 11 space devices.