Seven reasons why the Russian army is not as formidable as it seems. Modern service - the whole truth about the army

Not enough money, not enough soldiers, huge problems with discipline, many accidents, deaths and outdated equipment. Contrary to what Putin tells you, the Russian army is not that strong.

This week, the British Daily Mail published an article entitled “Is Putin Plotting War in Europe?” in which intelligence sources, drawing on large-scale military exercises in Russia, claimed that the Russian army was preparing to fight NATO. All this comes amid a flurry of reports about a renewed Cold War, Russian spy planes flying near the air borders of the US, Canada and the UK, submarines gathering intelligence around the world and, of course, Russian military activity in Ukraine and elsewhere. . Added to this are weekly reports about the strength of the Russian military, how scary Putin is, and how the Russian military is returning to Cold War greatness.

But let's tell the truth. Intimidation is used as a magic bullet to gain budgets and increase sales. The Russian army is actually very different from the picture they paint for us. They are light years away from the combat capability of the US, Chinese, German and French armies. Of course, one should not go to the other extreme; this is still not South Sudan or Somalia. The Russian army has a huge number of nuclear warheads, excellent aircraft, excellent tanks and silent submarines. But, as you will now find out, she is still not as formidable as she seems.

So what is really going on in the Russian army?

1. Lots of sacrifices and poor discipline

In May, it became known that Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree according to which data on army losses during military operations in peacetime becomes a “state secret.” In an effort to restore Russia to superpower status, Putin sends soldiers to various places, to Georgia, Ukraine and beyond, and they show impressive abilities there, but also die in large numbers. For example, Ukrainian sources report that the Russians burn the bodies of soldiers killed in Ukraine to hide their participation in the war, as well as to avoid the negative impact of losses on the morale of the troops.

To this should be added the huge number of soldiers dying during exercises. According to some reports, there are several hundred such cases per year. If that's not enough, several hundred more military personnel die each year at the hands of their comrades in fights or as a result of alcohol abuse. The last official data on such cases was published in 2001, and then we were talking about 500 victims of murder in the army.

There are many reasons for this, and the low level of discipline in the Russian troops is obvious, which affects their combat effectiveness and even the quality of exercises. Old-timers bully new recruits, ceremonies marking the completion of training courses are more reminiscent of the torture of the Inquisition, and this is only a small part that is known to the public. Two years ago, as part of the national fight against smoking, it was decided to stop distributing free cigarettes to soldiers, but the Chief of the General Staff warned that the result could be a riot. The situation with discipline and the value of human life is so bad that the mothers of soldiers go out to protest demonstrations.

2. There is no money in the treasury

Although the Russian military budget has been significantly increased, it is nowhere near the defense spending of the rich US, and the financial situation of the Russian military is poor. The Russian military budget is 80-90 billion dollars, the American one is 500 billion dollars, the Chinese one is more than 100 billion dollars. German - 50-60 billion dollars.

The difficult economic situation makes it difficult to purchase new weapons. Most of the military equipment of the Russian army belongs more to museum exhibits than to military weapons. Submarines rust in ports, planes fall apart at airfields, and many projects remain on paper. Vladimir Putin has good intentions and grandiose plans, but most of them are not implemented. The Russian stealth aircraft is still undergoing testing, while the US has already formed five squadrons of Raptors and has moved on to creating the next generation aircraft.

3. There are not enough soldiers

For many years now, Russia has been discussing the possibility of switching to a completely hired army, like in the United States. At the moment, the country has universal conscription, and the term of service is from one to two years, unless the conscript has money or connections. The army has units entirely staffed by contract soldiers. In particular, one of the previous chiefs of the General Staff said that two brigades, 12 special forces units and five airborne and marine infantry battalions were formed from contract soldiers. But the problem is that, for the reasons described above, the Russian army is experiencing great difficulty in attracting contract soldiers, especially from high-quality sectors of the population.

4. Planes fall from the sky

In the past two years, we have seen a resumption of an activity familiar since the Cold War: air reconnaissance flights along the air borders of Western countries and near their ships. However, it should be noted that the state of the Russian Air Force is so bad that planes often simply crash and crash. The latest incident was last week, a plane crashed during an air parade.

In July, the Russians lost a Su-24 aircraft and a Tu-95 strategic bomber, and a month earlier, two MiG-29s and a more modern Su-34. Entire air fleets were grounded due to plane crashes and pilot deaths. The list goes on, but the overall picture is clear. The maintenance of the planes is poor because there is not enough money and the pilots cannot train properly. New planes are not arriving for the same reason - lack of money.

Although Russia has excellent aircraft, the majority of aircraft consists of the now obsolete MiG-29 and Su-27, which have not undergone the same modernization as their parallel models, the F-15 and F-16.

5. The only aircraft carrier, not too impressive

The American Navy currently has 11 attack aircraft carriers and another eight helicopter carriers, no less advanced. France, Italy and even India have such ships. The Russian fleet has one aircraft carrier, not in the best condition, which also needs to be refueled every month or two, unlike American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

Due to the size of the aircraft carrier, only lightweight aircraft can take off from it, that is, with limited freedom of action in the air.

Vladimir Putin plans to build dozens of ships and submarines, but the depreciation of the ruble is forcing him to cut back on these plans. The target date, 2020, also looks unrealistic.

6. Tank vs tank

One of Putin’s main trump cards is powerful armored forces with thousands of tanks. But here, too, a careful study of the quantity and quality of tanks paints a different picture than the Russian leader shows. The Russian army has at least 10 thousand tanks, and three thousand of them are in active service. About half of them are T-72s, outdated vehicles that do not meet Western standards. There is also a new tank, the T-90, but there are only 300 of them in the army, and the delivery rate is slow. The United States has fewer tanks, about 5 thousand, but they are all different modifications of the M-1 Abrams. If you add the Marine Corps, that number increases by several hundred.

7. Accidents at parades show everything

The Russian army loves to show its power to the citizens of the country and the whole world at military parades. They usually involve dozens of aircraft, hundreds of pieces of equipment and many soldiers. If we look closely at these parades, we will see the same thing as described above - accidents and catastrophes, the death of a soldier, a plane crash, a tank explosion. As we have already said, just this week a plane crashed at the parade and the pilot died. Last month, a rocket launch from a ship went wrong in public. Fortunately, the rockets fell into the water. During a parade of air defense troops, considered very strong, a missile fired did not hit the target and fell due to a technical malfunction. During the Victory Day parade on May 9, the Russians unveiled their newest tank, which simply stalled and had to be towed away.

I warn you right away, there are a lot of letters. But it makes sense to read it. Even if you have never served, and the army for you is a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Taken from here: http://shurigin.livejournal.com/160964.html
http://shurigin.livejournal.com/160712.html#cutid1

Defense Minister Serdyukov's military reforms are costing Russia dearly.

One of the ancients very accurately said: “Those who do not teach the lessons of History will very soon be erased from History!”

Somehow it turned out that the entire analysis of the war that took place in South Ossetia focused on the actions of troops in the conflict area. Newspapers and magazines write about the army's actions. Television programs and talk shows are dedicated to them.

Of course, this analysis is extremely important. And it is necessary to draw the right conclusions, both from the mistakes made by the troops on the battlefield, and from the successes of our army.

But at the same time, the actions of another key participant in these events - the top military leadership of the army and the main military control body - the General Staff - somehow fell out of attention. But without an analysis of their actions, any conclusions about the war will be incomplete. Therefore, it makes sense to close this gap and tell what actually happened in Moscow during the days of the South Ossetian crisis.

...WHAT WAS IT LIKE IN MOSCOW?

August 8, 2008 found the Main Operational Directorate and the Main Organizational-Mobilization Directorate in the literal sense of the word - on the street... On this day, fulfilling the strictest directive of the Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov, the departments were moving. A dozen KamAZ trucks lined up at the entrances, and the property of the two main departments of the General Staff, packed in boxes and units, was loaded into them.

Many officers learned the news that Georgia had launched a military operation against South Ossetia only from the morning news broadcasts. By this time, the warning system, which had been functioning uninterruptedly for more than forty years, was dismantled. There were simply no people on duty in departments and services, since there was nowhere to be on duty. There was no one to notify the officers. Therefore, there could be no talk of any arrival of officers on alarm and immediate “inclusion” of the State Inspectorate or State Administration in the situation. There was no one and nowhere to get involved.

At the same time, the State Educational Institution itself has been without leadership for two months. The former head of the GOU, Colonel General Alexander Rukshin, was fired in early June for disagreement with Anatoly Serdyukov’s plans to sharply reduce the General Staff. During this time, Serdyukov and the Chief of the General Staff Makarov had no time to find a new head of the GOU. The acting head of the State Educational Institution, First Deputy Rukshin, Lieutenant General Valery Zaparenko, was forced to combine several positions in one person, which could not but affect the state of affairs in the State Educational Institution.

All this was aggravated by the fact that by this moment the GOU and GOMU were completely cut off from the troops. In the premises cleared for renovation, not only all ZASovskaya communications, but even the usual “Erovskaya” communications were already disconnected, and in the new building they simply had not yet been installed. As a result, at the most dramatic moment of the Tskhinvali drama, the Russian General Staff lost control of the troops.

At the same time, no one canceled the move itself and the work actually had to unfold on wheels. As a means of communication with the troops, several ordinary open long-distance telephones were used in those several offices that were designated for the temporary accommodation of ministerial advisers. But most of all, ordinary mobile phones helped out the most, from which officers and generals negotiated with colleagues from the North Caucasus Military District for their own money.

The working groups were deployed in any more or less suitable premises of the former headquarters of the Joint Forces of the Warsaw Pact. In dressing rooms, locker rooms, behind the scenes, in the gym. One of the directions of the State Educational Institution actually ended up sitting in the orchestra pit.

Only by the end of the second day was it possible to somehow restore command and control of the troops and begin work. But this confusion caused great loss of life and mistakes.

Thus, the new Chief of the General Staff did not dare to give the order to the troops to begin a military operation until the last moment. After the Georgians started the war, the command of the peacekeepers, the duty general of the Central Command Center and the commander of the North Caucasus Military District repeatedly went directly to the chief of the general staff with reports that our peacekeepers were suffering losses, that a city with a civilian population was being destroyed, that immediate assistance and bringing to the effect of the existing plans to repel aggression in this case, but the NGS kept delaying, constantly “clarifying” with the top political leadership what the scale of the use of force should be, although the political decision had already been made by that moment.

This is precisely what accounts for the delay in the deployment of troops, which cost our peacekeepers several dozen killed soldiers and officers.

The first directive sent to the troops was of such a limited nature that it almost immediately required that it be supplemented with a new one. According to the first directive, the troops sent into South Ossetia were actually left without cover, since the directive concerned only units and formations of the North Caucasus Military District...

It was his fault that inconsistency arose between the types of armed forces. Having no experience in organizing interspecies interaction, at the most crucial moment the Chief of the General Staff “forgot” about the Air Force.

The directive to the troops of the North Caucasus Military Circle was sent, but the directive was not sent to the Air Force command. They “remembered” it only when the troops, having passed the Roki tunnel, found themselves under attacks from Georgian aviation. And the Air Force had to, as they say, “on wheels” enter into the operation. This was one of the reasons for such high losses in aircraft.

Then, in the same way, they “remembered” the Airborne Forces and the directive went to the Airborne Forces headquarters. This is precisely what explains the fact that the most mobile troops of the Russian army were actually in the rearguard of the military operation.

It is completely unclear why, on the eve of the war, when information was continuously received about the aggravation of the situation around South Ossetia, the leadership of the General Staff did not decide to deploy a central command post, which had every opportunity to control troops in the conflict area, during the relocation of two key departments, but everything during the war, worked in the usual “duty” mode, engaged only in monitoring the situation, while the GOU and GOMU were actually cut off from the troops?

This war showed that a “tasteful” approach to the selection of the Chief of the General Staff, a key figure for command and control of troops in a combat situation, is unacceptable. The excitement of Defense Minister Serdyukov, who pointed his finger at the map with a proposal to bomb “this bridge,” is humanly understandable, but it has nothing to do with strategy and operational art, which, in fact, decide the fate of the war. At the most crucial moment, the necessary professionals were not there...

At the same time, Mr. Serdyukov very cleverly placed all responsibility for the losses on those whom he himself placed in a catastrophic situation.

So, at the debriefing at the General Staff on the results of the Georgian campaign, he, without hesitation, laid all the blame for the confusion of the beginning of the war on the officers and generals sitting in front of him in the hall, whom he himself actually threw into the void.

At the same time, for the first time in the history of the General Staff, the Russian Minister of Defense publicly simply went to the mat. Without mincing words, from the podium he scolded the leadership for the large losses of personnel and equipment.

Apparently, Serdyukov has exactly this idea of ​​how to communicate with the “little green men” - this is exactly what the minister’s inner circle – all sorts of advisers and assistants – call the military among themselves.

I note that not a single defense minister, starting with People’s Commissar Tymoshenko, has allowed himself such rudeness in public...

Why did we win?

Because the troops and headquarters were preparing for this war.

Because since the spring, when the situation around Tskhinvali began to sharply escalate, the General Staff began developing an operation to force Georgia to peace. It was these tasks that were practiced at the spring and summer exercises of the North Caucasus Military District.

We won because headquarters at all levels had developed detailed plans in the event of the outbreak of this war. And the credit for this goes to the very GOU, which was actually destroyed by Mr. Serdyukov.

We won because in the chaos of confusion and confusion there were those who took responsibility. Who, in the absence of clear and precise instructions from Moscow, decided to begin to act according to the plans that had been worked out.

But high losses in people - 71 people were killed, in equipment - more than 100 units and 8 aircraft - this is the price that the army paid for the voluntarism and tyranny of some senior officials.

One can imagine what a terrible moral defeat for the new Russian President Medvedev a military failure in South Ossetia would be, how it would damage the prestige of Prime Minister Putin. But we avoided it with great difficulty - if we had missed another 2-3 hours, Tskhinvali would have fallen, the Georgians would have cut the Transkam and there would have been no one for us to save...

GREAT POGROM

Such an outright failure of the General Staff’s work was the last and logical result of a whole chain of erroneous decisions made by Mr. Serdyukov as Minister of Defense.

You can talk about them for a very long time, but in order not to get lost in thought, it is worth tracing the story of the ill-fated repair to the very beginning, which will allow us to understand the motives of the actions of the current Minister of Defense and the style of his work.

Let's start with the fact that the General Staff building is one of the newest buildings in the Russian Ministry of Defense complex. It was commissioned in 1982.

Huge marble panels with a retrospective of the battles of the Russian and Soviet armies were created by the most famous artists. Finishing the building with marble, Ural stone, serpentine and granite guaranteed at least fifty years of operation of the building without major repairs.

At the same time, work on its arrangement and modernization continued in the building itself.

Just two years ago, renovations were completed on the floors occupied by state educational institutions and state educational institutions. All offices were connected by a special fiber-optic network, which guaranteed complete secrecy of information exchange; the most modern communications were carried out here. For the halls where servers and other equipment were deployed, special microclimate systems were installed, the most modern fire extinguishing system was deployed, and all rooms were reliably shielded from any external penetration. In total, more than $100 million was spent on these renovations.

Several more millions were spent on renovating the “ministerial” floor before the arrival of former Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov there. Then a major renovation was carried out here with a complete replacement of furniture and all office equipment.

It would seem that after such repairs, the new Minister of Defense, and even with the laurels of a “reformer,” was ordered by God himself to plunge headlong into the work of reforming the army, forgetting about his own welfare and prosperity.

But it turned out the other way around.

For some reason, Defense Minister Serdyukov decided to start the reform with himself, more precisely with his apartments, and even more precisely with their expansion to previously unprecedented proportions. Even in the era of the USSR, when our army numbered more than four million “bayonets,” the office of the Minister of Defense occupied half the floor of the new General Staff building. Now, at a minimum, they will take one and a half.

But this is understandable! After all, it is only the colonels of the Main Military Directorate or State Military Medical Directorate who can sit four to five people in one office, and Serdyukov’s “girls,” as the assistants to the Minister of Defense call each other, do not want to sit more than one at a time. In addition, the volume of premises necessary for the minister’s “girls” and “boys” to breathe easily cannot be compared with those in which the “little green men” - the officers with whom they work - are accustomed to living and working. Therefore, since last fall, nimble gentlemen began to snoop around the floors and offices of the State Educational Institution and State Medical University, introducing themselves as designers, architects, or superintendents, who measured and wrote down something.

And in the spring, renovations began. And not just repairs, but repairs to all repairs! Not a trace remains of the former Soviet marble and granite luxury. Crushed by the sledgehammers of the ubiquitous “guest workers” from the Central Asian republics, who strangely gained access to one of the most secret facilities of the Russian army without any verification, all the panels and all the cladding turned into a pile of rubble.

Moreover, some of the “guest workers” actually live in the building being renovated. It got to the point that one of the halls of the State Educational Institution was turned into a branch of the mosque by devout Muslims from the construction crews, and in the evenings builders gather there with rugs to jointly “Allah Akbar!” mark the strict fasting days of Ramadan. According to the guards, Muslim chants in the dark building of the General Staff sound so unusual that they cause shock...

At the same time, one cannot help but recall the fate of the first president of Chechnya, Akhmat Kadyrov, who was blown up with a landmine that was walled up in the wall of the sports box of the stadium during construction. Who and how controls the work of devout Muslims is unknown. But the scale of the renovation is amazing.

Literally everything is being redone - from the front entrance to which Mr. Serdyukov deigns to drive up (a special gallery is now attached to it, protecting it from prying eyes), stairs, to elevators and, of course! - a complete replacement of the unique oak furniture that was brought especially for the minister from warehouse. This furniture seemed to the minister inappropriate for his status, and he ordered it to be replaced with a more suitable one. But here it’s hard to argue with him about anything, but our minister is a real expert when it comes to furniture!

And then it was the turn of the State Educational Institution and State Medical University departments deployed here. Despite all the justifications and explanations, both departments were ordered to collect their belongings and move to “temporary” premises.

The fact that these premises were completely unprepared to receive such serious structures did not bother the Minister of Defense at all, just as he did not care that they had neither communications nor conditions for normal work. He didn’t even care that the regime of secrecy and closure from technical penetration was not ensured there, that there were no repositories for top-secret documents, of which there are more than one thousand units registered for the State Educational Institution and the State Medical Institution. That there is not even an alarm system in the premises where equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was taken. In response to all the military’s explanations, Serdyukov only ironically shrugged his shoulders, saying, stop making people laugh with your “secrecy”! Repairs must be started in a timely manner! Superintendents are our everything!

And, as mentioned above, on August 8, the officers and generals of the GOU met the war, carrying property on their humps into the KamAZ trucks of the rear. And behind them, the same silent Asian migrant workers were already smashing walls and ceilings with hammers, tearing optical fibers and crushing electronic protection units into flat cakes, knocking down “cubes” of air conditioners and communication racks.

Widows, orphans and parents of soldiers and officers who died in Georgia now know how much this thoughtless haste cost the army.

But I think that very few people know the amount that this ministerial “repair” costs the Russian taxpayer. And it’s worth voicing it. 10 BILLION (!!!) rubles have already been allocated for the renovation of just seven floors of the General Staff building, but, as financiers say, this is not the final figure. It is possible that it will grow by another quarter...

It was officially announced that this transfer is “temporary” and after the renovation of the ministerial floors everything will return “to normal.” However, the officers have no special illusions about returning back. They have already announced that part of the General Staff building will be transferred to the office of VTB Bank, and in another part of it shops and a sports and fitness complex will be opened for personnel of the Ministry of Defense. All for the same “girls” and “boys” of Serdyukov.

Well, as for GOU and GOMU, what will remain is what remains. Moreover, by this moment very little will remain of the GOU and GOMU themselves. Mr. Serdyukov has already announced that they will be reduced by 60% to save public funds and optimize. For example, in the same GOU, out of 571 officers, 222 will remain.

In general, the new minister’s approach to “saving” money is distinctive.

Money was found instantly to dress ten thousand soldiers and officers of the parade squad for the parade. Moreover, one set of uniforms from Yudashin costs the Ministry of Defense 50 thousand rubles. The overcoat from this set costs 12 thousand rubles - the same as in a good boutique! And for an ordinary uniform tie, the Russian taxpayer pays Yudashkin’s company as much as 600 (!!!) rubles. At the same time, part of the uniform, by a strange coincidence, is sewn in the city of St. Petersburg - the hometown of our minister. But there was no money to clothe and properly equip ten thousand soldiers and officers of the 58th Army, who, as all forecasts and intelligence data showed, were awaiting an imminent war.

The minister found and spent billions of rubles on the renovation of his own apartments, but for some reason his ministry never found money to purchase GLONASS receivers for the warring army in two years.

However, maybe the minister simply did not have time to re-equip the army while putting things in order at his workplace?

Let's see what this order is.

For example, previously the maintenance of the General Staff building was carried out by the special commandant's office for the operation of the new administrative building. Three hundred officers, warrant officers and contract soldiers served in it. Officers - engineers were engaged in the operation of the technical systems of the building, warrant officers - in technical maintenance and repair, contract soldiers - mostly women - were engaged in cleaning the building and maintaining order in it. 15 million rubles were allocated per year for the functioning of this commandant’s office.

At the next meeting with the minister, the work of this commandant’s office was cited as an example of a vicious structure and an example of unwise spending of money and misuse of military positions. The commandant's office was abolished. Instead, as is now fashionable, a competition was held for a new contractor to maintain the building. This contractor was the company "BIS".

Now in the General Staff building all housekeeping and cleaning is in charge of “BiS”. Its cleaners receive from 12 (the salary of a major in the RF Armed Forces) to 24 thousand rubles (the salary of a colonel with full length of service), and the total cost of maintaining the building is now as much as 18 MILLION rubles per month! – 216 million per year! In total, after the ministerial “optimization”, the costs of maintaining and maintaining the building increased fourteen times!

But now the minister can be proud - the wages of soldiers and officers have been saved, this money is going “properly” - into the pockets of businessmen.

Needless to say, the BiS company, which won the competition against competing firms, by a strange coincidence turned out to be from St. Petersburg, where, as you know, the minister himself came from...

Now Minister Serdyukov says that there are a disproportionate number of officers in our army. Like, in the US Army (!!!) there are far fewer of them per hundred soldiers. And based on the results of his “analysis”, in the coming years, at least two hundred thousand (!!!) officers and warrant officers will be sent under the ax of cuts. To restore, so to speak, “correct American proportions.”

Using the example of the abolished commandant’s office, one can easily calculate how much this reduction will cost the Armed Forces. And how many new “BiSs” will win competitions for the right to take part in the generous military budget...
BEAR-VOIVODA

In general, the reformist fervor of the new minister is increasingly reminiscent of Saltykov-Shchedrin’s well-known fable about the bear governor who ruined everything he could.

Then Serdyukov intends to arm the army with English sniper rifles, having decided, after one of his private conversations, to purchase several thousand English L96 sniper rifles instead of the existing army SVD sniper rifle and promising sniper systems. And for months at a time, departments and directorates of the General Staff are immersed in proving the harmfulness and ill-conceivedness of such a decision. Only when a comparative shooting of existing and promising Russian rifles and the English one proposed by him was held especially for the minister at the training ground, as a result of which no serious superiority of the “English” over domestic models was revealed - the minister spoke on the topic of the “English”, which cost 5 times (!!! ) more expensive than Russian analogues, I calmed down...

By the way, one can easily imagine the fate of this “rearmament” if it happened in real life. The British reaction to the war in South Ossetia was extremely negative and anti-Russian. It is clear that the contract would have been terminated and, at best, the Russian army would have been left without the opportunity to purchase spare parts for these rifles, or even simply with a shortage...

Then the minister personally at the command post determines targets for airstrikes in the combat area - having seen a bridge or building on the map, he immediately calls on the Air Force representative: “Let’s hit this bridge!”

Then, tired of the extra burden, he gets rid of the “nuclear suitcase” - the Cheget portable terminal, a nuclear weapons control system, which was a mandatory attribute of his position, on which the country’s security depends.

But these are still fairly harmless outbreaks of reform activity. His global “projects” are much more tragic.

Now the minister has again “activated” the well-known directive of February 21, 2008 on replacing the positions of officers and warrant officers with civilian specialists.

Six months ago, after an almost unanimous protest from specialists who proved the absurdity and ill-conceived nature of these plans, it was quickly withdrawn, but not cancelled, but shelved. Then experts proved that the implementation of this directive would inevitably lead to chaos and disorganization in a combat situation, because Unbound by oath and duty to put their lives at risk, civilian personnel can safely ignore any orders that pose a threat to life. In peacetime, this “dispersal” will lead to the collapse of those few remaining effectively functioning systems and the mass departure of specialists from the army.

And now, after the military campaign in South Ossetia, this directive was again brought to light. Now these wholesale reductions are taking place under the banner of a general “optimization” of the army’s size. Military doctors have already announced plans to reduce 66 hospitals by 2012. Officer doctors are expected to demobilize and begin work as civilian specialists. It was announced that out of 14 thousand military doctors by 2012, only 4 thousand will remain.

But military medicine is one of the few effectively functioning systems in our army today. During the last war (Chechnya), military medics were able to achieve impressive results when the mortality rate of wounded admitted to hospitals dropped to less than 1 percent. In military medicine today, brilliant medical personnel are concentrated, high-quality medical institutions are deployed and functioning.

This “optimization” of military medicine cannot be called anything other than a pogrom!

The main problem is that almost all decisions are made by Serdyukov behind the scenes, in the circle of advisers and associates. Without any broad discussion with specialists and experts. It is completely incomprehensible where a person who worked from 1985 to 1993 in the Lenmebeltorg system with the military experience of a conscript corporal had such faith in his own infallibility as a “military expert”?

Now Serdyukov has announced that the current size of the Armed Forces - 1 million 100 thousand people - is “too large,” although three years ago former Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov passionately convinced the Russians that the then reduction of the army by 100,000 people was the last, and that the size of the Russian Armed Forces has now (2005) been brought “to the optimal composition” of 1.2 million people.

Since then, the army has been reduced by another 100 thousand people. And now a new large-scale reduction is coming - 100 thousand until 2016. At the same time, those around the minister do not hide the fact that this is not the last. They say that the “optimal” size of the Russian army should be no more than 800 thousand people.

Who and how determined this figure is unclear.

The most courageous people from the ministerial circle vaguely say that, they say, the Russian budget simply cannot accommodate a larger number.

Of course, it won’t work if each company involved in the cleaning and operation of Ministry of Defense buildings is paid 216 million rubles a year - a third of the annual salary of all military doctors in Russia, and 10 billion rubles are spent on repairs of ministerial apartments.

But in all these cuts and discussions about what budget the size of the army can be adjusted to, one key question fell out of the attention of officials - actually, who will this army fight against? Who is our likely enemy? With whom might we have to cross missile trajectories and aircraft contrails in the foreseeable future?

In my mind, this is where military planning and military reform begin.

Because officials can adjust the size of the army and the military budget as much as they want to fit their ideas about a “balanced economy,” but if these volumes do not guarantee reliable parity in the future and do not meet the needs of defense, then all these “optimizations” are nothing more than outright sabotage and crime.

Let me remind you that in 1998, when sanctions were lifted from Yugoslavia, we proposed that Milosevic’s government purchase any weapons that Russia put on the foreign market. Then the ministers of finance and economics of the Yugoslav government, just like now our “Kudrinites,” wringing their hands, began to prove to Milosevic that the Yugoslav economy would not withstand massive purchases of weapons from Russia. That Yugoslavia does not have extra money for the S-300 and other similar systems. That the military budget must be “balanced.” As a result, the Serbs never bought anything from us, maintaining the “balance” of their economy. And less than a year later, the NATO air armada left no stone unturned from the Serbian economy, literally “bombing” Serbia into the Stone Age - even destroying Yugoslavia’s electricity grid and plunging it into darkness. Then, suddenly, everyone immediately remembered the Russian S-300, which, it turns out, is so necessary for Serbia, but which was not available at the right time...

So who might we have to face in the future?

With the mythical “international terrorists” of Bin Laden, whom the American army has been searching for for seven years all over the world, simultaneously occupying countries and subjugating entire regions?

Or maybe we should just take a closer look at what is happening on the borders of Russia? For example, to the fact that in the near future, with a high probability, a group of American troops will be deployed in Georgia, for example, that NATO bases have come close to the Russian borders, that NATO fleets are already demonstratively entering the area of ​​the Russian-Georgian conflict, and US military transport aircraft Saakashvili is quickly moving military reinforcements. One can only guess what will happen tomorrow, given that the Georgian leadership is absolutely not going to come to terms with the loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

I would like to hear from “strategist” Serdyukov clear assessments of future threats and how, after all these cuts, Russia will be able to protect its sovereignty and its national interests?

However, Mr. Serdyukov does not really like to speak publicly on military issues. Either due to natural modesty, or due to his weak competence in these very matters. However, he has begun another stage of military reform.

Next to the old building of the Ministry of Defense on Znamenka Street, a major renovation of a mansion has begun for the residence of the Minister of Defense and his closest assistants. The Ministry of Defense refused to name the amount it will cost the Russian taxpayer...

The Law of the Stool says that if you throw a stool in the air, don't expect it to fly like a bird, but you can be sure that sooner or later you will get hit on the head with it...

In November, my son left to serve in the Russian Army. In June I graduated from the university and received a diploma. What is the problem?

The problem began about six months before the time of conscription. The adult guy categorically did not want to go to Amiya, because... feared with terrible force. What were you afraid of?
He was afraid that he would be beaten by old-timers and long-term sergeants. And the son was even more afraid that he would be bullied. After all, there are legends all over the country about how young soldiers are beaten. How they are “churned.” How they are driven to disability and suicide. You don’t need to look far for examples, right? Starting with the official recognition of M. Norbekov in one of his books. And, concluding with a recent publication on the Internet about a criminal case in Kronstadt.
And the main problem, after all, is not this.

The main problem is different. As a doctor of pedagogy in higher education (I work with people over 16 years old), I assume that the whole country has such “sons”. As a specialist, I understand that throughout Mother Russia, capable and physically healthy guys are afraid to join the Army. For the same reason. I understand that they begin to be afraid about 4-6 months before conscription. And during these 4-6 months, almost every Russian guy lives with a feeling of fear. Of course, guys are embarrassed to admit it. But if we get them to talk... we will see a depressing picture.
The problem is aggravated by the fact that, for another 6 months, being inside the Army itself, most of them live in a state of fear.

And the problem is not only in their personal experiences. And not only that young soldiers are actually humiliated and beaten. After all, surely not everyone is humiliated and beaten, right?

PROBLEM in the Fate of the country and in the Fate of the nation. The problem is that ALMOST HALF (!!!) of the rank and file of our defenders of the Fatherland lives in a state of fear of humiliation and beating.

Question 1: What is the moral and psychological spirit and combat potential of the army, in which almost half of the soldiers live in fear???
Question 2: Can we be proud of an Army in which almost half of the soldiers are afraid of their fellow veterans, afraid of sergeants, afraid of pain?
Question 3: Is such an army capable of defeating a real enemy whose soldiers live without fear (i.e., self-confident and have high self-esteem)??? Are we reliably protected by our Army?

I don’t even ask, what kind of innovative potential do Russian citizens have who have been threatened with humiliation and beatings for six months? And what genetic code do men who have lived in a state of fear for almost a year pass on to their children?

Of course, the US Army, because it uses the most advanced weapons systems, very strong interaction between military branches (which does not exist in the Russian Federation) and the professionalism of American soldiers is higher than that of Russian conscripts. Well, what can we say about the superiority of American technology and equipment. In European countries, and throughout the world, the US Army has long been the standard of military training. It is worth mentioning right away that in the United States itself, the word army does not mean the entire armed forces, but only the land part of it. Out of habit, we will mean the entire armed forces. If the army of the “most democratic” state is recognized as the standard in the world, then a reasonable question arises: who serves as an example for the American soldiers themselves? I think even a schoolboy can answer this - the Marine Corps is considered the most powerful unit in the overseas forces.

We won’t discuss where and what tasks they perform—that’s a topic for another day, but it won’t hurt to know the truth about the combat effectiveness of soldiers, at least for comparison. Firstly, this unit has its own separate budget and the corps is subordinate only to the general commanding it. For his subordinates, he is god and king.

By the way, many key positions in the Pentagon are occupied by former or current senior officers of the Marine Corps.

Secondly, the discipline and level of training in the unit is not just at the level... it is at a high-class professional level and cannot be compared in any way (may the Creots forgive me, but this is the reality) with the training of the “NATO threat” - our brave paratroopers (which there we talk about infantry). I also want to note that among senior management and ordinary employees we have a lot of immigrants from Ukraine, the founders of the Marine Corps were immigrants from Ukraine, so to speak. many of them have been presented with high awards for services to the United States; they have shown themselves to be excellent leaders in many military operations.

I do not underestimate the merits of the Blue Berets. Our guys are desperate people and sometimes compensate for the lack of preparation with individual qualities. Here's what Denis, a former Muscovite, a man with two higher educations, who studied at one of the Russian military universities, and has been serving for several years in the North American Marine Corps, had to say about the US Marine Corps:

“In fact, judging by what I see here, your army is very far from the American armed forces. God forbid Russia to fight with the States (he laughs and says this, in Russia they are whipping up hysteria through the zombie box - America does not need wars in the coming years, the people will not allow it, everyone is tired of taxes). There is very strict discipline and competent instructors. They make us into high-level specialists, each in his own field. If you are a shooter, then a shooter with a lot of knowledge about many types of small arms, physically developed and disciplined, if you are a tanker, then, accordingly, you know everything about tanks. And so on.

How many of the “reserve men” of the Russian army can boast of this knowledge? Not every tanker can even start a tank... There are no lone heroes like Rimbaud here. No one breaks bricks on their heads during “show off” or bends crowbars. The main thing that is taught here is to work in a well-coordinated team, to do one’s job accurately (this is how soldiers feel about their service).

In addition, if we evaluate the military power of the two powers as a whole, the picture for Russia turns out to be gloomy: America has “under arms,” if I’m not mistaken, about 1 million 400 thousand people, and at the same time – professionals in the active army, and Russia – 1 million 100 thousand.

If necessary, another 700 thousand reservists will be mobilized - there will hardly be more of them in Russia.

As for technology, it is stupid to dispute the fact that in the USA every fighter has a lot of different electronic “devices”. What does a Russian soldier have? I will say this about wheeled and tracked vehicles - in this matter we are approximately equal. However, anyone who served in the Russian army knows perfectly well the deplorable state of the vehicle fleet, most of it Soviet-style. On the go, I’m unlikely to make a mistake – ten percent. At this time, the American Army fleet is in excellent condition.

I understand that patriotism is patriotism, but we have to look at things realistically. As for the question of how to get into the ranks of American soldiers, any army will tell you that they need people who are ready to accurately do their, often dirty, work, and not “special forces” who are ready to take down the enemy in batches and “shed bags of blood.” Nobody needs psychos. So it’s unlikely that you have much chance without some even more or less significant specialty.

During the conversation, I was bursting with a question that I finally asked: “And in the event of a conflict between our countries, whose side will you be on, Denis?” “I am an American citizen, I serve in the army of this country and I will do my job conscientiously. Although I have many friends in Russia. I will say right away that it is practically impossible for any military operations to take place, because the Russian military is practicing with us and we are carrying out some operations to combat terrorism locally. Russia needs to pay attention to China, because all this hysteria against America is nothing more than Putin’s populism. Also, look at why Russian generals keep their investments in the EU and the USA? they buy real estate from us, educate their children here, hatred of the West is, in their opinion, simply a necessity for a common enemy, nothing more... Although they have long known who their enemy is in reality. The USA is my country, which has given me a lot, and I am grateful to it for that,” my interlocutor stated.

“Timur” now lives in Kazan, but twelve years ago he served in the same branch of the army: “I also think that we can’t compete with them... It seems to me that our (Russian) army has degraded after the collapse of the USSR and now we are down and out We will wipe out the war if such a thing happens, although I doubt it. The trouble with our army is simply African corruption, the highest ranks in the Russian army are corrupt and corrupt, I wouldn’t be surprised that they are selling their homeland, which has happened more than once, selling technology to the Chinese, which they wrote about recently..

Regarding the US Navy latest news

In an interview with the official US military newspaper Stars and Stripes, the US Navy's chief of naval operations, Admiral Jonathan Grigorenko, emphasized the importance of this base for presence in the region and said that Greece is the "best option" for basing the US fleet in the region.

The admiral said that the expansion of the base is associated with the future deployment of 23 LCS-class coastal combat ships, which in the future will replace the fleet of mine-sweeping ships located here. The LCS ships are expected to arrive in Greece in 2014. A new base will also be created with combat-ready ships, aircraft, support vessels, marine units and service personnel from the Pacific and Atlantic fleets; these are high-speed and maneuverable platforms that can successfully operate in coastal waters. In addition, the base will be able to accommodate a larger number of ships of other classes; these costs are provided for in the US military budget.

Earlier this year, US Navy Commander Richard McDaniel opined that "with ongoing political unrest, there is a threat of loss of strategic basing rights in this region, and this possibility must be carefully considered." We are soon planning to conclude an agreement to station our fleet on the territory of Ukraine; this is the best option for stabilizing peace and tranquility in this region.

I couldn’t resist and asked him to compare our AK-74 and the notorious M-16 automatic rifle. “Well, in fact, the M is no worse or better than the Kalash - both have advantages and disadvantages.

For example, the M-16 has a much more convenient and accurate sight, and the sighting range is an order of magnitude higher than that of the AK. But at the same time, the Kalash is more trouble-free and has higher penetration ability. As the Americans told me, the Kalashnikovs were made by the military, and the M-16 was made by scientists. M-ka is easier - because almost everything is plastic... But, in general, I would not say that any of the machines is better.”

You can be or not be a patriot of Russia, love or not love its army, but you just have to look at its condition objectively, and you understand that either everything is not lost for us, or everything is still ahead...

Dreaming about the future is a task not only for science fiction writers, but also for government services. NASA does this all the time, but the US military rarely shares its vision of how war will be fought in 2050. However, Dr. Bill Lewis, the US Army's director of aviation, presented a video that shows what awaits us in 37 years.

This video has it all - it's as if its creator had a fantasy based on excessive time spent playing video games. Laser guns, drones, a gun that shoots drones, a bracelet that allows you to control airstrikes...

Probably the strangest episode involves a medic who approaches a wounded soldier, scans his wounds, and then a levitating capsule flies up to him and takes him to the infirmary. However, the purpose of the video is not so much to show the real future, but to inspire young professionals to create innovative technologies.

The restoration of Russia's military power is a myth that is beneficial to the ruling elite of Russia and the West, but has nothing to do with reality. This is stated in the report of the Institute of National Strategy, “Results with Vladimir Putin: the crisis and decomposition of the Russian army,” which was prepared with the participation of prominent military experts.

The main authors of the report - political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, president of the Institute of National Strategy Mikhail Remizov, general director of the INS Roman Kareev, head of the department of the Institute of Military and Political Analysis Alexander Khramchikhin, head of the Center for Military Forecasting Anatoly Tsyganok - note that one of the most important tasks of the study is to show that the myth about Russia's military power has nothing to do with reality. “It is necessary to recognize the truth, no matter how bitter it may be: contrary to official propaganda, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are in a deep crisis, which has worsened most seriously under President Vladimir Putin. Moreover: unfavorable trends in the development of the military sphere have become largely irreversible in the “Putin era,” the report says.

The authors of the study note that in recent years, Putin’s Kremlin has done a lot to create a myth about the “revival of Russia’s military power” hardly to the Soviet level. At the same time, the created legend is very popular in the West, supported and disseminated by politicians and the media of a number of G7 countries, which allows foreign military functionaries to demand from their parliaments increased allocations for military needs and explain to their people various types of large-scale military operations or preparations for them. This myth is actively supported by the legend that Russia is ruled by a “Chekist corporation”, which, according to experts at the Institute of National Strategy, can aggravate negative trends.

The Kremlin does not take into account the Chinese threat and exaggerates NATO's military power in Europe

Meanwhile, the authors of the report draw attention to the fact that no military construction in the state is possible if the country’s political leadership has not formulated views on what tasks the Armed Forces (AF) will have to solve, i.e. What type of wars and with what enemy(s) should the Armed Forces be prepared for? For Russia, this issue remains relevant until recently.

Experts note that two official documents that deal with the geopolitical position of the Russian Federation, military threats to the Russian Federation and the state of the Russian Armed Forces are the “Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation”, approved by presidential decree in 2000, and “Current tasks for the development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation ” – are not specific, and some points look very controversial.

In particular, experts note that, judging by official documents, the only potential adversary in the Far Eastern strategic direction is considered to be the United States (and, possibly, Japan), and China is not considered as such, since it supposedly has neither the opportunity nor the need (due to the presence of a long land border) to conduct amphibious operations against the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, according to the head of the department at the Institute of Military and Political Analysis, Alexander Khramchikhin, in the east of Russia it is precisely the threat of military expansion of China that should be taken into account, which is guided by the concept of “strategic borders and living space.”

As noted in the report, the concept of “strategic borders and living space” was developed to justify and justify the conduct of offensive military operations by the Chinese Armed Forces, and is based on the idea that population growth and limited resources create a natural need to expand space to ensure further economic activities of the state and increasing his “natural sphere of existence.” At the same time, the long-term program for building the Chinese armed forces involves the formation of an armed forces capable of “winning a war of any scale and duration using all means and methods of conducting armed struggle.”

The authors of the report note that although this concept does not directly name the direction in which China’s “strategic boundaries of living space” will expand, it is quite obvious that this can only be Russia, primarily its eastern regions, which have a gigantic territory and natural resources with a very small and rapidly declining population.

At the same time, Alexander Khramchikhin draws attention to the fact that in September 2006, China conducted unprecedented-in-scale ten-day exercises of the Shenyang and Beijing military districts of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA, the official name of the Chinese Armed Forces), two of the most powerful in their potential of the 7 Chinese military districts. It is these districts that are adjacent to the border with Russia, Shenyang is opposed to the Far Eastern, and Beijing to the Siberian Military District of the Russian Armed Forces.

At the same time, during the exercises, units of the Shenyang Military District made a throw over a distance of 1000 km to the territory of the Beijing Military District, where they conducted a training battle with units of this district. The objectives of the exercises were to develop skills in maneuvering army formations at great distances from their bases and to improve the level of logistics management for troops. According to experts, such an exercise scenario can only be considered as preparation for a war with Russia, and it is the offensive, not the defensive, that is being practiced.

On the other hand, as noted in the report, the idea of ​​NATO as the main potential military adversary of the Russian Federation seems very doubtful today. According to experts, official Kremlin propaganda often misleads the public about the dynamics of the development of NATO Armed Forces in the regions adjacent to the Russian Federation. According to analysts, the North Atlantic Alliance grouping in Europe has undergone a radical reduction in the period since the end of the Cold War, and the reduction continues. Thus, at the beginning of 1990, the armed forces of the 16 “old” NATO members had in Europe a total of 24,344 tanks, 33,723 armored combat vehicles, 20,706 artillery systems (artillery systems) with a caliber of more than 100 mm, 5,647 aircraft, 1,605 helicopters. At the beginning of 2007, the armed forces of 22 NATO countries (16 “old” and 6 “new”, former members of the Warsaw Pact Organization, WTO) had a total of 13,514 tanks, 26,389 armored fighting vehicles, 16,042 artillery systems, 4,031 aircraft, 1,305 helicopters in Europe . At the same time, the US military presence in Europe was significantly reduced. In this regard, according to experts, preserving the CFE Treaty is more expedient for the Russian Federation than its destruction, since Moscow, firstly, has sufficient growth potential within the framework of the quotas provided by the treaty, and secondly, is interested in ensuring that the existing military disparity between by the forces of Russia and NATO countries in Europe did not take on an overwhelming character.

Analyzing official documents, experts come to the conclusion that the military-political leadership of post-Soviet (Yeltsino-Putin) Russia in the period from 1992 to 2007 did not develop a strategically clear and historically specific answer to the question of why Russia needs armed forces and, accordingly, what kind of armed forces they should be be. The authors of the report believe that on the basis of existing documents, such as the “Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation” (2000) and “Current tasks for the development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” (2003), it is impossible to carry out military development that is adequate to the current international situation. “The Putin era” turned out to be no more productive in this regard than the period of his predecessor’s rule, analysts conclude.

The crisis of military-technical equipment of the Russian army

The authors of the report also draw attention to the fact that a comparison of the current state of the main branches of the Russian Armed Forces with their state at the end of the 1990s indicates an unambiguous worsening of the crisis in the military-technical equipment of the Russian army in recent years. Analysts note that the total budget expenditures on defense for 2000-2006 only slightly (about 15% in dollar terms) exceed similar average expenditures in the period from 1993-1999, when the economic capabilities of the state, due to the unfavorable raw materials situation, were significantly ( immeasurably) more modest than today's. At the same time, the volume of weapons and military equipment received by the army for these expenses is significantly lower than in the 1990s, which is due to a dramatic increase in corruption.

According to experts, the greatest concern is the crisis state of the Strategic Nuclear Forces (SNF). In particular, their massive reduction, the unification of their structure based on suboptimal and vulnerable weapons models, and the rapid degradation of the naval component of the strategic nuclear forces.

According to the authors of the report, during the period from 2000 to 2007, strategic nuclear forces lost 405 carriers and 2,498 charges. During the reign of Vladimir Putin, only 27 missiles were produced, i.e. more than 3 times less than in the “wild” 1990s, and 1 Tu-160, i.e. 7 times less than in the 1990s. “Thus, if in the 1990s the strategic potential inherited from the USSR, in general, was kept at the same level, then since 2000 it has been declining, taking on a landslide character. Moreover, the trends in the development of the situation should be recognized as clearly negative,” experts say.

At the same time, in the field of conventional weapons, as the report states, there is a significant (several times) decrease in purchase volumes compared to the period of the 1990s, disruption of state rearmament programs and degradation of the content of these programs themselves. Among the most striking discrepancies between official propaganda and the real state of affairs, the authors of the report cite the words of former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who said that Russia would increase the number of its strategic bombers to 50, although there are currently 79 units in service.

According to experts, the current state weapons program for the period 2006-2015 raises a lot of questions. The authors of the report believe that it is unclear what justifies the number and types of weapons and military equipment being purchased, as well as the feasibility of this program, given that all previous programs were disrupted.

In particular, it is unclear whether it will be possible to purchase the 1,400 T-90 tanks planned by this program (to implement the program for this class of weapons, the pace of purchases must be increased 6 times compared to the current one), why they are purchased in exactly this quantity (according to the above-mentioned CFE Treaty, only Russia may have 6,350 tanks west of the Urals), how feasible is the purchase of these particular tanks, which, according to experts, cannot be considered truly modern. Experts found similar bottlenecks in other parts of the program.

In particular, the authors of the report also find the situation with the adoption of a new attack helicopter to replace the Mi-24 extremely strange. Experts note that back in December 1987, the results of the competition were summed up, in which the Ka-50 defeated the Mi-28. In 1995, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the Ka-50 was put into service and produced in a series of 5 units. 2 helicopters of this type successfully participated in combat operations in Chechnya in 2001. However, in 2004 it was officially announced that the Mi-28 would enter service in the amount of 50 units. It remains unclear why such a decision was made and what determines the number of purchased vehicles (according to the CFE Treaty, the Russian Federation can have 855 attack helicopters just west of the Urals). It should be noted that so far not a single serial Mi-28 has been accepted for service, although the arrival of the first vehicles to the unit was reported in mid-2006.

The authors of the report also draw attention to problems in the Russian Navy. Experts state that, as in the 90s of the 20th century, the Navy’s most serious problem remains the lack of repairs for ships. Because of this, ships are being written off that could remain in service with the Navy for another 10-20 years. As an example, experts cite the Project 1144 nuclear-powered missile cruiser Admiral Nakhimov, which has enormous combat potential. It was put under renovation in 2001, which with sufficient funding could have been completed in 3-4 years. However, the ship is still undergoing repairs, which are hardly funded. Most likely, one of the best surface ships of the Russian Navy will be decommissioned in the near future, the authors of the report believe.

Analysts note that since 2000, the supply of new ships to the fleet has sharply decreased. 3 more units laid down during the USSR were completed: 1 submarine project 971 (“Cheetah”), 1 missile boat project 12411 and 1 minesweeper. At the same time, the SSN Project 949A “Kursk”, commissioned in 1995, was lost.

Of the ships laid down in the 1990s, 6 boats of Project 10410 and the submarine “St. Petersburg” were completed; in the last 2 years, 2 more submarines of this type were laid down. The submarine "St. Petersburg" is currently undergoing tests, which are being delayed due to serious technical problems. The Severodvinsk submarine has remained at the shipyard for 14 years. Judging by the statements of a number of Navy representatives, even if this boat is completed, it will remain in a single copy. In light of this fact, the bookmark 3 of the RPK SN Project 955 described above is especially surprising. The construction of missile boats requires the simultaneous construction of at least the same (optimally double) number of multi-purpose submarines to support the operations of the RPK SN. Given the absolute superiority of the US Navy over the Russian Navy in surface ships, the absence of multi-purpose submarines also makes the deployment of the RPK SN at sea in combat conditions impossible.

At the same time, experts note that in the post-Soviet period, the Russian military-industrial complex lost many technologies and entire generations of qualified personnel. These losses, analysts believe, are gradually becoming irreparable. The main factor that allowed the industry to survive (at least in part) was its reorientation to the foreign market and arms exports. This, however, had ambiguous strategic consequences, increasing the likelihood that military-industrial complex enterprises would lobby for the production of obsolete models not only for export, but also for the RF Armed Forces. At the same time, experts point out that at present practically no new types of weapons have been created, and the so-called newest developments were invented back in Soviet times. At the same time, there is a danger that after the creation of large military-industrial holdings, internal competition in the military-industrial complex will disappear, which can only exacerbate existing negative trends.

The professionalism and social security of the Russian army raises big questions

Analyzing the condition of the personnel of the RF Armed Forces, experts state that it is assessed as even more difficult and “unbreakable” (A.I. Solzhenitsyn) than the condition of weapons and military equipment. According to the authors of the report, the main problems in this area are the demotivation of military personnel (related, not least, to the significant restriction of the social rights of military personnel during the “blessed” period of Vladimir Putin’s reign) and their deprofessionalization.

As the report states, at present we have to note a very low level of training of the officer and general corps (including senior command personnel). In the Air Force, where the level of combat training can be clearly quantified (the number of flying hours), the situation is critical. Experts point out that the notorious Major Troyanov, who crashed on Lithuanian territory in September 2005 in a Su-27, had a year's flight time of 14 hours - he lost his course, largely due to a lack of flying practice. In general, the lack of flight practice has led to a sharp increase in aviation accident rates. There will soon not be a single sniper pilot in aviation, almost no 1st class pilots. In 10 years, only 3rd class pilots will remain, mostly aged 37-38 and older.

At the same time, as the report says, military science, without the generation of new ideas on the part of the military leadership, has gone into the wilderness. At the Combined Arms Academy (formerly the Frunze Academy) there are only 20 active colonels left - doctors of sciences who are still teaching. While up to 100 doctors of science worked here before 1991. In Moscow, almost 90% of students and teachers of military academies work during the day and at night in order to generate additional income.

According to expert estimates, about a third of military school graduates will take off their shoulder straps and use their diplomas outside the army. 83.3% of current lieutenants do not intend to serve until the age limit. Today, graduates of military departments of civilian universities (“two-year students”) come to the positions of junior officers. According to the military leadership itself, there are already up to 50% of them, officers called up from the reserve, in the troops, which indicates big problems in the personnel of the Armed Forces.

The report also notes that it is extremely difficult to judge the real scale and nature of combat training in the Russian Armed Forces. Official statistics on the number of exercises conducted are not made public; statements by officials only emphasize that it is constantly growing. If we talk about the exercises that were covered in the central media, most of them were, first of all, advertising campaigns. That is, it combined the maximum information effect with the minimum scale of the parts involved and unconvincing legends, the authors of the report believe.

At the same time, experts note the rapidly growing outflow of professional officers (graduates of military universities) from the Armed Forces and their replacement by officers called up from the reserves. Also, the current state of the Armed Forces, according to analysts, is characterized by the absence during the entire post-Soviet period of our history, including the widely publicized “Putin era,” of any systemic decisions on the transition to the professional principle of recruiting non-commissioned officers, the absence of which is one of the main reasons for the moral and legal decomposition of the grassroots army environment.

The report also draws attention to the disadvantaged position of the Armed Forces and army officers among other law enforcement agencies, which is manifested in the social and personnel policies of the state; the growth of property and social disproportions within the Armed Forces themselves.

According to analysts, even the most general statistical data allow us to adequately assess the state of the army’s social sphere, according to which 36% of military families are below the poverty line, 52% (!!!) of Russian officers work additionally, including 29% on a permanent basis ( mainly night watchmen, security guards, and employees of private security companies), 24% of officers are forced to have additional work to earn a living. In almost every fifth officer family, the main source of livelihood is the salary of the wife or another family member.

According to experts, the introduction of the contract principle of recruiting individual units, carried out in 2000-2007, did not lead to an improvement in the quality of personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Quite the opposite. The replacement of conscript recruitment with contract recruitment exacerbates one of the most unfavorable trends in the social development of the army: the tendency towards lumpenization of the Armed Forces.

The results of military development over the past 8 years are not encouraging

According to the authors of the report, in general, trends in the field of military development in the Russian Federation clearly indicate that in the foreseeable future the Russian Armed Forces will lose the ability to ensure the country’s security from external aggression. “Apparently, the process of degradation of the RF Armed Forces, which in essence remained a grandiose fragment of the Armed Forces of the lost USSR, has become irreversible. To change the current situation, it is necessary to create a new concept of military development, based on an assessment of real external threats to the Russian Federation. On its basis, new approaches to the formation of the management system and structure of the Armed Forces, military-technical policy, principles of service for personnel, and the organization of combat training should be formed. Based on this, military construction should be carried out in the Russian Federation. Unfortunately, the current political situation in the country does not give any reason to assume that such a concept will be created and implemented,” experts believe.

According to analysts, the military development of the past 8 years has de facto given priority to the development of infantry units over the development of units based on high-tech types of weapons (in particular, almost all “continuous readiness units” receiving priority funding are infantry units). There is reason to believe that in the near future the basis of the RF Armed Forces will be mercenary infantry, whose main task will be to fight not against external threats, but against its own people. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation risk acquiring exclusively police functions and becoming an integral part of the repressive apparatus.

As the report states, “military construction is inseparable from state building. This is doubly true for Russian history, in which the state of the army has traditionally been and remains one of the unmistakable indicators of the state of the state.” According to analysts, the best that has been done so far in the field of defense policy in post-Soviet Russia can be seen as an attempt to prevent and delay the final destruction of the USSR Armed Forces. More precisely, that part of them (by no means the best in all respects) that was inherited by the Russian Federation from the lost Soviet Empire.

“Military development in the proper sense of the word has not yet appeared on the Russian agenda. It is a task for the future, and for the near future, if we want to survive as a single country. Considering that the means and forms of warfare have changed noticeably over the past decades, and Russian society and the state are radically different from the Soviet ones, the ideology of future military development can hardly be formulated in terms of reforming/modernizing the remnants of the Soviet military legacy. We will have to talk about building “from scratch” new Armed Forces, adequate to the new stage of development of Russian statehood, as has happened more than once in Russian history,” the authors of the report believe.

The creation of new Armed Forces, which is the only possible and historically justified alternative to the process of “controlled dying” of the USSR Armed Forces, is possible only if a qualitatively new generation of statesmen comes to power in Russia. The fate of the Russian army depends entirely on probable, but not at all guaranteed, changes in the fate of the Russian government. In the fate of Russia itself.

We have no excessive grounds for historical optimism. But we still have the right and responsibility to hope, the report’s authors conclude.