Defense News

Some Russian defense news from June 8, 2012 . . .

Kremlin.ru and other sites noted several designers of the prefab or modular Voronezh BMEW radar have received a 2011 State Prize for Science and Technology.  The new system can be deployed 3-4 times faster, costs four times less to operate, and requires six times fewer personnel to service than the previous generation of radars, according to press reports.  TsAMTO carried the story as well as a review of the state of Voronezh deployments.

Izvestiya reported details on a consolidation of Russia’s munitions producers.  It’s been predicted for many months.  The country’s 56 producers will be reorganized into 5 holdings, with Bazalt, Pribor, and Mashinostroitel leading three of them.  A Bazalt rep basically admits the sector’s a mess, and it’ll take several years to organize the industry.

But Bloomberg and other media reported U.S. defense firms are actually looking to Rosoboroneksport for the purchase of munitions from Russian producers.

Topwar.ru carried an Interfaks story saying Delta IV-class SSBN Novomoskovsk is nearing the end of a modernization to extend its service life to 2021.  The sub went to sea for some trials last week.  It is, by the way, the newest of the class.  Zvezdochka is also working on Verkhoturye, and both SSBNs will reportedly return to service by the end of 2012.  See this earlier-posted related item.

RIAN reported an OSK source claims the Navy will buy up to ten support ships per year starting in 2013 to rebuild Russia’s naval auxiliary fleet.

General Staff Chief Nikolay Makarov addressed the possibility of Finland joining NATO while in Helsinki.  He said this threatens Russia’s security.  But there were Western news service reports saying he said Finland’s military cooperation with NATO by itself is a threat to Moscow.  Voice of Russia covered the negative reactions of Finnish politicians as well as Russian commentators pointing out that the general’s view on another possible broadening of NATO is understandable.  VPK.name highlighted the story.

NVO interviewed new Ground Troops CINC, General-Colonel Vladimir Chirkin on his plans for army acquisition.  Chirkin said UAVs, reconnaissance systems like Strelets, Rys armored vehicles, S-300V4, Buk-M3, Tor-M2, and Verba SAMs, Iskander-M, Tornado-G (S), Msta-S, and Khrizantema-S missile and artillery systems, comms equipment, T-72B1(2), and BTR-82A will be procured out to 2015.  RIAN carried the abridged version.

Meeting on Gogolevskiy Boulevard

Protesters and Placards (photo: KPRF.ru)

Thursday about 50 military men gathered near Gogol’s statue in the park across from the Defense Ministry to protest the closure of the Air Forces Academy named for Professor N. Ye. Zhukovskiy and Yu. A. Gagarin. 

These largely middle-aged protesters held placards saying ”Air Forces CINC Zelin is the Gravedigger of Air Forces Academies!” or ”Prime Minister:  Get Rid of Defense Minister Serdyukov!” or ”General Bychkov is a Traitor to VVA Gagarin and VVIA Zhukovskiy!”

 

Recall the Zhukovskiy and Gagarin academies — the former for engineers, the latter for pilots and staff officers — were melded in 2008 in the latest and most painful drawdown of an enormous leftover Soviet-era military educational establishment. 

 

The functions of these mid-career academies are being transferred to the new, consolidated Air Forces Military Training-Scientific Center (VUNTs VVS) in Voronezh.

 

The KPRF organized the protest, and it said about 100 attended.  KPRF.ru and Nakanune.ru recapped the event.

 

KPRF Duma member Vyacheslav Tetekin told Novyy region destroying these academies damages VVS combat readiness since the majority of their 1,600 (perhaps not much lower than the total number of flyable VVS aircraft) instructors and professors won’t go to Voronezh to train future senior officers.

Tetekin argued there are already protests against aircraft noise in Voronezh, and he’ll ask fellow KPRF member and Duma Defense Committee chairman Vladimir Komoyedov to address the prime minister and president on the fate of Zhukovskiy and Gagarin.

Apparently now retired, General-Lieutenant Ivan Naydenov – a former deputy chief of the academy — claimed Defense Minister Serdyukov just wants the institution’s valuable real estate.  Naydenov said only 29 younger instructors have gone to Voronezh.  He put the total staff at only 700, in contrast to Tetekin’s 1,600.

Naydenov has recorded and posted this appeal to save VVA im. Gagarin.

No one will mistake this little event on Gogolevskiy for what took place on Bolotnaya or Sakharov Square.  Nor will anyone confuse the characters in this drama with demonstrators against Duma election fraud.  Or a scarcely-noticed gathering of older military men with the resonance of the first large-scale political protest in years. 

Nevertheless, older Russian officers have taken to picketing about their grievances more frequently of late.  The personal toll in their situation is lamentable.  But cuts and consolidations Serdyukov has made in Russian military education were very deep and difficult simply because they were so long overdue.

Without a doubt, some of those choosing dismissal over moving will add to the queue for military apartments in Moscow and its suburbs.

The Sound of Managed Democracy?

The classic dilemma of civil-military relations . . . is jet noise the sound of freedom – or in this case, of managed democracy?

Or is jet noise a dangerous nuisance?

Last Sunday, Svpressa.ru ran an article on complaints about a major expansion of Baltimor Air Base on the outskirts of Voronezh.  Baltimor also goes by the name Voronezh-B.  This is just the most recent article on local concerns about Baltimor.  Novaya gazeta published on the situation in the middle of last year.

By year’s end, Baltimor is supposed to be Russia’s largest air base, with 200 aircraft, according to Svpressa.  A second, 3,500-meter runway is being built there to accommodate all aircraft types.  Takeoffs and landings at Baltimor occur just a few hundred meters away from apartment blocks.  Residents expect the jet noise to double along with the number of aircraft.  Here’s a video of local aircraft operations.  And another. 

Svpressa notes the air base was used little after 1990, except for spikes during the Chechen wars.  And from about 4 years ago, it was all but abandoned, overgrown, and broken down.  At the same time,  apartment construction grew outward toward the base.

The resumption and expansion of activity at Baltimor put nearby residents into action.  They believe, with 200 aircraft, flights will be virtually constant.  And a former serviceman told Svpressa he expects the base to have 200 flight days (and nights) a year, with as many as 10 aircraft up simultaneously.

Not surprisingly, residents worry about crashes, about fuel and munitions storage depots, about airport-level noise and vibration, and its effect on young children and infants.  Svpressa reprints their long petition to Voronezh officials asking who and how the air base’s expansion was approved:

“How was such a document signed?  Who was responsible for preparing it?  Why is the population’s opinion supplanted by the conclusions of some ‘experts’ and the silent consent of the oblast administration?”

The website also publishes Air Forces CINC Aleksandr Zelin’s answer.  He asserts they illegally built too close to the airfield, and emphasizes the state’s interest in expanding an existing air base rather than building a new one for “several billion rubles.”

The case of Baltimor Air Base is interesting in its own right, but it’s significant on two other levels.

On the first, the Baltimor situation is evolving in the context of debate over the Air Forces’ force structure and base structure.

Defense Minister Serdyukov’s major reforms pointed immediately at concentrating the Air Forces at fewer bases.  The exact number, however, has shifted constantly downward from 55 at first.  Recall at the 1 April Security Council session on the aviation sector, Medvedev told ministers and officials:

“Now the airfield network of military aviation does not correspond to the basing requirements of aviation groupings.  At the Defense Ministry collegium which took place recently [18 March], I gave orders to establish several large air bases.  Taking into account the deployment of troops, they will be situated on the main strategic axes.”

At the collegium, Serdyukov in fact announced, instead of 33 air bases, there will be eight army aviation bases subordinate to the four military districts / OSKs, and the number of aircraft at each will increase 2.5 or 3 times.  Of course, saying that and getting to that point are two different things entirely. 

Gazeta.ru printed a nice summary of the VVS ground infrastructure issue.  It concluded fewer bases would make things cheaper, but also easier for a potential enemy.  It said a similar effort to resubordinate air and air defense forces to MD commanders in the early 1980s failed.  Rossiyskaya gazeta said experts think the number of air bases should be different for different MDs, as should the mix of aircraft.

It seems, for economic reasons, these large air bases will be picked from the list of existing ones, they won’t necessarily take advantage of vast swaths of unpopulated territory, and they’re likely to irritate the civilian population.

Abandoning old bases and airfields leads to another, longstanding but growing problem of late – the archipelago of unneeded garrisons and military towns.  The Defense Ministry would like to shuffle them off to someone else’s responsibility, and resettling retired military, dependents, and civilian workers elsewhere has been problematic.  BRAC-like processes are especially painful in Russia. 

On the second level, Baltimor could become politically and socially significant.  It’s rare in Russia these days for a military problem to have that kind of potential.  

If politicians ignore or downplay what the locals feel is their basic right to health and environmental protection for the sake of an intangible state interest, there’s a chance Baltimor could become a more serious regional, or even national, issue.  Especially if similar circumstances arise in other cities.

This may seem a stretch, but remember ordinary Russians tend to be galvanized by the local impact of things like auto import tariffs, immigration, building roads through forests, etc.  And concern about the impact of air bases would come on top of other civil-military issues.

In Chelyabinsk, and several other places, the locals are protesting explosive ammunition destruction that is rocking parts of their cities.  Prosecutors already found that the military lied about the size and power of demolition activities not far from Chelyabinsk.  Chelyabinsk residents are also angry about overflights of the city from nearby military airfields.

Air Forces News

A couple Air Forces items of interest today . . . .

A major live-fire exercise is taking place in the Far East today and tomorrow.  According to RIA Novosti, about 20 aircraft from the Far East Air Forces and Air Defense Army will fire more than 30 air-to-air missiles over the ‘Endurance Bay’ range on Sakhalin Island. 

A Defense Ministry spokesman said the aircraft are Dzemgi-based Su-27 fighters, and they’ll perform both day and night firings.  He emphasized that junior pilots will participate in the exercise.

There’s no readily available indication of the last time the Russian Air Forces conducted live-fire air-to-air training on this scale, so one presumes it’s been a while. 

Visiting Voronezh today, Air Forces CINC, General-Colonel Zelin said the city’s air base — soon to be one of Russia’s largest — will get four Su-34 bombers by year’s end.  The air base will be a first rank one, with 100 or more aircraft.

RIA Novosti reports the base’s expansion isn’t making nearby residents happy.  Those who object to it say its noise exceeds permissible levels, and causes headaches and sleeplessness.

On the Su-34s, Zelin said:

“I was recently at Novosibirsk aircraft plant.  One aircraft was already in flight test status.  The remainder are already in final assembly.”

Putin’s Voronezh Trip and Military C3

It takes a while to digest the press devoted to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s 18 January trip to Voronezh and Sozvezdiye, or the state-owned communications conglomerate based on the Voronezh Scientific-Research Institute of Military Communications.  Sozvezdiye is the holding which encompasses 16 other enterprises involved in C3, radio, and electronics.

Watch this NTV coverage of Putin at Sozvezdiye.

Sozvezdiye had a big demo set up outside for Putin.  But as the video shows, Putin was wearing his supremely bored look.  Moskovskiy komsomolets picked up on this, noting that Putin gave a cursory look at everything, and inside the display tent, he apparently picked up the mic on a video link system and tried to use it, but the soldier on the other end couldn’t hear the Prime Minister.

The Voronezh trip was the latest in a series of meetings on the state of the OPK.  Putin started by stating the obvious, noting that C3I is a decisive factor in the combat capability of a modern army, and a precondition for the use of highly accurate weapons.  He said it’s difficult to imagine an effective transition to a modern organizational structure without the right C3.  He called C3 a key priority for defense and noted that significant budget money will be spent on them.

Putin proceeded to chide his C3 producer audience, saying that Russia can’t modernize what it’s got; it needs an entirely new generation of systems.  He said C3 producers suffered from poor leadership, organization, and coordination of efforts.  Finally, he had to admit that they basically ignored his 2000 presidential decree on development of a new C3 system.

Specifically, Putin said:

“…we need not only to conduct a fundamental modernization of existing complexes and systems.  We have to say plainly that they unfortunately have already aged greatly.  And become obsolete, and even their technical condition often leaves much to be desired.  Therefore our focus for the coming years is to give the troops new generation equipment, to take a qualitative step forward.  It is precisely on this that I ask you to focus.”

“Our enterprises have a good scientific-technical pool for resolving this task, we need to use it wisely.”

Noting that dozens of OPK organizations work on C3I, he said:

“I ask that you turn attention to precise coordination of their activity, and also concentrate on working out agreed approaches and requirements for product development.”

“Besides this, I would like to turn attention to this, to this time a number of decisions adopted earlier have not been carried out.  So, to the present day, a general designer for development of an automated C2 system for the armed forces has not been appointed.  An integrated structure which would develop and implement a unified scientific-technical policy in this sphere has not been formed.  A special comprehensive program which would allow us to concentrate resources, to reduce and to optimize, to increase the effectiveness of budget expenditures has not been developed.”

Find the text of Putin’s address here.

Different media outlets reached the same conclusion about Putin’s Sozvezdiye visit and whether his words can fix the OPK’s problems and increase the sluggish pace of military modernization.  Segodnya.ru concluded:

“…the fact that Vladimir Putin directly participates in the problem of modernizing the technical outfitting of the army and promises to give the troops new generation equipment in coming years, inspires some optimisim.  Although the sensation remains that loud pronouncements about modernization traditionally hang in the air.”

Writing in Nezavisimaya gazeta, Viktor Myasnikov called it Putin’s “latest attempt to mobilize the military-industrial complex to equip the armed forces with quality modern products.”  Making note of Putin’s exhortations to the C3 producers, Tribuna said, “We’d like to believe they heard him.”  Newsru.com summed it up simply, Putin demanded that they modernize C3, but how to do it is not clear to anyone.

What exactly did Putin order in 2000?  According to Denis Telmanov writing for Gzt.ru before the Voronezh visit, Putin ordered the development of the Unified Tactical Level Command and Control System [ЕСУ ТЗ or YeSU TZ]. 

What’s it supposed to do?  It is supposed to be a large part of a system tying the armed forces together in one modern C2 network, and enabling them operate in a netcentric fashion.  Several media items reported that the Defense Ministry believes YeSU TZ will provide 2 or 3 times the capability of its predecessor. 

Tribuna noted that the Russians have the individual pieces of equipment, bought with a considerable allocation of money, but they haven’t managed to pull them together into one, integrated and modern C2 system.  According to Segodnya.ru, experts believe only Russia’s strategic forces possess a functioning, albeit increasingly obsolete, C2 system.  The armed services and branches, MDs, fleets, and armies have local automated C2 that isn’t necessarily integrated or compatible with other commands.

At the operational-tactical (battalion-brigade) level, Russia has reportedly fallen 20 years behind Western armies in C2.

Testing of YeSU TZ began in 2006 and continues.  In December, troops at Alabino used the equipment in a battalion tactical exercise.  But Telmanov concludes the military is in no hurry to adopt the system because it’s problem plagued and has obsolete elements.  It’s also hard to integrate with the army’s old comms gear. 

Izvestiya on 20 January reported that the system may be too complex for soldiers and sergeants, but even for some officers.  Myasnikov noted that the equipment suffered a lot of breakdowns at Alabino. 

But Sozvezdiye denies the criticism, saying YeSU TZ is reliable and no more difficult to use than a mobile phone.

Nikolay Khorunzhiy writing in Vremya novostey had said back in November that the Akatsiya system was tested during Kavkaz-2009 but could not be fully employed because operator training was deficient.  Combat situation data had to be input by hand and orders sent out by voice radio, defeating the purpose of automation.  Myasnikov also wrote that Akatsiya isn’t working out.

A little nomenclature is in order here.  It’s difficult to square all the press, but it seems Akatsiya is a name for YeSU TZ, but it’s also known by the name Sozvezdiye, a little confusing since this is the C3 production conglomerate’s name as well.  Apparently, Akatsiya is either based on or relies on the Akveduk satellite radio [?] system as one of its component parts.  These in turn evolved out of Polet-K and Manevr before them.  A couple press pieces said one problem with the system is what was basically a radio comms enterprise was put in charge of the broader C2 system effort which required other expertise as well.

A few other issues from the Voronezh visit bear mentioning…

Many press items cited the 2008 five-day war with Georgia as putting attention on C3 weaknesses.  Vremya novostey recalled the image of a wounded 58th Army commander, the recently dismissed, Khrulev borrowing a satellite phone from a journalist to communicate with Moscow.  Several papers cited a Sozvezdiye deputy director saying the holding ‘got raked over the coals’ for South Ossetia and Abkhazia.  He noted that Georgian forces used Harris equipment from the U.S. and it was better than Russian analogues in a number of ways.

Regarding this technological lag, there’s some dispute.  Moskovskiy komsomolets indicated Putin was told “we’ve approached NATO standards” in computerized C2.  Izvestiya, however, cited an industry source saying that there’s no appreciable lag between Russian and U.S. and Israeli systems.

Nezavisimaya gazeta and Izvestiya tackled the cost issue.  First Deputy Sozvezdiye Director Vasiliy Borisov was widely quoted to the effect that equipping one brigade with the new C2 system will cost 8 billion rubles.  Nezavisimaya multiplied this by 85 ‘new profile’ brigades for a price of 680 billion rubles, or when higher echelons have to outfitted as well, the total cost is probably more like 1 trillion rubles, or the price of one complete year of the State Defense Order (GOZ).  Izvestiya quoted Borisov saying the price to outfit a company commander would be 150,000 rubles, and 50,000 for individual soldiers.  The paper concluded that the new equipment won’t be replacing mobile phones any time soon at these prices.

Nezavisimaya also noted that one can’t do C2 properly without the right navigation system, and GLONASS is not up to the job.  It cited 17 operational GLONASS satellites, but press services today noted that 18 are now functioning.  Still, not enough.  Nezavisimaya compares work on C2 to Bulava and GLONASS–other military programs that defense industry is having a hard time bringing to fruition.  Tribuna makes the same point that a fully functioning and reliable GLONASS system is a ‘sine qua non’ for effective C2.