When we say "navy", we must understand that, in addition to people and ships, in addition to naval bases, aircraft, airfields, military schools and much more, it is also (in theory) a combat control system. Headquarters, commanders, communications centers and the system of subordination of ships, units and subunits to the headquarters of formations and formations and, at a higher level, to the high military command.
A properly built command and control system is not only an integral part of any organized military force, but also its "backbone" - the basis around which this military force is built.
The Russian Navy is one of the three branches of the RF Armed Forces, and, again, in theory, this branch of the armed forces should have its own combat command and control system. As long as we allow the formation of inter-naval groupings (for example, in the Mediterranean Sea) or the independent performance of combat missions by the fleet (for example, somewhere in the Caribbean), then it is necessary to provide such type of armed forces as the fleet with full-fledged military control.
And here a person who does not wear a navy uniform is in for a surprise, as is usually the case with us in naval affairs - an unpleasant one.
There is no system of combat control of the fleet. There is no single command capable of correctly and competently linking the actions of the fleets with each other and with naval groupings deployed somewhere far from the shores of Russia. In general, there is no fleet as a single organism.
Who is the Pacific Fleet subordinate to? To the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy? No. He is subordinate to the commander of the Eastern Military District, Lieutenant General Gennady Valerievich Zhidko, a graduate of the Tashkent Higher Tank Command Military School, who has served all his life in the ground forces. How so? And the Pacific Fleet is part of the Eastern Military District and receives orders in a "regular" mode from the district headquarters.
And the Black Sea Fleet? And he, with the Caspian Flotilla, is part of the Southern Military District, headed by Lieutenant General Mikhail Yuryevich Teplinsky, a paratrooper.
And what about the Baltic? Lieutenant General Viktor Borisovich Astapov, also a paratrooper.
And the North? And the Northern Fleet - lo and behold - itself is a military district, the presence of army units that have nothing to do with the fleet at all. So, for example, the 14th Army Corps of two motorized rifle brigades with a total strength of five thousand people, the 45th Air Force and Air Defense Army, naval formations and much more are subordinated to the fleet, and all this is commanded by Admiral Nikolai Anatolyevich Evmenov.
Questions, as they say, are asking. There is no doubt that Lieutenant General Zhidko knows how to conduct an offensive with several tank and motorized rifle divisions. There is no doubt that Lieutenant General Teplinsky is able to perform the widest range of military tasks - from an army offensive operation to throwing grenades at a machine-gun crew. After all, this is one of those people who, without bragging rights, can say something like "Rambo, if he was real, would be a puppy compared to me," and that would be true.
But can they set tasks for those naval formations that are subordinate to them? Do they understand both the capabilities of the Navy and the limits of those capabilities? On the other hand, is Admiral Evmenov able to assess the plan for the defense or offensive of the 14th corps?
Historical experience suggests that army men are not in a position to command fleets and that admirals are not suited to land commanders. There have been precedents in our history more than once and ended badly.
The last example of a major war, before which a lot of mistakes were made in the management of the fleet and the organization of its combat training, and during which the fleets were subordinate to the ground commanders, was the Great Patriotic War. We know the results today.
From book “The main headquarters of the Navy: history and modernity. 1696-1997 , edited by Admiral Kuroedov:
… quite often the responsible employees of the General Staff did not even imagine the operational capabilities of the fleets and did not know how to correctly use their forces, taking into account only the obvious capabilities of the fleet forces to provide direct fire support to the ground forces (the number of barrels of naval and coastal artillery, the number of serviceable bombers, attack aircraft and fighters).
This was natural, and it was natural not only for the General Staff, but also for the headquarters of the fronts, to which the fleets were subordinate in that war until 1944. Nobody has ever taught ground officers to command fleets and conduct naval operations, and without this it is impossible to correctly set tasks for the fleet. The experience of the Great Patriotic War tells us that if the fleet had a more competent leadership, it could have achieved more for the country.
Land and naval warfare are very different (although the same mathematical apparatus is used in the analysis or planning of battles and operations).
Two decisions for a battle of two commanders of two motorized rifle divisions advancing on tank-accessible terrain will be similar to each other.
And every naval battle, every attack by naval aviation or combat operation of submarine forces is unique. At sea, completely different approaches to camouflage are used - there is no terrain in which to hide. At sea, the very approach to planning naval operations looks fundamentally different - for example, at the tactical level, the only way a ship can inflict losses on the enemy is by attack. Defense at sea at the tactical level is impossible - a submarine cannot dig in and fire from cover, like a surface ship.
The operation of the naval forces can be defensive, but in any case they will have to attack the enemy, attack, solve the defensive task by offensive methods.
The issue of combat losses also looks completely different. A motorized rifle battalion destroyed in battle can be withdrawn to the rear for re-formation and replenishment. You can replenish it with marching reinforcements or at the expense of soldiers from the rear units, in a day - two to repair most of the equipment pulled from the battlefield and restore combat effectiveness.
The ship is lost completely and forever, then you cannot "win back" it, get it from storage bases (mostly), restore it to a combat-ready state in a couple of nights. It simply sinks and that's it, and from that moment on, the power of the naval formation decreases and is no longer restored until the hostilities stop and a new ship is built.
The same applies to replenishment of losses in personnel. An infantryman can, if he is pressed, be trained in a month and thrown into battle, but a torpedo operator cannot, and an electrician and acoustics are not allowed. And this requires a different approach to saving energy. In a naval war, losses are until the end of hostilities.
Even the medicine in the navy is special, for example, a military doctor working in a ground hospital is unlikely to ever see the so-called. "Deck fracture".
There are 31 tanks in a tank battalion, and in the correct version they are the same tanks. In a naval strike group, there may not be a single identical ship, all ships may have serious differences in the technical part and the requirements for planning a combat operation arising from this. In a ground battle, you can remove a tank or a platoon from the battle to get ammunition, at sea this is unscientific fantasy. The same Su-30SM in the Aerospace Forces and in the naval assault aviation requires different crews with different training. The differences are in everything.
THE PRICE OF THE MISTAKE AT SEA IS COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than on land. If the target is incorrectly classified, the entire ammunition load of the ship's anti-ship missile or formation can go to decoys, and most importantly, to other decoys (for example, MALD), the entire ammunition load of the missile defense system can go. The consequences are obvious.
War at sea is different in that you can lose EVERYTHING in it because of one single mistake of one person. Everything, the entire fleet, all the country's capabilities to protect itself from an attack from the sea. Even a nuclear strike on a motorized rifle regiment is not capable of completely depriving it of its combat effectiveness, if the personnel are ready to act in such conditions.
And at sea, having made one wrong decision, or right, but belated, you can lose everything. You can lose the whole war at once. And then there won't be a single chance to fix something
All this requires special knowledge from the military personnel of the command structures, and an understanding of how all this is arranged in the Navy. But we know that it is in such a volume that they are simply not given to ground officers. Nowhere.
Could a tanker plan a submarine raid near an array of low-frequency hydrophones somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska? This is a rhetorical question in fact, but, what is worse, the tanker will not be able to evaluate the practical feasibility of other people's plans, he will not be able to understand his subordinate in naval uniform, and to distinguish a good and implemented plan from a bad and delusional one.
Of course, for some reason, it is possible to introduce double subordination, when both the Main Command and the General Staff of the Navy will also be able to contribute to the planning of combat operations, but now the Main Command of the Navy is a purely administrative body and the fact that the admirals want to drive more forces and means to the Main Naval Parade than for strategic exercises, is very indicative - they also want to control something.
How did this all become possible?
The reasons are described by the expression "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." Here is exactly the case.
Russia is a unique geopolitical entity - our country has four fleets and one flotilla in unrelated theaters of military operations, a high level of threat from sea areas, and at the same time a huge land border with neighbors, some of which are in dire need of training.
At the same time, depending on the type of military conflict, Russia will either have to start independent actions with the forces of the fleets, or vice versa, subordinate both the fleets and the rest of the troops to a certain single headquarters, for which the headquarters of the districts are now trying to pass off. And the system of combat control of fleets should easily allow the transition from one scheme to another.
Are we waging the same war as the Second World War or are we recapturing the Kuril Islands from Japan? Then our fleet and the forces of the military district are fighting under a single command. Are we conducting an extensive anti-submarine operation in the Pacific against the United States in a threatened period? Then the district is not involved here, the Main Command and the General Staff of the Navy directly control the fleets. The transition from one "mode" to another should be very simple and well worked out.
In the middle of the 2000s, an attempt was made to create such a universal control system. It was then that the Chief of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, General Yuri Baluyevsky, proposed dismantling the archaic system of the Military Districts in the RF Armed Forces, which had become obsolete at that time, and replace it with the Operational-Strategic Command - USC.
A feature of Baluyevsky's ideas was that the USC in his understanding were purely staff structures, responsible only for the combat control of interspecific groupings. These were not administrative bodies, which included economic divisions, a mass of service units and had permanent administrative boundaries on the territory of the Russian Federation. These were "mixed" interspecific headquarters, not burdened with administrative tasks, responsible for "their" future theater of operations and used only in wartime to solve problems in their area of responsibility. At the same time, in different conditions, they could be allocated a different number of forces and means, including large formations and associations. The entire administrative part and economic management had to be taken out of the brackets and work according to a separate scheme.
If it was necessary to provide a unified command of both the fleet and the forces of the ground forces, such a headquarters would be able to simultaneously command both a separate fleet (or part of it) and air and ground forces. At the same time, the composition of the units subordinate to the USC, and the time during which they would be subordinate to the USC, would depend on the problem being solved and would not be a constant.
Such a scheme was very much reminiscent of how the command and control of troops in the United States was organized.
The first attempts to experiment with such command and control bodies turned out to be unsuccessful, but, frankly, due to a lack of experience in managing interspecific groups, and not because of the initial perversity of the idea. The idea had to be brought to a working implementation, but instead in the summer of 2008, Baluyevsky was fired from the post of the NSH. According to some versions, as a result of intrigues on the part of the commanders of the districts, from whom the reform, according to his plans, would take everything. However, these may be nothing more than rumors.
General Nikolai Makarov, who replaced Baluyevsky, however, continued to "push" the idea of the USC within the framework of the extensive reform of the combat command and control of the RF Armed Forces carried out under his leadership. But it turned out to be implemented completely differently than it was planned under Baluyevsky.
According to Makarov, the districts were simply enlarged and received the status of the USC in parallel with their old status of the military district. And, most importantly, the fleets located “on their” territory were also brought under the control of these USC districts. This was motivated by the fact that the commander of the USC, in whose hands all the forces and assets in the theater of operations, would be able to manage them more effectively than if he had only his own ground forces and part of the aviation. In addition, the new system of combat control was presented to the top political leadership as less cumbersome, where all issues of combat control were "left" under the General Staff, and issues of combat training and material and technical equipment in peacetime remained with the command of the Armed Forces (including the High Command Navy). It was believed that such changes in command structures were some form of "optimization" (and in fact - reduction of "extra" personnel) of the latter.
This is how the first and main step was made towards the de facto elimination of a single service of the Armed Forces - the Navy, and its transformation into a kind of "naval units of the ground forces."
Makarov's ideas quickly found support from Anatoly Serdyukov, who became Defense Minister, who apparently saw this as an opportunity to reduce the parallel command structures of the fleet and ground forces, which performed similar or identical tasks, but within the framework of “their own” type of the Armed Forces.
And the reorganization began. In 2010, the formation of military districts of a new type began - operational strategic commands, at the same time the subordination of these associations and fleets began. In the western direction, due to various conditions and threats in the Baltic direction and in the Arctic, it was not immediately possible to form effective USCs, and we had to go to the organizational and staff structure that is now taking place by trial and error, sometimes tragicomic.
It didn't work out with optimization - so many administrative tasks fell on the headquarters of the USC districts that, on the contrary, they turned into inert and clumsy monsters, hardly able to quickly respond to changes in the situation, but bogged down in essentially non-military issues "head over heels".
One way or another, but at the moment when the fleets were subordinated to the army headquarters, the existence of a single type of the Armed Forces - the Navy, had already been "called into question."
Let's imagine an example: by the nature of the radio exchange and based on the analysis of the current situation, the intelligence of the Navy understands that the enemy is going to concentrate a reinforced group of submarines against the forces of the Russian Federation in the Pacific region, with the probable task of being ready to sever sea communications between Primorye, on the one hand, and Kamchatka. and Chukotka on the other.
An emergency solution could be a maneuver by anti-submarine aviation forces from other fleets … but now, first, it is necessary for the officers of the ground forces from the General Staff to correctly assess the information from the Navy, to believe in it, so that the Marine Section of the General Staff confirms the conclusions made by the command of the Navy, so that from the paratroopers, military intelligence also came to the same conclusions so that the arguments of some of the district commanders, fearing that enemy submarines in his theater of operations would start sinking “his” MRK and BDK (and he would be responsible for them later), would not turn out to be stronger, and only then, through the General Staff, this or that USC district will receive an order to "give" its aircraft to its neighbors. There can be many failures in this chain, each of which will lead to the loss of one of the most valuable resources in the war - time. And sometimes lead to non-fulfillment of actions that are vital for the defense of the country.
It was here that the main striking force in the oceanic directions was lost, and not only the Navy, but the RF Armed Forces as a whole - the Naval Missile Aviation of the Navy. She, as a branch of the military, capable of maneuvering between theaters of operations, and for this reason, the proper central subordination simply did not find a place in the new system. Aircraft and pilots went to the Air Force, over time, the main tasks shifted to striking ground targets with bombs, which is logical for the Air Force. Here are just to urgently "get" a large naval strike group of the enemy in the sea today there is nothing.
And we do not consider such a human factor as tyranny, when a land commander vested with power will voluntarily give the sailors impossible suicidal orders, and then also plan the actions of the ground forces based on the fact that these orders will be carried out. However, the option with a tyrant admiral in the Northern Fleet, foolishly sending infantry to certain death, is no better. The system in which districts and fleets are brought together in monstrous associations makes such things possible, unfortunately, even encourages them to happen.
Something is already happening. The video below shows the Pacific Fleet Marine Corps exercise on the territory of the abandoned Bechevinskaya Bay in Kamchatka, where there used to be a small naval base, but now there are bears. We look.
As you can see, the reform did not lead to a particular increase in combat effectiveness. The Marines are tearing trenches at the very edge of the coast (they will be destroyed by fire from the sea from a safe distance), trying to destroy sea targets from land ATGMs (this trick does not work over water), shoot cannons and MLRS "Grad" at surface targets (a classic of the genre - battle between the Libyan MLRS and HMS Liverpool in 2011 - "Grads" were mixed with the ground by the fire of a 114-mm cannon. Shooting at ships is difficult). Should the Marine Corps defend the coast in this way, and by the time the first enemy units land on the water's edge, there will be no living people among the defenders. But the advancing "pleases" no less - disembarkation from a rescue ship on motorboats revives the Great Patriotic War in the memory, but the power of the enemy's weapons is now different, however, the landing of an airborne assault from an anti-submarine helicopter on the coastline is a phenomenon of the same order. One "buried" 40-mm AGS Mk.19 with a crew capable of shooting from a closed position and a supply of belts, and a couple of machine guns to cover it - and we will have our own Omaha Beach. In general, a real enemy would have killed all the defenders, but none of those landing on the "beach" would have slipped through alive. But in this case, elite personnel without discounts, people in whose training wild funds have been invested, and who, with proper use, together would be worth a division of “simpler” soldiers, are taken out “at the expense” in this case. It turns out that no "integration" of the fleet into the ground forces has raised the combat effectiveness of either the fleet itself or the marines.
Geographical assignment of territories to one or another command also raises questions.
We look at the map.
The Novosibirsk Islands are part of the Severny Flot OSK. But to the territory belonging to the Eastern Military District 60 kilometers from them, and to the nearest territory belonging to the Northern Fleet (sounds like an oxymoron, but that's how we have it) as much as 1100. Does it look like anything?
Let us turn again to the book mentioned above, edited by ex-Commander-in-Chief Kuroedov:
Sometimes there were incidents similar to what took place in 1941 on the Moonsund Islands, when the troops defending on the island. Ezel, by order of the General Staff were subordinated to one front, and on about. Dago is different.
And how to interact in such conditions? Based on the goodwill of commanders of all levels?
But the "brilliant" idea to integrate fleets and districts was not the last nail in the coffin of the Navy as a single type of armed forces.
The second blow was initiated by A. E. Serdyukov, the General Staff of the Navy moved to St. Petersburg.
This decision did as much harm as no sabotage would have done. Do not indiscriminately hang all the dogs on A. E. Serdyukov, for all the contradictory nature of his actions, it is impossible to define them all as unambiguously harmful, he did a lot of useful things, but in the case of the relocation of the command structures of the fleet, everything is unambiguous - it was a purely malicious decision.
We will not go into details, they are sufficiently highlighted in the media and on "specialized" forums, let us dwell on the main thing - when the General Staff of the Navy was "moved" to St. fleet could be carried out on a global scale with the receipt of intelligence in real time. An uninitiated person simply cannot imagine how huge and complex the complex was behind these three letters, both technically and organizationally complex. The transfer of the General Staff of the Navy to St. Petersburg left the TsKP unclaimed - apart from the General Staff, it lost its functionality. And then there was a simple one-move. From November 1, 2011, the command and control of ALL Navy forces was transferred to the command post of the General Staff, and the technical equipment of the Central Command Center and the staff were "optimized", and everything - control remained under the General Staff, within the framework of the new Central Command Center of the RF Armed Forces, a single command post that controls all types of the RF Armed Forces and military branches of central subordination, except for the Strategic Missile Forces, whose command and control system remained intact (and thank God).
And this despite the fact that the new unified Central Command Center of the RF Armed Forces, organized under the auspices of the General Staff, does not have equal opportunities for managing fleets with the old Central Command Center of the Navy. Personnel too.
Thus, following the "pulling" of the Navy across the USC districts, the unified control system was also eliminated, which in fact deprived the fleet of competent control, and turned the Main Command into a strictly rear organ, which had nothing to do with the Navy command.
It is not hard to guess that when "they come for us", the whole system will tumble down like a house of cards. We had it already, on a different technical level, during the Great Patriotic War. And then the fleet, though played an important role, but not even close to realizing his potential. The system didn't work as it should. But we fought with the enemy who "came for us" by land. Now everything will be different.
What do we have to do? Instead of breeding tank-sea monsters, with economic departments forced to cover an area slightly smaller than the area of Australia and an area of responsibility from Krasnoyarsk to Seattle, we must return to the original idea of the USC as a purely military interspecific headquarters, which would be subordinate to those associations and formations, which are needed "here and now" to solve a specific military task.
Let the fleet be a fleet with its own full-fledged and not castrated system of combat control, with the High Command, which is the High Command, and not a reserve of future retirees and a sinecure for making money, whose role in military management is limited to parades and holidays, and tasks - logistical support and the purchase of weapons and other material resources.
And let the district be what it should be - the "preparation" of the front or the army group, as was the case during the Great Patriotic War. And let the USC be the headquarters used only when necessary. We are conducting a joint operation by the army, navy and the Aerospace Forces - all forces in the region go under the USC, which ensures the unity of command. The fleet is fighting for the safety of communications, and in this case there is no need for any USC, the Navy is able (should be) to solve such problems independently, by forces of both formations of surface ships and submarines, and naval aviation.
Such a system will be much more flexible.
And it will not break the management of the branches of the armed forces, like the current one. It can represent the Aerospace Forces, the Navy, and ground forces. USC officers should rotate in peacetime, coming to it from the Navy, Aerospace Forces, district headquarters, and returning back after some time - this will allow for a good understanding between the USC and those associations that may be included in its composition. And the commander of the USC can be appointed "under the task." We are talking about repelling an enemy air offensive operation - and our commander from the Aerospace Forces, and the General Staff sends him additional aviation units to reinforce. Is there a threat from the sea? We put the commander of the admiral. Are we moving our mechanized legions into the very heart of the enemy on the ground? A general in a green uniform takes over the post. Everything is logical and correct. Such a headquarters, even from a theater of operations, can be taken away if it is not needed there and to strengthen a dangerous direction for them - headquarters in a war, oh, how much they need, especially "cobbled together" and experienced.
But for this, someone should not be afraid to undo the previously made wrong decisions, despite the fact that they were accompanied by some advertising in the press. This must be done for the sake of the country's defense capability.
However, some enemy can force us to come to the necessary states by force, as has happened more than once in history, but I really want to believe that one day we will learn how to prepare for wars in advance …
