Air defense and military space defense of the country (VKO) today cannot fully ensure the country's security. This statement was made on May 13 by the former commander-in-chief of the Russian Air Force, Anatoly Kornukov, and the former chief of armaments of the Russian Armed Forces, Anatoly Sitnov.
Including because the existing military equipment is becoming obsolete, and the military-industrial complex producing it, according to them, is in a deplorable state. In addition, they believe that in terms of the development of aerospace defense assets, Russia is 25-30 years behind potential adversaries. As Anatoly Kornukov said: "At the present time, a military space attack (VKN) decides everything. The experience of recent local wars is a vivid confirmation of this." Moreover, according to him, the United States is successfully developing the forces of the VKN: "This is evidenced by the launch of a spacecraft, a fifth-generation aircraft, work on space platforms, which is being carried out within the framework of a global strike," the expert noted.
In turn, according to Anatoly Sitnov, Russia has lost more than 300 unique technologies in the field of military aviation and missile defense in just a few years. We are talking about a unique reusable space transport system, super-heavy aircraft of the Mriya type, a military orbital ship and developments in the field of rocket technology. According to him, “who owns space, he owns the world. similar weapons, says Sitnov.
But are things really that bad? I turned for comments to military experts Vladislav Shurygin, Alexander Khramchikhin and Ivan Erokhin.
"The words of Kornukov and Sitnov reflect the harsh reality," said Air Defense and Aerospace Defense expert Vladislav Shurygin. "For the past 20 years, we have not created anything new in the field of military space weapons. And what we have now is developments made during the Soviet era. This also applies to our "fifth generation" fighter.
In the last year alone, we have written off about a thousand combat aircraft that were on the ground due to the lack of certain warheads, without receiving anything in return. And most of those that are available now will be written off in a maximum of six years. As for military space weapons, in recent years the NATO countries, including the United States, have been intensively developing them. And therefore, they have a colossal superiority over us in the field of information, information and analytical systems, communications, navigation, data processing, etc. All this is a consequence of the policy pursued since 1990 in relation to not only the air defense and aerospace defense, but also all the armed forces in general. To eliminate this, you need to properly line them up. This will require a large-scale purchase of the latest military equipment. The piece purchases that we see now are not able to solve the problem. And the establishment of massive supplies of the latest military equipment to the troops is impossible without appropriate technological modernization, because in its current form, our military-industrial complex is not able to meet the needs of our armed forces. A large investment will be required, including in design bureaus (KB). And here is another problem - both for the military-industrial complex itself and for the design bureau, young people are needed to replace literally dying out workers and designers, many of whom are already well over 60 years old.
The situation is aggravated by the current "reform" of the armed forces, carried out under the flag of "optimization" and reduction of their costs. And this is what it is: this year, only 15 pilots for airplanes and 15 more for helicopters will be recruited to the only flight department that graduates military pilots. And this is on the scale of such a huge country like ours.
This is also the reason why the struggle against military educational institutions continues. For example, out of 50 schools, 10 remain. Accordingly, the number of officers is reduced by five times. Moreover, the remaining ones bear a fivefold load and for this reason they are physically unable to cope with it. This struggle extended to the academy as well. Most of them have already been cut. And, by the way, the "Sword of Damocles" reduction loomed over the only in the country Academy of Air Defense and Aerospace Defense. Zhukov, located in Tver. In other words, now we see finishing off our rapidly degrading armed forces, "the expert believes.
And here is the opinion of the deputy director of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, Alexander Khramchikhin. “Kornukov is right,” he stressed. “The Americans already have land-based, sea-based missile defense systems,“air lasers,”they successfully shoot down satellites from a ship. We do not have such weapons.
And at present, our air defense and aerospace defense are not capable of fulfilling the tasks of repelling the strike of a potential enemy. Now they can be simply crushed by the "mass". And this is evidence of the general collapse of our armed forces. This is largely due to the fact that the Soviet potential has already been developed, and nothing new appears.
Someone will say: "we have the newest S-400 complex!" Firstly, there are only two divisions, while dozens are required, and secondly, due to the fact that there are no missiles supplied for it, with the help of which it can shoot down targets at greater distances than the S-300, in fact, in their current form, they are no different from the "three hundred". Now our armed forces, in fact, have become only a permanent exhibition for the buyers of our weapons.
It is impossible to ignore one more moment. Information about the impending elimination of the unique Air Defense and Aerospace Defense Academy in Tver has long been leaked to the media, as had previously happened with many other academies. And this will deal a severe blow to our defenses. There are excuses like that its functions can be performed by other institutions like the Yaroslavl Anti-Aircraft Missile School, which, however, does not cover fighter aircraft and VKO. The trouble with military academies is that they occupy expensive buildings in the center of cities, which many want to occupy.
Some time ago, it was fashionable among some of our politicians to declare that we did not need an army at all, because "now is another time and no one will attack anyone." But history suggests that military weakness gives rise to aggression in the first place. If we continue to treat our armed forces in this way, then very soon they will prove the opposite to us, "the expert emphasized.
“As such, we now have essentially no air defense or aerospace defense,” says Air Defense Colonel, Doctor of Military Sciences Ivan Erokhin. performing completely different tasks. In such conditions, there is no need to talk about any development of air defense and aerospace defense.
For Russia, the greatest danger in the 21st century is posed by threats from aerospace. Let me remind you that NATO countries have always relied on the strike forces of the Air Force. And as the examples of Yugoslavia and Serbia show, in recent decades, the means of the HCN have begun to play a decisive role in achieving military success.
As you know, strategic nuclear forces (SNF) play the main role in deterring aggression. But the strategic nuclear forces themselves need both protection from a preemptive disarming strike by the aggressor's military forces and information support for their actions. They can only be protected by a single information and fire system of aerospace defense, created on a national scale.
Aerospace defense is of particular importance in connection with the active development in the United States of hypersonic aircraft with a speed of up to six thousand km / h. As a result, a potential adversary will be able to strike in a matter of minutes. And accordingly, certain decisions about repelling aggression will have to be made not even in minutes, but in seconds. Therefore, we need appropriate specialists, who soon may not stay at all. We are talking not only about officers in the troops, but also scientists who develop the strategy, operational art and tactics of using aerospace defense and, accordingly, about those who will train the first and raise the second. Today they can be trained by the Military Academy of Aerospace Defense (VA VKO) named after V. I. G. K. Zhukov in Tver. It is not without reason that since 1997 the United States has been constantly inviting its specialists for joint work on missile defense. But the threat of closure hung over her. One of the reasons is the desire to obtain economic benefits due to its closure, despite the fact that aerospace defense can allegedly be developed in other military universities. But VKO is a very complex independent system and "incidentally" it cannot be attached anywhere.
And the world recognizes her leadership in the field of training air defense and aerospace defense specialists. It is not for nothing that representatives of more than 20 countries study within its walls. They pay for this in currency, the flow of which will dry up if the academy is liquidated. There is no doubt that those who send their officers to study with us want them to study at this very academy, whose graduates, over the decades of its existence, have successfully participated in repelling air strikes in many local conflicts, from Korea to Vietnam. And the elimination of systematic military training will lead to a sharp decrease in the volume of military-technical cooperation, including the purchase of our military equipment. Foreign experts are skeptical about the prospect of studying not in an academy, but in an incomprehensible "training center" or "on courses" "somewhere in Russia"?
The presidential "Concept of the RF Aerospace Defense" says that the most important part of the country's security is its aerospace security. This task has become a nationwide one. The training system for a VKO specialist includes a whole range of training. It affects missile attack warning systems, missile defense and anti-space defense, space control, anti-aircraft missile fire, fighter air cover, reconnaissance and electronic warfare. These are all interrelated things and therefore the training of a VKO specialist can be organized only under a single leadership.
Only VA VKO them. G. K. Zhukova trains servicemen for air defense and aerospace defense. The entire VKO theory was developed within its walls. In the event of the liquidation of the Air Defense Forces of the Russian Aerospace Defense and the exclusion of one of its components (air defense or missile defense) from its structure, there will be nowhere and no one to continue research in the field of integrated aerospace defense and to implement military issues of the presidential "Concept of the Aerospace Defense of the Russian Federation." Any dismemberment will destroy the whole. Recovery will take 10-15 years. Since only in the 11th year you can get the first doctors of military sciences.
However, will it be recovered from whom? There is already a struggle for cheap Russian intelligence. It is not for nothing that today many countries, realizing that this is the main weapon of modern warfare, have prioritized the development of air defense and aerospace defense. And they are ready to buy not only our first-class weapons, but also our experience and "brains", knowing that nowhere in the world the organization of air defense and aerospace defense has been mastered so deeply as in Russia, the specialists from which defended many countries from the aggressors ", - reminds expert.
Yes, and one more small detail, which once again testifies to the correctness of the experts: the officers who work at the Air Defense and Aerospace Defense Academy in Tver recently reported the most interesting news, which indirectly testifies to preparations for its disbandment: for a long time there have not been updated anti-virus base. Allegedly, they did not allocate money, which was not observed before …
