Nowadays it has become fashionable to criticize, criticize everything and everyone. You listen to the radio, turn on the TV, open the newspaper, flip through the pages in the Internet browser, and mostly criticism is pouring in from everywhere, to the point and without any business. You are already beginning to fear that even turning on the iron, you will hear a stream of criticism pouring out of it. A society in which it was forbidden to criticize anything for a long time went all out. It is always easy to criticize, but at the same time it is necessary to observe the line, crossing which, any criticism from the category of constructive turns into destructive. An example of the Russian national football team looms before our eyes, which has long been under the pressure of universal criticism, and what, is our team playing better from match to match?
Now a lot of criticism is being heard both against the Russian army, and against the Ministry of Defense, and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in particular. We live in a country where people seem to be happy with everything in their everyday life and everyday environment, so it is considered quite normal and commonplace to wash the bones of our own army here. Meanwhile, in recent years, quite positive changes have begun to take place in the army and in the country's defense capability.
Finally, a large-scale military reform, which has been talked about for so long, was carried out, but at the same time all the statements remained just words, spoken or printed on paper. Today, everything was not limited to words, and even though the five-day war with Georgia acted as a catalyst for a cardinal reform, the reform was finally carried out, decisively and in a fairly short time. And this is one of the main positive aspects in the development of the Russian armed forces.
In the course of the military reform, such significant shortcomings of the armed forces were corrected as an overloaded command and control system and, accordingly, a rather low mobility of subunits. The chain of command, which consisted of 4 links district - army - division - regiment, was reduced to 3 links: military district - operational command - brigade. The number of military districts in the country was reduced from 6 to 4; accordingly, 4 joint strategic commands were created with this. The future of the Russian armed forces is not a Soviet-style army, when all the country's armed forces were a huge repository of military equipment in case of a possible large-scale war. Heavy weapons stored in endless hangars are absolutely unsuitable for modern Russia. The country needs a modern, mobile army, in place of the Soviet divisions, a more compact combat formation is coming - a brigade.
In the ground forces, it is planned to leave only 96 brigades, fully equipped with personnel and equipment. Each brigade is a completely self-sufficient combat unit, which has all the necessary means to solve combat missions. The modern staff structure of the Russian motorized rifle brigade includes: 3 motorized rifle battalions, 1 tank battalion, 2 artillery battalions of self-propelled guns, an anti-tank battalion, an MLRS battalion, 2 anti-aircraft battalions (artillery and missile), an engineer battalion, a repair and recovery battalion, a communications battalion, a logistics battalion, a reconnaissance company, a command and control and artillery reconnaissance battery, a radiation, chemical and biological defense company, an electronic warfare company, a brigade command and headquarters. Unlike the "mythical" 1890 divisions and regiments of the old army, which would have required more than 10,000,000 people to deploy into a combat state, these units are fully equipped with soldiers and equipment.
Reducing the number of units in the ground forces by 90% made it possible to create combat-ready formations that meet the realities of today. The Russian army does not plan and will not carry out Vistula-Oder offensive operations in the near future, the concept of modern wars has changed significantly in recent years. Large-scale war is a thing of the past. The reform made it possible to create units that can be entered into battle within the shortest possible time and in any direction. During the two Chechen campaigns and the five-day war with Georgia, the Russian military was forced to feverishly pull out (from the number of existing on paper divisions) combat-ready formations of the regiment and battalion level and create combat-ready groups from them. Now this will not happen. To solve combat missions, you can involve the entire brigade as a whole, without creating a separate headquarters above this structure, without mixing different units and officers. In terms of the quantity and quality of available weapons, one Russian brigade is capable of resisting any of the armies of the Baltic countries.
The reduction of the army to one million people was largely due to the reduction of officer posts. More than 150,000 officers were dismissed from the ranks of the armed forces, which was perceived rather painfully, but this measure was the only possible solution at this stage. This reduction fully resonates with the existing economic realities of Russia, all other proposals are, in fact, demagogy and political populism. The alternative to downsizing the officer corps, which finally made the conditions of service prestigious and attractive for the remaining officers, simply did not exist. Thanks to the reduction, the salary for the youngest command position - lieutenant from 2012 will be able to increase to 50,000 rubles. So from January 1, 2012, the level of salaries in the Russian army will almost triple. The minimum salary for contract cadets will be 18, 2 thousand rubles, a private soldier - 24, 8 thousand rubles, a contract sergeant as a squad leader - 34, 6 thousand rubles, a colonel of a brigade commander - 93, 8 thousand. rubles.
It is worth noting that mainly senior officers - majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels - fall under the reduction, the number of junior lieutenants and senior lieutenants, on the contrary, is planned to be increased by 30 and 17%, respectively. Many of those dismissed from the ranks of the armed forces can already count on receiving a military pension, all of them will be provided with housing. At present, the program for the construction of housing for military personnel is being fully implemented for the first time in many years. It is planned to completely eliminate the queue for providing officers and their families in need of housing in the period from 2011 to 2013. In fact, this means that from 2013 onwards, the provision of housing to the needy military personnel will take place upon the fact that they achieve the appropriate right to own property.
A big plus for the Russian army is its rearmament program. The adopted State Program for the Procurement of Arms for 2011-2020 plans to bring the number of modern weapons and military equipment to the level of 30% by 2015, and to 70-80% by 2020. In total, it is planned to spend 19 trillion rubles on the acquisition of weapons and research activities. The adopted state program provides for the purchase of 100 warships, including 20 submarines, up to 35 corvettes and 15 frigates. Purchase of more than 600 new aircraft and up to 1000 new combat helicopters, 56 divisions of the S-400 Triumph air defense missile system.
Armored vehicle VPK-3927 "Wolf"
Unfortunately, all previous programs for the procurement of weapons in our country ended in failure, it was not possible to achieve 100% of their performance indicators, but often this is not the fault of the military. Russian society is completely mired in corruption, starting from the very bottom. Look at yourself, who among us has never in our life bribed a traffic cop, a teacher at a university, did not stimulate a doctor or leave a pretty penny in the housing office so that the plumber would fix the accident today, not tomorrow. Well, we ourselves do not want to change in any way, and at the same time with pleasure we scold all the bribe-takers in power, one might think that they were not among you and me who got into this power. Therefore, it would be dishonest to blame only the Ministry of Defense for the possible disruption of this program, the problem is of a much more global nature on a national scale. But even taking into account the fact that the program may not be fully implemented, the army will be able to receive such a quantity of new military equipment that has not been received since the days of the USSR.
Even the purchase of weapons abroad, the same Israeli drones and Italian armored vehicles, in general, had a positive effect on the domestic military-industrial complex, which finally felt real competition in the domestic market and, it seems, is starting to wake up from years of hibernation. The purchase of 12 unmanned aerial vehicles in Israel for $ 53 million and subsequent plans to purchase vehicles for another $ 100 million, forced the domestic defense industry, who "mastered" about 5 billion rubles for the development of Russian UAVs, to take a more responsible approach to solving this problem. Today, the domestic defense complex has presented to the military a sufficient number of samples: Orlan-3M and Orlan-10, Skat, Aileron, the Inspector UAV family, just have time to carry out tests.
The situation with armored vehicles is even more amusing. According to a number of experts, the Tiger cars are almost several times superior to the armored car Iveko LMV adopted by the Russian army, but the latter for some reason enjoys success all over the world and is gladly acquired by many NATO member countries, including, then as a domestic armored car, in fact, only the Brazilian police were seriously interested. Was this machine so good, which, unlike the Russian T-90 tanks, Su-30 fighters and its modifications or AKs, was not in demand on the world market. In fact, the "Tiger" was buried not even by Iveko LMV, but by its own promising development of JSC "GAZ" - the family of armored vehicles VPK 3927 "Wolf". This armored car has largely surpassed its predecessor and initially received a modern modular layout, which is the basis for creating unified vehicles on one platform, as well as an increased level of booking.
