Last week, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General of the Army Nikolai Makarov, made a report on the progress of the military reform at the State Duma Defense Committee. This attracted a lot of public attention. And although the Ministry of Defense, after the previous head of the military department Sergei Ivanov in 2005 said that "the military reform has been completed", avoids such a definition, there, following President Dmitry Medvedev, they talk about giving our army a "new promising look", to Unfortunately, the internal dynamics of this process is for some reason very often carefully masked.
So the Duma discussions with the NSG were held behind closed doors, despite the fact that, in addition to members of the defense committee, there were representatives of many factions, and some passages from General Makarov's speeches were even leaked to the press. One of them is related to the course of combat training.
DO WHAT I DON'T KNOW WHAT
The conclusion that the military department draws from the operational-strategic, operational-tactical and tactical exercises that have taken place this and last year, including the sensational Zapad-2009 and Vostok-2010, is that professional and methodological the training of Russian officers, to put it mildly, leaves much to be desired. Such an assessment is given to commanders of various degrees, who now lead new military districts (united strategic commands), armies or operational commands, as well as brigades of high combat readiness, are given in the leadership of the Ministry of Defense. Moreover, as they emphasize, this is not the fault of major generals and colonels, as well as lieutenant colonels, majors and captains, but their misfortune.
The fact is that for many years, proclaiming a course towards a modern mobile, highly technically equipped and highly professional army, even reporting on the completion of the military reform, what we heard from the lips of the former minister and not only from his lips, the country's leadership, represented by the government and leading financial authorities, nevertheless saved money on the combat training of the army and navy. The pilots did not have enough flying hours, the tankmen and artillerymen rarely fired with a regular combat shell, and the sailors rarely went to sea. And now, when there are no restrictions either on the amount of funds allocated for fuel and lubricants, for the operation of military equipment, especially the one that should be written off in the near future as obsolete, when the service life of a soldier was reduced to one year, it turned out that the officers Those who managed to grow from lieutenants to colonels, and some to generals' stars during the time of forced "idleness", are not able not only to organize a modern battle, even at the tactical level, but also to quickly and effectively teach their subordinates something. They simply do not have such experience and methodological skill.
The military humorists even had a bitter joke. If in Soviet times, army officers taught their subordinates by their own example, according to the principle "Do as I do!"
And lately, some commanders have been practicing the norm - "Do that, I don't know what!"
Where to find a way out of this situation is, in principle, clear. On the one hand, to remake plans and methods of individual training of a soldier and combat coordination of subunits to meet the requirements of the time, on the other, to teach "teachers" - commanders of platoons, companies, battalions and brigades, as well as their chiefs, to teach subordinates. With the use of the modern educational and material base at their disposal, new instruments, simulators and other equipment. Moreover, not to train them to perform one or two or three operations, as it happened during the preparation for large operational-strategic exercises, when companies and battalions were taken out for two or three months in the field and, as they say, “drove them through the approved directors until they were lost consciousness ", so as not to hit the face in the mud in front of the high Moscow authorities. And to teach the entire spectrum of military sciences - topography, communications, fire skills, fire control, engineering training, protection against weapons of mass destruction, tactics in defense and offensive, on the march. In an ambush, a forward detachment, in reconnaissance … As part of a squad, platoon, company, battalion. This is what is now being done in all military universities and headquarters.
It has been decided, as reported, that there will be no major operational-strategic exercises next year, with the exception of the already announced Center-2011. Tactical maneuvers will not exceed the platoon-company level. All officers in command positions, from platoon commander to district commander or operational-strategic command, will undergo accelerated retraining and improvement courses in the next two to three years. By the way, three new commanders of the new armies, which have been deployed this year in St. Petersburg (Western Military District), Stavropol (Southern Military District) and Chita (Eastern Military District), recently completed retraining at the General Staff Academy, where they read the chief of the General Staff and other deputy defense ministers conducted lectures and practical exercises with them.
And one more very important detail - from now on, all commanders, from the platoon commander to the commander of the district, will be responsible for organizing and conducting combat and special training, but personally the commanders-in-chief of the branches of the Armed Forces and the commanders of the branches of the armed forces. They now have a special department subordinate to this, which will deal with this. It will have the right to issue appropriate directives and methodological instructions, direct combat training and monitor its progress and summarize the results.
At the same time, such a task has been removed from the commanders of military districts and joint strategic commands, although all military units located in their territory, including air force and air defense bases, as well as naval sailors, if the district has access to the sea, will be subordinate to them. True, the Strategic Rocket Forces, Space Forces, and Airborne Forces will remain at the disposal of the General Staff.
The Main Commands of the Navy, Air Force and Air Defense themselves will move to the Frunzenskaya Embankment, to the building where the Main Command of the Ground Forces is located today. They will have four more important tasks: developing their own armed forces, conducting peacekeeping operations, training and retraining officers and non-commissioned officers, as well as developing requirements for weapons and military equipment developed in their interests, organizing their purchases and supplies to subordinate troops. And the General Staff, commanders of districts and armies will be responsible for operational training, and the Main Directorate of Educational Work, commanders of districts and commanders of brigades will be responsible for strengthening military discipline.
MILITARY POLICE TO BE
Another almost sensational message that leaked to the media through the Duma walls after the speech of the chief of the General Staff there. According to him, the military police should start working in the Russian armed forces (the dates for the start of its work are different - December 2010 and 2011). It is being created in the army and navy, according to news agencies, to strengthen the rule of law and order among the troops. True, according to their information, the final decision has yet been made. At present, the General Staff is only working out the organizational and staff structure of the military police from a separate unit to the military district, inclusive.
At the same time, it is already known that the number of the military police will be about 20 thousand people. Basically, its staff will be formed from servicemen dismissed from military service in the course of the reform of the armed forces, that is, from former officers, warrant officers, sergeants and soldiers, with whom they will conclude a contract for the next three to five years. The military police are expected to have a vertical organizational and staff structure - from a separate unit (brigade) to a military district (fleet).
It may be recalled that the question of creating a military police in the Russian army has existed for at least twenty years. The same number as the armed forces themselves of the new model. But from talking about it to a real presidential decree on its creation, the matter never reached. This problem was discussed especially vigorously even at the time when the military department was headed by Sergei Ivanov and when it came to the return of disciplinary arrest to the army with the maintenance of the guilty in the garrison guardhouse. A demonstration "lip" was even built in Alabino, where the arrested were to be kept in cells with beds, covered with snow-white sheets, with blankets and pillows, with washbasins and other sanitary devices, even with a TV.
There was a talk about the fact that only a garrison judge can put in a guardhouse, having carefully examined the disciplinary act of a soldier or sergeant for which such a punishment was imposed on him by the commander. It was assumed that the offender would have a public prosecutor and public defender. But in the country and the army, where not a single good deed, like loudly announced programs and reforms, are never brought to the declared results, again something has not grown together. Either there was not enough money, or for some reason there was no time for the demonstration guardhouses, but the Alabinsk "lip", as it seems to us, remained the only one for the entire army, but with European-quality repair.
Then the leak was made by the now liquidated Main Directorate of Combat Training and Service of Troops, where the media said that in the near future the reform would also affect the previously untouchable disciplinary battalions. As a result, they will simply be eliminated. And at the expense of their staffing, new territorial garrison units will be formed - "professional military commandant's offices." "It is planned to create full-time military commandant's offices of three categories," said the then chief of the GUBP, Lieutenant General Alexander Lukin. He emphasized that the commandant's offices of the first category with a staffing of more than 30 people will be located, as a rule, at the points of deployment of the headquarters of the districts, subordinate directly to the chiefs of territorial garrisons and will deal with issues of law and order in the subordinate troops, as well as the search and detention of servicemen who have committed misconduct, or simply deserted. Thus, they will relieve the military units from working off-profile, in connection with the escape or beating of one or another soldier. In other words, these units will also take over the functions of the "military police". And guardhouses will begin to function under the commandant's offices.
Alexander Lukin clarified that the issue of liquidating disbats has already been resolved positively, but "currently a financial and economic substantiation of their liquidation is being carried out." But it didn’t come to that either. There are five separate disciplinary battalions in both the army and the navy - in Chita, Novosibirsk, Ussuriisk, in the village of Mulino near Nizhny Novgorod and in the North Caucasus in the village of Zamchalovo. The total number of the permanent composition of the disbats is 1230 people.
Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has also said more than once that the military department is studying the issue of creating a military police in the Russian army. The last time he mentioned this was in April 2010. “We are working on this issue,” he said. - Unfortunately, the design that could suit us has not yet been found. However, we are studying the experience of foreign countries where there are such structures”. “First of all, we must understand for ourselves what the military police will look like. Only after that we will be able to start creating it,”the minister said.
Shortly thereafter, the Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Secretary of State Nikolai Pankov said that "at this stage of reforming the army and navy, the creation of a military police by the leadership of the Ministry of Defense has been recognized as inexpedient." Now it turns out that this refusal was only temporary.
In turn, in June, the chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky told reporters that the delay in the creation of a military police in Russia is due to the need to adopt a large number of new legislative acts regulating its activities. "The introduction of this body is not just a function of the leadership of the Ministry of Defense or another power structure, for this it is necessary to bring in line a lot of legislative acts and change them radically," he said. According to the chief military prosecutor, the military police can be a good help for the activities of the military prosecutor's office. This is evidenced, in particular, by the experience of its use in the armies of foreign states. By the way, today it exists in more than 40 armies of the world, including the USA, Germany, France, Great Britain, China. In the post-Soviet space, the institution of military police has taken root in the armed forces of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, as well as in the armies of the Baltic republics.
But the fundamental question is who will be subordinate to the military police. If the military department in the person of the General Staff or the Main Directorate of Educational Work, which becomes responsible for discipline, will not succeed in this venture. It is fundamentally unprofitable for the army to expose its "sores" to the light. So information about incidents and crimes in the armed forces has not been published on the website of the Ministry of Defense for two years. Therefore, it is necessary to subordinate it to the GVP or, at worst, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the police will exist as a class, or the Ministry of Justice. And it should work in close connection with public organizations. Including with committees and unions of soldiers' mothers. Maybe then we will get objectivity, transparency and, most importantly, efficiency in the struggle to strengthen military discipline.
