After a rather long and painful period of recession, military development in our country is gaining momentum more and more confidently. Today we can speak not only about overcoming negative processes in certain issues of military organizational development, but also about the first successful steps in the implementation of new directions of ensuring military security. One of these areas is the creation of an aerospace defense system (VKO) of the Russian Federation. Its need is primarily due to the improvement of the means of aerospace attack (SVKN), the massive development and adoption of high-precision weapons (including cruise missiles), the development of hypersonic technologies and, as a result, the transformation of air and outer space into a single sphere of warfare. The unprecedented increase in the risks and potential threats posed by aerospace is an undeniable fact today.
VKO CONCEPT
To create a full-fledged aerospace defense system in Russia, the Concept of Aerospace Defense of the Russian Federation was developed and approved by the President of the country. Its provisions, which were further developed in the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in 2012, determined the role, place, tasks, principles, main directions and stages of development of aerospace defense, the general organizational principles of its construction.
As for the tasks of the aerospace defense, they are formulated as follows:
- tasks solved in the interests of implementing strategic nuclear deterrence;
- tasks solved in the interests of protecting the state border in the airspace of the Russian Federation, monitoring the procedure for using the airspace of the Russian Federation and preventing violations of its use, as well as controlling outer space;
- tasks solved in the interests of fighting the aerospace enemy in the course of military conflicts of various scales.
The solution of all three groups of problems is of strategic importance for modern Russia. It is no coincidence that the issues of creating an aerospace defense system attract wide attention of many specialists and simply thinking people.
As the chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Government of the Russian Federation, directly involved in solving the problems of technical equipment of the Armed Forces, I confirm that it is the creation of a technical basis that is the main condition for creating a promising aerospace defense system and the most resource-intensive component of its construction. This becomes clear from a simple analysis of the technical state of weapons and the combat capabilities of the existing groupings of troops (forces) of the Russian Federation, which are currently solving aerospace defense missions.
CAPACITY BUILDING
Unfortunately, our capabilities to solve the problems of aerospace defense have been limited until recently. Of particular concern was the state of information systems that provide warning of a missile attack and carry out radar reconnaissance of the airspace.
We could not be satisfied with the state of the aerospace defense "firing" systems designed to solve the tasks of fighting the aerospace enemy. Here, as in reconnaissance means, there was an unsatisfactory technical condition of a certain part of the weapons due to the development of a specified resource, as well as a low proportion of modern models that provide effective confrontation with all types of aerospace attack weapons of a potential enemy.
Analysis of the actions of the NATO states, which literally fired at first Yugoslavia, and then Iraq and Libya with precision-guided weapons, without giving any chance of direct contact of their armed forces with the military formations of the victim countries, which turned out to be unable to resist an attack with traditional air defense (air defense), served as the reason for the adoption by the political and military leadership of Russia of the decision to forcefully develop the potential to contain new aerospace threats.
Of course, the gap between the capabilities of the SVKN and the air defense / aerospace defense had to be urgently closed, since a gap in the technical basis of defense is a serious source of threat to military and national security in general.
I repeat: we are talking not so much about improving organizational structures, but about the advanced development of technology capable of fighting all types of modern and promising ICSs. After all, the main problem is not in the "seating" of officials, but in the development of a promising technical basis.
Any backlog of the technical basis of aerospace defense from the development of the SVKN can lead to a situation in the late 40s - early 50s of the last century, when reconnaissance aircraft of the United States and other NATO countries repeatedly and with impunity invaded the airspace of the USSR, and Pentagon specialists led detailed elaboration of plans for nuclear bombing of the largest cities of the Soviet Union.
At that time, the USSR did not have effective means of destroying high-altitude and high-speed enemy aircraft.
Realizing the scale of the impending danger, the leadership of the USSR at one time took energetic and rather effective measures to strengthen its air defense. Until now, one cannot fail to impress the extremely tight deadlines for the creation of fundamentally new weapons - anti-aircraft missile systems, supersonic fighter-interceptors, as well as radar stations. Already in 1955, the S-25 "Berkut" system was adopted, which solved the problem of Moscow's air defense. Subsequently, in a short time, a number of effective air defense systems were created, which were equipped with units, units and formations of the country's air defense forces, the air defense forces of the Ground Forces, the Air Force and the Navy.
The leadership of the USSR also made tremendous efforts in the field of creating and improving means and systems of strategic deterrence - primarily nuclear weapons and their carriers. The tests of the atomic bomb in our country were carried out in 1949, and the hydrogen bomb in 1953. In 1957, after launching an artificial earth satellite and ahead of the United States, the Soviet Union received a fundamentally new delivery vehicle - an intercontinental ballistic missile. Already in December 1959, the Strategic Missile Forces were created, the consistent build-up of their capabilities put an end to the era of the US nuclear monopoly and the invulnerability of its territory.
In the context of the unfolding missile arms race, the leadership of the USSR also took vigorous measures to create an anti-missile defense system. Its first successful tests by destroying the ICBM warhead were (for the first time in the world!) Conducted by us on March 4, 1961.
THE FUTURE IS FOR PERSPECTIVE SYSTEMS
An analysis of the already obtained and expected results of the work carried out in the field of creating an aerospace defense system shows that it is possible to achieve a significant increase in capabilities in the fight against aerospace attack weapons only by creating promising weapons systems, producing them in the required quantity and equipping troops (forces) with them. tasks of VKO. However, this requires the solution of many scientific, technological and production problems, as well as the expenditure of considerable financial resources and time. That is why this work is under the jurisdiction and under the direct control of the Military-Industrial Commission under the Government of the Russian Federation. We proceed from the premise that the creation of the aerospace defense system can be carried out only in stages, as new knowledge is acquired, technologies are mastered and appropriate economic conditions are formed.
The creation of advanced weapons systems, their production in the required quantity and equipping troops (forces) with them is impossible without defining the main guidelines of the military-technical policy, as well as clear and continuous control of all stages of this process. As the domestic experience of military development in recent decades shows, the reformist fever, the irrepressible desire to "move furniture" in the chief's office had an extremely negative impact on the quality of control over the process of creating weapons, which, as a rule, replaced work to achieve the really necessary and important result.
The most important step of the military-political leadership of the country in the creation of aerospace defense was the decision of Dmitry Medvedev in 2011 to form a new branch of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - the Aerospace Defense Forces. This made it possible to solve one of the main tasks contributing to the construction of the aerospace defense - to form a strategic body of military command - the command of the Aerospace Defense Forces, responsible for the creation of the aerospace defense system based on the integration of air defense and missile defense systems.
With the direct active participation of the command of the Aerospace Defense Forces in the interests of building the aerospace defense system of the Russian Federation, the State Armament Program for the period 2010-2020 (GPV-2020) assigned a significant amount of R&D, including both general system work and work on the creation of samples of weapons of the Aerospace Defense …
The entire "architecture" of system-wide work is aimed primarily at solving the issues of creating an aerospace defense system of the Russian Federation and its most important subsystems, as well as the formation of a system of initial data necessary to substantiate the requirements for weapons and military equipment of aerospace defense, to determine the plan for aerospace defense, the creation of groupings of troops (forces) aerospace defense and their further improvement.
The planned and ongoing work on the creation of weapons of the aerospace defense includes a large list of R&D aimed at creating information, power (fire, jamming, etc.), control and support components that are part of the reconnaissance and warning subsystems of aerospace attack, defeat and suppression, management and support.
When creating promising weapons, priority development should be given to air and space-based means and systems (including unmanned and balloon ones), over-the-horizon radars, universal interspecific anti-aircraft missile systems of various ranges, laser systems of various types of basing and purposes, promising front-line aviation systems. aviation, jamming complexes for various purposes, advanced ACS and communication systems.
In addition to the modernization of existing and the creation of new means and systems of aerospace defense, large-scale work is underway to prepare the industry for the production of modern technology, as well as to develop the infrastructure of the country's territory in the interests of ensuring an effective and reliable aerospace defense.
The elaboration of the issues of creating the aerospace defense system and its elements will inevitably go beyond the framework of GPV-2020. This is due to the extreme complexity of the problems to be solved. At the same time, the development of the aerospace defense armament must be coordinated with the measures for the organizational development of the aerospace defense. The best conditions will be created when one official is assigned personal responsibility for organizing aerospace defense. This is due to the transience of events in the event of a sudden aerospace attack and the need to take instant measures to counter it and bring to the highest political and military leadership of the country all objective information about the outbreak of aggression.
At present, work is being completed on the formation of the VKO concern, which should include the main enterprises - the developers of the VKO system and its elements. This is necessary to maximize the concentration of efforts and increase the controllability of the development process.
A huge amount of work on the improvement and further development of aviation technology and armament is to be carried out by the Air Force as well. For strike aviation, for example, new means of information support about the ground situation, as well as control systems, are needed. Moreover, these means and systems should be developed in conjunction with the information support of missile forces and artillery, missile systems and artillery of the Navy in the general system of destruction of critical targets of the aggressor. An equally difficult issue is the creation of a technical basis for Long-Range and Military Transport Aviation.
Thus, at the current stage of military development, it is necessary to act systematically and consistently, concentrating efforts on creating the material and technical basis of aerospace defense and the air force of the future. Only then will we be confident in our ability to repel an aerospace attack by an economically more powerful enemy and inflict irreparable damage on it in a counter-counter-confrontation.
