The Kremlin wants to tackle long-festering problems, and painful reform can’t be avoided much longer. Russia’s Military Retrenchment AP photo/Murad Sezer Agent of change. Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the cut-and- reshape campaign to revitalize Russia’s forces. In this June photo, the By Stewart M. Powell Kremlin leader reviews Russian peacekeeping troops at Pristina airport in Kosovo. USSIA’S military, tapped by the scope and magnitude of which of valuable equipment for sale to President Vladimir Putin for can be glimpsed in a random sam- criminal gangs. a thorough revitalization, is pling of problems: Now, the Kremlin, for the first under pressure to clean up Fighter pilots get 14 hours of time since collapse of the Soviet R its own act. flying time per year. Union a decade ago, seems serious Even staunch advocates of in- Murder claims 500 troops per about tackling problems besetting creased support for Russia’s soldiers, year—18 times the number in US the force. Fueled by humiliating set- sailors, and airmen are turning their armed forces. backs in Chechnya and the disas- guns on the waste and mismanage- Ground station fires knock out trous loss last summer of the subma- ment that have weakened the force ground military communications rine Kursk with all hands, Putin’s in recent years. They say that spend- systems and communications with planned revitalization aims to in- ing more on the military as presently satellites. crease the resources and prestige of constituted will only feed its pen- Commanders sometimes seize the armed forces. chant for squandering resources on a electricity plants to prevent loss of Experts say that Putin’s support, gargantuan scale. power to ICBM bases. however, will not be sufficient by Few have any doubts that Russia’s Thieves in the navy—including itself to bring about a military re- armed forces were in a deep crisis, officers—are stripping submarines vival. Moscow simply does not have AIR FORCE Magazine / August 2001 71 enough money to rebuild the force in have already been cut from Cold large as the force that existed at the its traditional form. Eliminating War levels. Their end strength in the end of the Cold War. wasteful practices and structures is 1990s shrank from about four mil- Hardest hit in the Putin plan will the key, they say, and painful reform lion to 1.2 million. (However, some be the regular army, currently at is inevitable. 1.5 million of the troops that were 348,000, which would have to ab- As experts see it, the best outcome eliminated came from rear support sorb cuts of about 180,000 troops. for Russia would be the emergence and strategic forces—not from the- Still, the other services are not of a smaller, more modern fighting ater units.) Even so, analysts are vir- immune. Russia’s 185,000-strong air force shaped to deal with border in- tually unanimous in the view that force would drop by another 40,000 cursions and internal disruptions. Russia no longer has a need for a service members and the 172,000- The president himself vows to end million-man force. man navy would lose 50,000 sailors. the practice of devoting “colossal They note the size of today’s Rus- Russia’s reform-minded politicians resources” to lumbering forces which sian military approximates that of and military commanders are hoping “wasted” precious sustenance on US forces, which have global re- that the personnel reductions will free “peripheral issues.” sponsibilities and conduct operations enough funding to bring about a sub- Putin has warned, “The structure at far higher intensity. stantial boost in spending on fuel, of the armed forces must precisely For a poor country like Russia, spares, maintenance, and training. correspond to the threats Russia faces keeping such a large force has obvi- There are dangers, however. By now and will face in the future. To ous drawbacks in terms of quality. any standard, the cut is a large one, maintain such a cumbersome and at Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of and it has been opposed by more tra- times ineffective military organiza- the Duma’s defense committee, has ditional elements in the armed forces. tion is extravagant. In our situation noted that the US per-troop expendi- Mindful of the risks of a political it’s simply impermissible.” ture exceeds that of the Russian mili- backlash, Putin describes his force- Putin repeated his insistence on tary by a factor of 45. The implica- cut crusade as a “measured, calm, reforms in remarks to graduates of tion is that Russia can have quantity and smooth” effort to “optimize the Russia’s military academies in late or quality, but not both. country’s military machine” with “no June, declaring: “We are paying spe- Russia “is unable to fully finance massive, wholesale reductions.” cial attention to military construc- the armed forces,” says Gen. Vladi- Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov tion and military reform. The unique slav Putilin, deputy chief of the Rus- adds: “National security is not a geopolitical location of Russia, its sian armed forces’ general staff and sphere where revolutions are admis- vast territory and long borders present head of the general staff directorate sible.” great demands before defenders of for organization and mobilization. the homeland.” “The reduction of armed forces per- Increasing Professionalism sonnel is inevitable.” Equally important is the goal of Attacking the Bloat In a search for more balance in forces reining in the military’s harsh and The most intense reform pressure and budget, Putin last September or- sometimes murderous ways and in- focuses on cutting Russia’s bloated dered a three-year reduction to slice creasing the professionalism of the and expensive force structure. another 350,000 service personnel from force. It is true that Russian forces, in- the rolls, leaving only 850,000 in 2003. Putin reportedly captured 90 per- cluding paramilitary rear services, That force will be only 21 percent as cent of all military votes, at least partly because of his pledge to cur- tail the hated draft long used to fill the ranks of the Russian armed forces. Many Russian analysts maintain that reform efforts will produce only cos- metic improvements unless it some- how brings an end to conscription and ushers in a volunteer force. Reality is extraordinarily bleak for Russia’s hand-me-down armed forces and has been for years. Putin, elected in 2000, has declared his dedication to ending the neglect that has brought missed paydays, food shortages, bru- tal hazing of conscripts, and corrupt moonlighting by underpaid and un- disciplined troops. The poor quality of basic provi- sions and equipment only adds to miseries of the Russian fighting man. Combat equipment is shoddy. In Blackjacked. The TU-160 Blackjack bomber was a symbol of Soviet might, Chechnya, Russian troops would but the Kremlin’s military machine broke apart. Here, a Tu-160 (claimed by rather risk injury or death than put Ukraine after the Soviet collapse) is cut up as part of arms reduction efforts. on outmoded protective gear. They 72 AIR FORCE Magazine / August 2001 and even some newly emergent na- tions in the sophistication of its de- fense systems. The Kremlin says that, by 2015, it should be devoting 50 percent of the Russian national defense budget Photo by Katsuhiko Tokunaga to research and development and weapon procurement. That would mark a dramatic shift in emphasis. Today, Moscow devotes roughly 70 percent of defense spending to per- sonnel and maintenance. “Our army must be a modern, flex- ible, mobile, combat-capable force,” Putin says. “We cannot simply main- tain the army, refusing to train it in new technologies or to buy modern equipment.” Already, the military is shifting around forces in anticipation of the Great technology, but ... Russia still has some top-of-the-line equipment, payoff of additional budget resources such as the Su-35 fighter, but Russian air force pilots get minimal flying time arising from the shift in investment to develop and maintain their air combat proficiency. decisions. Oksana Antonenko, a re- search fellow with the London–based enter combat wearing bandannas in- These low-paid, poorly disciplined International Institute for Strategic stead of helmets, not for lack of dis- troops are deployed to operate the Studies, notes that the Russians plan cipline but because out-of-date army submarines, warplanes, and nuclear to create by 2006 a pair of high- flak jackets and helmets impede weapons. readiness joint force groups, one to movement while offering almost no Now, political reformers and many be based in Southwestern Asia and protection. senior Russian military officers them- one in Central Asia. The Russian air force complains it selves back efforts to end conscrip- “These forces will be the first to receives a fifth of the fuel that it tion and shift to an all-volunteer receive new weapons systems,” says needs to sustain proper training. The force. As Putilin puts it, a profes- Antonenko. “Priority in equipment story is much the same elsewhere. sional armed force that is well-paid, modernization will be given to air The navy, for example, has not de- well-fed, and widely respected re- force and missile air defense, com- ployed to train in the Mediterranean mains “the great dream of all ser- munications, and reconnaissance sys- since the winter of 1996–97. vicemen.” tems as well as precision weapons.” It appears that only the vestiges of The effort faces two major road- strict Soviet–era control have pre- blocks. The first is cost. Today’s De-Emphasizing Nukes vented a disastrous revolt in the face Russian conscript comes close to Another goal of the overhaul is to of perilous conditions that spawn an being a slave laborer, with a pay- close down or at least greatly reduce estimated 400 to 600 suicides by check of about one dollar per day.