PMC legalization and maritime security
There is hardly a topic in the modern information field that is more controversial than the potential legalization of private military companies in Russia. Both President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov spoke positively on this topic. The idea of legalizing such organizations had and has strong support among retired military, in the State Duma and in part of society.
Employees of RSB groups on the deck of a protected vessel.
However, this is Russia, and it is still there. Until. The last attempt of the deputies of “Fair Russia” to bring PMCs out of the “shadow” failed at the stage of negotiating the bill with the government, and the rationale for refusing to approve the bill was not only contrary to common sense, but was also flagrantly illiterate. However, this is the Russian government, it is difficult to expect anything else from it.
Somewhat complicates the legalization of PMCs that the public does not have a firm opinion on this issue, and instead of understanding it, wears a set of myths in our heads. The author in his time published article-educational program on private military companies in Russia, familiarization with it is strongly recommended before speaking on the topic.. Although superficial and far from exhaustive, it gives some idea of the subject.
Due to the sharp increase in the activities of such formations in Africa, we can expect that the resistance of the amusing union of “system” liberals, the Ministry of Defense and the FSB “joined them” will be overcome, one way or another, with one or other reservations, but private military companies will be legalized.
It makes sense to identify those opportunities for their hiring and use, which must necessarily be legal for domestic PMCs in the future.
One of the popular activities of such organizations is the protection of ships from pirates and terrorists. Given that PMCs are able to exert a truly tectonic influence on this field of activity, it makes sense to dwell on their participation in ensuring maritime security in more detail.
Maritime security (Maritime security) or MARSEC has become one of the most desirable areas of business for any PMC, small or large. It is much easier and safer to repel an attack of pirates on boats from a high-borne ship than to guard a VIP convoy somewhere in not the most peaceful areas of Iraq, and it is not often necessary to repel attacks, the pirates, as a rule, have enough not even warning shots, but just a demonstration weapons.
With the increasing number of attacks by pirates on merchant ships in the Indian Ocean, PMC guards firmly “registered” on the decks. And although there were excesses with them (from hunting people for fun, to the “urban legend” of mercenaries — pseudo-pirate troops trained and equipped by NATO intelligence services, which no security team had yet experienced clashes with. But this may well be true) However, the statistics stubbornly asserts that the presence of such a group on board a ship guarantees security with a probability close to 100%.
But time passed and new methods were born. One of them was the emergence of the so-called "ships-arsenals." Do not confuse this with the projects of the Pentagon missile cruisers, everything is easier.
It is simply a "floating weapon".
As you know, pirates are not a global force, their attacks are seriously limited in place. First of all, it is the Gulf of Aden and the waters to the east and southeast. The second region with high risks of pirate attacks is the Strait of Malacca. Pirates and there, of course, different. The third hot spot is the Gulf of Guinea. There are other less stressful.
Arsenals of private military companies plied in the areas of entry and exit from these waters, relatively speaking, on the border of the “pirate risk zone”. At the approach of the vessel, with the owner of which PMC had a contract, a security group was brought on its board, which accompanied its entire dangerous section. At the end of the plot, the group went to another ship-arsenal.
Such tactics allowed to solve a lot of problems. For example, it was not necessary to deliver weapons to the sovereign territory of any country, solve all licensing issues and obtain licenses - the weapon was always at sea. Similarly, the fighters were also on these ships, and in the case of them there was no need to ensure their flights from countries to which the ship could make an entry after passing through the danger zone.
In fact, the presence of such arsenal ships at sea at some point would make the extensive presence of military fleets in the same Gulf of Aden almost irrelevant.
In Russia, as indicated in the article by reference, the company pioneered the organization of such a scheme. Moran group and personally V. Gusev. Unfortunately, it is the effectiveness of their tactics that has played a cruel joke on them, forcing the competitors to deal with the annoying Russian “unsportsmanlike” methods. However, the business survived, only to V. Gusev it was very expensive.
Myre seadiver, one of the ships of the "Moran Group", the "hero" of the Nigerian incident
It is worth looking at this experience.
Currently, the number of pirate attacks on ships in the Gulf of Aden is negligible. This is due to the extensive presence of warships from different countries in the region. Theoretically, however, you can do much easier and cheaper for the state.
Legalized PMCs may well be present in such regions in the same way as the Moran group was present. Moreover, it is possible to go further, and instead of sending naval warships, attract private security companies, whose task could be to impute not only finding security groups on ships, but also air reconnaissance using UAVs, helicopters and airplanes, and even the release of ships whose crews could to hide from a pirate attack in the ship "citadel."
In fact, only one task would remain for the Navy — operations to free hostages, for which ships with special forces specially trained and equipped to perform such tasks could sometimes be present in dangerous regions, no more than one per region.
What is such a scheme more profitable?
The fact that PMCs are private structures and do not use public money. Arsenal ships are bought and rebuilt at their own expense. Fighters, equipment, outlets at sea are paid by clients - shipping companies. If the state attracts private security contractors to solve some problems (for example, aerial reconnaissance), then the private security contractors will have to buy the necessary equipment (for example, patrol airplanes). Naturally, when working on the same Navy, PMC services will cost the state money, but less if you do everything yourself.
Relatively speaking, if sending some duty forces to the Gulf of Aden for several months would have risen the fleet billion rubles, then the starting price in the tender for the same, but by the hands of "private traders", would be, for example, eight hundred million. At the same time, the state would take back part of the money paid under the contract as taxes.
Even greater prospects are opening up, if we consider the mercenaries not as something alien that we have to endure, but as a certain reserve for emergency situations.
In most countries where private military companies are legalized, various restrictions were imposed on their equipment, so the structures of Eric Prince (starting with “Black Water” and on) never managed to get permission from the US authorities to buy the weapons they wanted - light armed airplanes, for example. Prince’s people, however, are still fighting in Libya on similar planes, and in an amusing way on the same client that Russia supports - Marshal Haftar. But airplanes formally do not belong to Prince ...
Nothing prevents (in theory, in practice, our mentality prevents) “spin the nuts” and give PMCs the right to have guns on ships, up to 76-mm in size, heavy machine guns, anti-sabotage grenade launchers, and “door” machine guns on helicopters and airplanes. When entering the port, it is possible to oblige them to hand over all equipment and weapons for storage, so that even technically it would not be possible to use all this on the territory of the Russian Federation (and this should be strictly prohibited). Then, in the event of some kind of emergency, all these forces could be hired organizedly as an auxiliary fleet, simultaneously on the basis of a special procedure, mobilizing the personnel into the ranks of the RF Armed Forces. In fact, by allowing the existence of such structures, Russia would have left on the shoulders of private owners the formation of a part of reserves in case of hostilities.
Similarly, on the shoulders of private owners would be the formation of anti-piracy forces, hiring personnel and soldiers, the purchase of weapons and ammunition. And those tasks that the Navy would have dumped on them would have been paid for by the state, but at a much lower price than if the fleet did it.
Naturally, it will be necessary to somehow connect this order with the same UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, but this is not such a big problem.
And, of course, having a controlled military force with experience of a global presence in different parts of the planet on hand to the Armed Forces is very useful in light of the growth in the number and strength of various terrorist organizations. As mentioned in the commentary on raising the flag of St. Andrew on the under-ship of the 22160 project, the nature of threats is changing around the world - purely criminal piracy is waning, while terrorism is increasing, and in some cases, non-state entities are already able to challenge national governments. In this situation, every barrel and every ship is important.
Compare this situation with what is now.
Navy thought himself flawed anti-piracy ship, extremely limited suitable for anti-piracy and almost unsuitable for anti-terrorism tasks. For thirty-six billion rubles, a series of six such ships is being built, crews are being formed that will be “turned off” from the real security of the country. Then these forces (in theory, in practice — not a fact) will be sent to the “pirate-dangerous” regions of the world and will probably do something for the money of the Russian budget.
If everything was organized “wisely”, then a tender would be announced for the fight against piracy, with qualification requirements for participants, including the need to purchase ships, vessels, aviation etc., and it’s strictly in the Russian Federation (a list of what you could buy abroad would also be - we don’t do much at all, or we do poorly, or we do it very expensive. Most often, it’s both bad and expensive). The starting price of the tender would have been calculated in advance as, for example, 75% of the cost of the military campaign of the Navy ships, after which the winning PMC would begin to prepare such an expedition. With a “patent” from the Russian Federation.
And thirty-six billion would be spent on real warships, and not useless semi-civil "ersatz."
Of course, the PMC functionality would be limited compared to the Navy - so it is unlikely that they could stop and inspect all vessels and boats that would be considered suspicious. But they could “transfer” these contacts to someone, the same Chinese, NATO, or anyone.
A separate topic is the assistance of the Navy and SSO in conducting special operations. Sooner or later, but over time, the ships of the Russian PMCs would “become familiar” in different parts of the world, and no one would notice that there were completely different people among the guards, and there were a couple of extra boats or containers on board the ship. And this, too, would not cost the state money.
In some cases, the FSB could hire such structures, for example, to dramatically strengthen its forces in a particular region.
And there is a purely economic effect from such events. If the Navy simply saved money in the fight against piracy, delegating it to “independent operators”, private clients would hire private security companies for money, which would then be taxed in Russia, and private security companies would be obliged to buy licenses and equipment in Russia , at least a little, but they would feed the domestic military-industrial complex and the sudoprom (or ship repair). In general, it is beneficial for the country.
But most importantly, unusual tasks would be removed from the navy. The fleet is an instrument of war or containment of war. To erode his already scarce resources into incomprehensible what, it is just a crime, especially in the current poorly predictable world. In such conditions, it would be a very sensible decision to dump some of the “non-core” tasks on third-party contractors, and even at their expense. It would also be very good to get almost free, even if weak, low-quality, but still organized and trained military force, which could be used as a reserve in secondary areas.
Alas, but a reasonable approach in Russia is not honored. Officials are concerned that “if something didn’t work out,” the FSB does not want to do extra work, the Ministry of Defense doesn’t understand what it wants, liberals in the Government do not want their Anglo-Saxon deities to be angry with them, and are willing to pay any price for it, people wants it to be “like in the USSR” (having forgotten for a long time, as it was there, in the USSR), and as a result we have what we have.
But if, as it is sung in one song, “the mind will ever win,” then it will be impossible to miss such opportunities.
In the meantime, one can only hope for the best.
Employees of RSB groups on the deck of a protected vessel.
However, this is Russia, and it is still there. Until. The last attempt of the deputies of “Fair Russia” to bring PMCs out of the “shadow” failed at the stage of negotiating the bill with the government, and the rationale for refusing to approve the bill was not only contrary to common sense, but was also flagrantly illiterate. However, this is the Russian government, it is difficult to expect anything else from it.
Somewhat complicates the legalization of PMCs that the public does not have a firm opinion on this issue, and instead of understanding it, wears a set of myths in our heads. The author in his time published article-educational program on private military companies in Russia, familiarization with it is strongly recommended before speaking on the topic.. Although superficial and far from exhaustive, it gives some idea of the subject.
Due to the sharp increase in the activities of such formations in Africa, we can expect that the resistance of the amusing union of “system” liberals, the Ministry of Defense and the FSB “joined them” will be overcome, one way or another, with one or other reservations, but private military companies will be legalized.
It makes sense to identify those opportunities for their hiring and use, which must necessarily be legal for domestic PMCs in the future.
One of the popular activities of such organizations is the protection of ships from pirates and terrorists. Given that PMCs are able to exert a truly tectonic influence on this field of activity, it makes sense to dwell on their participation in ensuring maritime security in more detail.
Maritime security (Maritime security) or MARSEC has become one of the most desirable areas of business for any PMC, small or large. It is much easier and safer to repel an attack of pirates on boats from a high-borne ship than to guard a VIP convoy somewhere in not the most peaceful areas of Iraq, and it is not often necessary to repel attacks, the pirates, as a rule, have enough not even warning shots, but just a demonstration weapons.
With the increasing number of attacks by pirates on merchant ships in the Indian Ocean, PMC guards firmly “registered” on the decks. And although there were excesses with them (from hunting people for fun, to the “urban legend” of mercenaries — pseudo-pirate troops trained and equipped by NATO intelligence services, which no security team had yet experienced clashes with. But this may well be true) However, the statistics stubbornly asserts that the presence of such a group on board a ship guarantees security with a probability close to 100%.
But time passed and new methods were born. One of them was the emergence of the so-called "ships-arsenals." Do not confuse this with the projects of the Pentagon missile cruisers, everything is easier.
It is simply a "floating weapon".
As you know, pirates are not a global force, their attacks are seriously limited in place. First of all, it is the Gulf of Aden and the waters to the east and southeast. The second region with high risks of pirate attacks is the Strait of Malacca. Pirates and there, of course, different. The third hot spot is the Gulf of Guinea. There are other less stressful.
Arsenals of private military companies plied in the areas of entry and exit from these waters, relatively speaking, on the border of the “pirate risk zone”. At the approach of the vessel, with the owner of which PMC had a contract, a security group was brought on its board, which accompanied its entire dangerous section. At the end of the plot, the group went to another ship-arsenal.
Such tactics allowed to solve a lot of problems. For example, it was not necessary to deliver weapons to the sovereign territory of any country, solve all licensing issues and obtain licenses - the weapon was always at sea. Similarly, the fighters were also on these ships, and in the case of them there was no need to ensure their flights from countries to which the ship could make an entry after passing through the danger zone.
In fact, the presence of such arsenal ships at sea at some point would make the extensive presence of military fleets in the same Gulf of Aden almost irrelevant.
In Russia, as indicated in the article by reference, the company pioneered the organization of such a scheme. Moran group and personally V. Gusev. Unfortunately, it is the effectiveness of their tactics that has played a cruel joke on them, forcing the competitors to deal with the annoying Russian “unsportsmanlike” methods. However, the business survived, only to V. Gusev it was very expensive.
Myre seadiver, one of the ships of the "Moran Group", the "hero" of the Nigerian incident
It is worth looking at this experience.
Currently, the number of pirate attacks on ships in the Gulf of Aden is negligible. This is due to the extensive presence of warships from different countries in the region. Theoretically, however, you can do much easier and cheaper for the state.
Legalized PMCs may well be present in such regions in the same way as the Moran group was present. Moreover, it is possible to go further, and instead of sending naval warships, attract private security companies, whose task could be to impute not only finding security groups on ships, but also air reconnaissance using UAVs, helicopters and airplanes, and even the release of ships whose crews could to hide from a pirate attack in the ship "citadel."
In fact, only one task would remain for the Navy — operations to free hostages, for which ships with special forces specially trained and equipped to perform such tasks could sometimes be present in dangerous regions, no more than one per region.
What is such a scheme more profitable?
The fact that PMCs are private structures and do not use public money. Arsenal ships are bought and rebuilt at their own expense. Fighters, equipment, outlets at sea are paid by clients - shipping companies. If the state attracts private security contractors to solve some problems (for example, aerial reconnaissance), then the private security contractors will have to buy the necessary equipment (for example, patrol airplanes). Naturally, when working on the same Navy, PMC services will cost the state money, but less if you do everything yourself.
Relatively speaking, if sending some duty forces to the Gulf of Aden for several months would have risen the fleet billion rubles, then the starting price in the tender for the same, but by the hands of "private traders", would be, for example, eight hundred million. At the same time, the state would take back part of the money paid under the contract as taxes.
Even greater prospects are opening up, if we consider the mercenaries not as something alien that we have to endure, but as a certain reserve for emergency situations.
In most countries where private military companies are legalized, various restrictions were imposed on their equipment, so the structures of Eric Prince (starting with “Black Water” and on) never managed to get permission from the US authorities to buy the weapons they wanted - light armed airplanes, for example. Prince’s people, however, are still fighting in Libya on similar planes, and in an amusing way on the same client that Russia supports - Marshal Haftar. But airplanes formally do not belong to Prince ...
Nothing prevents (in theory, in practice, our mentality prevents) “spin the nuts” and give PMCs the right to have guns on ships, up to 76-mm in size, heavy machine guns, anti-sabotage grenade launchers, and “door” machine guns on helicopters and airplanes. When entering the port, it is possible to oblige them to hand over all equipment and weapons for storage, so that even technically it would not be possible to use all this on the territory of the Russian Federation (and this should be strictly prohibited). Then, in the event of some kind of emergency, all these forces could be hired organizedly as an auxiliary fleet, simultaneously on the basis of a special procedure, mobilizing the personnel into the ranks of the RF Armed Forces. In fact, by allowing the existence of such structures, Russia would have left on the shoulders of private owners the formation of a part of reserves in case of hostilities.
Similarly, on the shoulders of private owners would be the formation of anti-piracy forces, hiring personnel and soldiers, the purchase of weapons and ammunition. And those tasks that the Navy would have dumped on them would have been paid for by the state, but at a much lower price than if the fleet did it.
Naturally, it will be necessary to somehow connect this order with the same UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, but this is not such a big problem.
And, of course, having a controlled military force with experience of a global presence in different parts of the planet on hand to the Armed Forces is very useful in light of the growth in the number and strength of various terrorist organizations. As mentioned in the commentary on raising the flag of St. Andrew on the under-ship of the 22160 project, the nature of threats is changing around the world - purely criminal piracy is waning, while terrorism is increasing, and in some cases, non-state entities are already able to challenge national governments. In this situation, every barrel and every ship is important.
Compare this situation with what is now.
Navy thought himself flawed anti-piracy ship, extremely limited suitable for anti-piracy and almost unsuitable for anti-terrorism tasks. For thirty-six billion rubles, a series of six such ships is being built, crews are being formed that will be “turned off” from the real security of the country. Then these forces (in theory, in practice — not a fact) will be sent to the “pirate-dangerous” regions of the world and will probably do something for the money of the Russian budget.
If everything was organized “wisely”, then a tender would be announced for the fight against piracy, with qualification requirements for participants, including the need to purchase ships, vessels, aviation etc., and it’s strictly in the Russian Federation (a list of what you could buy abroad would also be - we don’t do much at all, or we do poorly, or we do it very expensive. Most often, it’s both bad and expensive). The starting price of the tender would have been calculated in advance as, for example, 75% of the cost of the military campaign of the Navy ships, after which the winning PMC would begin to prepare such an expedition. With a “patent” from the Russian Federation.
And thirty-six billion would be spent on real warships, and not useless semi-civil "ersatz."
Of course, the PMC functionality would be limited compared to the Navy - so it is unlikely that they could stop and inspect all vessels and boats that would be considered suspicious. But they could “transfer” these contacts to someone, the same Chinese, NATO, or anyone.
A separate topic is the assistance of the Navy and SSO in conducting special operations. Sooner or later, but over time, the ships of the Russian PMCs would “become familiar” in different parts of the world, and no one would notice that there were completely different people among the guards, and there were a couple of extra boats or containers on board the ship. And this, too, would not cost the state money.
In some cases, the FSB could hire such structures, for example, to dramatically strengthen its forces in a particular region.
And there is a purely economic effect from such events. If the Navy simply saved money in the fight against piracy, delegating it to “independent operators”, private clients would hire private security companies for money, which would then be taxed in Russia, and private security companies would be obliged to buy licenses and equipment in Russia , at least a little, but they would feed the domestic military-industrial complex and the sudoprom (or ship repair). In general, it is beneficial for the country.
But most importantly, unusual tasks would be removed from the navy. The fleet is an instrument of war or containment of war. To erode his already scarce resources into incomprehensible what, it is just a crime, especially in the current poorly predictable world. In such conditions, it would be a very sensible decision to dump some of the “non-core” tasks on third-party contractors, and even at their expense. It would also be very good to get almost free, even if weak, low-quality, but still organized and trained military force, which could be used as a reserve in secondary areas.
Alas, but a reasonable approach in Russia is not honored. Officials are concerned that “if something didn’t work out,” the FSB does not want to do extra work, the Ministry of Defense doesn’t understand what it wants, liberals in the Government do not want their Anglo-Saxon deities to be angry with them, and are willing to pay any price for it, people wants it to be “like in the USSR” (having forgotten for a long time, as it was there, in the USSR), and as a result we have what we have.
But if, as it is sung in one song, “the mind will ever win,” then it will be impossible to miss such opportunities.
In the meantime, one can only hope for the best.
Information