The most reliable guarantee of national security
The leading position of the Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN) in the structure of the domestic nuclear deterrence forces (SNF) was confirmed by the United States’s perseverance in the framework of the Russian-American negotiations on the limitation of strategic offensive arms (START). According to the terms of the 31 Treaty of START-1991 signed in July, the distribution of the number of warheads in the Russian SNF was: in the Strategic Missile Forces - 1%, in the naval strategic nuclear forces - 64%, in the air-based SNF - 27%. In preparing the START-9 Treaty, signed on 2 in January of 3, the American side forced the Russian leadership to agree to a decrease in the share of strategic missile forces in the structure of strategic nuclear forces to 1993 – 2003% of the total number of warheads by 20. Mainly due to the elimination of heavy missiles with separable warheads. This would practically deprive Russia of the necessary deterrent potential. But the START-30 Treaty has not entered into force.During the period of the existence of the Russian strategic nuclear forces - and especially in recent decades - the theory and practice of military affairs have undergone very significant changes. The traditional concepts of network-centric wars, indirect actions, controlled chaos that have recently been successfully tested by NATO countries have replaced the traditional notions of wars and military actions with massive involvement of human power and military equipment.
Their generalized essence lies in the fact that war, in essence, is fought continuously and continuously, both in the military and in other areas of security (economic, informational, environmental, etc.). The border between peacetime and wartime is blurring. Achieving the goals of war are not only military operations with clear material damage (in relation to states with strategic nuclear missiles). weapons, - with its proactive disabling), but also actions in the framework of an indirect confrontation with damage to the implicit. The manipulation of information and intelligence data, as well as the time factor in both proactive and retaliatory actions, are crucial. In accordance with this, the limits of independence for the conduct of hostilities by groups (subunits) and the actions of individual servicemen are significantly expanded.
WHAT TO PARALIZE RUSSIA
In a number of countries of the world (first of all, in the USA), modern war is interpreted as an activity to coerce or punish the political and military elite of the enemy without mass destruction of infrastructure and civilians. Obvious evidence of this is the complex (informational, economic, diplomatic, actually military) actions of the United States and its allies with respect to a number of European countries (Yugoslavia) and the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, etc.).
In this regard, it is necessary to focus on two extremely important circumstances for Russia.
First, no matter how much modern (including homegrown) “peacekeepers” dissuaded us from doing so, the West is constantly striving to achieve its geopolitical goal. And it is to guarantee their well-being and domination in the world by destroying or weakening all real and potential geopolitical opponents.
Secondly, what is happening in Syria is an extremely clear lesson for Russia. On the one hand, he makes through a prism of “is there no someone’s interest here?” To more thoroughly analyze a number of negative processes in Russia over the past decades. On the other hand, it is necessary to clearly realize that Russia can become an object of intervention (in some of its possible forms). Most likely this can happen during the period of maximum military weakening of the country, that is, as soon as the enemy is convinced that it is possible to act relatively impunity. And the reason for this is not in the abstract “bloodthirstiness” of the world environment, but in its objective striving to possess the necessary exhausted natural resources. According to the figurative Chinese expression, "the tiger eats people not because it is angry, but because it is hungry."
The modern development of weapons, military and special equipment (VVST) in the world is focused on the basic principle of the “network-centric” war: achieving victory with little blood, primarily due to advantage in the information sphere. In this perspective, traditional weapons are being improved and intensive testing of various types of weapons is being carried out on new physical principles, including laser, beam, kinetic, geophysical, biological, cybernetic, and others, including non-lethal actions, as well as the use of robotics to replace people.
Under these conditions, the relative importance of nuclear missiles in economically developed countries should theoretically decrease to the point of completely abandoning them in the future. Of course, after it is destroyed and in countries for which it has become (or will become) the main security vestige. Today, the main line of development of the USAA is connected with systems based on new physical principles. In the United States and Israel, special cyber divisions have been created, the capabilities of which are estimated by American experts in such a way that "... 592 man per 2 of the year at the cost of the 98 million project will provide ... paralysis of Russia."
Undoubtedly, it is precisely with the achieved breakthroughs in the creation of new (non-nuclear) types of weapons and military technologies that the United States persists in the further development of Russian-American agreements in the field of reducing strategic offensive weapons, engaging non-strategic nuclear weapons in this process, preserving and securing non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. . The restructuring of the "network-centric" methods of war (in their broad interpretation) is characteristic not only of the developed West, but also of China, which is rapidly gaining strength. In the book of PLA officers published in the USA in 1999 in the People's Republic of China, published in the USA under the title “The Art of War Without Rules”, with the subtitle “Chinese Plan for the Destruction of America”, the position of Chinese military experts is presented as follows. “While one country prepares for war using all the power of modern weapons, another country at this time accumulates financial resources, destabilizes the situation on the stock exchange in an enemy country, spreads all sorts of rumors, inflicts pinpoint non-military strikes on vital enemy nodes, eliminates key figures in the economic, defense and political sectors of the enemy, smuggling large amounts of money into the enemy’s currency, infecting bodies of water and crops, organizing opposition speeches, etc. As a result, panic flares up, the enemy’s social institutions are destabilized, mass riots, looting and other delights of a real war arise. Only then is a demonstration military strike struck and a war is formally declared. There is nothing left for the injured party but to make peace on shameful conditions. ”
In this context, it seems appropriate to note that the liquidation of the USSR and the extreme weakening of Russia due to the degradation of the industrial-technological base, agriculture, medicine, science, education and most other vital sectors during the last 20 years should apparently be considered one of the most the ambitious practical results of the policy of targeted indirect actions by relevant stakeholders.
NETCENTRIC RETENTION
The global trends in the development of military affairs are, of course, reflected in the basic Russian documents on military construction. For example, in the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 7 in May 2012 of the year No. 603 “On the implementation of plans (programs) for the construction and development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, other troops, military units and defense modernization organizations” the development of communication systems, intelligence, control, electronic warfare , unmanned aerial vehicle complexes, robotic systems, high-precision weapons, along with the improvement of strategic nuclear forces and aerospace defense systems, are among the priority tasks.
Some domestic military researchers recommend an immediate and radical reversal to new principles of creating AMST, arguing their position with the following circumstances: the possibilities of modern fundamental knowledge for the implementation of promising technologies have now been exhausted; further technical progress is possible only on the basis of a breakthrough of fundamental science to a qualitatively new level; currently available mobile installations (with the exception of nuclear submarines) in 10 – 15 years (provided that they are converted to gas fuel in 25 years) will find themselves without sources of fossil fuel and will not be able to realize their combat capabilities; Considering the inertia of industry and the economy in introducing fundamentally new technologies, it is necessary to abandon modernization and move on to developing new generations of technology based on non-traditional energy sources and operating principles that are consistent with the structures and rhythms of the natural environment.
The ideas of combining the efforts of reconnaissance, automation of control and fire destruction to achieve this goal were first expressed by Marshal of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ogarkov in the middle of the 80-s of the XX century. However, they began to find their practical outlines in the form of integration into a single system of reconnaissance and surveillance, automation of control and communications, combat platforms in the US armed forces at the end of the 90s. As for the Russian Federation, it is once again forced to catch up. At the same time, Russia's current capabilities do not allow it to expect success in direct (“symmetrical”) military-technical rivalry with the United States, its NATO satellites, and China’s potential world leader in the field of a rapid transition exclusively to the “network-centric” ideology of creating the Higher military technology and the use of Armed Force
To a large extent, this is due to economic factors. It should be noted that, in contrast to the very recent past, the fulfillment of military construction tasks in the Russian Federation is now not only secured with unprecedented funding, but is also under the scrutiny of the country's military-political leadership. According to the estimates of many experts, for the first 4 months of 2013, the domestic nuclear weapons complex received almost 80% of the stipulated annual funding, military science - 57%, and overall national defense - more than 40%.
Unfortunately, the picture that is so encouraging for Russian defense construction seems to have its own specific timeframes. Experts predict that a way out of the global economic crisis of 2008 – 2010 will most likely not lead to stable growth, and already in the 2014 – 2016 years a new global economic crisis is very likely. As a matter of fact, the signs of this are already observed in a number of previously quite successful European countries. This process, of course, will not bypass Russia, the growth rate of gross domestic product in which has already dropped to a critical level.
ASYMMETRIC ANSWER
From the totality of these circumstances, it is quite natural for the Russian Federation to conclude that it is necessary to find alternative (“asymmetric”) directions for parrying the formed and rapidly increasing military-technical superiority of today's world leaders. In his speech at the general meeting of the Academy of Military Sciences of Russia, General of the Army Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formulated this conclusion in the form of the following task: “No matter how strong the enemy is, no matter how perfect his forces and means of warfare are, and methods of their use, he will always find vulnerabilities, which means that there is a possibility of adequate resistance. At the same time, we should not copy other people's experience and “catch up” with leading countries, but work “ahead of the curve” and be in leading positions ourselves. ”
It is important to emphasize that the above wording does not mean an elementary ignoring of the modern ideology of the development of military affairs. After all, “network-centrism” as such implies a change in the worldview of military leadership at all levels in the management of subordinate formations in various conditions of the situation; creation of unified ACS by troops and weapons operating in a single information space; the introduction of modern technical means of surveillance and reconnaissance, which will fill the telecommunications networks of control systems with information; the development and adoption of a sufficient number of high-precision weapons of various classes, as well as more sophisticated combat platforms of various bases for the deployment of weapons of destruction. Without the implementation of all this, that is, without following the ideology of "network-centrism", one cannot count on an adequate development of the domestic Armed Forces.
We are pleased to note that, judging by the content of the aforementioned Decree of the President of the Russian Federation and the State Armaments Program for 2011 – 2020, the political leadership of the country has determined the main guidelines in the construction and development of the Armed Forces. In this regard, the installation to ensure the advance in alternative directions should, in our opinion, be understood as emphasizing the distribution of efforts in military rivalry over the future until Russia’s current economic lag behind the most developed countries of the world is eliminated.
In practical terms, for today's Russia, an asymmetrical approach in the face of the challenges of a “network-centric” war can be interpreted as a priority to combat the enemy’s high-tech systems (information, control, communication, navigation, etc.) using both promising (created) and currently available at the disposal of funds. Given the current role of the Russian strategic nuclear forces in ensuring the country's military security, it is first of all that, along with the control and information systems, an asymmetrical approach to development and application planning should be extended to them.
The current capabilities of the components of the Russian strategic nuclear forces to meet the challenges of strategic deterrence and ensuring the country's military security vary significantly. Without going into a detailed analysis of this statement, we refer to the conclusions of some experts.
As experts have already noted in the NVO (see No. 16 for 2013 for the year “Under the Darkness and Silence”), the state of Russia's anti-submarine defense is such that the Navy cannot ensure the security of the territory of the Russian Federation from attacks by foreign submarines (SP) with ballistic and high-precision long-range cruise missiles (CRBD), nor the safety of the NSNM. The main reason for this is the overwhelming superiority of US submarines over domestic submarines in the characteristics of the underwater lighting system. The tragedy of the Kursk nuclear submarine in 2000 showed that the Navy does not control the underwater situation even in its training ground at sea.
And the permanent author of the NVO, Alexander Khramchikhin, analyzing the possibilities of the United States for delivering a disarming non-nuclear strike on the Russian strategic nuclear forces, concludes that for the time being it is purely theoretical. Mainly due to the presence in the strategic nuclear forces of missile systems of the Strategic Missile Forces, which have high combat readiness and are based, in particular, in areas of the national territory that are unattainable for the enemy’s first strike.
As for the sea component of our strategic nuclear forces, it will be quite simple to destroy its enemy. To do this, he may need a whole unit of B-52 bombers with artillery and rocket launchers from the Arctic and the Aleutian Islands, or a cruiser or destroyer equipped with Tomahawk, or one of the multi-purpose nuclear submarines in the Pacific Ocean. Aviation the component of the Russian strategic nuclear forces during the disarming strike of the enemy will cause him the least concern. If even several Russian planes somehow survive after such an attack, this will not become a problem for the United States, because our bombers will simply not be allowed to enter the line of launch of their Kyrgyz Republic on American territory.
Thus, to date, the initially leading role of the Strategic Missile Forces in the structure of Russia's SNF has not only been preserved, but also objectively strengthened. From this it follows that in implementing the development of national strategic nuclear forces with a focus on the high-tech nature of possible wars and the search for effective asymmetrical counteractions to the enemy in the face of time and resource shortages, special attention corresponding to their actual status should, in our opinion, be given to the Strategic Missile Forces.
STRUCTURE, HAPPINESS, PRESERVED
Based on the accumulated experience of the creation, formation and development of the Strategic Missile Forces, we can quite conventionally single out three, in our opinion, the most significant aspects of their further improvement: technical, organizational and political.
The technical aspect seems to be by now the most developed and basically already practically realized on the basis of a deep modernization of the available means and a new scientific and technical reserve. Judging by the information in open sources, it includes the creation of new stationary and mobile missile systems (including railway-based), their more effective combat equipment (including, possibly, non-nuclear), infrastructure based, support and control, adapted to content and conditions for the implementation of promising combat missions. This refers to the defeat of the objectives of various classes and importance (including key infrastructure and information support) in any region of the world in conditions of acute temporary shortage, most characteristic of retaliatory actions, active information counteraction and the presence of a potential adversary of layered antimissile defense. It is expected, in particular, that by the year of the 2020, the Strategic Missile Forces should fully switch to faster and more secure digital data transfer technologies.
Thus, in the technical aspect of the development of the Strategic Missile Forces, in our opinion, the main recommendations can be reduced, firstly, to ensuring the timely and full implementation of the decisions and commitments already made and, secondly, to finding additional measures to maintain the combat stability of the group projected conditions of modern war. The latter covers a wide range of issues - from information saturation, including early warning and the development of decision support tools, to organizing a cover from the informational, psychological, reconnaissance and sabotage actions of the enemy, as well as strikes of his high-precision means.
The organizational aspect of the development of the Strategic Missile Forces naturally follows from the projected changes in the tasks and conditions for their implementation, as well as the technical appearance of the armed forces.
The basis of the expedient organizational structure of the Strategic Missile Forces in the form of missile regiments, divisions and armies, fortunately, has been wisely preserved in the form in which it has already shown its effectiveness in practice. The status of an independent branch of the Armed Forces of Russia under the overall control of the General Staff today allows the Strategic Missile Forces to fully realize their combat capabilities. At the same time, the Strategic Missile Forces already currently have components that fall within their objectives and characteristics of operation under the definition of the kind of troops. Such components are the grouping of stationary RC and the group of PGRK. In the future, they may be joined by groups of railway-based RKs and special-purpose complexes (for example, with rockets in non-traditional equipment). As domestic and foreign military experience shows, the most effective management of the coordinated joint use of such groups (essentially, combat arms) in the expected specific conditions of military operations can only be achieved within a hierarchical structure of a higher level than that of the armed forces. This circumstance constitutes the objective background of the urgent, in our opinion, question of the rational status of the Strategic Missile Forces.
TO PARRY ANY CALL
The political aspect of the development of the Strategic Missile Forces is primarily due to the need for the specific positioning of the Russian Federation to the world community as a self-sufficient sovereign state, intent and able to pursue an independent policy and effectively defend the national interests of its and its allies. Much points to this need. In particular, the development of events around Syria, inspired by the NATO countries, which could turn into another heavy political and economic damage for Russia.
In this regard, a logical continuation and systematic design of the totality of already implemented and possible new measures to maintain and increase the combat potential of the SNF and its base element - the Strategic Missile Forces to a level sufficient to guarantee Russia's military security in the predicted conditions of modern and foreseeable future wars. the decision to restore the Strategic Missile Forces in the status of the type of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Such a decision, among other things, would be an unequivocal signal to our foreign partners about toughening Russia's position in all matters relating to ensuring its national interests and security, including the definition of expedient conditions and limits for subsequent restrictions and reductions of all types of weapons.
Thus, reinforced technically and organizationally, supported by relevant political statements, the Strategic Missile Forces, together with developing other components of the Strategic Nuclear Forces and general-purpose forces, will form an asymmetrical response to Russia in the foreseeable future that can counter any military technical challenges.
The authors deliberately did not touch upon the issues of economic justification of the proposed recommendations, leaving them to relevant specialists and a priori assuming that the additional costs associated with this would not be overly burdensome for Russia and fully compensated by the new combat properties of the Strategic Missile Forces in their future appearance.
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