Reform of the Russian army: long-awaited or doomed

So ... Now many people will talk about the announced reform of the Russian army, we here with our comrade colonels thought well and also decided to insert our five rubles.



In general, everything voiced at a historical (without exaggeration) speech requires separate reflection, understanding, calculations and transcripts. And then it's time to express opinions.

So, it seems that our leadership has realized two very significant points:

- The Russian army in its current state is very far from ideal;

– clash with NATO in a non-nuclear conflict weapons perhaps, and in it the Russian army shines very little.

Therefore, the army simply needs to be reformed, once again tightening their belts, spending trillions of rubles on this, guessing that this money will go to its intended purpose, and will not be spent on exhibitions and parades.

What was announced:

- the return of the military districts of the Soviet structure, Moscow and Leningrad;
- Deployment of a special army corps in Karelia;
– In the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions of Russia there will be two new motorized rifle divisions;
- The Airborne Forces will receive an additional two airborne assault divisions;
- seven existing motorized rifle and tank brigades will be deployed in divisions;
- all brigades of the Marine Corps are deployed in the division;
- tank armies receive a mixed air division and an army brigade aviation from about 80 attack helicopters;
- Aerospace Forces will receive 8 new bomber regiments, one fighter aviation regiment;
- six new army aviation brigades were created;
- 8 new artillery divisions (including one or two large capacity);
- the age of conscription for military service will be 21 years, the limit - 30 years;
- the number of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is assigned to one and a half million people (including 670 thousand contract soldiers).

Battalion tactical groups

Here immediately there is an understanding that all this is not for one year and not for five years. To create and deploy all these divisions and brigades will require a lot of things: people, equipment, money. Equipment still needs to be made, people need to be found and trained.

Training is a separate issue altogether, the SVO perfectly showed that BTG (battalion tactical groups) in the modern conditions of Ukraine and with the current state of communications in the Russian army (at the level of the 60s of the last century) and reinforced brigades are simply nothing, because BTGs assembled from the world piece by piece, with a zero level of interspecific interaction of troops, without modern intelligence and control, are simply not capable of solving problems in the modern theater of Ukraine.

Yes, one can recall the first and second Chechen wars, where it was the battalion and regimental groups that decided. And then you need to remember in what areas it happened. The area of ​​the Chechen Republic is 16 sq. km. The area of ​​the Kharkiv region, for example, is 171 sq. km. We add here all the other areas where the NWO is going, and we understand the depth of the gaping abyss into which BTGs fell, are falling and will fall.

Thank God, it dawned on someone there that such fronts should be held precisely by divisions. Moreover, not assembled on the knee, but completely mobilized and ready to perform combat missions.


Basically, what is BTG? This has already been discussed more than once - a tool that is just perfect for driving barmaley in the Syrian expanses. Suitable for pecking terrorists, but for full-fledged positional battles, to put it mildly, not quite suitable. In fact, a crutch for defective regiments.

Here you just need to take a tour of history, and even in Soviet times. It was then, and not under Serdyukov-Ivanov, that the Soviet army system "company - battalion - regiment - division - army" began to be killed. Many smart people from those times say today that the main reason was not the desire to “mow down” according to Western models, but the completely trivial desire of Soviet colonels to retire as generals. Still, a general will be much fatter than a colonel.

But the system, which had worked perfectly since the Great Patriotic War, did not allow to have so many generals. Everything was clear and understandable - the regiment commander was a colonel, the division commander was a major general.

Who, when and how came up with such a stellar idea with brigades, I can’t say for sure, but it was this person who quickly realized that potentially the brigade was commanded by ... a colonel or a brigadier general! Yes, somewhere a brigadier general is called a senior colonel, this is something intermediate between a colonel and a major general in many armies, but ours grasped the idea clearly: the main thing is the general!


And rushed. They began to churn out brigade regiments by reinforcing a motorized rifle regiment with a tank battalion, an artillery battalion, an air defense battalion, and so on. And here it is, the coveted general's position!

Major General, well, don’t introduce a senior colonel or a junior general, after all ...

And the most important thing began in 2007, when the Ministry of Defense, by the will of President Putin, received a new Minister of Defense, Anatoly Serdyukov. But the three-eagle State Councilor is half the battle. Serdyukov is a real civilian, and the demand from him is somewhat in the other direction. But the Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov ...


Here Makarov, it seems to me, really hated the army. And as much harm as he did with the full approval of Serdyukov, probably no one has done in the entire history, starting with Tukhachevsky. But with Tukhachevsky, how it happened, and Makarov is alive and well to this day.

To be objective and fair, the Makarov-Serdyukov duo did a lot of useful things and innovations for the army. But all the useful things that they have done can in no way compensate for the harm they have done to the army.

The way military schools were thinned out, closing in batches, how the officer corps was reduced, and not where it was necessary, but lower - the generals all sat there. How civilian outsourcing came instead of logistics. What can I say, we all observed and will observe for a long time the results of this work in the Northern Military District, when there is no communication, no normal control, no sane coordination between the assembled units like a vinaigrette, just terrible chaos in the rear.

We will not say anything about the mobilization system, everyone saw everything with their own eyes: the mob system died that way 30 years ago, and the mobilization necromancy of the 2022 model put everything in its place.

Brigades

The idea was quite right: instead of large and really clumsy divisions (including cadre divisions), it seemed like more mobile brigades of constant readiness appeared. There was something reasonable in this, but: the divisional scheme was worked out by two world wars, and worked out clearly. The brigade system is a special matter, brigades cannot be used effectively everywhere, everything depends very much on the theater of operations and the enemy.

The mobility of the brigade is good when there is a need for it. In small regional conflicts such as Syria or Karabakh. If we are talking about the fact that today in the NMD zone a dead defensive stand is required or, conversely, offensive actions based solely on brute strike power over large spaces, this is a division.

The mobility of the brigade is determined by its weakness. A motorized rifle brigade is essentially just a motorized rifle regiment, reinforced by another motorized rifle battalion, artillery, anti-aircraft and anti-tank battalions. That is, in fact, to fulfill the tasks of the old division today, three brigades are required. Two and a half. Moreover, they are in the hands of one command.

And management is also difficult. The brigade headquarters is expectedly inferior to the divisional headquarters, which is capable of working out more complex and more global tasks. The Americans, by the way, honed their ability to use brigades in small conflicts for a very long time, but when it came to a serious fight (Operation Desert Storm), the 7th US Army Corps of the divisional formation went into action. Yes, the divisions were of a two-brigade composition, but these were precisely the divisions, each consisting of two brigades, and not two brigades in some kind of operational subordination.

It is possible to assemble two brigades into one shock fist, but this does not make them a division. Issues of communication, control, coherence of headquarters and divisions.

This, at last, seems to be understood in Moscow. Therefore, they decided that yes, it was necessary to fight with the usual and prescribed blood scheme “company - battalion - regiment - division - army - front”.

And here is a full hello.

Reforming this level is not a matter of one year and not one trillion rubles, as already mentioned. Here it is worth recalling the example of Marshal Tukhachevsky, who gave birth to the idea of ​​mechanized corps, consisting of a thousand tanks each. And how these corps, left without control and supply, were destroyed in the first month of the war, proving their complete incapacity.

And then, in the conditions of the winter of 1941, tank brigades had to be hastily formed in order to be able to maneuver in the face of an acute shortage of tanks. But after 1941 came 1944, and in Germany and other countries already included tank armies, well-oiled tools for the destruction of everything in their path. The raids of the armies of Lelyushenko and Rybalko have become an adornment of any textbook, both tactics and history. And these armies were already quite well supplied and managed, which means they could win. And they won.

And note that the path "division - corps - brigade - division - army" took almost 8 years. And 5 of them are military.

Today we have a slightly different alignment. If we want to see these divisions created from scratch and deployed from brigades, all this requires hundreds of tanks and self-propelled guns. Airplanes and helicopters. Also hundreds. And for planes, helicopters and tanks, crews are needed. Trained and trained. The question arises - where to get them? Mobilization? Not seriously. You can mobilize / buy privates and sergeants, with pilots everything will be very difficult. Will the remnants of flight schools (Krasnodar and Syzran) be able to satisfy the need for flight crews? It's kind of doubtful, to be honest.

Approximately the same is with the rest of the divisions that are planned to be formed and created. They will need a huge number of experienced officers and sergeants, with whom there is still a shortage. And there will be more shortages. And this despite the fact that now there is an outflow of personnel from the army, from all branches of the military.

To many, the situation with the NMD today resembles the first Chechen campaign precisely in that it was necessary to assemble combat-ready units throughout Russia. And all the same, we had to arrange mobilization, and as a result we have a complete hodgepodge of army units, "BARS", the Chechen National Guard, "musicians" and units of the LDNR. And all the same problems with management and communication.

Reformers

Here is the cost of the very army that Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov began to prepare at the beginning of the XNUMXs. The one that was before Serdyukov, and under which the destruction of the army began. It was under Ivanov's rule that the myth that the army could be manned by contractors died.

In general, the activities of all our ministers can and should be discussed separately, because each contributed to what the whole world sees today, looking towards the Russian army. But they see little that is pleasant for us and a lot that is encouraging for themselves. The Russian army has ceased to be a scarecrow on a global scale, you can not be afraid of it. To the greatest regret.

But who will return the disbanded schools? Factories for the production and repair of equipment that are sold even now, when there is a war?

Minister Ivanov reduced the army to "sufficient for defense" one million people, Ivanov began to reduce the officer corps by reducing military universities. That is, gentlemen, the generals both sat in their chairs and remained sitting, but there were fewer lieutenants at times. But the problems with military service, which were reduced to one year, went away, although this was a very controversial step.

Then there was the reign of Serdyukov. Yes, by a strange coincidence, in 2008 the army was able to solve the Georgian problem.


The army worked perfectly, but the whole catch was that the Russian military acted according to deployment plans that were developed almost under Defense Minister G.K. Zhukov. Since the scheme was working, it was required to get rid of it as soon as possible, with which Mr. Serdyukov coped more than successfully.

The number of officer positions was significantly reduced, from 350 thousand to 150. The institute of midshipmen and ensigns was abolished. In my opinion, this is one of the significant losses for the army, because ensigns are not only warehouses and canteens, but also signalmen, cryptographers, operators of various complex systems, gunsmiths and technicians. It was warrant officers and midshipmen who were the technical backbone on which the technical part of the army and fleet.

Yes, under Shoigu, they seemed to come to their senses, and the institute of ensigns was returned, but the ensigns themselves did not return in such volumes. That is, the army and navy have a huge shortage of specialists with a secondary technical profile of education. Techies. Which will be needed for new divisions. Where would you like to take them?

In general, according to the ideas of the reformers, ensigns were to be replaced by some specialists with a higher technical education, perhaps even civilians. However, for some reason, the "citizen" was not able to provide these specialists at the disposal of the army.

Approximately the same problems with personnel and funding began to be observed in the defense industry. And here Serdyukov's reforms backfired with a rushing mass of imported developments. French ships, thermal imagers, Austrian rifles, Italian armored vehicles and so on. "Why do when you can buy?"


Today, "Armata" was left without a radar, thermal imager, screens, electronics. And there is nowhere to buy all this, and there was not even a project of its own. And it won't be anymore.


And now they have continued what Serdyukov started, who simply played in corruption schemes, that is, he began to steal, as if he were not in himself. And so he would continue to be a minister, if not for corruption scandals.

So now they just continued Serdyukov's reforms. On the one hand, there are reforms of social issues for the military, an increase in monetary allowance, and housing. On the other hand, there was a ceremonial-ostentatious army that was slipping into the abyss of competitions and exhibitions. The mortgage army, which will now have to be treated for many problems.


One plus: those who did not want to serve from the beginning of the SVO together began to throw reports on the table to the authorities and flee from the army. The outcome was comparable to the flight of those who did not want to be mobilized from Russia, only these gentlemen fled from the army. And this outcome will also have to be compensated at any cost.

And on the whole, it can be stated that the creation of the “new Russian army”, which began in the mid-90s, failed miserably. And the creation of a professional and contract army capable of solving extremely limited combat missions of a counter-terrorist nature led to the fact that the army was unable to solve combat missions within the framework of the NMD.

And here is the reform

Not for one year. Here you can clearly see that this is for several years, if the leadership of the army will have these several years at all.

Cutting up the ZVO monster into the Leningrad and Moscow military districts is not fast. How many offices will need to be filled with generals... But what was created under the USSR turned out to be more reasonable and effective than the huge districts of Russian reality. Well, like the mechanized corps of Tukhachevsky in comparison with the tank brigades of 1942.

And we are not yet talking about the restructuring of all communication and control systems in the structure of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff, caused by the emergence of two (two or two?) old new districts.

But I would like to say that the Karelian corps, two airborne assault divisions of the Airborne Forces, two divisions in new areas, the deployment of all marine brigades in a division, and so on, will simply require a breakthrough in equipment. Of course, those who get such fat government orders will be happy, but the question is: how long will the production of this equipment take? In conditions when T-90Ms go to the front instead of T-62s, this looks somewhat optimistic.

As far as this is possible - we will see in the very near future. But what was within the power of 20-30 years ago, today may simply be beyond the strength of the Russian industry. After all, we are talking about hundreds of tanks, guns, planes and helicopters, and our military industry cannot yet cope with the elementary release of shells.

The announced reform is a very necessary thing. But the huge problems that must be solved on the way to its implementation inspire fears that the Russian military-industrial complex, which is already working to break, which is a remnant of the destroyed Soviet military-industrial complex, will not survive. The creation of new divisions is to drive those not mobilized into the army, everything is much more complicated.