This objective was also part of the plans for 2009’s largest command post exercises held last August in Buryatia, the Trans-Baikal Territory and the Irkutsk Region, across which the East SiberiaPacific Ocean oil pipeline is being built.
The exercises’ scenario provided for planning and taking measures to clean up consequences of natural disasters and man-made catastrophes.
In 2010, Russia’s Airborne Force will land at the Barneo ice station and other areas of the oil- and gas-rich Arctic shelf as part of celebrations of the Force’s 60th anniversary.
The Shield war games held on the Matybulak range in Kazakhstan near the gas pipeline being built from Turkmenistan to China, involved the Collective Rapid Response Force of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation.
Russia’s partners in the CSTO are ready to support the idea of joint protection and the defence of crucial economic zones.
Control of hydrocarbon transport routes is key to managing the global economy.
Analysis of terrorist activity shows that their overall, although not only, objective is to control hydrocarbon production and transportation zones. An indication of this is that the terrorist network started to take shape after the first global oil crisis in 1974.
The United States and other NATO countries first provided military protection for hydrocarbon transportation long ago.
The US also planned to protect the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, but Azerbaijan stated it had the capacity to do so without any assistance.
Russia’s war games this year were not limited to the safe transportation of hydrocarbons. Nikolai Makarov, Chief of Russia’s General Staff and First Deputy Defence Minister, said that the 2009 West games, which were held near Kaliningrad, Russia’s territory on the Baltic Sea, and in Belarus and Russia, included mass regrouping of troops and their more effective operation in the two countries as well as on the Baltic and Barents seas.
Makarov stated that the Russian Defence Ministry held the exercise to study the transition of the military command to a new system based primarily on the concept of network-centric warfare, which “seeks to translate an information advantage, enabled in part by information technology, into a competitive war-fighting advantage through the robust networking of well informed geographically dispersed forces”.
In plain English, it implies feeding information from satellites, AEW aircraft, unmanned air vehicles and reconnaissance groups into a united computer network available to the command bodies at all levels. The network is used for troop control, targeting, and providing information about the results of fire strikes.
Training for this type of operation requires a space-based navigation system (GLONASS) and portable receivers that can track the targets to the nearest centimetre, which is vital for precision weapons. Miniature unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) with tracking and information transfer equipment are also necessary, as well as a large number of portable miniature computers. Automatic tracking systems at combat platforms connected to the satellites’ reconnaissance systems, AEW aircraft and UAVs must be installed as well.
Most crucial is the need for trained personnel who can use computers and the warfare tactic of small units in open formation.
Unfortunately, the GLONASS system is merely nascent at this time, and only a limited number of UAVs have been bought abroad. Therefore, Russians are mostly using old-fashioned methods of warfare – making long marches, digging trenches and the like, said General Yuri Netkachev, former Deputy Commander of the Group of Russian Forces in the South Caucasus.
The need for transition to network-centric warfare methods has motivated the reform of military command and the Russian armed forces’ change to a brigade-based structure. The United States started reforming its armed forces only after they were equipped with precision reconnaissance and strike systems as well as modern communications, while Russia is doing everything the other way round. First, it began by reforming the system of military command, only later giving consideration to equipping the armed forces with new systems. It began training soldiers to use high-tech systems of this type even later.
The exercises held in 2009 highlighted the military’s resolve to modernise the army. Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Forces, General Vladimir Boldyrev, who supervised the Ladoga war games, said their results would be analysed to make a decision on creating operational-strategic commands at military districts, with air and naval forces made subordinate to these commands.
This means for example that the troops of the Leningrad Military District in the North-Western Strategic Direction covering the territory from Belarus in the West to the Barents Sea in the North would be made subordinate to the Chief of the Operational-Strategic Command.
The Interior Troops and the Northern Fleet are not part of the Leningrad Military District. They are independent operational groups directly subordinate to the Main Command of the Interior Ministry’s Interior Troops and the Main Command of the Navy, respectively.
However, in the case of a war or during war games they will follow the orders of the Operational-Strategic Command.
As of now, there are no central command units in the Russian Ground Forces; they have been incorporated into military districts and made directly subordinate to district commanders.
The Army now has 85 combined arms, assault, missile, artillery, electronic warfare, communications, and other full brigades These have replaced the six permanent-readiness divisions that previously comprised the Army. In short, the promise to develop a new image for the Russian Armed Forces by December 1, 2009 as formulated by President Dmitry Medvedev will be fulfilled.
Units of two Russian armies were deployed in Belarus during the 2009 West war games, which had a 1,500-km (932-mile) frontline 300 km (186 miles) deep. These war games were held simultaneously with NATO manoeuvres in the region, thereby playing the role of dissuasive force. Despite their economic differences, the presidents of Russia and Belarus indicated that security problems were at the top of their agenda and that they were united on the issue.
NIKOLAI KHORUNZHY
