Expert Khodarenok told what lessons Russia should learn from operations in Iraq and Yugoslavia Not so long ago, the peculiar anniversaries of the NATO operations against Yugoslavia "Allied Force" (began on March 24, 1999) and "Freedom to Iraq" of the United States and its allies (aka "Shock and Awe", started on March 20, 2003) were celebrated.
Military observer of the Newspaper.En" Mikhail Khodarenok - about what conclusions Russia should draw from this to strengthen its national security.
Russia has always reacted to the suffering of peaceful Iraqi (and Serbian) citizens, but the national security interests of its country are still closer. As the next anniversaries of both operations approached, Russian politicians and political scientists talked a lot about the fact that as a result of military operations in Iraq, chaos reigned for a long time (which, according to their estimates, still lasts). They recalled the losses among the civilian population of this country, and these are hundreds of thousands of people. There was a lot of talk about the guerrilla and civil wars that arose in Iraq as a result of the American invasion.
Analyzing the operation "Allied Force", political scientists focused mainly on the fact that some territories of Yugoslavia were exposed to radioactive contamination during air raids (as a result of the use of depleted uranium ammunition). It was hotly discussed that thousands of Serbs were killed, missing and injured, and ethnic cleansing began in the province of Kosovo, directed against the titular nation. Finally, they remembered the problem of the growth of carcinogenic diseases among the Serbian population after the use of depleted uranium ammunition. They did not forget, of course, about the destruction of Yugoslav rivers by the aggressive NATO bloc and the poisoning of the air.
In general, in both cases, the attention of representatives of the political class and the political science community was mainly focused on the colorful description of the bloody fangs of American imperialism and the sharp claws of European hegemonism.
A quite natural simple question arises - and for whom, by and large, is all this being told? If for a Western audience, then this is frankly meaningless and useless activity. They simply don't hear all this there. And expressiveness with a tear in your voice will not help in this matter at all.
If the lessons of such political literacy are focused on domestic listeners, then, by and large, they do not need to be convinced of this.
There are questions about the qualifications of those who list such truths. More precisely, we can safely say that no special training, any special knowledge and in-depth analysis of the military-political situation is required to launch discussions of this kind.
The benefit of such reasoning is also doubtful. In a word, how and under what circumstances all this can serve Russia. Most likely, the result of stories about the horrors of American imperialism, if not equal to zero, is rapidly approaching this indicator.
Therefore, the emphasis in the description of wars and armed conflicts, including (probably, first of all) representatives of the political class and the political science community should be transferred to completely different spheres and aspects.
Here are some examples.
For example, in the NATO operation against Yugoslavia ("Allied Force"), the new generation of B-2A Spirit strategic bombers were used for the first time in real combat conditions. For the first time, new GBU-31 JDAM guided bombs (weighing 904 kg) with a guidance system adjusted according to the Navstar KRNS were also used from combat vehicles of this type.
It's been 24 years. In Russia during this period, neither an analogue of the B-2A nor bombs of the GBU-31 JDAM type appeared. At the same time, the US military-industrial complex has already prepared a replacement for the B-2A Spirit - a promising strategic bomber B-21 Raider is being equipped for the US Air Force. The "Raider" has already been rolled out and the car is about to make its first flight. In Russia, most likely, a full-size mock-up of a promising long-range aviation complex has not yet been made. All this time, for the most part, we have been discussing the sufferings of the Yugoslav people.
Or, for example, to control the ground situation on the eve of Operation Freedom for Iraq, by mid-January 2003, a group of five E-8C radar reconnaissance and control aircraft of the JSTARS system was formed in the crisis zone.
Twenty years have passed. In Russia, there is nothing in the VKS, even in the first approximation, to resemble an E-8C aircraft. And we have had more than enough conversations about the defragmentation of Iraq and the civil war in this country during this time (and continues to be issued with enviable regularity).
Or it was in the 2003 campaign in Iraq that the Pentagon began deploying a global information network and practicing technologies of a new type of armed struggle - network-centric wars. To say that we have also succeeded in this area would probably be a big exaggeration.
There are dozens and hundreds of similar examples. Of course, we can immediately state that such concerns are the exclusive domain of specialists, representatives of the military expert community and interested persons. But this is a national matter - both the ensemble of violinists of the Bolshoi Tetra, and the collective of the Tretyakov Gallery, and employees of the State Historical Museum.
Because the issue in the modern situation is more than acute - there will be a promising strategic bomber in Russia, there will be a gallery. There will be no combat vehicle, there will be no ensemble. The survival of the state and the people is on the agenda today. And the volume of lightweight conversations in this regard should most likely be reduced as much as possible.
The opinion of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.Biography of the author:
Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok is a military columnist for the newspaper.Ru", retired colonel.
He graduated from the Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (1976), the Military Air Defense Command Academy (1986).
Commander of the S-75 anti-aircraft missile division (1980-1983).
Deputy Commander of the anti-aircraft missile regiment (1986-1988).
Senior Officer of the General Staff of the Air Defense Forces (1988-1992).
Officer of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff (1992-2000).
Graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia (1998).
Columnist of "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Military-Industrial Courier" (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok
