Colonel Khodarenok called for the separation of the Air Force and air defense armies
High-intensity armed conflict is the best litmus test for verifying the correctness of decisions made in the military sphere in peacetime. Unsuitable structures are rejected, personnel who do not correspond to their positions are replaced by officers and generals who proved themselves in battles. What priority changes are needed by the Russian army against the background of ITS own - in the material of the military observer "Gazeta.En" by Mikhail Khodarenka.
The results of many organizational and staff activities carried out in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in the period 2008-2012 (and in previous times) need to be reviewed, and urgently. What seemed very good in times of peace turned out to be of little use (and sometimes simply incompetent) during a special military operation. Let's focus on some points.
According to the Western model
For example, in the period 2008-2012, the team that managed the military department began very extensive and in-depth organizational and staff activities. Unfortunately, the civilians who led the necessary (in their opinion) restructuring of the army and navy did not have any experience in military construction and knowledge in this area.
They had to take ready-made schemes and hastily implement them. During this period, the leadership of the Ministry of Defense used tracing paper from the organizational and staff structure of the armed forces of the collective West as a sample and applied them on domestic non-chernozem soil. At the same time, the then leaders of the military department were guided by only one principle - everything that is used abroad is definitely good, beyond doubt, and requires immediate implementation in practice in the Russian Federation.
In short, there is no God but the armed forces of the collective West, and the Pentagon is his prophet on Earth.
At the same time, the bearers of balanced and well-founded opinions were persecuted, and they were, as a rule, expelled from the Armed Forces. In practice, it turned out that, in principle, the West is not ready for a major continental war using only conventional weapons and military equipment. And there is not much to borrow there, although there is a lot to look at and listen to.
Here are some examples of hasty application of Western patterns:
- At that time, it was believed that if the United States Armed Forces had joint combat commands (European, Pacific, African, Central, etc.), then there should certainly be similar ones in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. They (operational and strategic commands) appeared in 2010.
To what extent such an approach is applicable to our purely local conditions, no one in the leadership of the military department thought much at that time. As a result, the unified Armed Forces (in particular, the Navy, the Aerospace Forces) were pulled apart by hastily created commands. As a result, the commanders-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were left without troops (for example, the commander-in-chief of the Navy practically lost his influence and control over the fleets).
- Previously unimaginable organizations such as the United Strategic Command (USC) "Northern Fleet" have emerged.
- As for the locations of the new USCS, the deployment of the Northwestern Command in St. Petersburg was absolutely a masterpiece in this regard. For the first time in the history of the state, the capital military district ceased to exist.
Currently, the reverse movement has already begun - the fleets are returning to the commander-in-chief of the Navy, the Army of the Air Force and air Defense - the commander-in-chief of the Aerospace Forces, instead of the ridiculous Northwestern Command, the Moscow and Leningrad military districts are being recreated. That is, there is a return not to any old schemes, as some experts believe, but simply to common sense.
"Brigadization" of the army
Or consider the almost universal "brigadization" undertaken in 2008-2012 in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, that is, the formation of new brigades or the transfer of existing divisions at that time to the staff of brigades (and even the well-deserved and famous divisions such as Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya were reorganized).
What did the authors of such reformations proceed from? Yes, just from one simple fact - there are brigades in the West, so let us have brigades. Whether this is right or wrong, whether it meets our conditions, to what extent such measures meet the requirements of modern combat - these trifles were not taken into account by the ideologists of the reforms of that time. Again, both today and somewhat earlier, the brigades of the 2008-2012 model began to be reorganized back into divisions. Because this is the main tactical unit.
In a division, for example, there is a self-propelled artillery regiment, in a brigade there is only an artillery division (and of a smaller caliber), in a division there is an anti-aircraft missile regiment, in a brigade there is only a division, in a division there is an engineering battalion, in a brigade there is only a company, etc. That is, the brigade as a unit is significantly inferior in its combat capabilities to the division. And in battle, it affects from the very first minutes. There is no doubt that our enemy (AFU) will return to the divisions in the near future.
And what is the extremely ridiculous idea of reorganizing the famous fighter and bomber units and formations into aviation bases of the 1st and 2nd category? And it had to be returned to the zone of common sense.
And how much firewood was cut in 2008-2012 in the field of strategic deployment and military mobilization? This can be fully judged only by the shortcomings with which the partial mobilization was carried out in the fall of 2022.
"They crossed a hedgehog and a hedgehog"
It is necessary to pay attention to those structures that were formed not only in 2008-2012, but also much earlier. In particular, in 1998, with the merger of two types of Armed Forces - the Air Defense Forces and the Air Force, the Air Force and Air Defense armies were formed (that is, then the Air Force and separate air defense armies of the Air Defense Forces were united).
By participating in operations, the air army solves the following tasks: defeats aviation, nuclear missile assets of the enemy on the ground and in the air; violates the control of troops and weapons; strikes reserves, air and sea landings; disrupts the transportation of enemy troops and materiel; provides overflight and combat operations of other aviation associations and formations; provides landing and combat operations of its airborne troops; conducts aerial reconnaissance and electronic warfare (electronic warfare).
In turn, a separate air defense army was intended to provide reliable cover from air strikes of administrative and political centers, economic and transport infrastructure facilities, and the most important groups of troops in the interests of preserving their combat capability and fulfilling their assigned tasks.
That is, the functions are diametrically opposed: the air army is purely shock, the separate air defense army is purely defensive. Therefore, in the near future it seems extremely expedient to separate the armies of the Air Force and air defense as part of the Aerospace Forces, that is, to recreate the air armies and revive on a new basis not separate air defense armies, but the armies of aerospace defense.
Objections that there may not be enough forces and means for this at the present time should be considered irrelevant. In this regard, it is necessary to act in stages (not to grab everything at once), at the beginning to recreate at least two air armies and two East Kazakhstan Region armies on the western borders of the state. Such organizational and staff measures should be considered the most important task in the field of national security of the state. And decisions to dramatically increase the combat strength of anti-aircraft missile and radio engineering troops, as far as we know, have already been made.
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 Gazeta.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 Russian Armed Forces (1998).
Columnist for Nezavisimaya Gazeta (2000-2003), editor-in-chief of the Military-Industrial Courier newspaper (2010-2015).
Mikhail Khodarenok
