#10
Itogi
No. 19
May 2003
DELUXE POVERTY
If all privates and sergeants serve under contract, a Russian army mostly comprised of colonels will be even more expensive
Author: Oleg Odnokolenko
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

THE CABINET RESOLVED TO REDUCE THE BUDGET FOR THE MILITARY REFORMS FROM OVER 100 BILLION RUBLES TO 70 BILLION RUBLES. THE DEFENSE MINISTRY CLAIMS IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO RECTIFY THE EXISTING PERSONNEL IMBALANCE. AND RUSSIA HAS NOT MADE ANY SUBSTANTIAL PURCHASES FOR ITS ARMED FORCES OVER THE PAST DECADE.

A few words of skepticism about the military reforms

The liberals really ought to restrain themselves. The Cabinet discussion of a plan for transition from conscription to professional service did not turn out as the Union of Right Forces (URF) and its leader Boris Nemtsov had expected. They advocated a rapid transition to contract service, and reduction of conscription terms to six months.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov called their proposals a "populist farrago", and persuaded all of the Cabinet to agree - at least to some extent. Ivanov promised to reconsider reduction of conscription terms after 2008, when all units in the Caucasus Military District will have moved to contract service, and all permanent combat readiness units will be ready to make the transition.

Conscription may survive in any case, and not only due to financial considerations. General Andrei Nikolayev, chairman of the Duma Defense Committee, considers that conscription is actually a connection between the Armed Forces and the people.

Financial considerations do play an important role. The Cabinet resolved to reduce the budget for the military reforms from over 100 billion rubles to 70 billion rubles. Neither the URF nor the Defense Ministry were happy with that, especially not the military. The top brass is sure that the government constantly underfunds the Armed Forces; and the funding shortages mean that there cannot be full military reforms or reduction of military service.

Still, the figures indicate just the opposite. A third of all Russia's state spending goes to defense and security. Neither should we forget the paradoxical "demographic situation" in the Russian Armed Forces: for every hundred commanding officers, there are 120 soldiers and 150 civilian specialists. This is similar to the ratio in the Volunteer Army during the Civil War of the early 20th century (an army consisting of officer regiments). No other nation can afford anything like that.

There are problems with the officer corps as well - in which the number of senior officers equals the number of low-level officers. If we have all soldiers and sergeants serving under contract, with appropriate salaries, our Armed Forces - mostly consisting of lieutenant colonels and colonels - would become even more expensive. The Defense Ministry claims it's impossible to rectify the existing personnel imbalance. The generals say they do not have money to build or buy housing for officers who quit the military or those ones who remain in service.

General Alexander Piskunov from the Auditing Commission thinks otherwise. Up to 70% of graduates from military schools quit the Army or Navy within their first five years as officers. This costs the state almost 16 billion rubles a year. According to the Auditing Commission, reorganization of the system of military education alone (abolishing some unnecessary schools and colleges, and ending the brain drain from the Armed Forces) would save the nation enough money within three years to solve the housing problem. Moreover, the remaining funds would be sufficient for full-scale military reforms. It is also clear that transition to a professional military requires a different emphasis in the ratio of permanent combat readiness units, reduced units, and storage facilities where "surplus" colonels and generals usually serve.

Russia has not made any substantial purchases for its Armed Forces over the past decade. For all these years, the Russian defense sector has been busy arming China, India, and other states. Rosoboroneksport (Russian Arms Exports) earned the nation $4.8 billion last year... Here is a question. Where is the money? Where are all these billions, which would suffice to equip several professional armies? No one knows; but the Auditing Commission has uncovered something. The Defense Ministry itself wastes money on occasion. Take the Severnaya Verf shipyard incident, for example - when the Defense Ministry refused to accept two ships for which half the cost of construction had been paid by the state. These modern destroyers were eventually sold to China, and the state received only 1% of their value. A similar situation is shaping up with two submarines at present, one of them being built on the Volga and the other in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The public is told that these submarines do not fit in with the current development concept of the Russian Navy. Because of this, the submarines have automatically become the property of their builders. Needless to say, all the profits are ending up in someone's pockets. According to the Auditing Commission, these two submarines cost as much as the Armed Forces spend on acquisition of new military hardware each year.

We still have fourteen (!) departmental armies, each with its own rear services, hospitals, sanatoriums, and colleges. We still have three space launch centers, even though we cannot maintain a single one. All the same, Russia is even paying Kazakhstan for the ruined Baikonur space center. When Yevgeny Nazdratenko was chairman of the State Fisheries Committee, this structure set up its own corporate space sector.

The military doctrine was the first to appear, its authors assuring everyone that military development was impossible without it. It was followed by the national security concept. Even this did not help, for some reason, because combat readiness did not go up. Several plans for transition to service under contract were drafted (at least a dozen, according to Nemtsov). The president expects one of them by June 1. But specialists are skeptical.

Vitaly Tsymbal of the Transition Economy Institute, a specialist who was in the working group on military reforms, cannot understand why transition to contract service should be initially restricted to the Caucasus Military District alone. Here is the reasoning: generals say that the military reforms might peter out in Siberia (where we have some permanent combat readiness units as well) because there will be no one to supervise them out there.

And we still retain a ratio of close to one officer for every soldier? Perhaps we should start with changes in the structure of the Armed Forces.

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