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The Russian Defense Ministry wants to protect high- tech industries and skilled professionals—like these workers at an engine-making association—but defense cutbacks and other fleet problems will make it difficult.
Andrey Kokoshin, First Deputy Minister of Defense in the Russian Federation, noted in December last year that, “In the sphere of military-technical policy, we give priority to strategic nuclear forces, means of space intelligence, communication and control systems, and the development of mobile forces.”1 He also indicated that emphasis would be placed on the creation of scientific and technical facilities for the development of advanced armaments and the modernization of existing systems. Kokoshin reported that the Russian Defense Ministry is making “all possible efforts” to protect high-technology industries and personnel as the defense sector is reduced and reorganized. However, current fleet problems indicate that the high-technology industries supporting the navy—as well as currently available high-technology naval equipment and trained naval personnel—may be hard-pressed to preserve minimal capabilities.
Serious personnel shortages across the military were the subject of a 1992 Russian Federation Defense Ministry Collegium. Although the plan for last year’s spring draft was nearly 100% achieved, the forces still face “a catastrophic shortage of people.” Military subunits reportedly are manned on average at 60% nominal strength. The shortages have at least two causes. First, the breakup of the Soviet Union led to a loss of the conscript base from the former republics. Although military forces are being scaled back, the navy, strategic rocket forces, and air forces are not being cut proportionately as much as the ground forces. Second, there is an acute demographic shortfall of young males in Russia: “. . . the birth rate has fallen sevenfold and is at the level of the war years, and the health of the rising generation has sharply deteriorated—only one in every four or five secondary school-leavers is fit for the draft.”2 Social, economic, and political changes also have had an adverse impact on conscription.
In view of the personnel shortages, the Russian Defense Ministry is hoping to meet its manning needs in two ways. First, the military is being cut substantially, which reduces the manning requirement. Unfortunately, this is happening in both a planned and unplanned fashion. The military has lowered the required force levels several times since the demise of the Soviet Union, and the Law on Defense merely sets a ceiling for the military at 1% of the Russian Federation population (which currently would represent a 1.5 million-man force). However, as each end strength number has been set, the military has found itself struggling to meet the ceiling.
A second approach is to implement contract service, the volunteer program associated with the Russian “mixed-manning principle.” This entails increasing substantially the number of contract volunteers in the military—currently about 100,000 men and women in the army and navy, about 1,000 of whom are officers. However, the Russians admit that there are still more than 100,000 vacancies.[1] The Russians have traditionally had great trouble finding enough volunteers for long-service billets in their enlisted ranks; the Soviet Navy, for example, was never able to meet all of its warrant officer (michman) requirements.
Administrative measures seem unlikely to reduce the manning shortages. The lack of enthusiasm of the draft-age population for the military, the lack of provisions for housing and many other simple requirements for the recruits, the low prestige that is currently associated with military service, and the inability of military wages to keep up with rampant inflation make a fix seem remote. In the 1992 fall draft, the Russian armed forces requirements were only 21% fulfilled.[2]
The declining Russian economy clearly is having a major, detrimental impact on the Russian military. Particularly noteworthy is the effect of the wildly fluctuating rate of inflation—recently running at nearly 20% per month. Major General Kuznetsov, the Deputy Chief of the Defense Ministry’s Main Military Budget and Finance Directorate, recently cited some figures to show the scale of the problem. He noted that the cost of maintaining a soldier in 1991 was 4,500 rubles per annum; 12 months later it had jumped to 68,000 rubles. Moreover, although the Defense Ministry had planned only for a small inflation percentage, it has been told that it must remain within its allocated appropriations. Thus, . . vehicles in certain units now go out only to fetch food for personnel. Pilots are losing their skills, because they do not fulfill even one-third of the flight [hour] norm. ... We have already had an alarming telegram from the Pacific Fleet. Because of a lack of money they cannot bring in heating and fuel oil to the regions of the extreme north.”[3] The problems of the economy also have hit the large merchant marine of the former Soviet Union, reducing the previously formidable role it could play in any military contingency. The Russian merchant fleet inherited only 50% of the fleet and port cargo-loading capacity of the former Ministry of the Merchant Fleet of the Soviet Union. Of the ships, 857 of about 11 million deadweight tons are in the Russian (seagoing) merchant fleet.
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while 39 of 70 ports have been retained. Of these 39 ports, 10 are above the Arctic Circle and do not operate year-round. The resulting merchant fleet “has a carrying deficit for its own needs of somewhere on the order of 25% to 30%.”[4] 3 4 5 [5]
Furthermore, the fleet is aging. “If our shipping enterprises just wrote off all of the old ships, then today Russia would be left with approximately 50% of what we now have." Privatization and the ending of subsidies have had a number of effects on the fleet. Shipping companies must now generate their own hard currency to finance purchases of ships overseas—or generate funds from their operations to build ships in Russian yards. Many major shipbuilding and repair facilities formerly in the Soviet Union are now in “foreign” countries. As the shipping companies are privatized, they tend to focus their operations on the most lucrative portions of the maritime trades. This has made it hard to continue service to remote regions in the Arctic, for example, as this trade is more difficult and much less remunerative. With the uneven rate of privatization, the ability of many of the internal markets within Russia to compete with foreign merchant trade is quite constrained. The loss of ports, shipbuilding and repair facilities, and ships has reduced the Russian merchant fleet to a shadow of its growing and modernizing Soviet predecessor. And the declining economy will make it difficult for the fleet to revitalize itself anytime soon.
The Russian Navy has similar problems. The average age of a Russian Navy ship is 15 years, and shipbuilding rates have declined to their lowest levels in decades. According to the Russians, the navy’s share of the Soviet military budget never exceeded 15% (as opposed to the U.S. Navy’s average 30% share of the U.S. military budget), and its share of the declining Russian military budget is no higher. Furthermore, the admirals note that drawdowns exceeding 8%-10% per year in shipbuilding and support are all that can be borne without serious disruption, for example “‘closing’ of slipways by the ships being built in them, collapse of production, loss of production technology, and a breakup of labor collectives.” Despite these assessments, . . financing of military shipbuilding is already decreasing at a rate exceeding these permissible limits severalfold.” The result is hard to predict, but it will include damage to the shipbuilding sector, to the navy’s combat effectiveness, and to the “professional cadres of science, industry, and the military.”[6] And this does not include the burdens on the shipbuilding and repair sector of the massive nuclear dismantlement program that looms ahead.
Recently, the sunken Komsomolets, the Mike-class submarine that was “inadvertently scrapped” in 1986 in the Norwegian Sea, has been in the news again. The Russian press has reported that some radiation leakage has been detected in the vicinity of the hulk. Negotiations regarding salvaging the boat have been undertaken with several countries, but the cost in each case has proven excessive.
The Russians, apparently spurred by the evidence of leakage and the concerns of the littoral countries, have discussed alternative means to deal with the sunken ship. One approach involves leaving the vessel in situ, but filling it and encasing it in some form of foam or plastic that will “fix” the radioactive materials. Another alternative involves recovering only the nuclear torpedoes, which may be the source of the leakage and which, in view of their plutonium content, may be the most dangerous components of the wreck.
In these trying times for the navy, one naval component also has become the object of another service’s affections. The First Deputy Commander of Naval Aviation, Major General of Aviation Nikolay A. Rogov, recently discussed the air force proposal to assimilate naval missile-armed aviation/ He noted that such a move would mean the navy no longer would have aviation units . . sufficiently trained professionally for conducting combat operations at sea,” and that command and control for aviation forces that must cooperate with naval surface forces would suffer. Moreover, Rogov noted that the considerable reduction in the “strike submarine and surface forces of the fleet” actually requires a reinforcement of “fleet strike aviation.”
In view of the reforms under way in the military, and more specifically in the navy, General Rogov also described goals that had been set for fleet aviation. He observed that naval aviation has been tasked to reorganize in keeping with the ongoing general and Conventional Forces in Europe reductions in personnel strength and in fleet aircraft. The reorganization is to be completed by 1995, and naval aviation will lose 30% of its personnel and 20% of its aircraft. “We will retain the basic strike force—naval missilearmed aviation—the air forces of the Northern and Pacific Ocean Fleets, and somewhat reduce the units of attack, ASW, and reconnaissance aviation. At the same time, [naval aviation] plans to form shipborne fighter aviation for operations from heavy aircraft carrying cruisers.” Meanwhile, General Rogov indicates that combat training has been “made considerably more difficult” by the lack of fuel and lubricants, disruption in deliveries of fuel, and by reductions in support in general. Personnel shortages in supporting units and the loss of training ranges are also cited as problems.
In the Pacific Ocean Fleet at least, it is not clear how shipboard aviation will be supported, as the Minsk has been mothballed and the Novorossiysk has been idle since the summer of 1992. While the Russians apparently cannot afford to have these two ships fixed and cannot arrange access to Nikolayev for their repair or overhaul, there seems little likelihood there will be a Russian carrier to land upon in the Far East.
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[1]Litovkin, p. 2.
[2]Litovkin, p. 2.
[3]Col G. Miranovich and LCol O. Vladykin, “Infla
'Andrey Kokoshin cited in ITAR-TASS newswire in English, 0935 GMT, 8 December 1992.
:Viktor Litovkin, “Army Pins Hopes on Help of Legislators and . . .Women,” Izvestiya, 17 October 1992, Morning Edition, pp. 1-2.
tion Devours the Military Budget Before It Can Be Approved,” Interview with MGen V. Kuznetsov, Krasnaya zvezda, 15 October 1992, pp. 1-2. hInformation on the merchant fleet is taken from the Moscow Central Television First Program, 1845 GMT, 9 September 1992, Interview by A. Lutskiy with G. Davidovich (surname not given). Director of the Department of the Merchant Fleet of Russia. Cited in FBIS-SOV-92-180, 16 September 1992, p. 29.
[6]RAdm Belyshev, “Will Russia Remain a Great Maritime Power?” Morskoy sbornik, July 1992, pp. 3-8. “Interview with Major General of Aviation N. A. Rogov by Col Yu. Morozov, Morskoy sbornik, No. 8-9, August-September 1992, pp. 3-5.