Posted on 08/02/2004 7:42:20 AM PDT by knighthawk
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti military commentator Viktor Litovkin) - Early August saw intensified anti-terrorist preparations, and not only in Athens, where the Olympics will begin soon. Or in the US, where the threat condition is Orange, one below Severe (Red), and means a high risk of terrorist attacks. Or in Iraq, where coalition forces seem unable to do anything about terrorists.
A tactical exercise, Avariya (Accident) 2004, is planned in Russia for August 3-5 outside the city of Olenegorsk in the Murmansk region, and the Rubezh (Frontier) 2004 exercise of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) are to begin at the settlement of Kurdai, Kazakhstan, on August 2 and will continue from August 4 to 6 close to the Balykchi and the Edelweiss mountain range in Kyrgyzstan.
Although both are clearly anti-terrorist exercises, they differ greatly in terms of structure, the number of participants and significance. Rubezh 2004 will be a traditional exercise of Central Asian states, with Rapid Deployment Forces (special forces and airborne units) airlifted from Chechnya and Central Russia to the deployment sites of Kazakh, Tajik and Kyrgyz troops. The exercise will include command post training, cutting off transport corridors which terrorists and their accomplices may use, and then blocking and liquidating terrorist bases. The exercise in the Russian North will be unique, as it entails training in regular army and special operations to repel terrorist attacks targeting transports carrying nuclear weapons.
A situation will be simulated outside Murmansk when imaginary terrorists try to seize a nuclear weapon carried by a vehicle. One of the vehicles (the one allegedly carrying the charge) will be blown up by a land mine, mimicking what happens in Chechnya or Iraq. The terrorists will then try to seize the container with the weapon; there will be a shootout between them and the convoy, who will be soon helped by a group of forces hurrying to the battlezone in helicopters and armoured vehicles. In short, the troops will receive training in repelling the attack and in withdrawing the "threatened" charge to the technical maintenance depot.
This is not the last surprise planned for the Avariya exercise. According to the plan devised in the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Defence Ministry, which is responsible for the safety of nuclear weapons in Russia, men and officers will also receive training to repel a terrorist attack targeting a train carrying nuclear weapons. Besides this, divers will search for a sunken vehicle in order to remove a super-container with a nuclear charge from it.
Avariya and Rubezh will differ in the training standards to fulfil the tasks: though the standards of fighting terrorists in the mountains or during the transportation of nuclear weapons should be comparably high, the dangers involved and political consequences are more serious in the latter case. This is probably why observers from NATO countries (above all the US) have been invited to the exercise in the Murmansk region.
No NATO observers, not even from the Manas base outside Bishkek, have been invited to the exercise in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Only officers from Uzbekistan and China, which are (like the majority of the Collective Security Treaty signatories taking part in the exercise) members of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, have been invited. The SCO is not a military organisation, yet one of its goals is to combat international terrorism.
Besides, the number of troops involved in the exercise in the mountains will not exceed 1,500, which is, by international standards, too few for the obligatory invitation of international observers (the lower ceiling is 10,000).
On the other hand, military observers from NATO countries will not attend the exercise in Central Asia not simply because it is small. This "modesty" has a military-political explanation. Despite the growing threat of terrorism in the region (the recent explosions in Uzbekistan are proof of this), Moscow, Astana, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Beijing and Tashkent want to stress that they can deal with the problem on their own, without NATO. You carry on the counter-terrorist operation in Afghanistan, they seem to be saying, while we will do our best to defeat terrorism in the zone of responsibility of the CSTO and the SCO.
The security of Russia's nuclear weapons and their depots, transportation routes and other military infrastructure is a completely different matter. The Russian leadership and the Defence Ministry have repeatedly stated that the country's strategic deterrence weapons are carefully protected and perfectly safe. On the other hand, the Kremlin has never rejected financial and material assistance to improve protection systems. Paul Longsworth, First Deputy Secretary of Energy and Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Non-Proliferation (National Nuclear Security Administration), recently visited Russia and said that Moscow and Washington were doing their best to prevent terrorists from gaining access to nuclear materials. The US has spent over $400 million in Russia towards this end.
Ping
Included in his bold new plans are measures in homeland security designed to ensure our safety. These include:
Securing your home's entry;
Wearing biologically-safe clothing;
Praying to the East (Europe) five times daily;
Crawling on hands and feet to avoid snipers and to show deference and respect to the enemy.
John Kerry promotes his War On Terrorism system in the photo-op below:
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