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According to this article, Russia is selling her old equipment, and building new......

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Foreign Military Studies
Office
101 Meade Ave
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-1351

WARNING!
The views expressed in FMSO publications and reports are
those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the
official policy or position of the Department of the Army,
Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

Russian Minister of Defense
Plans for a Smaller,
Highly-trained, Modern Army
Within a Decade

Mr. Lester W. Grau
Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

A version of this article appeared in

Armed Forces Journal
International

December 1996

General Igor Rodionov, the new
Russian Minister of Defense, recently
outlined his plans for a much smaller,
mobile, highly-trained, professional
army which will become a significant
force within ten years. To do so, the
Russian senior officer corps will be
cut, new force structures will be adopted, expanded arms exports will
provide funds for research and development, and the Russian Army
will try to avoid contingency operations which detract from reform,
restructuring and combat-readiness.

In a major interview with Moscow News,
General Rodionov laid out his vision for the
Russian Army in ten years. "We are talking
about creating a small, mobile, well-trained
army capable of carrying out its principal
assignment--deflecting or sustaining the first
blow."1 General Rodionov's predecessor,
General Pavel Grachev, preserved skeleton
divisions at the price of combat readiness. The
ill-trained, unpaid, starving army that stumbled
into and out of Chechnya was the result. Despite
much talk, General Grachev's military reforms
were without solid content, specific direction or
apparent implementation. General Rodionov is
going to slash the ground forces to twelve
combined-arms divisions which are deployable,
fightable and combat-ready. Since financial
constraints restrain the size of the ground forces, General Rodionov is
determined to rid the force of its hollow divisions and convert the few
that remain into a combat-ready, professional force that will serve
Russia and serve as a basis for expansion in time of crisis. In doing so,
General Rodionov is preparing Russia to fight her most-likely, if not
most-dangerous, future war. Rodionov's ground forces must be
affordable, deployable and expandable.

Affordable

General Rodionov plans to put his scarce financial assets into
paying, training and feeding his forces and he calculates that he can
adequately pay, train and feed only twelve divisions. He currently has
approximately 80 divisions, although many are little more than some
combat equipment and a flag. General Rodionov plans to push and
expand arms exports as a means of keeping the defense industry alive
and generating needed research and development funds. Integrated
cartels within the defense industry will concentrate on prototype
development. There will be few orders for new equipment from the
Russian Army in the immediate future.

Deployable

Historically, Russia has relied on a large ground
force to dominate the vast expanse of Eurasia.
Rodionov plans to substitute deployablity for a
permanent presence around the Russian periphery.
The earlier Russian MOD (Grachev-era) plan for
centrally-based mobile forces was based on airborne
forces. Rodionov is changing this concept to
combined arms divisions which are deployable. These
divisions will be air moveable, but not necessarily
airdroppable. Rodionov has just announced the
reduction of two of the five Russian airborne divisions
by December. Despite the howls of protest from the
Russian airborne community, Rodionov believes that
the days of the airborne division combat insertion are over. Mobility,
sustainability and combat power are the key components for future
Russian ground forces and airborne forces need to become combined
arms to meet the challenges of national defense.

Expandable

General Rodionov favors the establishment of a strong,
professional NCO Corps for the Russian Army. Most of the training,
discipline and performance difficulties of the Russian Army can be
traced to their reliance on conscript NCOs. Although this is an
expensive proposition, General Rodionov realizes that if a truly
professional NCO Corps can be developed in the Russian Army, the
potential for building an expandable force is realizable. If the NCO is
capable of assuming lower-level leadership positions, the current
force can be

designed for expansion where
platoons expand into companies,
companies into battalions, battalions
into brigades and brigades into
divisions. General Rodionov will
probably retain some division-sized
equipment bases to support an
expanding force. This concept worked
for the Reichswehr in the 1930s. With
modifications, it can work again if the challenge is to deliberately
expand over time to meet a vague danger as it grows into a real
military threat. The strong, competent NCO is the key.

The Force

What will Rodionov's
combined-arms divisions eventually
look like? First, there will be fewer
tanks. For the past ten years, a
debate on the future of the tank has
raged in the professional journals of
the Soviet and Russian Army. As
commander of the Soviet 40th Army
in Afghanistan, General Rodionov
saw that tanks had limited value on
that terrain. In Russia's most-likely
future wars, the terrain will probably
not support large armored formations.2 The armored division and
tank army are no longer affordable, particularly since the
formerly-dominant role of the tank has changed due to its vulnerability
to modern weapons. Second, these new divisions will have a larger
combat service and combat service support component. The
Soviet-style division designed for short, intense combat will be
replaced by a larger, sustainable division closer in concept to that of
western armies. Third, the maneuver regiments will be replaced by
maneuver brigades (although they might still be called regiments).
This follows an on-going force-structure evolution of at least twenty
years that Rodionov appears to endorse. The Russians feel that the
maneuver brigade structure is better designed to fight separately on
the non-linear battlefield of the future. Fourth, these divisions will be
tailored to meet their theater-specific missions and there will not be
one standard TO&E. The combined arms division may be primarily
mechanized, air assault, light infantry or mountain. It will be
deployable, which means airtransportable, but not necessarily
airdroppable. Fifth, the divisions will make do with equipment in the
current inventory for ten years. Funds from arms exports will keep the
defense industry alive and support research and development. In
order to keep up with the revolution in military affairs, the Russian
Army will modernize with precision-guided munitions and information
warfare systems as they can afford them.

Training and Combat Readiness

General Rodionov wants to pull the Russian Army out of
contingency missions and concentrate on national defense. Over the
past seven years, the army withdrew from the Afghanistan stalemate
and deployed to Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia,
Abkhazia, Ossetia, Azerbaidjan, Turkmenistan, Armenia and
Chechnya. During these contingency deployments, training and
combat readiness of the deployed forces slipped drastically. Further,
the non-deployed forces were unable to train since all the training
funds went to support contingency deployments. General Rodionov
realizes that no nation can train, reform and restructure an army in
the midst of contingency operations. General Rodionov hopes to
concentrate on rebuilding his army for national defense and let the
Minister of Internal Affairs and other Russian ministries worry about
contingency operations (he is also likely to seek cuts in the forces of
these ministries to finance his army reform). However, withdrawing
the Russian Army from all contingency missions at this point is
problematic.

How likely is it that Rodionov will
be able to implement his vision?
Currently, his vision looks like the
only realistic plan that can save the
Russian ground forces. However, his
former chief supporter, Security Chief
Aleksandr Lebed, was recently
ousted in a bout of Kremlin
in-fighting. Lebed looked to Rodionov for strategic vision and
sponsored his recent promotion to four-star rank.3 As the question of
President Yeltsin's control of the country becomes more problematic,
Lebed's power as an outsider should increase, and Rodionov seems
well situated to survive within the current government or a future
government. Rodionov is recognized as a competent Defense Minister
and his potential replacements lack his credentials. If Rodionov
survives, his reforms have a chance of implementation and leading
Russia back to a position of military strength and competence within
the next decade. His chief opposition will come from the Chief of
Ground Forces, the airborne community and from the competing
military and paramilitary establishments of other ministries and
agencies such as the Ministry for Internal Affairs, the Border Guards,
the Presidential Guard, the Federal Security Service, the External
Intelligence Agency, the Federal Agency of Press and Information
(similar to a National Security Agency with armed troops) and the
Emergency Command. His reforms will initially prove expense and will
undoubtedly meet political opposition as well.

If Rodionov implements his reform, it will continue Russian
reliance on nuclear deterrence, create changes in the way that Russia
performs peace enforcement missions and encourage membership in
regional security alliances. Financial reality is driving this change, but
this may also be a response to the potential fragmentation of the
Russian Army along regional lines.

Endnotes

1. A. Zhilin, "Igor Rodionov: Unpopular Measures Can No Longer Be
Avoided", Moscow News, 11-18 August 1996, No. 32, 7.BACK

2. For a biography of General Rodionov, see Lester W. Grau and
Timothy I. Thomas, "Russian Minister of Defense General Igor
Rodionov: In With The Old, In With The New", The Journal of Slavic
Military Studies, June 1996, 442-452.BACK

3. Thanks to Dr. Jacob Kipp and Mr. Tim Thomas of the Foreign
Military Studies Office and Dr. Rob Arnett of the Pentagon for their
help and thoughts.