A week ago, the Russian military completed the largest spot
check exercise it has conducted since 1991. The MOD has put out some information
on the scale and units involved. The slides were helpfully reproduced by Ruslan
Pukhov in his blog. They are done in the usual Russian style — it’s all about
how many planes flew, how many tons of equipment were moved, etc. Nevertheless,
there are some interesting tidbits. Here are some highlights.
The exercise involved 160,000 personnel from all three
military branches. Ground forces from all four Eastern district armies and the
41st army of the Central district were involved, including 9 infantry brigades,
the 18th artillery division (based in the Southern Kurils), a tank brigade, 2
air assault brigades, a naval infantry brigade, 5 signal brigades, 2 artillery
brigades, 2 rocket brigades, 1 MRLS brigade, 2 air defense brigades, 2 NBC
defense brigades, 4 logistics brigades, and 2 equipment storage bases. 12,000
vehicles were activated.
The air force activated 130 aircraft and helicopters from
four commands (Long Range Aviation, Military-Transport Aviation, 2nd Air and Air
Defense Forces Command — Yekaterinburg, 3rd Air and Air Defense Forces Command —
Khabarovsk). The specific air force units involved were the 6952nd LRA Base from
Amur Oblast, the 6955th MTA Base from Tver, the 6980th aviation base from
Chelyabinsk, and the 6983rd aviation base from Primorskii Krai.
Naval participation included 70 ships from the 36th surface
ship division, 165th surface ship brigade, 10th and 25th submarine divisions,
19th submarine brigade, 100th assault ship brigade, 114th coastal defense ship
brigade, and the 520th independent coastal missile-artillery
brigade.
One infantry brigade arrived by sea, while 30 transport
aircraft moved 8,500 personnel over 167 flights. 1000 reservists were involved,
from Primorsky Krai. 45 field control centers were activated, most at the
brigade level. 8 UAVs completed 22 flights. One of the 12 long range aviation
planes failed to complete (or maybe to start?) its flight.
The overall assessment of these exercises from the military
has been largely positive, though some areas did come in for criticism. Yuri
Borisov noted that 3-4% of vehicles broke down during the exercise, either
because of errors made by the operators or because the equipment was old. This
is not ideal, but is certainly a better statistic than in the bad old days a
decade ago. Shoigu criticized the state of the communications system, noting
that military communications are only 18% effective. It’s not clear what that
number actually means, but it’s clearly not good. Marksmanship also came in for
criticism, in part because of a lack of practice. He was pleased with military
transportation, highlighting in particular that railroad transportation
functioned at almost double the allotted rate of travel (1000km/day vs
600km/day). He also noted that changes may be made to the structure of the air
force, primarily by dividing up the air bases that were created a few years ago
and and re-opening some of the military airports closed by
Serdyukov.
UPDATE: Aleksei Nikolskii wrote to say that Shoigu’s
statement on the communications systems being 18% effective referred to R&D
efforts on C2 systems not producing results, rather than the systems’
effectiveness during the exercise itself.
Read more: https://russiamil.wordpress.com/2013/07/28/eastern-command-exercises-completed/#ixzz2aWigUsGc
