Armed Forces Today.
 

As I have promissed I began a new thread about the Armed Forces around the world, where I would write a number of posts on the state of Russian Armed Forces.

Note to the moderators - I forsee the possibility of this thread going OT (specifically - political) so it may be wise to keep it in general topics rather than specialised topics.

Note to the forum members - this thread is intended by me for discussing various armed forces around the world, so if you want to talk about armed forces other than those of Russia you are most welcome.

The overview of the Russian Armed Forces.
 

As many of you know by now Russian Armed Forces are going through a reform and rearmament process. This process began back in 2007 and was greatly accelerated by the war in South Osetia. The problems faced by the forces there were numerous - from the low readiness and poor comms to lack of proper ECM gear for combat aircraft. Hence why the Russian State decided to improve the Armed Forces.

While my review is not exhaustive - it is an overview after all, please do ask any specific questions.

The reform of the Russian Armed Forces historically can be split into several stages. That split is done by the changes made during those stages rather than by some sort of grand plan, created in advances.
Those stages are:

1. The initial stage. During it the Armed Forces structure was cut down, optimised in terms of officer core (we had too many colonels), the manpower was shifted to create full strength peace time units, capable of responding the challenges at all times via the shift from a divisional to BDE structure for example.
2. The second stage. The second stage occured after the change in the MoD leadership, where some of the new OOB structures were expanded back into divisions as the manpower and arms to do so became availiable. At the same time the optimisation of manpower usage continued, via the completing of munitions disposal programs and reduction in quantity of bases and thus release of personel from their security.
3. The third stage. This third stage occured after the Ukrainian crisis and was focused on building the capability for decisive military intervention in Ukraine or elsewhere, if need be. This lead to a massive explosion in terms of new formations. The manpower optimisation process was more or less completed in 2016 and released tens of thousands of servicemen to do more usefull duties.

Then there are rearmament programs, 2 of them - the 2007-2015 program (ГПВ2015 or GPV2015) and the 2011-2020 program (ГПВ2020 or GPV2015), with the 2011-2020 program being the larger one. Those programs were tasked with catching up in terms of rearmament after the slump of procurement in 1991-2007 time period. At the same time we began to hire more contract troops, with the ammount of contract soldiers and NCOs exceeding the ammout of conscripted soldiers and NCOs last year.

The state of the Russian nuclear deterent or getting the boring things done first
 

As one could guess the corner stone of the Russian Armed Forces is the nuclear deterent - it assures the physical existance of Russia and precludes attacks by the major foreighn powers. Even in the hard years of the 1990s the nuclear deterent was maintained, despite the expectations that Russia would get rid of it either due to the political pressure or the lack of funds required to maintain it.

That deterent is split into several branches, specifically the Triad and the related supporting forces - the EW means, the ABM/AAW defenses and others.

After the break down of the Soviet Union the deterent has, well, deteriorated somewhat despite our best efforts. We had the following problems:

1. Loss of EW radar coverage due to the radar sites now being in foreighn countries.
2. Loss of EW satelites due to their expiration.
3. Loss of the delivery systems due to their expiration.
4. Degration of the defensive systems via expiration and obsolesance.

In order to fix them we:

1. Built a series of the new EW radars - the Voronezh and Container series of radars. Those radars not only allowed us to regain the Soviet era capabilities of detecting inbound ICBMs and SLBMs but gave us new capabilities - specifically detecting low flying cruise missiles and stealth bombers using the new OTH radar - Container.
2. Began deployment of the new spaceborne EW and command system - the EKS (however this process only just began).
3. Began construction of the new delivery means - the Borei program, the new Yars ICBMs.
4. Procured new defensive systems - ie the MiG31 upgrade and the S400 SAMs.

Overall you can see that we are doing some major force modernisation there, but we would maintain it within our commitments to the New-Start arms reduction treaty, primarily because we are already below it's limitations in terms of delivery systems and it would take us a while to reverse it with the introduction of the new systems - Yars-M light ICBM (both silo based and road based), Sarmat heavy ICBM (silo based SS-18 replacement), Borei-A class SSBNs, possibly PAK-DA heavy bombers (but the PAK-DA program is in trouble).

The state of the Russian Ground Forces and the ASFs.
 

The Ground Forces were the most affected by the reforms - after all they were cut down to BDE structure from a division structure. At the moment we are expanding the Ground Forces, with 4 MRDs (motorised rifle divisions) and 1 TD (tank division) being formed this year and 2 more being expected to be formed next year.

Ground Forces also went through some important changes in terms of equipment and capabilities:

1. we deployed the new command system.
2. we improved the electronic warfare capabilities of the troops.
3. we expanded the ammount of UAVs we use from ~200 to over ~1500 over 4 years of the 2nd and 3rd stages of reforms.
4. we achieved parity between the ammount of contract and conscript soldiers, expanding the Ground Forces using the increase in contract troops and internal manpower optimisation. In the future the Ground Forces would become increasingly proffesional due to this trend.
5. we now conduct large scale exercises - both the snap drills and the regular annual exercises. Kavkaz-2016 exercise was conducted by the forces of 4 armies and with the deployed Front command, with forces being moved up to 2500km from their bases to deployment areas.

The Airforce was changed in the Air-Space force. Apart from the change in structure (which is now being reversed back to the Soviet like structure) there is an ongoing rearmament program.


For example at the moment Russia has 246 new fighters (ie younger than 10 years, this does not account for A-A capable strike aircraft such as Su34) 58 Su35S, 79 Su30SM, 20 Su30M2, 12 Su27SM3, 44 MiG29SMT, 10 MiG29UB, 23 MiG29Kr/KUBr and around 440 older fighters, including the modernised, approx 180 Su27, 20 Su33, 120 MiG29, 120 MiG31.
By 2025 we can expect to have 480-500 newer fighters (younger than 20 years) and up to 210 modernised older fighters. Compare and contrast with, say, UK or other western countries with compatable military budgets.

Both of those branches got plenty of usefull experience in Syria, with some 80 percent of the airmen going through the conflict and with numerous new modes of operations being tested there, for example ground-air coordination, new command means, new weapons, new infantry gear - etc.

Last but not least - Navy.
 

Navy was always the worst of in our Armed Forces, probably because we are a land power.

Currently our Navy is built around the core of 7 major surface combatants (3 Slavas, 3 Kirovs and 1 Kuznetsov), 11 older destroyers (Sovremeny and Udaloy series) and the submarine force - 22 SSKs (1 Lada and 21 Kilos of various vintages) 17 SSNs (10 Akulas, 4 Sierras and 3 Victor-IVs) and 9 SSGNs (8 Oscar-IIs and 1 Yasen class).

Open source estimate of the current force (excluding minor combatants) can be found here:


While the GPV2015 and GPV2020 did begin rearmament and revitilisation of the Navy, with some programs going very well (for example procurement of replacement Kilo class submarines) the surface warfare major combatant construction did suffer delays and now the engine problems. The major armament procurement programs are:

1. Borei and Borei-A class SSBN procurement.
2. Yasen and Yasen-M class SSN procurement.
3. Stop gap emergency program for the Black Sea Fleet - 6 Kilo class SSKs and 6 Grigorovich class FFGs, Grigorovich program would be probably cut early, as it makes more sense to build better desighns when the Russian made powerplants become availiable.
4. Construction of the minor surface combatants - the Buyan small missile ships with the UKSK launcher (capable of launching Kalibrs and Yahont/Oniks) and other such designs.
5. Steregushy corvette program for the Baltic Fleet and the Northern/Pacific Fleets.
6. Gorshkov class FFG program - this program suffered delays due to the new weapons systems and now the powerplant problems. Updated Gorshkov is the most likely candidate in my opinion for the large scale procurement after the powerplant problem is resolved.
7. SSN/SSGN modernisation - the Akulas, Sierras are being upgraded with new electornics, sensors and weapons. Upgraded Oscar-IIs would also receive proper UUVs.
8. Surface combatant modernisation - with the exceptions of Kirovs this is limited to minor refits of electronics and sensors even though there were reports regarding massive modernisation programs for Udaloy class for example.

One open source estimate of ships under construction (but excluding minor combatants) can be found here:



But now all is bad. Even if we have problems and delays with procurment there are some very positive developments. One of them would be an improvement in readiness of existing ships, an example of such improvement you can see here with the Akula series:

Morever it appears that we have began power plant production for the surface combatants in Russia, meaning that the affected programs would get a new life soon.


Another important topic is the supporting infrastructure for the Russian Navy. Currently we are constructing new deep diving submarines for special missions, as well as refitting mothership submarines to carry those around. In addition to this we are begining deployment of a new survalance ssytem, with spaceborne components (for detection and communications), new deployable and stationary sonar sensors (in Arctic), with stationary infrastructure using autonomous nuclear generation modules.

Interesting. I got two abbreviation questions:
1. Does BDE mean brigade?
2. What OOB stands for?

1. Yes
2. Order of Battle