While They Count Votes.

An "interesting" piece from  Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy (SVOP), and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club. SVOP is a cabal of politologists and "associated" people, such as late legendary Evgenii Primakov, but is mostly known today for a bunch of "liberals" such as slick opportunist Sergei Karaganov from VShE who pretend that they know how power balance is formed. Lukyanov is an epitome of humanities--uneducated "analyst" (not to mention being associated with a cloaca of VShE) and he doesn't disappoint writing on the issues he has no idea about. In fact, he is clueless. He makes an astonishing claim re: Russian-American relations:

Let's start with the current agenda. In the past, no matter the circumstances, the focus was invariably on the issues of strategic stability and nuclear arms control. Between them, Russia and the US possess over 90 percent of the world's nuclear arsenal, and both have the ability to physically annihilate one another – along with the planet. It was the need to manage these risks that gave rise to a system of special arrangements between Moscow and Washington.

I don't know what stone did Mr. Lukyanov sleep in the last 20 years under, but since Russia and the United States STILL possess 90% of the world's nuclear arsenal, the necessity to manage it still remains one of the major points on the agenda of Russian-American relations. He proceeds with elaboration on this point:

With the nuclear issue losing its pivotal role, there is practically nothing of substance left in US-Russian relations. Granted, there are some smaller-scale technical issues to take care of, such as avoiding accidental clashes in Syria or strengthening diplomatic cooperation to tackle the problem of North Korea. There would probably still be contacts on topics related to former Soviet countries, but that's more about making your intentions clear – not about agreeing on a common position.  

I understand that  Mr. Lukyanov was probably a good journalist for a bunch of rags in Russia and maybe even rubbed shoulders with some luminaries but specialist in modern power balance he is not and never was, and never will be, as will not be Karaganov or many other demagogues with egos larger than cathedrals populating this non-governmental org, SVOP that is. As such his assumptions are risible, because Russia is named in every doctrinal document in the US and is mentioned  as present and clear danger to America by every single US top echelon official, from Pentagon to Department of State. Yet, Lukyanov who wouldn't know the difference between anti-shipping cruise missile and motorcycle comes up with a typical incompetent BS:

For Russia, a critical aspect of this previous experience is its excessive fixation on the United States – to the detriment of other areas of development. This is something that must be thrown overboard, as quickly as possible.

I would suggest Mr. Lukyanov to conduct a forensic experiment and go out and piss off some crazy Caucasus (Chechen, Dagestani or Ingush) body-builder on the street and then remain not excessively "fixated" on his and his family's safety. The whole notion that some political "scientist" or journo who wouldn't be able to grasp nitty-gritty of running even WW II-era diesel sub, not to speak of division of nuclear ones or what is going on in terms of strategic stability on the level of modern weaponry and sensors, as integrated into the decision making on the highest military-political level, can have a competent opinion is risible. Yet, here we are--another ignoramus, who never got to serve even as a private in any capacity in any force waxes "strategic" by parading his ignorance reiterating the point:

For Russia, a new era will only begin once our leadership – who remain overly preoccupied with Russia's relations with the US, believing themselves to be in some sort of unique and historic position – listen to the Russian people, for whom America is just another foreign land. An important one, yes, but no more than that. When it comes to Russia's relations with the US, the less we get carried away by feelings of self-importance and misplaced superiority, the better it would be for everyone, ourselves included.

So, I don't know where Lukyanov gets his points of view, but somebody better whisper to his and his colleagues' ears that the political "science" is not science neither is profession of journalism a valid occupation. To pass competent judgement on issues of a strategic stability and actual power--this is beyond Lukyanov's competencies, even if he thinks that rubbing shoulders with Russia's national security professionals does provide rubbing off fundamental knowledge and competencies which allow people in Russia to make decisions which go radically counter to Lukyanov's platitudes presented as a deep thought, which it is not. In times like these only raw military-industrial power is a viable insurance against a variety of contingencies which end up in massive military clash. I think Lukyanov should take his advice to Russia and apply it to himself, like this:

the less I (Fyodor Lukyanov) get carried away by feelings of self-importance and misplaced superiority, the better it would be for everyone. 

Especially when trying to apply skills in philology to complex matters of national security of Russia whose people overwhelmingly view the United States as a very real threat for themselves. The only thing on which I agree with him--for Russia it makes no difference who comes to power in D.C. Russia will remain America establishment's main threat for reasons of which Lukyanov has very little, if any, understanding. But larger question in all that is how a person with minimal military-political credentials can pass for "expert" in Russia--the explanation to this is very simple, a putrid belch of Russia's "liberal experiment" of 1990s and 2000s when people like Lukyanov wormed their way into the lucrative sphere of Russia's "expertdom" by learning many buzz-words and catch-phrases without having a grasp of their real meaning.  

150th Motor Rifle Division And Much Much More Military Power Related-II

So, let us review some of the fundamental ideas which Vitaly Shlykov advocated for Russia's "military reform" which, in the end, resulted in a disaster that required urgent intervention of....drum roll...none other than President Vladimir Putin, that is a man, whose appointment of Anatoly Serdyukov to the Defense Minister position precipitated that disaster in the first place. But first, we need to point out positions where Vitaly Shlykov was correct. 

1. He, certainly, was correct about the necessity to reform Soviet Armed Forces, which were massive and, effectively, existed in overkill mode insofar as the numbers go. Yet, while correctly pointing out in his What Killed Soviet Union. The General Staff And Economy the fact of Soviet military and intelligence failure to correctly estimate (by inflating) NATO's military potential, Shlykov went overkill the other way--he "informed" Gorbachov that Soviet General Staff overestimated NATO's mobilization potential 50 to 100 times. 

2.  Well....that's about it. 

Yes, those were the times of Perestroika (correctly dubbed Catastroika by Alexander Zinovyev) and ascendance of highly idealistic, if not altogether naive and uncritical to the point of folly, views of the combined West and Vitaly Shlykov's ideas on war and military reflected it fully. In fact, they influenced them in the most harmful way possible. Here I need to make a confession. It was then, late 1980s when I also, together with very many of my peers, exercised the idea of possible re-formatting of the geopolitical order after the collapse of the communist ideology into some sort of a cooperative environment in which reformed USSR would take its proper place and fears and hostilities of the Cold War would be the thing of the past.  But that was me, at that time senior lieutenant of Soviet Armed Forces, who still thought that surely the Colonel of GRU must know more than me about the war. Boy, was I wrong. By 1992, two years after I left the service for health reasons and scarred by the events related to Nagorny Karabakh, there was nothing left of the Soviet Union, Warsaw Pact and former Soviet Armed Forces were in the process of disintegration. It was also the time of mindless economic, military and political so called reforms (in reality, annihilation of anything perceived as Soviet) which would bring upon peoples of Russia a suffering and humiliation not seen since the first days of the Great Patriotic War. This would become the time when history would be taken away from Russian people. 

One of the major, if not the most important, premises, on which demolition of what used to be Soviet military was based was the idea that the victory over Wehrmacht in WW II was won by the enormous purely military losses and despite, not thanks, to Soviet highest military-political leadership. A popular "trupami zabrosali" (overwhelmed the enemy by throwing corpses at it) meme became extremely popular among "liberal" post-Soviet "intelligentsia" and all kinds of "fighters with bloody Soviet past". All kinds of revisionist crap, akin to incompetent propaganda BS by turncoat Victor Rezun (aka Suvorov) filled the void of military science. Indeed, the logic went, if USSR collapsed, together with ideology which supposedly held it together, then everything associated with it must be wrong. And it was then that the revision started. Vitaly Shlykov led the charge with his 1988 Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn (International Life) famous article The Armor Is Strong (Bronya Krepka). 

"Посеянные в те годы семена «науки побеждать» числом, а не умением нашли благодатную почву в консерватизме советской военной мысли застойного Периода, наследие которого еще предстоит преодолеть. Броня крепка, стереотипы прочны, отходят от них иные с трудом".(c)

The seeds of the "science of winning" by numbers, not by the skill,  sown in those years (he means WWII period) found a fertile soil in conservatism of the Soviet military thought of the zastoi (stagnation), whose heritage we are yet to overcome. The Armor is strong, stereotypes are rigid and some people abandon them with difficulty. 

Shlykov went further in the same article and stated: 

Stalin and his immediate military surrounding always tried to hide from complex and incomprehensible for them variety of qualitative characteristics of the military might of states with different social structures behind the thick wall of numerical superiority over the enemy. (c)

I know, the hindsight is a 20/20 vision, especially considering the time when Shlykov's pieces were written, but it is impossible to ignore such absolutely sweeping generalizations from a man who inserted himself into the discussion on one of Russia's most important, existential, issues and who started to built his conclusions based on cliches which had very little to do with the realities of the Great Patriotic War. There is no denying that Red Army was sustaining abhorring losses at the start of the war. Wehrmacht losses inflicted by the Red Army at the end of the war were no less massive. Yes, the issue of large tank units is valid, the same as, to a certain degree, the issue of Red Army's prewar purges. But today, when most of the archives are opened, it becomes absolutely inconceivable to accuse Stalin, let alone Stavka in "hiding" from "qualitative" characteristics of military might when, in reality, if not for Stalin and his "military surrounding" the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War would have been inconceivable. 

Admitting almost miraculous survival and recovery of what essentially can be termed Stalin's (and Beria's, Vannikov's and many others) economy doesn't make one a Stalinist. In the end, it was this economy which provided not only quantity but the quality of weapons which ensured the final outcome. In the end, Soviet tanks as a force turned out to be simply better than German ones and so were, in the end, Lavochkin or Yakovlev fighters which were at least on par with what Luftwaffe could field and they were produced in quantities which ensured, from the skies of Kursk Battle and massive air campaign over Kuban, Soviet dominance in the air. Not without Allied help with US providing P-39 Cobras which were flown by none other than Pokryshkin and Rechkalov brothers--all, together with Ivan Kozhedub who flew Lavochkin aircraft, top Allied aces by far.  But the question here is why the issue of numbers even came up at all? By what means Vitaly Shlykov was going to fight the greatest and most advanced military force in history, fresh from its....drum roll....lightning victories over French and British Armies and subjugation of Europe? Here we are going to make a small detour to elaborate on some basic operational facts and they will involve a little bit of mathematics (rather, simplest calculus). Welcome to the world of Osipov-Lanchester differential equations.   

dA/dt = -βB

dB/dt = -αA

Well, as it is usually the case, the original 1915 essays by Russian mathematician M.P. Osipov "Estimation Of Victims Of War" went unnoticed in the West, but Lanchester's work in the same field did get noticed. Today Western world knows those equations as Lanchester Model or Laws, while truly educated people call it Osipov-Lanchester equations. Before I get accused of abstract approach to a war or playing "percentage" war ( I had exchange on this issue with incomparable Colonel Lang) I want to make a disclaimer--I am no military nerd who views the world through the prism of dry numbers. Far from it, I am keenly aware of a chaotic and too often very human nature of war in which command ability, heroism, sacrifice and skill are as, if not more, important as technological and operational dimensions of a war. 

To Be Continued...........

P.S. Do not run for cover yet. I will explain how this simple math works. 

150th Motor Rifle Division And Much Much More Military Power Related-I (Reformated)

I don't recall from the top of my head who was it, Dmitry Gorenburg, Mark Galeotti or whoever poses today in the Western media and think-tankdom Parnassus as "Russia's military experts", but I remember the phrase about declaration of the return to the Division structure in the Russian Army as "purely symbolic" by one of these "experts". By now this whole list of those "experts" is so mixed up that I barely remember what corner of this "expert" community another round of rubbish comes from. Truth is, Russia restores, dissolved in 1946, Order Of Kutuzov 150th Idritsk-Berlin Motor Rifle Division. 

New Division Is Forming (In Russian) 

The division will be stationed in Rostov Region and the construction of the quarters for it is in a very active phase. In fact, First Deputy Defense Minister Ruslan Tzalikov already inspected facilities of the newly reborn division and they are really nice accommodations, both for personnel and for officers. The division will have around 10,000 of personnel in six regiments: 3 motor rifle, 1 tank, 1 self-propelled and 1 air defense regiments. Division's HQ will be located in Novocherkassk, which is very close to Rostov-on-Don--a major urban center in Russia's Southern Federal District. But the point is not in that, however remarkable, fact. The point is much larger and deeper. 

In 2013, "reformed" into the utter submission, that is reduced to the brigades, 5th Tamanskaya Motor Rifle "Brigade", as well as brought from the verge of being completely disbanded, 4th Guards Tank Kantemirovskaya Division are back in the game and not as "brigades" but as full blown divisions. In fact, these two divisions, together with two, one tank and another motor rifle, brigades, are the core of newly reconstituted 1st Guards Tank Army of the Western Military District. 

In all, three new divisions, in words of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, will be re-formed: 2 in the Western Military District, 1-in the Southern.

The question here is next: what happened with this much touted  (mostly in the West) "brigade" structure of the "reformed" Russian Army, why return to divisions? The answer is extremely simple and...complex--almost a catastrophic failure of Anatoliy Serdykov's and his minion, former Chief Of General Staff Makarov's, "reforms" of Russian Armed Forces. In the end, the fresh title from one of the major Russian media outlets Vzglyad reads exactly like this--To Defend Against NATO One Needs Larger (than brigade) Units. Welcome to the reality. But the issue here is not just with Serdyukov--a no clue, corrupt imbecile who surrounded himself with coterie of his clueless bimbos. After all, it was none other than Putin who appointed this tax and furniture "specialist" to head Russian Defense Ministry. The issue here is HOW could this "reform", which almost cost Russian Armed Forces the loss of operational control, have happened at all? A large part, the root, of the answer is found in influential SVOP (Council On Foreign and Defense Policies), one of the representatives of which, namely Karaganov, was featured in media (and this blog) very recently. One of the brains and ideologues of that "reform" was late Vitaly Shlykov, GRU Colonel, whose biography reads like a spy novel and whose ideas,  later, when Shlykov became Deputy Minister Of Defense of Russian Federation and founded this SVOP, which I mentioned above, played a crucial role in this "reform". It is customary in Russia to follow a very famous proverb: about deceased--either only good or nothing at all. But we are not going to discuss here the personality of late Vitaly Shlykov, who, undeniably, was a Russian patriot and a man who wanted only best for Russian Armed Forces. That is a given. We have to take a look at his ideas. What is also a given is this--spies do not necessarily make good military leaders, in fact, they seldom do. Vitaly Shlykov's ideas are the best proof of that, because they were generated by the person who was by an occupation...drum roll--economist with the slight leaning towards military economics. He graduated famous (or infamous--depends on the point of view) Moscow Institute Of International Relations (MGIMO) with degree in International Relations. This is a red flag immediately. Make no mistake, it is a red flag insofar as any military operational experience goes, for a spy this could be, actually, an advantage. In the end, Shlykov graduated Military-Diplomatic Academy but here is the first major problem with his military education (rather lack thereof) since Shlykov's ideas on the training of officers instigated a disaster of a massive proportion with officer corps of Russia's Armed Forces. It matters a great deal, in fact it is a decisive factor, that Shlykov never went through real system of higher military education which lead to his very bizarre ideas on officer training. Later, that would contribute to almost successful demolition of the system of officers' training in Russia and not that only. After all, SVOP, of which Shlykov was one of the founders and a big shot in SVOP's military-analytical "wing" likes to point it out. In the end, none other than pro-government Rossiiskaya Gazeta (Russian Gazette) published a obituary after Shlykov's untimely death in 2011, which stated that Shlykov's ideas, aka Shlykov's List, were in the foundation of Russian Armed Forces' "reform".  And they were, since Shlykov joyfully applauded the appointment of furniture "specialist" ( and a moron, I may add) Anatoly Serdyukov to the position of Defense Minister. It was Shlykov who stated that:In Russian: Здесь не нужен человек со специальными военными знаниями, для этого у президента в подчинении полно генералов(c)In English: There is no need for this position to have a man with special military knowledge, for President has enough generals under his command (c) Needless to say, a lot (MOST???) of Shlykov's ideas have been drawn from US and European military "experiences" (actually, he is overbearing with his references to US Armed Forces) and, actually, found a lot of positive response (still do) from  Western "experts". The problem? Shlykov forgot that he wasn't on a spy mission in Switzerland, he was pushing homicidal (or suicidal)  principles on one of the greatest armies in human history and he had no experience whatsoever of commanding a platoon, let alone an army, to his credit. In fact, he had zero field experience. Do you remember how Hippocratic Oath goes? I, certainly, remember what Varlam Shalamov told a darling of Western propagandists Solzhenitsyn, while giving him his notes--in whose hands will your literature end up? Well, guess what, according to Solzhenitsyn I should have been born in GULAG and all my relatives should have been executed and I...shouldn't have been born at all, since, well, hundreds of millions (nay, billions) of Russians have died in GULAG. Guess what, Solzhenitsyn didn't spend a day in GULAG (he worked in Sharaga), while Shlykov never commanded anything in his life. Sounds familiar? 

To Be Continued..........