Tennis Shoes and Stolen Toilets
JOHNSON, REUBEN F.
Tennis Shoes and Stolen Toilets Russia’s military ‘renaissance.’ BY REUBEN F. JOHNSON In 1976, when Soviet fi ghter pilot Viktor Belenko defected to the West in his MiG-25, his U.S....
...More recently, Medvedev announced that the Russian Navy would conduct maneuvers off the coast of Venezuela in conjunction with the armed forces of Moscow’s good ally and compa?ero Hugo Ch?vez in order to show his determination to carry out this military renaissance...
...The immense sums required to support these lavish promises will not materialize...
...Uniforms, beds, U.S.-supplied Humvees, and toilets were even pulled off the walls by Russian forces...
...The fact that the aircraft —a medium-range strategic bomber that was originally designed to carry nuclear weapons—was misused for a reconnaissance mission is another source of embarrassment...
...One wonders if there is a similar divorce from reality inside the Kremlin today with regard to the Russian armed forces...
...A total of 12 Russian aircraft were lost to Georgian air defense units, including one Tupolev Tu-22M Backfi re bomber...
...Almost all the data on purchases made by the Georgian air defense forces and the radar networking modernization contracts that had been carried out by Aerotechnica in Kiev and other Ukrainian fi rms was available in the Russian-language press, on the Internet, and from other open sources, but no one at GRU (the Russian military intelligence service) seemed to be paying any attention...
...In the case of his MiG-25, this translated into the impossible task of being ready to take on the latest U.S...
...The central obsession of the higherranking officers at the aerodrome where he was based was inventing ways to steal the highly purifi ed grain alcohol that was used for cooling the MiG25’s avionics and deicing the wings...
...All signs suggest that the waste and neglect that made Belenko so disdainful of the political commissars were never dealt with...
...More recently, the Russian president, Dmitri Medvedev, made a speech calling for a massive military modernization program and a substantial increase in defense spending...
...The past few months have seen a number of grandiose promises for restoring the might and modernity of Moscow’s men at arms, but even the most optimistic projections for the Russian economy fall well short of what would be needed to pay for major military initiatives...
...It is always easier to shoot the messenger than criticize those who should be getting a good working-over for failing to do their jobs properly...
...In July, a Russian admiral, Vladimir Vysotsky, announced on the Naval Fleet Day holiday that the Russian navy would add six carriers to its force—plus all of the cruisers, destroyers, supply ships, minesweepers, etc., that form a complete carrier battle group...
...debriefers discovered (along with a trove of Soviet secrets) a military man with a life’s accumulation of grievances against the Soviet system...
...Tennis Shoes and Stolen Toilets Russia’s military ‘renaissance.’ BY REUBEN F. JOHNSON In 1976, when Soviet fi ghter pilot Viktor Belenko defected to the West in his MiG-25, his U.S...
...They had everything...
...But the main source of Belenko’s alienation was what he described as the Communist party’s penchant for “trying to repeal the laws of nature by decree...
...Russian troops stole everything they could lay hands on—particularly from the Georgian army facilities they overran...
...So, be on the lookout for more armed men in tennis shoes carrying stolen toilets in carjacked Humvees the next time Russia decides to make mischief beyond its borders...
...A colleague of mine was impolitic enough to point all of this out at a conference in London, only to learn later that one of the attendees in the audience was the Russian air attach?, who later declared himself to be offended...
...At the top of the list of Russian failures should be the intelligence agencies...
...The loss of the Tu-22M is symptomatic of the deep and pervasive ills of Russia’s military machine...
...More often than not, this is the standard Russian response to any honest assessment of its military...
...The former commander of the Russian Air Force, General Anatoly Kornukov, blasted the current military leadership, telling the Interfax news agency in Moscow that “they sent the Tu-22 crew to their deaths thinking that the Georgian air defense would mount no resistance...
...President Medvedev has announced an increase in military spending, but total outlays are still far less than the U.S...
...The shipyards where the current Russian carrier was built during the Soviet period are in Nikolaev, Ukraine, and there are no comparable facilities in Russia...
...By the time hostilities ceased Russian pilots were being offered lavish bonus payments if they were willing to fl y missions over Georgia, and still some of them turned the offers down, preferring to stay on the ground where it was safe...
...This is all just so much chest-thumping...
...There were no operational pilots with enough hours to fl y the mission, so instructor pilots had to be press-ganged into service —only two of whom were able to eject safely...
...The price of oil (which Russia depends on for a great deal of its state revenues) has dropped to less than half its value from this past summer, the Russian stock market is in free fall, and foreign investment has fl ed Russia...
...Like their counterparts at the CIA and so many other spy services around the world, Russian intelligence offi cers have lived by the axiom that “information is not worth anything unless it has been stolen...
...The performance of the Russian armed forces during the invasion of Georgia in August showed the dismal state of Moscow’s military machine...
...This often required that several tons of jet fuel be dumped on the ground and a nonexistent fl ight of the MiG25 entered into the logbook in order to make it seem as though the alcohol had been consumed in service of the aircraft rather than at some drunken late-night dinner...
...military aircraft in an airplane that still used vacuum-tube technology...
...It’s also an enormous expenditure at a time when the basic needs for equipment, clothing, housing, and training of the men in uniform are not being met...
...But it is not an activity that is sustainable or has anything other than the symbolic value of annoying the United States...
...Some Russian soldiers went into battle wearing athletic shoes because there were not enough boots to go around...
...Russia has never had even one proper carrier battle group, has only one aircraft carrier in operation, and has demonstrated that its shipyards are not up to the task even of refi tting an old Soviet-era carrier for the Indian Navy...
...A Freon-based fi re extinguishing system on a nuclear submarine accidentally activated, and there were not enough breathing apparatuses on board for all personnel—a basic piece of equipment for which there is no excuse for a shortage...
...A senseless waste, as he saw it, to soak hundreds of gallons of fuel into the soil and then later say there was not enough funding for proper base housing or an offi cers’ club...
...A former Black Sea Fleet commander, Vladimir Komoyedov, told the Russian RIANovosti news service that this accident was the result of “the greatest lack of professionalism and negligence...
...the most amazing f—ing beds, amazing f—ing barracks with sealed windows,” one Russian soldier was recorded saying in a short mobile phone video that was later broadcast—awestruck like Goldilocks when she stumbled upon Baby Bear’s boudoir...
...According to his statements, by 2020 Russia will have built substantial numbers of new naval vessels, will have developed a combined air defense and missile defense system with both land and space-based elements, and will have upgraded the nation’s conventional forces to a “permanent state of combat readiness...
...Such failures led to 20 Russian sailors being killed last week...
...You can’t get there from here, as the old aphorism goes...
...Reuben F. Johnson, an aerospace analyst, writes frequently about the Russian military...
...defense budget, and much of what has been allocated will have to go towards undoing the years of neglect and decay during the Boris Yeltsin presidency...
...Russian forces were able to overcome Georgian forces because of sheer numbers, but in air operations the Russians had their proverbial head handed to them...
...Apparently living conditions for soldiers have improved little in the decades since Belenko’s defection...
...And don’t be surprised if the average Russian serviceman continues to risk being needlessly sent to an early grave...
...Even at the height of Moscow’s power, Belenko told them, the political leadership could not properly provide for its soldiers, sailors, and airmen, who often lived in squalid conditions with almost no means of entertainment or diversion...
Vol. 14 • November 2008 • No. 10
