The Russian bear is back
Pastor Dale Morgan
The Russian bear is back*
by Martin Walker
Washington (UPI) Aug 13, 2007
The announcement Saturday by President Vladimir Putin that Russia has
launched a vast program to improve the country's missile defense system
is being presented as a response to American plans to deploy a similar
new U.S. anti-missile system in Eastern Europe.
But it comes in the context of other recent Russian steps that suggest a
determined and coordinated effort by the Kremlin to assert a return to
great-power status by restoring much of the military power of the old
Soviet Union. To suspicious observers in the West and to U.S. military
commanders who must make their own strategic assessments based on the
capabilities of potential rivals, it must look as if the Russian bear is
back.
In one crucial sense, the bear never went away. Although Russia's navy
has been rusting in dock for more than a decade, and though its army has
shrunk in size and very nearly collapsed in morale after its setbacks in
the Chechen wars, the nuclear-armed strategic rocket forces have
retained much of their traditional power to awe and to deter. Russia
remains the only country that could, in theory, destroy organized life
in the United States.
But something new is happening. Russia is rattling its sabers again.
Last week's planting of a titanium flag on the seabed below the North
Pole was one sign. Another was the resumption of long-haul missions into
U.S. and NATO-controlled airspace by Russia's strategic bombers. Two
T-95MS 'Bear' turboprop bombers last week flew over the Pacific island
of Guam, where the United States is upgrading its air and naval bases.
"It has always been the tradition of our long-range aviation to fly far
into the ocean, to meet (U.S.) aircraft carriers and greet American
pilots visually," Maj. Gen. Pavel Androsov told a Moscow news
conference. But that tradition was in abeyance in the 1990s, when the
Russian military was short of aviation fuel and training flights were
cut drastically. Under Putin, all that has changed.
Another bomber crew from Engels Air Base in southwest Russia flew to a
test range in northern Siberia, hit the assigned targets with cruise
missiles and then flew another 3,000 miles to land at a base near the
Pacific coast, an air force spokesman said. Engels is one of the main
bases for the most modern of Russian bombers, the supersonic Tu-160
Blackjack, known to Russians as the white swan, which holds a special
place in Putin's affections since he took a five-hour flight with one of
the Engels crews.
Yet a further signal of Russia's bold new strategic posture was the
announcement by navy Commander Adm. Vladimir Masorin of a massive
rebuilding of the Russian fleet. Masorin, who also promised the return
of a "permanent naval presence" in the Mediterranean Sea, said last
month Russia was rebuilding an industrial base to build six new aircraft
carriers over the next 20 years.
Russia can certainly afford it, so long as energy prices remain close to
their current high levels. Dmitri Medvedev, who combines the jobs of
being chairman of the Gazprom energy giant and also first deputy prime
minister, told Germany's Stern magazine last week that Gazprom "could
become the world's most valuable company."
"Gazprom has the largest natural gas reserves in the world. When I
joined the board of directors (in 2000), the concern was worth about $8
billion, but today it is more than $250 billion," Medvedev said.
At current U.S. prices, a fleet of six carriers, along with their
aircraft and the training costs of pilots, would cost in the region of
$150 billion, about the current level of Russia's national
infrastructure fund. But Russia is spending a great deal more than that.
Putin's announcement of the new early warning and anti-missile facility
that he opened at Lekhtusi, 30 miles north of St. Petersburg, was said
to be "the first step in the implementation of a major early warning
program up to the year 2015." And being based that far north it was not
intended to stop missiles from Iran or China or the south, but to guard
against missiles coming over the North Pole, which is to say against a
potential threat from the United States. Not that Russia is leaving the
south unguarded; a similar advanced radar installation is under
construction at Armavir in southern Russia.
Then there was the announcement this month that the new S-400 Triomf
missile defense system, designed to defeat Stealth bombers, has gone
onto combat alert in the Moscow region. And in June the Kremlin
announced the first successful undersea launch of the new Bulava
missile, designed to defeat anti-missile defenses, and to equip the
next-generation Borei 955 nuclear submarines.
It all sounds very expensive, and very formidable, the first ominous
fruits of the $200 billion 10-year rearmament program Defense Minister
Sergei Ivanov announced two years ago.
The reality is rather less impressive. Indeed, senior Russian defense
officials are warning publicly that the rearmament program faces
collapse, as wages and other costs soar. The cost of the new T-909 tanks
has risen by 25 percent in just three months, and the Defense Ministry
has stopped announcing the actual production of tanks, missiles and
warplanes.
"The targets for increasing armaments have not been met, even when
spending for the program consistently increases," Deputy Chairman
Vladislav Putilin told the Military-Industrial Commission in April. And
Lt. Gen. Vladimir Mikheyev, the Defense Ministry's deputy head of
armaments, is on record saying: "Uncertainty regarding financing means
that we will not receive the tanks from Nizhny Tagil-based manufacturer
Uralvagonzavod, nor the Su-34 aircraft that the armaments program mandates."
The Sukhoi group itself has warned that mass production of the
long-planned Su-34 is out of the question this or next year. And Ivanov
himself told the last meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission:
"There is a deficit of over 1,500 materials needed in defense. That
constitutes a threat to the state's defense capability and economic
security."
The fact is that the Russian military-industrial complex may have
impressive technological skills, but it lacks the skilled manpower, the
resource base, the cost control and management, and the advanced
engineering capabilities that the rearmament program requires.
It cannot even meet its lucrative export contracts. The former Soviet
aircraft carrier, the Admiral Gorshkov, is being modernized for India at
the Sevmash shipbuilding yard under a $1.5 billion contract signed three
years ago. It was supposed to be operational in the Indian Ocean next
year, along with a wing of MiG-29K warplanes. Not a chance. Last month
Sevmash admitted that the Gorshkov would not be ready until 2011 at the
earliest, and Sevmash Director General Vladimir Pastukhov was fired.
The Russian bear may be coming out of hibernation, but he's a long, long
way from being back -- even with all that oil and gas money at his
disposal. And the more the big holes in the rearmament plan become
apparent, the more questionable become Sergei Ivanov's hopes of
succeeding Putin as Russian president next year.