MOSCOW: Russia is launching its most radical army reform in decades after its brief war in Georgia underlined the need for a more agile military than the one designed to fight the Cold War.

Analysts say the plan will face resistance from generals who stand to lose their jobs and their influence in the reshuffle, pitting the Kremlin against a powerful interest group that has blocked previous attempts at wholesale reform.

Russia quickly defeated Georgia’s army during the five-day war in August and occupied large chunks of Georgian territory after Tbilisi tried to retake its rebel South Ossetia region.

The campaign showed Russian soldiers were a formidable fighting force, but it also exposed their obsolete weapons, lack of precision missiles and old communications systems. It also put into question the army’s ability to win a bigger modern war.

Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov – a former tax inspector with ties to Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin, who was drafted in with a brief to shake up the military – this week presented a plan to turn Russia’s top-heavy and bloated army into a more compact force that is permanently combat-ready.

The army reform meeting was held on Oct 14 behind closed doors but Serdyukov released some details of the proposed reforms and Ruslan Pukhov, a member of the Defence Ministry’s Public Advisory Board, had access to his report.

“The transformations, if they are put in place in line with Serdyukov’s pledges, promise to become the most radical change to the national military system since 1945,” said Pukhov, director of Russia’s Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technology, in comments e-mailed to Reuters.

“It is obvious that the Georgian events prompted the planned transformations in the most direct manner,” wrote Pukhov.

If Serdyukov’s plan succeeds, Russia’s ability to use its military to project its growing power outside its borders – something that is already a cause of concern to Western policy-makers – will be greatly enhanced.

When the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Russia cut the number of men in uniform and slashed military funding. But it left the military structure inherited from the Soviet army essentially intact.

That has led to a situation where units exist on paper but are not capable of combat. Only about a quarter of all tank and mechanised infantry divisions have their full complement of servicemen, according to Pukhov.

Some units are staffed exclusively by officers – a relic of the Soviet system of keeping skeleton units ticking over to be mobilised with reservists in the event of war.Underlining the top-heavy structure, Russia’s armed forces have 335,000 officers – or 30 per cent of the total number in uniform. In the British army, by contrast, officers make up only 14 per cent of the total.

Russian media have frequently reported on servicemen who do little actual soldiering, but instead spend their time building country villas for their senior officers.

Serdyukov’s plan is to deliver value for money from defence spending, which is rising by 30 per cent a year but has yet to produce a corresponding improvement in battle-readiness.His reforms will include cutting the number of officers by more than half, to 150,000, by 2012. The number of generals and admirals will fall from 1,107 to 886.

The number of military units in the ground forces will be slashed from 1,890 to 172 within three years.

And the four-tier system inherited from the Soviet army – where the line of command is from a military district, to army, to division to regiment – will be replaced with a streamlined three-tier system in which brigades will play a central role.

Under the plan, namely brigades – interim units between a regiments and divisions, will be largely self-contained, combat-ready forces which are highly mobile and can be deployed quickly in a crisis.

Backlash

The battle looming for Serdyukov, a man with no professional military background, is to overcome resistance to the changes from the generals serving under him.

Asked about the reform to the command structure, military analyst Vitaly Tsymbal of the Moscow Institute of Transitional Period Economics, told Reuters: “This will be a blow to the generals .... because the more links you have in the chain of command the more senior posts there are in the system.”

Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, an influential former defence ministry department chief who now heads the Moscow-based Academy of Geopolitical Problems, said: “Serdyukov’s activities are more detrimental than those of a NATO agent”.

“Officers are resigning, understanding their helplessness and unwilling to take part in destroying the armed forces,” Ivashov told the Ekho Moskvy radio station.—Reuters