Russia

Sergey Shoigu nuances public image with art exhibition

2018-06-13 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia’s top leaders are known for many talents. Vladimir Putin, for example, is also a famous martial artist, horseback rider, wildlife conservationist, hang glider pilot, underwater archeologist, and a truck driver.

Now, defense minister Sergey Shoigu shows that there are also other sides to him than political life. He is apparently a skilled artist, and he displays some of his works at the National Museum in Kyzyl in his home region of Tyva. That reports Voenno-Promyshlenny Kurjer.

Shoigu does different kinds of arts. The displayed pieces are objects of carved cedar wood like vases, sculptures and small boxes. Shoigu’s wood carvings are the ones in the first picture in this Facebook post.

I am unable to judge the artistic qualities of the wood carvings. A representative from the cultural department in the Ministry of Defense notices that Shoigu is especially gifted as a graphical artist and a painter, which is interesting given that such pieces are not on display.

The art works are a part of a larger exhibition to celebrate the centennial of the Red Army. On opening day, Shoigu showed the exhibition to a delegation of defense ministers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and from the defense command in Russia. The museum notes that the delegation was surprised to see the private works of Shoigu in the exhibition.

At the time of this writing, the Museum’s post only has 34 reactions from Facebook users, and the picture of Shoigu’s art has four likes. That is a surprisingly small number. It does make you wonder how the famous Russian cyber bots could miss this opportunity.

One could speculate that Putin and Shoigu have coordinated their public non-political appearances to appeal to different segments. Putin has created an image of strong masculinity, while Shoigu’s artistic expressions send a more reflective and emotional message.

The exhibition with Shoigu’s wood carvings is open until the end of June.

Landing ship Ivan Gren ready for delivery after 14 years in production

2018-06-06 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia’s new landing ship Ivan Gren is ready for service. The government trials have been completed, and the official acceptance documents have been signed by the government representative, captain 1st rank Viktor Ivanov. That writes the Yantar Shipyard in a press release.

This deserves a genuine “finally”. Ivan Gren was ordered back in 2004, so it has taken 14 years to build the ship. I have addressed the ship’s problems before in this post after a helicopter crash during the sea trials. Most recently it attracted attention that there were serious problems with the ship’s ability to sail astern.

Ivan Gren has a displacement of 5,000 tons and a crew of 100 persons. It can carry 13 main tanks or 36 armored personnel carriers, and it can accommodate up to 300 marines. The second ship of the class, Petr Morgunov, has been under construction since 2015, and it will be the last ship in the series. Originally, it was expected that the Russian Navy would order six ships of this project, but they later changed their minds.

Now that the Navy has accepted the results of the sea trials, the ship will probably leave the Baltic soon. It is expected that Ivan Gren will be a part of the Northern Fleet.

Recently, the Russian government has sought to improve the performance of the shipbuilding sector. Controls have been improved to ensure that funding is withheld when the defense industry is unable to deliver on time, and last month Putin personally engaged in a critique of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (OSK) which has a particularly bad track record of delays.

Russia’s military budget has nothing to do with the GDP of Spain

2018-06-04 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

The size and durability of Russia’s defense budget and economy in general is a source of much debate. One particular figure that I often encounter is that Russia has an equivalent GDP to Spain. The meaning apparently is that a country the size of Spain cannot sustain an armed force to compete for world leadership in the long run.

For example, Danish rear admiral Nils Wang uses the Spain trope in this interview to OLFI before his retirement as chief of the Danish Defense Academy. Wang presents the case that the military tensions between NATO and Russia are not comparable to the Cold War because with a GDP the size of Spain’s, Russia will not be able to hold territory in Western Europe after an initial occupation.

There are a few problems with this line of reasoning. First, historically the USSR never had an impressive GDP either. There are many complicating factors when comparing economies of different countries, especially when one of them has a fundamentally different economic system like the communist one. But in general, it seems that in second half of the 20th century, the Soviet Union had a GDP which was smaller than the combined GDP of West Germany and France. The combined GDP of all NATO countries beat the Soviet GDP by many lengths.

Another problem with the Spain comparison is that things don’t cost the same in different countries. In some places you just get more for your money than in others. It is cheaper to have a large army if the wages are low and equipment is inexpensive. To account for that, you need to correct the GDPs for purchasing power parity (PPP) before comparing different countries.

Nominally, the GDPs of Russia and Spain are roughly in the same ballpark. In 2017, Russia was number 12 in the world with a GDP of 1,527,469 million USD, and Spain was number 14 with a GDP of 1,313,951 million USD. So Russia’s GDP was about 14 percent larger than Spain’s in 2017. But if the numbers are corrected for purchasing power parity, Russia is number 6 in the world, just a tiny bit behind Germany and well ahead of both the United Kingdom, France, or Spain. Russia’s GDP (PPP) was 4,007,831 million Int$, and Germany’s was 4,170,790 million Int$. (Source: IMF)

The very similar GDPs (PPP) between Russia and Germany give room for an interesting perspective: Their defense spendings as percent of GDP indicate the same amount of stuff that one could buy for that money.¹

In 2017, Germany spent 44.3 billion USD on defense which amounted to 1.2 percent of GDP. Russia spent 66.3 billion USD, which was 4.3 percent of GDP (source: SIPRI). But because their GDPs with corrections for purchasing power parity are the same, Germany would have to increase their defense spending to 4.3 percent of GDP or 158.7 billion USD to afford the same investments as Russia.

Since playing with numbers is so much fun, I decided correct the defense budgets of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom for purchasing power parity and see how that compares to Russia’s military spending. With a GDP (PPP) of 4,007,831 million Int$ and a defense share of GPD of 4.3 percent, Russia’s defense planners had 172,336.7 million Int$ to spend in 2017. The other countries scored as follows:

In other words, corrected for purchasing power, Russia has a larger military budget than Germany, France, and the United Kingdom combined. Because graphs are fun too, I also illustrated this point.

Defense spending (PPP) — Corrected for purchasing power, Russia has a larger military budget than Germany, France, and the UK combined.

Recently, there have been reports that Russia’s military budget declined by 20 percent in 2017 compared to 2016. Some have argued that this decline was inevitable given the poor condition of Russia’s economy. But as Michael Kofman has explained, Russia’s military budget is neither declining nor unsustainable. Instead, the apparent decline in defense spending in 2017 is due to technicalities like periodization of expenses in the national budget. Indicators suggest a stable level of defense spending which is sustainable in the long run in terms of manpower, materiel, and money.

So while Russia does have a GDP the size of Spain’s, that doesn’t say much about their military potential. More interestingly, Russia has a defense budget which gives them the same purchasing power as the combined military spending of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. And they can afford to keep it up in the foreseeable future.

As Oliker has pointed out, there are many complicating factors when comparing defense spending across borders. For example, it is different what countries include as defense expenses. If anything, such a consideration would only strengthen the argument in this article. European countries have incentives to make their defense spending appear higher than it really is, whereas Russia has incentives to make it appear lower. ↩

Russia builds six more Borei-A submarines and cancels Borei-B project

2018-05-25 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia has canceled the development of the Borei-B class submarine and will build six more of the Borei-A class instead. The construction of the six new ships will begin in 2023. That reports TASS.

Back in November it received some attention that chief of the general staff Valery Gerasimov mentioned the Borei-B project, and it was expected that Russia would build four of these ships as part of the 2027 force development plan. But apparently the expenses outweighed the benefits, so they decided that they would rather have six of the existing class than four of the new class.

The Borei family of strategic nuclear submarines are planned to replace the Kalmar-class, Delfin-class, and Akula-class submarines (NATO names Delta-III, Delta IV, and Typhoon). They carry 16 intercontinental nuclear Bulava missiles. There are three existing submarines of the original Borei-class, and five submarines of the improved Borei-A class are in production. Last month it was revealed that the delivery of the first Borei-A submarine Knyaz Vladimir has been postponed until 2019.

With the six new Borei-A submarines, Russia will eventually have a total of 14 of these modern strategic submarines.

How could Israel destroy a cutting edge Russian air defense system?

2018-05-15 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

The Israeli air strikes in Syria last week have made some headlines in the Russian media. The attacks caused serious damages to the Syrian air defenses which consist of Russian produced weapons. The debate is whether the incident says something about the quality of Russia’s air defense technology.

How could these systems fail to protect themselves against an air strike? This question is especially apt in the light that last month the Russian Ministry of Defense made remarkable claims about outstanding performance by the Syrian air defense systems during missile strikes by USA, France, and Britain.

Israel apparently destroyed S-75, S-200, Buk, and Pantsir-S components. The first three are somewhat old technology, but Pantsir-S is considered a state-of-the-art medium range air defense system. Israel apparently felt the urge to brag about the accomplishment, so they published this video of the missile impacting the Pantsir-S.

This is not good news for the Russian weapon industry, which uses Syria as a showroom for their products to potential buyers. Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier (The Military-Industrial Courier) even speculates that Israel’s goal with the publication of the video was to damage the reputation of Russian air defense technology.

So in Russia there is a strong incentive to explain the Syrian fiasco in a way that saves the honor of the Russian weapon systems.

The newspaper Vzglyad has covered the incident closely, for example in this article under the title Who is to blame for the destruction of Buk and Pantsir in Syria. I will not go into all the details, but the newspaper finds that the Syrians are to blame. Had the equipment been manned with Russian professionals, it would have performed much better. (That may well be correct.)

After pictures of the damaged Pantsir-S have shown up, it seems clear that the system was inactive when the missile hit. The radar was in stowed position, so it has not been in use at the time of impact. All missile tubes were empty, so the Pantsir has probably fired all missiles and was waiting for resupplies. However, Pantsir-S is a combined gun and missile system, so just because the missiles were fired, it doesn’t mean that the system was defenseless.

Air defense can be organized as area defense or as point defense, and different systems can be distributed to complement each other. Air defense systems are inherently vulnerable as targets of an air strike, so it is important that different systems cover each other. In addition, passive measures like camouflage are essential for keeping the vehicles safe, especially when the adversary uses UAVs.

It appears that the Syrian forces neglected to take measures to coordinate their air defense. When it was hit, the Pantsir-S was inactive, uncamouflaged, standing still in the open with no cover from other air defense systems.

The crew of the Pantsir-S wasn’t even at the vehicle when the missile stroke. A lieutenant can be seen on the video running towards the cabin of the truck when he saw the incoming missile. Perhaps he thought there would be time to move the vehicle before the missile hit. He paid with his life for that piece of bravery which only accentuates that the Syrians neglected to take proper precautions before the incident.

So for now, the honor of the Pantsir-S weapon systems seems intact.

Forbidding soldiers to talk on the phone doesn’t improve security

2018-05-11 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia’s Ministry of Defense has introduced some new restrictions on the use of telephones for its personnel. The motivation seems to be to save money on the phone bills and to improve information security. That reports Kommersant. But the consequences may well be the opposite.

Obviously, phone conversations are a source of information leaks, and there is an argument for restricting the use of the civilian phone networks for military communications. However, the actual restrictions seem mostly aimed at making work complicated for the employees, which is a terrible security strategy.

Military personnel will be sorted into five categories, and depending on their category they will be allowed a certain number of minutes or money to spend on telephone calls every month. When the limit of either minutes or rubles is reached, the phone connection is closed until the beginning of next month. In addition to this, units are required to keep a detailed journal of all phone calls.

Every month the unit must make an analysis of the conducted phone calls. Who called whom about what for how long and at what time? This has to be filed in a report. If calls are identified that are not related to government business, an administrative investigation must be conducted to figure out how much money it cost. According to Kommersant, the Ministry of Defense has produced an example where a unit makes an administrative investigation into the suspected waste of government resources to private phone calls for a value of 316 rubles (€4.22). That seems like an awfully small amount to spend administrative resources on investigating.

Putin on telephone — Putin using an old school telephone. Photo: Kremlin.ru.

Most military personnel will not be allowed a direct connection to the phone network at all. Commanders of military units will be allowed up to 60 minutes or 500 rubles per month. A branch or regiment commander will be allowed up to 120 minutes or 850 rubles per month. Only 11 persons including defense minister Sergey Shoygu will have unlimited phone calls.

All in all this sounds like a bureaucratic headache. If I were to guess to possible security angles to this, I can think of these two:

To limit the overall number of phone calls to make it easier for the Russian security apparatus to spy on itself.
To compel military personnel to using more secure means of communication.

Both these things fit nicely with the initiatives that Russia has taken recently. A few months ago the Defense Ministry decided to solve the problems that smartphones present, so they forbade them altogether and produced a list of 11 approved models of dumb phones that soldiers can use. They also recently introduced restrictions on soldiers’ freedom to have a social media presence.

The official Russian approach to security seems to be to forbid technologies that introduce vulnerabilities. But security is also a question of enabling effective business operations. In the end, employees in the Russian military have a job to do. If the ministry and security services make it too complicated to get things done, people are going to work around the system.

As an officer said to Kommersant back in February, nobody within the Ministry of Defense actually intended to give up their smartphones. “You buy a dumb phone to carry around at all times, so you can show it to your superior if you have to. And your normal phone you keep on silent mode in your pocket”.

If employees move their work-related communications to their private telephones, the result will be less security, not more.

Nuclear Notebook publishes status on Russian nuclear forces, 2018

2018-05-03 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris have published an examination of Russia’s nuclear forces in their Nuclear Notebook column in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

This is a very comprehensive overview of Russia’s nuclear weapons. It includes informed estimates of the numbers of both launchers and warheads, and there are nice status updates on Russia’s different nuclear capable platforms. For example one can learn that Russia has a total of 4,350 nuclear warheads, of which 1,600 are deployed and ready for use, and 2,750 are in reserve. To this comes 2,500 retired warheads awaiting dismantlement.

Russia is in the midst of a modernization program of its nuclear forces. This was well overdue, as many of their nuclear weapons were getting old and needed replacement. I think some Western observers exaggerate the significance of the modernization program. For some this has led to almost hysterical interpretations of Russia’s intentions. I think that the right way to understand Russia’s nuclear weapons program is that they want to maintain the capabilities that they already have.

Dnepr Launch vehicle — Drepr launch vehicle which carries the SS-18 *Satan* ICBM. According to Kristensen and Norris, Russia has 46 of these missiles with up to 460 warheads. Photo: ISC Kosmotras.

Russia is a nuclear great power and intends to remain as such. A conflict between nuclear powers like the United States and Russia will be fought with nuclear weapons. Assuming that a confrontation could be held at the non-nuclear level is naive.

So where some analysts interpret Russia’s nuclear posture as increasingly aggressive, I will point to two other movements that I find more accurate:

Russia invests in the development of nuclear weapons that can defeat a Western missile defense. The goal is to maintain a second strike capability that Russia has had for many years, but which they fear they can lose if the missile defense technology gets good enough.
Fundamentally the new technology for Russia is in the non-nuclear field. Long-range high-precision missiles give Russia more options than nuclear escalation. At the same time this raises the nuclear threshold and makes armed confrontation more likely because the (illusion of) surgically accurate control of destruction makes it easy for politicians to resort to using such weapons.

The Russian nuclear forces, 2018 review includes a summary of the different positions in the debate about Russia’s nuclear strategy. Unfortunately there is an inclination to the views in the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, which I think gets many things wrong about Russia. But with the two points above in mind, I think that Kristensen and Norris’ column is an outstanding reference about the state of Russia’s nuclear weapons.

What to expect for naval parade in Saint Petersburg on 29 July 2018

2018-04-30 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

Russia celebrates Navy Day on the last Sunday of July, and last year a new tradition was established with a grand naval parade in Saint Petersburg. Ships from the Baltic, Northern, Mediterranean, and the Pacific fleets and from the Caspian Flotilla take part in the Grand Naval Parade.

In 2017 the parade got a lot of attention, and Vladimir Putin personally took part in the celebrations. Of particular interest was the participation of the Akula-class (Typhoon) submarine Dmitry Donskoy and the battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. China also sent a few ships for the parade and a subsequent naval exercise in the Baltic.

Putin on Naval Day 2017 — Grand Naval Parade in Saint Petersburg 2017. Photo: Kremlin.ru.

Now details are starting to emerge about the program for the 2018 show. The parade will include 41 ships, 25 aircraft, and more than 4,000 troops. Among the more notable participants are an Antey-class submarine (Oscar II class) and the missile cruiser Marshal Ustinov. There will also be a display of the newly commissioned missile corvette Uragan (Karakurt-class) and the frigate Admiral Makarov.

So although we will not see the world’s biggest submarine or battlecruiser this year, there should be plenty of other things to look at when the grand naval parade takes place on 29 July 2018.

Delivery of Russia’s first Borei-A class submarine postponed to 2019

2018-04-26 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

The delivery of Russia’s first Borei-A class nuclear submarine Knyaz Vladimir has been postponed to 2019. The construction of the submarine began in 2012, and at first it was expected to enter service in 2017. Then it was postponed to 2018, but now it is clear that it will take even more time before the submarine is ready. That reports FlotProm.

Borei-A is an improved development of the Borei-class. The first Borei-class submarine, Yuriy Dolgorukiy, entered service in 2013, but the construction started already in 1996. There are now three operational Borei-class submarines in the Russian navy, and five Borei-A class ships are under construction.

The Borei class is a nuclear powered submarine which carries 16 Bulava intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They are the cornerstone in Russia’s future submarine based nuclear deterrent, replacing the Kalmar-class, Delfin-class, and Akula-class submarines (NATO-names Delta-III, Delta IV, and Typhoon).

Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov has earlier announced that Russia is also working on a Borei-B class, but that is still in early development.

Delays are a common phenomenon in Russian warship construction. Current examples include the landing ship Ivan Gren and the frigate Admiral Gorshkov. Ivan Gren will be commissioned on 9 May 2018 after being under construction since 2004. Admiral Gorshkov has been under construction since 2006. It was originally expected to enter service in 2011, but the frigate is still not ready for duty. The latest prognosis is that the navy can take over Admiral Gorshkov in August.

Who cheated whom in Russian-British submarine duel?

2018-04-24 By Anders Puck Nielsen Leave a Comment

After the missile attack in Syria on 13 April, The Times reported that Russian naval forces successfully managed to suppress a British nuclear submarine which prevented it from launching its Tomahawk missiles. Supposedly, one or two Kilo-class submarines, two frigates, and an anti-submarine aircraft made it too difficult and dangerous for the British Astute-class nuclear submarine to move within firing distance from its targets in Syria. Allegedly the British submarine got support from American P-8 Orion maritime patrol aircraft which were tasked to track Russian surface and subsurface naval units.

Unsurprisingly, Russian media picked up the story. However, they cited the British story and did not provide more details from Russian sources.

Astute submarine — Astute class submarine. Photo: Royal Navy.

The whole story is a bit strange, and Michael Peck asked the apt question in The National Interest, Did Russia’s Diesel Submarines Really Hunt Down a British Nuclear Sub? Peck’s analysis focuses mostly on the technical feasibility of such an endeavor. Traditional military calculation would argue that the nuclear submarine has the best odds in a duel, even though the Kilo-class is a worthy competitor. Peck concludes that we just don’t know whether the Russian ships actually tracked down the British submarine, and that we also don’t know whether this prevented the British submarine from launching its weapons.

My take on this is that I don’t think the point of the submarine was to fire any missiles in the first place. Often a submarine is deployed not to deliver weapons but to keep the adversary busy. The mere knowledge that there is a submarine in the area forces the opponent to commit resources to finding it.

I guess that the United Kingdom sent the Astute submarine to keep track of the Russian ships in the area. A well placed news leak made sure that everyone knew about the presence of the submarine. Russian threats to shoot down both missiles and launch sites in case of an attack on Syria didn’t matter much because the submarine wouldn’t be a launch site.

That would have made it the job of the submarine commander to draw as many resources as possible from the Russian pursuers. In other words to be challenging yet achievable.

I don’t know whether this is what happened. But it does seem more plausible than the notion that the Royal Navy hit a streak of bad luck and had their mission blown by an unfortunate news leak and a masterfully executed Russian ASW-operation.