Izvestia: "Vladimir Putin inspects military communications in Voronezh"
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Voronezh yesterday. He visited the Sozvezdie (Constellation) research and production centre to inspect how the decree he signed ten years ago has been executed. Later, the prime minister held a meeting at the city’s government on the Russian Armed Forces.
In 2000, at the very beginning of his term as Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin ordered the development of an Integrated Tactical Control System. Voronezh’s Sozvezdie center was among the institutions that participated in the work and developed modern communications systems, such as mobile software-hardware complexes, personal communicators, portable radio sets, and other equipment. All systems were delivered to the Taman Division and the Alabino test range for experimental operation last year and received their first helpings of criticism. Those who used the systems said that they were technologically obsolete, very unreliable and too complicated for some officers, to say nothing of soldiers and sergeants.
“That’s all just maligning gossip,” the centre’s Deputy Director for Testing Valery Belyayev said. “The systems are reliable and not more complicated than cell phones. Even elderly ladies have learned how to use a cell phone…”
Ilya Vladimirov, Director of Sozvezdie’s Research Centre, said that the Russian Armed Forces did not lag behind their American or Israeli counterparts in terms of automatic control systems. A large breakthrough has been achieved recently, when the center “got it in the neck after the conflict in Georgia,” said Sozvezdie’s Deputy Director General Vasily Borisov.
“Another thing is that all these systems have not been supplied to the Armed Forces,” Vladimirov said, shrugging his shoulders. “Our production center has enough capacity to provide the whole army with the systems it needs, but the issue rests on lack of orders and lack of money.”
For example, a communicator for a company commander costs about 150,000 roubles. A portable radio set for every soldier costs about 50,000 roubles. It will take at least 8 billion roubles to equip a brigade with the necessary communication devices. Sozvezdie’s budget for 2010 totals only 8.5 billion roubles.
That is why modern communicators are unlikely to replace the ordinary cell phones that Russian officers, having no other means of communication, used to adjust artillery fire during the Georgian conflict.
Vladimir Putin inspected a few armored personnel carriers, equipped with the centre’s production, and a tent in Sozvezdie’s yard. The tent was full of blinking displays, working communicators, radio sets, and mannequins with various microphones and optical devices on their heads. The whole effect was something like the headquarters from the “Avatar” movie.
The prime minister took a walk through the centre’s shops, where fitting machines of the 1960s stand next to modern equipment for computer circuit plate production, and then headed to the adjoining government building to hold a meeting.
“Military experts refer to these systems as one of the key efficiency factors of a modern army,” the prime minister said. “Incidentally, recent conflicts demonstrate this to be the case.”
Vladimir Putin went on to say that the key factors in modern warfare were forces’ high controllability, communications reliability, and the application of electronic and radio countermeasures.
“High-precision weapons are unthinkable without it,” Vladimir Putin concluded. “A transition to a modern organizational structure is unthinkable as well.”
The prime minister added that developing control, communication, and reconnaissance systems was among “the top priorities of the defence program” requiring large budget spending. However, he stressed that a number of decisions that had previously been taken remained unexecuted.
“A chief designer for developing automatic control systems has not been appointed yet, there is no integrated structure to develop and implement a unified research policy in the field, and there is no complex strategy that could concentrate resources and make budget spending more efficient,” Vladimir Putin said.
How much more time the process will take – ten years or less – is still unclear.
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What Sozvezdie has to offer the army
Sozvezdie’s Integrated Tactical Control System is a new two-component troop control system that will provide for Russia’s Armed Forces transition to a conceptually new organizational structure corresponding to the network-centric warfare of the modern military.
The first component will be an automatic control system with the help of which an operation headquarters will communicate with the General Staff as well as process and analyse warfare data. The second component being developed by the Sozvezdie centre will deliver orders and other information down to every unit or soldier.
The designers claim that the new system will make military tactical units two to three times more capable than they are with the control means currently in service. Communication will be carried out via channels with triple security protection and ciphered with codes that are to be updated every half hour. The system’s computers are based on integrated circuits designed by Sozvezdie and have a Russian operating system installed.
By Alexander Latyshev
