| Submit your comments on this article |
| International |
| Russia to introduce volunteer force... |
| 2002-11-22 |
| Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov promised to switch the core of Russian ground forces from conscripts to volunteers by the end of 2007 as part of the country's military reform. Good move — assuming we never have to fight them, of course. At this point, I doubt if we will. We make more natural allies than enemies... But Ivanov appeared to backtrack on the Kremlin's pledge to completely abolish the unpopular draft, saying Thursday that "conscription will remain forever." There's no reason not to have conscription, and a draft has a number of societal advantages, but conscripts don't belong in combat arms. The draft took kids and tried to make soldiers out of them, but the kids have to cooperate in the process. It worked, for the most part in World War II, not so well in Vietnam — and Afghanistan. For the most part, volunteers are much better motivated, and in most cases a professional force will beat the hell out of a conscript force. The place for conscripts is in support — cooks, clerks, logistics, maintenance and some parts of communications. He said 92 units of the ground troops, airborne forces and marines with a combined strength of 166,000 servicemen would be newly staffed by volunteers by 2007. The change would start in 2004. He said the transfer would involve the most powerful, high-readiness units. "This is a rather ambitious but feasible task," Ivanov said in televised remarks. "These units will form the foundation of a new, professional army." The Soviet officers' corps had its share of time-servers and party hacks, many of whom were killed off in Aghanistan. It also had a core of very well-trained professionals, some of whom were truly brilliant thinkers. Lest we forget, the combined arms concept, which is the backbone of American military operations, is a development from Soviet concepts. I don't think, given their command and communications structure and their finances, that they were able to bring them off in practice the way they wanted, but they exercised to that end regularly. We took the idea in the mid-70s, worked on it and field-tested it in exercise after exercise, and worked out the bugs that surfaced in Grenada, Panama and finally the Gulf War. I won't say we owe it all to them — most of it we developed to counter them — but we wouldn't have done it without them. Russian "marines," by the way, are actually naval infantry. Since the mid-70s, they've been training toward where the U.S. and Royal Marines are today, but their genesis was as swabbies with rifles, amphibious tanks, and light artillery, fighting on land. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #3 Just ask the Germans how good the Russians can be. Imagine top-quality volunteer troops led by professional officers with no political commissars sticking their noses into operational matters. In WWII the Soviets had to overcome the loss of much of their officer corps, a result of Stalin's 1930s military purges, an ill-trained peasant army and the commissars -- and they still handed the Germans their hats. It took them two years to sort out all the problems, but there they were in April 1945 razing Berlin. I hope they do get their shit together because they will be formidable allies if they do. |
| Posted by: Larry 2002-11-22 14:10:08 |
| #2 No choices. Volunteer or take exam; exam dictates where best state could use individual. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-11-22 13:43:15 |
| #1 Give them good pay and living conditions, elimate the brutal hazing, some good modern training and they'll be fine. Draft everyone, but give them a choice of which area they can serve in. Evaluate them during their tour and find the good troops, talk those guys into going career. It works. |
| Posted by: Steve 2002-11-22 13:20:29 |