[FPSPACE] Strategic Missile Troops Seen Set To Resist Downgrading of Status

[JamesOberg@aol.com]

JimO: This overturns a lot of traditional status of the "Space Units" which 
jused to do most of the "heavy lifting" for Russian space activities.

Strategic Missile Troops Seen Set To Resist Downgrading of Status
Moscow Kommersant in Russian 06 Sep 00 P 2
   [Article by Ivan Safronov:  "General Staff Short of Space.  It
Will Be Obtained From the Missile Troops"]
    Yesterday combat details from the Strategic Missile Troops [SMT] launched 
a Proton-K rocket carrying
an American Sirius-2 communications satellite from the Baykonur space center. 
 This will most likely be one of the last launches carried out by the SMT.  
Chief of General Staff Anatoliy Kvashnin has issued a directive "On the 
Centralization of Military-Space Activity."  The directive provides for the 
Military-Space Forces and the Missile-Space Defense Forces to be removed from 
the SMT and resubordinated to the General Staff.
      A high-ranking source in the General Staff confirmed to Kommersant that 
such a directive was signed last week.  The plan is for the Military-Space 
Forces and Missile-Space Defense Forces to be removed from the SMT before the 
end of the year.  This means that Anatoliy Kvashnin's struggle with Defense 
Minister Igor Sergeyev has entered a decisive phase:  The General Staff has 
moved from words to action.
      The minister had always regarded the incorporation of the Space Forces 
into the SMT as one of his main achievements in the course of reforming the 
army.  He was convinced that this led to an
increase in the effectiveness of troop command and control and savings of 
defense budget resources.
       His opponents from the General Staff were convinced that the minister 
was guided by other considerations.  When SMT Commander in Chief  Igor 
Sergeyev became head of the military department in May 1997 he understood 
more clearly than other people that the troops that he hailed from faced an 
unenviable fate.  The missile troops were doomed to massive cutbacks in 
accordance with the
Russian-American treaties on strategic offensive arms.  And as early as the 
first decade of the 21st Century the SMT were set to lose the status of a 
branch of the armed forces.  There was no way
the marshal wanted to become the gravedigger of the troops that he hailed 
from.  And in June 1997 Sergeyev managed to get Boris Yeltsin's approval for 
the idea of incorporating into the SMT the
previously autonomous Military-Space Forces and the Missile-Space Defense 
Forces, which were part of the Missile Defense Forces.  Space was supposed to 
provide a trouble-free existence for the missile troops for many years:  
First, recent local conflicts have shown that in modern warfare the role of 
space-based systems (as opposed to strategic missiles) has increased sharply 
and, second, the SMT obtained access to commercial launches of foreign 
satellites and in the last three years has earned around $100 million from 
this.
       The missile troops are now being reminded of all this.  Sources in the 
General Staff claim that the missile troops needed to absorbthe 
Military-Space Forces and the Missile-Space Defense Forces in
order to obtain new appropriations, which were channeled exclusively into the 
Topol nuclear missiles and by no means into the development of military-space 
activity.  As a result the number of launches of military satellites almost 
halved (1997 saw 14 satellites launched, whereas the 1999 figure was only 
four), and the existing reserve of carrier rockets and spacecraft got 
completely used up and was not replenished.  As a result the SMT found itself 
incapable not only of ensuring the development of promising high-precision 
weapons integrated with space-based systems (the very kind of systems that 
NATO successfully utilized in Yugoslavia) but even of providing space 
reconnaissance data to the federal troop grouping in Chechnya.  And the 
GLONASS global navigation system has degraded altogether -- instead of the 
specified 24 satellites, only nine are currently functioning.
       On 11 August a Security Council session decided that it would be 
advisable to remove the  Military-Space Forces and the Missile-Space Defense 
Forces from the SMT.  At least that is what Kommersant's correspondent was 
told by a high-ranking source in the General Staff.  This will essentially 
mean the beginning of the end of the Missile Troops as an autonomous 
structure.
      But the missilemen have decided to resist Kvashnin's instruction.  
Kommersant was told at the SMT Main Staff that Commander in Chief Vladimir 
Yakovlev is on leave and has issued no instructions on this.  But his 
subordinates are sure that the commander in chief will do everything to 
preserve the integrity of the troops in his care and at least "will be in no 
hurry to carry out the directive."
       But the General Staff is sure of itself.  "Any attempt to disobey the 
directive has serious personnel implications because it reflects the 
president's stance," a high-ranking supporter of Anatoliy Kvashnin told 
Kommersant's correspondent.
     Moscow Kommersant  --  purchased by Boris Berezovskiy in 1999