Military Thought articles from January 2004

Military Thought archives from January 2004

To our readers.
January 1, 2004... We are happy that, despite an abundance of publications specializing in military subjects, you are still with us. This is a good sign because our readership is very special. It is not interested in sensational exposes or under-the-rug intrigue...

Ground Troops within Russia's military security system.
January 1, 2004... The last decade of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century were marked by momentous changes in the system of international relations. The threat of the outbreak of a world war, which is not very likely in the foreseeable future,...

The army command and control system: status and development prospects.
January 1, 2004... The ongoing changes in the composition and structure of the Ground Troops as well as the experience in local wars and armed conflicts of the past two decades highlight the need for improving troops command and control. Without stable,...

Developing engineer munitions and equipment: problems and methods.
January 1, 2004... The chief aim in further development of engineer munitions and equipment (EME) is keeping these at a technical level enabling efficient engineer support of combat activities of the services and combat arms (special troops) of the Armed Forces...

Warfare of the future.
January 1, 2004... The breakup of the bipolar world order brought about drastic changes in the lineup of forces on the international arena as well as in state to state relations, suggesting that a large-scale war is unlikely in the foreseeable future....

Operational coordination: organizational aspects.(military science)
January 1, 2004... The search for effective forms and methods of coordination in the military sphere has never lost its relevance or topicality. Official enforceable legal documents, drawing on the experience in wars and operational and combat training, issue...

Evaluation and decision.
January 1, 2004... Modern warfare is unprecedented in complexity, dynamism and scale, a circumstance making the appropriate methods for modeling armed confrontation processes an indispensable tool in justified operations (combat operations) plans and rational...

Evolution of methods and modes of warfare: the information aspect.
January 1, 2004... Military action and operations* are the principal forms of combat action on the operational sale. Engagements (including air and air-defense engagements) and strikes (including massed missile and air strikes) constitute the main substance of...

Tactics: the art of all-round combat support.
January 1, 2004... Engineer Support The term "engineer support" did not begin to be used in field manuals until relatively recently. Military literature of the past talked about the military engineer art of ancient days. At a very early stage in the...

Strike aviation: low acoustic signature.
January 1, 2004... Protecting important facilities and forces from air attacks is getting much attention from the military heads of all world armies, who tend to regard tactical air defense weapons such as short-range and close-in (effective range up to 20...

The use of satellite navigation systems for coordinate determination and timing support of the RF Armed Forces.
January 1, 2004... Today, satellite navigation systems (SNS) are a principal means of coordinate determination and timing support (CDTS) for branches and arms of the RF Armed Forces and other "power" departments. CDTS is conveniently defined as a relatively...

Safety of information: problems and solutions.
January 1, 2004... Currently the number and quality of tactical-level automated systems and information-handling hardware are much higher than they were before. The same applies to the amount and importance of information as well as the range of threats capable...

Problem specific processing of regulatory/technical information.
January 1, 2004... The quality of contemporary automated systems of military designation (ASMD) is to a very large extent predicated on the organization of the process of their development and creation, above all on the well substantiated selection of...

Evaluation of opposing air combat forces.
January 1, 2004... From the point of view of evaluating their operational effectiveness, air combat forces (ACF) are extremely complex systems whose comprehensive assessment is based on an aggregate of indicators including an integrated indicator and generalized...

A comprehensive system to protect Missile Troops and Artillery facilities from enemy precision weapons.
January 1, 2004... U.S. and NATO military commands view precision weapons (PW) as the main means of achieving fire supremacy over the enemy in modern wars and armed conflicts. This conclusion is confirmed, among other things, by the outcome of the military...

Organization of combat training in combined units and units made up of contract personnel.
January 1, 2004... Changes in manpower acquisition methods were always central to military reforms in Russia. Current reforms of the RF military also call for such changes. As we know, the special federal program drawn up and approved in 2003 calls for...

Military education: bureaucratic and statesmanlike approaches.
January 1, 2004... The idea of reducing the training period at military educational institutions does not in itself appear to be "seditious," considering that each hour of study time costs the state a great deal of money, that graduates are awaited with...

Unified combat training and indoctrination system for the armed forces.
January 1, 2004... There are many factors influencing combat capability of combined units, military units and subunits, but the main ones are certainly the combat proficiency and the moral-psychological state of the personnel. These are inseparably linked...

Air Force tactical exercises: organization and conduct.
January 1, 2004... Tactical exercises (TE) were always an important component of combat training. The Air Force, before its merger, in 1998, with the Air Defense Forces (ADF), mostly practiced these in the form of tactical air exercises (TAE). Currently the...

Training of career officers at civilian institutions of higher learning: organizational approaches.
January 1, 2004... It is common knowledge that one of the most difficult and intractable problems in the development of the Armed Forces at the present stage is an acute shortage of qualified officers, especially in the platoon-company (battery) echelon. This...

Control of moral and psychological support of combat operations: questions of theory and practice.
January 1, 2004... The early 1990s were a turning point in every sphere of sociopolitical and economic life in Russia. Morale activities in the Armed Forces required new forms as well. Party and political work (or, in combat situations, political work) gave way...

Use of military force in the fight against terrorism: legal aspects.
January 1, 2004... The problem of how to use military force against terrorists and terrorist organizations emerged only in the latter half of the 20th century. There had been no need before that to use the army might against separate persons or groups seeking to...

Possible ways of developing Russia's military.
January 1, 2004... Recent events provide compelling evidence that situation in various regions on the planet remains unstable. Moreover, now, in conditions of a unipolar world, with the United States trying to consolidate its position as an indisputable mover and...

Forms and methods of armed struggle.
January 1, 2004... It is necessary first of all to enlarge on the key term "armed struggle" [vooruzhennaia bor 'ba] used in this article. This term is defined in a variety of ways. In the 1950s "armed struggle" was taken to mean the same as war: "war is a social...

Tactical air defense in the initial period of war.
January 1, 2004... Tactical air defense is a component part of all combined-arms and joint operations. Therefore, its objective follows from the operation objective and tasks are determined by the tasks of troops under protective cover. The main objective of air...

Improvement of the structure and organization of combined-arms units.
January 1, 2004... One of the pressing tasks of military researchers is to determine priorities in upgrading organization and personnel structures (OPS) of combined-arms units, as was stressed by the commander in chief of the Ground Forces in his article dealing...

Command and control system in the tactical echelon.
January 1, 2004... To command and control, in modern parlance, means to show a consistent and system-based approach to defining the objectives, methods and tasks of a system, distribution of resources and comprehensive regulation of the entire set of contacts and...

Redressing the status of navigation service.
January 1, 2004... The article by Col. A.D. Tsyganok based on analysis of the latest war in Iraq experience and published in Military Thought drew an important conclusion about complete dependence of all weapon assets (and reconnaissance) on navigation support...

Repelling an air attack.
January 1, 2004... Currently, each publication devoted to warfare against aerospace offensive weapons (AOW) and methods of gaining air supremacy causes much interest. One of these publications is the article by A.B. Krasnov and E.I. Kulikovskiy. (1) One would...

Combat employment of special units on mountainous terrain.
January 1, 2004... Mountain-mass occupies a considerable part of territory on all continents. In wars of the slave-owning and feudal eras, combat action on difficult mountainous terrain was conducted occasionally, affecting mainly populated and accessible areas....

Psychological-information warfare: lessons of Afghanistan.
January 1, 2004... Psychological warfare has become a full-fledged component of modern operations plans which in some cases decides the subsequent course of combat action. An ever greater role is played by new kinds of weapons which incapacitate personnel without...

Terrorism as a social and military phenomenon of the 21st century.
January 1, 2004... Hostage taking, bomb blasts at apartment buildings and massacres of civilians have become daily events of our life. Such are the acts perpetrated by international terrorism. The problem of terrorism is being widely discussed in international...

Defense and Russia's military security.
January 1, 2004... Defense of any state--Russia above all--at the turn of the 20th century is, as it was in previous centuries, one of the most important problems analyzed in numerous research papers and journalistic writings. However, their attempts to explain...