Approaches to the creation of the National Aerospace Defense System in the conditions of future network-centric wars.

Cheltsov Boris Fedorovich was born in 1947 in the village of Totskoe, Totsky District of Orenburg Region. B.F. Cheltsov graduated from the Minsk Higher Military Engineering Antiaircraft Rocket Air Defense Academy (1970), Military Command Air Defense Academy (1985), Military Academy of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces (1991). All higher educational institutions were finished by Mr. Cheltsov with Honors. While serving in the troops, B.F. Cheltsov has raised from Deputy Commander of the radio engineering battery to the Deputy Chief of the General Staff of Air Defense. From March 1997, after the reunification of the Air Force and Air Defense Troops, he was assigned to the position of Chief of Operational Control Unit of the Air Force General Staff. From July 7 to May 14, 2007, B.F. Cheltsov occupied the position of Chief of Staff of the Russian Air Force (RusAF). B.F. Cheltsov holds the academic degree of Doctor of Military Sciences. He is an Honored military expert, Winner of the Russian Federation State Premium in science and engineering (2000), Winner of the Russian Federation Government Premium in science and engineering (2005). He has been awarded with the Order: "For Military Merits," "Honor," "For Service to the Motherland in the USSR Armed Forces" of the Third Class, and with 19 medals. From August, 2007 B.F. Cheltsov has been occupying the position of First Deputy Director General, Executive Director of OAO "Moscow Research Institute for Automatic Devices."

At the beginning of the 21st century, very few people actually realized that there had been a crucial change in the main warfare weapons, and that the epoch of entirely new wars had begun. The features of the new war were first displayed during the military campaign in Yugoslavia (1999) where the US warfare theorists were testing the "adaptive operations" in practice. In the course of these operations, the enemy's major striking targets were defined, their genuine real time location was reconnoitered and the main air defense system units were detected. In addition to that, the appropriate offensive forces and weapons were determined, and the most effective methods of their application were selected on the basis of multiple simulation activities. The combat effectiveness and loss indexes obtained as a result of modeling appeared to be quite satisfactory for the US and NATO armed forces coalition commanders. The follow-up air attack against the selected targets did confirm the simulation results. Thus, the main objective of the operation was achieved within the shortest possible time frame and with minimum losses.

During the military operations in Iraq (2003), air assault weapons of all sorts of basing were used for coordinated attacks against the major Iraqi control units and infrastructure facilities. These forces and means had been distributed not only around the Middle East warfare theater, but also worldwide. They were of diverse character and even belonged to the armed forces of different states, and they were applied under a uniform plan and schedule coordinated in terms of missions, goals, place and time. Even more so, the structure, the composition and the characteristics of the forces and means involved would dynamically change to ensure sequential solution of the tasks in view. Both the destruction targets and the power of impacts would also vary proceeding from the current situation. So, it became quite clear that new warfare technologies and war fighting methods and operations were tested and improved at full speed.

The military-political experience accumulated during that time was fully reflected in the new "U.S. National Military Strategy" (1) adopted in April, 2004. In fact, it contained the new aspects and areas of development of the US armed forces for the short-term and intermediate-term perspectives. Besides, it described various ways and methods of their application depending on the strategic conditions, as well as on the forces and means required to achieve superiority over the adversary in the military operations of the 21st century. The strategy was based on the principle of complete superiority over the enemy to be achieved not through an overwhelming advantage of the forces and means available, but by creating necessary conditions for their effective application even in the conditions of their deficiency.

The new US armed forces development strategy considered it necessary to convert the troops into unified network-centric and deployed forces on the basis of qualitative development of the system of collection, processing and appropriation of the information received. From this time on the Pentagon launched the deployment of a global information network and practical drilling of technologies of the new sort of warfare--network-centric (network) wars.

The essence of such wars consists in maximally expanded forms of producing the information, of providing access to it, ...