Signal Troops - Meichik 2009
The war in Georgia in August 2008, among other things, demonstrated the catastrophic communication problems of the Russian army. Some units were actually deprived of the opportunity to communicate with the command, instead of army radios, mobile phones and even "courier mail" were used. An officer of the headquarters of the Airborne Forces flew around the landing units in a helicopter, landed and personally set tasks.
Head of Communications of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and Deputy Chief of the General Staff (2008-2010), Lieutenant General Yevgeny Robertovich Meichik, in a 2009 interview with reporters, spoke about the "digitization" of the battlefield and the creation of the military Internet. After the well-known events in South Ossetia in August 2008, the chief army signalman said, "under the leadership of the Minister of Defense personally, at the direction of the President of the Russian Federation, approaches to organizing the entire control system and, in particular, the communications system" were completely revised.
The new approaches are as follows: “Here, there are combatants. We can call each of them an information source, be it a soldier, a combat unit, a tank, an infantry fighting vehicle, an aircraft, a military ship, a spacecraft - these are all participants in the hostilities that are information sources. Intelligence must receive information, this information must immediately go to the commander, who must make a decision and choose the means of destruction that will immediately destroy this enemy. I repeat once again: this is all in real time. And all these information objects - they make up a single combat space in which the Armed Forces conduct combat operations. We must provide each serviceman with means of control, communication, so that he can transmit all types of services, like on a cell phone.
General Meichik said that in the exercises "Caucasus-2009", "West-2009", "Ladoga-2009" new means had already been used, in particular, radio stations of the Aqueduct and Granit series. They allow the transmission of both voice and other information data. “By the end of 2011, we plan to bring the radio station to every serviceman, to every combat vehicle,” the general informed the journalists. Our means of communication must have all the necessary means that would provide modern management. It's not just radio communications. These are new means of infocommunication, these are new means of radio relay communication, these are new digital transmission systems. These are new satellite communication systems. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the Minister of Defense appreciated these funds well at the Zapad-2009 exercises. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief even managed the troops while in a Tiger-type combat vehicle.
At that time, the main tactical-level army radio communication complex was Akveduk , a family of R-168 radio stations, which since the early 2000s has been developed by the Voronezh Research Institute of Communications (Concern "Sozvezdie"). However, this system began to be widely used by the troops after the war in Georgia - and mainly by the Airborne Forces. When Meichik promised to bring communication "to every serviceman," he had in mind precisely "Aqueducts." But while the radios of the R-168 family were still "reaching" the soldiers, the Ministry of Defense decided to develop a completely new tactical communication system of the sixth generation, and not in the usual Sozvezdie concern, but at the Zelenograd microelectronic enterprise Angstrem.
By 2009 in the subdivisions of the Moscow Military District, the pilot operation of the Unified System for Controlling the Army Tactical Level was underway. It used modern digital radio stations of the 5th generation. With their help, the combat capabilities of military formations can be increased by 2-3 times, and the time for fulfilling certain standards can be reduced by forty times.
General Meichik lamented that Russia was lagging behind Western countries in its digital transformation. The first "digitized fighter" appeared there in 2002, and is now being tested in Iraq. German soldiers in Afghanistan in 2006-2007 conducted field tests of the "Soldier of the Future" kit (IdZ - Infanterist der Zukunft). Based on the results obtained, a completely new complex is being developed - IdZ-ES. France is also doing well, developing the Scorpio program. Full-scale tests of a “digital” soldier provided with a FELIN (Fantassis a Equipement et Liasons Integres) serviceman kit “Integrated infantryman equipment and communications” were held there in 2000. Now three sets are being prepared for military tests: a soldier, a squad leader and a platoon commander.
In Israel, army specialists had long developed programs for transferring troop communications to a digital basis, which were shown at an exhibition of the latest military technologies back in 2005. In 2006, in the second Lebanon war, they were already used in individual Israeli units. The essence of similar systems is the unification of all forces on the battlefield into a single communication network. What an ordinary soldier, squad leader and platoon leader sees in front of him is broadcast through a miniature video camera to a monitor in the headquarters, cockpit of an aircraft, helicopter or tank. Commands from the headquarters are sent simultaneously to all branches of the armed forces, which helps their interaction and contributes to success in battle.
“These states have their own military Internet, the so-called Intranet,” Meichik said. And they use it widely. But we also strive to ensure that this Internet web covers our Armed Forces. In order to be able to pull out any information anywhere to any official who needs this information. Well, of course, by access rights to this system. Because, of course, the brigade commander should not have all the information that, say, the Minister of Defense or the Chief of the General Staff has. This is our future and we are moving towards it.”
Until June 1, 2004, the Internet was strictly prohibited in the Russian Armed Forces. This was due to the requirements of the General Staff to maintain secrecy. And only in the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) did a special computer department exist for a long time, which had access to the World Wide Web.
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