2008 Russian military reform

Significant reforms of the Russian military were announced in October 2008 under Serdyukov and structural reorganisation began in early 2009.

The aims of the reform were to reorganise the structure and the chain of command in the Russian Army and to reduce it in size.

Elements of the reforms announced in October 2008 included: There had previously been several reform attempts such as the 1997 plan under defence minister Igor Sergeyev and the 2003 programme of President Vladimir Putin ('Urgent Tasks for the Development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation'), the latter of which was very similar to the 2008 programme, as it emphasised the need for reductions in personnel strength, a gradual decrease in the use of conscripts in favour of professional soldiers, the creation of a professional NCO corps and drastic changes to officer training and education.

The 2003 program moved at a very slow pace, mainly due to the unwillingness of the military to reform.

[3] The enlisted men were to be reduced according to the table:[citation needed] On 4 April 2011, General-Colonel Vasily Smirnov, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, said that the reformed forces would consist of 220,000 officers, 425,000 contract servicemen and 300,000 conscript soldiers.

This delay could undermine reform by creating problems with management and the manning of those combat arms where a relatively high percentage of officers are involved in the direct operation of military equipment, such as the submarine fleet and air defence forces.

[citation needed] Geographically divided, the four commands would be In 2014, the decision to give the Northern Fleet more autonomy was made and a fifth strategic command was established, Serdyukov's Defense Ministry will also be putting some soon-to-be-vacant real estate up for sale, e.g., Moscow MD headquarters (Polina Osipenko Street, Moscow), Far East MD headquarters (Seryshev Street, Khabarovsk).

This process began in October 2008 with the splitting of the 2nd Guards Tamanskaya Motor Rifle Division near Moscow.

Other planned changes were the offloading of non-military assets such as housing, the outsourcing of some jobs to civilian contractors and a reduction of the number of non-combat officers.

[10] The Naval Aviation and the support units were reorganised into 13 air bases, which were merged into territorially integrated structures in a second stage.

[10] Initially it was planned to change the four divisions of the Russian Airborne Troops (VDV) into 7 to 8 air-assault brigades, among a number of other cuts and changes which drew fierce protests from reserve and active airborne troopers who feared a loss of status.

They will be strengthened, and each military district will have an Airborne brigade to carry out urgent missions and operations under unpredictable circumstances."

The centralisation and cutting of the military education system was closely related to reductions to the officer corps.

Serdyukov affirmed that the entire faculty of military institutes would be preserved and absorbed into the new system and that only the managerial layer would be reduced.

There was no decent oversight over the residents, many towns contained large criminal or destitute people that the local law enforcement was unable to touch, since the closed establishment was under military jurisdiction.

Serdyukov's next step was to reduce massive maintenance costs since the Russian military before the reforms was essentially a smaller version of the Soviet Armed Forces.

As per some date, three fires happened on that day and the last one went out of control, creating a dangerous incident with the weaponry on board, including nuclear weapons.

Officials initially claimed that all weaponry was moved from the Ekaterinburg beforehand but Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin led the investigation and concluded Ekaterinburg "did not unload the ammunition set for repair: there were torpedoes on it, and regular ballistic missiles".

Part of the reason for Moscow's dissatisfaction was that funds had been released to remove the armaments from Ekaterinburg for the duration of repairs but these most likely disappeared.

By the end of 2012, Russian military training fields had been blown up with 3.6 million tons of this ammo.