Day 1.

BTU: "Bandit, you are destroyed..."

...And there were up to half a thousand of them-well-armed and trained saboteurs who crossed the state border and intended to commit a series of terrorist attacks on vital objects of the Russian Far East. It was this tactical legend that laid the foundation for the BTU, which opened the dynamic phase of the five-day strategic frontline command and staff exercise with the Far Eastern and Siberian military Districts.

The border guards, who were the first to take on the blow of the "gang", completed their task, holding out for almost half an hour before the approach of a motorized rifle battalion, reinforced by a tank company and an artillery division. The head of the reserve border post of the Khabarovsk border detachment, Captain A. Letnev, skillfully organized a fire system, managed to block the "enemy", preventing him from advancing into the depths of our territory. The first deputy head of the Combat training Department of the Federal Border Service of the Russian Federation, Major General N. Zemlyanoy, assessed the actions of the border guards as tactically competent, although the defenders had a hard time: even nature itself seemed to be against them. Because of the heavy rains that had passed the day before, soldiers and officers were literally knee-deep in water in the trenches.

The only mistake made by the border guards, but not escaped the experienced eye of the inspector: they did not support the motorized riflemen in the battle formations, when they, having received the task of attacking the "enemy" on the move, threw armored vehicles into battle and unleashed heavy fire from the armament of infantry fighting vehicles and tanks on the positions of the "enemy".

The commander of the motorized rifle battalion, Major V. Yakimov, organized interaction with the attached flight of combat helicopters, gunners, tankers and sappers in the initial area. Subsequently, he competently controlled artillery fire and made the most of the results of air strikes. A little later, analyzing the results of the exercise, Lieutenant General V. Marchenkov, acting head of the GUBP of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, will note that it was the combined-arms units that performed better than others.

...Following the motorized riflemen, a division of the Internal Troops went out to "clean up" the area where the "battle" was thundering until recently. The subordinates of the intelligence platoon commander, Senior Lieutenant A. Golubev, knew their business, and it was not for nothing that many of them had recently returned from Chechnya. Service dogs immediately identified the location of the "bandits", and the detention of the "violators" played out by the capture group was lightning fast. The head of the Department of Combat Training of the Internal Troops, Lieutenant-General N. Garidov, who watched the actions of the special forces from the tower, was generally satisfied with them.

As for the overall results of this stage of the CSU, the main goal, as Lieutenant General V. Marchenkov said, was to check operational and tactical calculations and standards, as well as the interaction of management bodies of various law enforcement agencies. By the way, operational and tactical standards, as it turned out, are still different in different law enforcement agencies. But the main problem was solved successfully. The commanders of combined-arms, border guard and Internal troops units were able to work out in practice the issues of interaction, including fire, and understand the essence of a joint maneuver.

However, as you know, the mother of learning is repetition. And when the troops will have the opportunity to once again conduct such a joint training, it is difficult to say, because the provision of material resources, and first of all fuel, still leaves much to be desired...

Day 2.

On the issue of fuel and lubricants and new approaches in training

This, in particular, was stated at a briefing held during the exercises, by Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Colonel-General Yu. Baluyevsky.: "I am familiar with the draft budget for 2001 submitted by the Government. In national defense expenditures, the amount of

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funds allocated directly for fuel and lubricants remain at the level of this year. Hence, the importance of command - and-staff exercises planned by the General Staff, like the current ones, both for maintaining the combat readiness of the Armed Forces and for improving the skills of military command and control bodies."

At the same time, the management bodies were learning to work in a really changing environment. The headquarters of the Far Eastern Military District resembled a disturbed beehive. The lights in the offices didn't go out even after midnight. Introductions were sent in hourly, and some officers complained (quite unnecessarily, I must say)when they received them: say, the General Staff plays along with the "southern". Similarly, as Colonel-General Y. Baluyevsky said, the SibVO headquarters also thought about playing along with the "northern" General Staff. But this happened, apparently, only because of some confusion, when the management bodies had to make not abstract, but concrete decisions on introductory issues, taking into account sometimes non-standard actions of the opposing side. "But this is exactly how we need to learn - in the conditions that will develop under the influence of the enemy, in the situation that will change in the course of real combat operations," the Deputy Chief of the General Staff stressed. This, in particular, was the essence of the new approach to conducting such events, tested by the General Staff during the current strategic front-line KSHU.

And one more innovation. Involvement of almost all law enforcement agencies of the regions in the exercise. After all, other troops stationed here are responsible for the situation in the Far Eastern and Siberian Military Districts: border guards, internal troops, railways, the fleet, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Therefore, the main principal result of the first stage of the CSU, according to Colonel-General Yu. Baluyevsky, consisted precisely in the fact that a clear interaction was established between the military districts and all other law enforcement agencies in the regions under a single command.

Of course, compared to the scale of military maneuvers of the 70s - 80s, this exercise looked much more modest. But here, too, a lot of forces and resources were attracted. A total of three thousand people participated in the last stage of the KSHU - a regimental live-fire exercise held in Primorye.

Day 3.

The final stage is very instructive

The troops who took up positions at the training center's training ground exactly a month before the start of the exercise had a chance to fully experience all the vagaries of the seaside weather. For three days, on the eve of the last stage, the soldiers bailed out buckets of water from trenches and trenches opened for equipment. But after each successive downpour, heavy combat vehicles standing in closed firing positions were again flooded up to the very towers. Soldiers and officers of the motorized rifle regiment of Lieutenant Colonel V. Lensky, who was assigned the main role in the exercise, and attached units dreamed of one thing-to "win back" the dynamics faster.

I must say that the regimental exercise turned out to be the first serious test for this unit, which was formed, or rather recreated quite recently - in December of the 99th. And how can you not remember the folk wisdom: young-green. Although this regiment is now considered part of the permanent combat readiness, and therefore it is equipped almost one hundred percent, but how it is equipped is a special question.

According to the division commander, Major General A. Rogov, the platoon - company link is headed mainly by lieutenants of the last and this year's graduation. There are more than a hundred of them in the regiment. And what they were taught-it turned out already at the place of service. It turned out that many people during their five-year stay in the walls of military institutes, as the schools are now called, shot only 3-4 times, and did not drive combat vehicles at all... not once (!). In addition, 40 percent of the lieutenants are so-called "two-year students" who came from civilian universities and have no experience working with soldiers. The question is: what can they teach their subordinates?

Therefore, the main problem, as the divisional commander said, is that many young commanders do not know how to work with people. And even the more experienced ones sometimes lost their skills in working with personnel, because during the years of the landslide reduction of the army, they had to serve mainly in cropped units. "It even gets to the point that there is no one to put on the posts of regimental commanders," Major General A. Rogovoy admitted. - Some are not worthy, others refuse, because this position adds a minimum salary, but a maximum of responsibility, hassle and loads that not everyone can stand."

However, despite all the difficulties, the unit conducted company and battalion tactical exercises with live firing during the summer training period. It began to loom

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coherence of divisions, commanders capable of leading military collectives and those who, according to the divisional commander, "need to be removed"were determined.

In general, the young military team has a lot of problems. With them, he went to the training. As expected, most of them were immediately revealed, as soon as the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, General of the Army A. Kvashnin, arrived at the positions of the regiment, which is on the defensive under the conditions of the KSHU. First of all, the head of the strategic frontline command and staff exercise visited the battle formations of the second echelon, which in the dynamics of the battle was supposed to ensure the success of the regiment with its transition to a counteroffensive. Then the helicopter of the Chief of the General Staff passed at a low level over the positions of the front edge of the defenders, where Army General A. Kvashnin ordered the rotorcraft to land. Later, having gathered the intermediary apparatus and senior officers on the tower, the Chief of the General Staff said:: "Do you think why Suvorov-Count, field marshal, and then generalissimo-was close to the soldier? Because he knew that if you didn't teach a soldier, he wouldn't complete the task. So he went to him, taught him, and tested him to win the battle." Unfortunately, in this case, as the head of the exercise noted, the commanders did not do so.

A detailed analysis of the mistakes made in the organization of defense took a good hour. Not even the slightest flaw went unnoticed by the Chief of the General Staff. Unsuitable equipment, which is at least inconvenient to fight in, a sniper's un-fired rifle when the sight was shifted and was turned in the other direction from the barrel; rust on the squad's collective weapon-a machine gun...

But these, one might say, were trifles compared to general omissions: first, an incorrectly created target situation, when there were only two targets for one unit of armored vehicles, which is clearly not enough with an abundance of shells. The situation is the same for snipers. Once they hit their targets, they would have fired half of the issued rounds just into the "white light". Secondly, the tactically ineffective formation of the battle order: some of the funds were undisguised. The firing positions were incorrectly chosen, as a result of which entire sections of the target field were not shot at, and there should be no" dead zones", as the Chief of the General Staff said. Third, the lack of mine-explosive and engineering barriers, which in a real battle would allow the enemy to throw grenades into the trenches of the defenders, as well as the lack of spare cells for submachine gunners and machine gunners. Fourth, company level officers are not aware of the tactical situation, the plans of senior managers, poor organization of interaction, etc. And General of the Army V. Kvashnin, pencil in hand, patiently explained to the control officers where, for example, a combat guard should be located in this case, what a topographical ridge is, how to properly build a fire system, how to choose firing positions for tanks, IFVs, grenade launchers, taking into account the range of fire, available forces and means... " A combination of firepower, tactics"the ability to apply to terrain features is the most difficult science for a combined-arms commander," he said. "And if he doesn't teach this to the soldiers, they will lie down in battle for 15-20 minutes."

The weak preparation of the regiment for battle was the reason that, according to the decision of the Chief of the General Staff, he did not take part in the dynamics that day. General of the Army A. Kvashnin gave the "go-ahead" to perform tasks on long-range fire prohibition only to gunners, front-line and army aviation and rocket men who were supposed to launch the "Point".

A few minutes later, the windows of the tower shook as bombs and shells rained down on the "enemy". Together with other veterans invited to the exercise, peering into the blue of distant hills, the head of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences, Army General M. Gareev, watched the results of the fire defeat. In the distant 45th, he took part in the development of operational plans for the 5th Army, which smashed the Japanese during the Manchurian operation, the experience of which is still relevant for the Far Eastern Military District. And of course, the attention of all those present, including at that moment the heads of local administrations and the plenipotentiary representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Far Eastern Federal District K. Pulikovsky, was attracted by the launch of a tactical missile. And soon the result became known, with which the head of the RVIA district, Lieutenant-General L. Shivdyakov, was satisfied: the goal was hit, the rating was "excellent". I must say that the launch was carried out by a young officer - a graduate of this year, Lieutenant A. Organov from the missile brigade of Colonel V. Apolonets. But, of course, not only the head of the calculation ensured success. The battery commander, Major M. Chetveryakov, and the engineers of the fire and special training control group, Majors A. Zamydra and K. Chetveryakov, worked for him. Kissin, who was responsible for topogeodetic preparation and topoprivyazku, and technical supervisor Colonel S. Gavrilenko, who provided training of ground equipment, the rocket itself and launch safety.

Well, at the end of this stage of the exercise, summing up a brief summary, Army General A. Kvashnin said:: "All of us still have to work and work, from me to the soldier. In order for the country's defense capability to be at the proper level, we need will, faith and professionalism. This is what we are striving for."

Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Pylaev, permanent correspondent of Orientir magazine for the Far Eastern Military District.

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