Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

and Air Force. 20 Russia’s need for military modernization
is not prompted exclusively by perceived threats
from its western and southern directions. Russia’s
strategic east faces a growing military and economic
power in China, whose own military modernization
“has moved the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] from
a mass industrial army built to fight people’s war to a
force seeking to rearm as an advanced conventional
force and conduct their own version of net-centric
warfare.” 21
The Russian Defense Ministry’s plan for modernization
and reform is ambitious on paper. It anticipates
a broad transformation, departing from the
historical experience of the Soviet Union in the 20th
century with mass mobilization, conscript based forces,
and trained for protracted interstate wars of attrition.
22 Instead, future emphasis will be placed on the
creation of light, rapidly deployable, and elite units
of permanent readiness, staffed by specially trained
contract soldiers instead of draftees. Additionally:
the brigade, instead of the division, will be the focal
operational-tactical unit of action; the officer corps
will be downsized; and, emphasis will be placed on
improving the command-control and network centric
warfare capabilities of ready forces. 23 The post-reform
brigades will be the drivers of a new Russian military
that is trained for the kinds of wars that Russia is more
likely to have to fight in the 21st century: small wars,
including counterinsurgency and counterterrorism
operations, near or within Russia’s borders.
Skeptics question whether Russia has the necessary
financial resources to fund this program for
military transformation, and others have pointed to
demographic problems in making available the numbers
of eligible contract troops as well as draftees to
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