Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future

of brigades in the table of organization and equipment
(TOE) and he, as well as Igor Sergeyev and Sergei
Ivanov, considered forming operational-strategic
commands. Nonetheless, the most striking feature of
Serdyukov’s reforms is the extent to which they draw
upon an analysis of foreign military experience.
In April 2004, the Foreign and Defense Policy
Council (SVOP) in Moscow published an important
70-page study. Colonel (Retired) Vitaliy Shlykov
headed the team of writers, including Alexei Arbatov,
Alexander Belkin, Major-General (Retired) Vladimir
Dvorkin, Sergei Karaganov, Mikhail Khodorenok,
and Andrei Kokoshin. 35 The report, Voyennoye stroitelstvo
i moderinzatsiya Vooruzhennykh sil russiy (The Development
and Modernization of the Russian Armed
Forces), identified 15 traits present in the world’s leading
militaries, though absent from the Russian armed
forces, and recommended dramatically reducing the
officer corps, abolishing warrant officers, training
professional NCOs, introducing military police, and a
number of other measures (later featuring in Serdyukov’s
reform). 36
This was referred to in a letter from Serdyukov to
Sergei Karaganov, the Chairman of SVOP, on September
30, 2009:
The issues which are raised in the report are important
during the period of profound reforms in the
Russian Federation armed forces. In the process of the
transition to the new model of the Russian Federation
armed forces, the Russian defense ministry is currently
implementing the most important measures which are proposed
in the report, including the transition to the new TOE
and establishment of the military formations, optimization
of the command and control bodies, comprehensive technological
rearmament of the troops (forces), improvement of
48