Air Force tactical exercises: organization and conduct.

Tactical exercises (TE) were always an important component of combat training. The Air Force, before its merger, in 1998, with the Air Defense Forces (ADF), mostly practiced these in the form of tactical air exercises (TAE). Currently the existing Air Force holds both TE with units and subunits of Antiaircraft Missile Forces, Radiotechnical Troops, and Electronic Warfare, and combined units of Air Defense Forces, and TAE with air combined units, units and subunits. Joint TE's are also held with air and ADF units and combined units. According to a long-standing definition, TE (TAE) is the highest and most difficult form of combat training. Sometimes it is added that it is "the most efficient" form, but this assertion is not incontestable. The point is that efficiency is inseparably linked with cost, and exercises are always a costly affair. In addition, efficiency is evaluated in accordance with the tasking designation of a form of combat training: where a seminar or a drill is effective enough, there is no need to hold an exercise (for it will be ineffective). But TE (TAE) are certainly essential as a final stage in combat training of subunits, units and combined units. Whether they will be efficient depends on how they are organized and conducted. The practical experience suggests that TE (TAE) reach the greatest effect when held in training areas which alone can offer opportunities for real missile launches, bombing, all types of jamming, and more, that is, everything characteristic of the modern combat operations.

In recent years, organization and conduct of TE (TAE) have been influenced by a number of main factors.

* First, the formation of a new RF AF service, the Military Air Forces (MAF), incorporating both the former Air Force and the Air Defense Forces. The merger made it difficult for commanders, commanders-in-chief and their staffs to organize and conduct TE (TAE) in Air Force training areas, but simultaneously gave them some opportunities they had lacked before. For the first time ever they have a real chance to undertake joint training of different combat arms and forces comprising the MAF, to drill their coordination, and to use, on the reciprocal basis, their combat performance characteristics in order to enhance combat employment efficiency.

* Second, a new factor is formed by the well-known difficulties linked to the existing economic situation in the country as a whole and the MAF in particular: the equipment is ageing, while new WME supplies are so far negligible; fuel is still in short supply as are funds to practice full-scale combat training; training facilities are not developed in line units, training area equipment is outmoded as well, both permanently assigned and temporary personnel in training areas have seen their social and everyday standards deteriorate.

* Third, the decade-long decline in combat training of units and combined units makes itself felt as well. The decade saw the natural replacement of a generation of officers who used to man the subunit-unit echelon: professionals skilled in full-blooded combat training, including the organization and conduct of exercises, left the service and assumed the reserve status. Their successors are commanders who grew up in a situation where pilots almost did not fly at all, AMF subunits were not on alert duty, and both combat arms did not practice field drills. Regimental exercises within combat arms, particularly those involving a departure to a training area, were an infrequent proposition.

* Fourth, the number of training areas declined dramatically, many well-equipped training areas are now the property of several former republics of the USSR, currently independent states. Some training areas shrunk territorially on account of a new configuration of Russia's state border.

Each of the above factors generated quite a few problems, some of which are being dealt with, and it is sufficiently clear what to do about the others.

One of the problems that cropped up after the Air Force-Air Defense Forces merger was a substantial difference in guideline and regulatory documents related to combat training. These used different concepts, while identical terms were occasionally invested with a different meaning. For example, the Air Defense Forces did not use the category "pilot ground training," and the Air Force, "combat teamwork training of subunits, units and combined units," etc. This caused many questions, specifically, how commander and ground training, combat teamwork and precision formation flying ability, TE and TAE were related? Clearly, new, unified documents regulating all forms of combat training of subunits and units of MAF different combat arms were needed.

With this aim in view, a number of scientific investigations was carried out, producing results that prompted the holding of joint seminars and conferences attended by representatives of line units, the Yu.A. Gagarin Air Force Academy and the G.K. Zhukov Air Defense Military University, as well as other MAF higher educational establishments and research organizations.

Presently the work to make a unified regulatory and legislative framework for MAF combat training, including organization and conduct of TE (TAE) in training areas, is in its final stage.

Essentially different indicators and criteria were used to evaluate results of combat training in units of different combat arms. Clearly, evaluation criteria applied to, say, a bomber regiment and a radiotechnical brigade cannot fail to differ, but, as the present writer sees it, principles underlying these should be the same. For example, antiaircraft missile units employed, until quite recently, "miss in norm" as a criterion for results of field firing, which, in my view, is fundamentally wrong.

Until recently, exercises taking place in training areas were of "combat-arm" nature, which means that they involved units (subunits) of just one combat arm. This was due to traditions, but also to the fact that such exercises were seemingly less costly. Currently MFA training area exercises are increasingly of a combined-arms (joint) nature, which, firstly, reflects what modern combat is all about, and, secondly, ultimately produces a positive economic effect, because units of different combat arms (for example, Antiaircraft Missile Forces and strike aviation) pursue their proper missions while simultaneously "playing up" to each other.

In this connection the tasking designation of training areas gets modified: those that were used for training air defense missions alone are getting additional equipment to be able to perform as ground pilot training areas, etc. This work will be continued. It is necessary to further activate a part of training areas in the territory of this country to make MAF central training areas as accessible to exercises as those of MAF large strategic formations are. After all, Ashuluk, the MAF central training area, though located on the boundary between European and Asian Russia, is not fit for MAF units and combined units that are based, for example, in the Trans-Baikal Area or in the Far East.

Training area equipment needs improvement and development. In the first place, this refers to the trajectory measuring equipment and other objective control assets. Modern information technologies enable real-time handling, objective evaluation and subsequent analysis of combat drill results, which is equally true of both strike aviation and air defense forces.

Recent wars demonstrated that electronic warfare had a sweeping and growing effect on the course and outcome of combat operations. In this connection, the jamming situation is of crucial importance for the instructiveness of exercises. We have modern jamming devices, and it is important that they be supplied to all MAF training areas and made an imaginative use of during exercises.

Exercises are occasionally attended with injuries, wrecking of combat equipment, and emergence of air targets, missiles and other weapons beyond the boundaries of a training area. This is inadmissible, but it would be wrong to think that these incidents are linked to the growing complexity of the combat drill situation alone. More often than not they result from human errors occurring on account of "insufficient training" as well as infringements, to wit, the conscious departure from the established security rules. For this reason, various simplifications that are occasionally allowed during exercises under the security pretext are not justified. Exercises must train the entire totality of actions characteristic of combat employment of subunits and units of this or that combat arm, including the whole gamut of combat support (reconnaissance, tactical camouflage, concealment and deception, etc.). To make this possible, an appropriate tactical background should be created for commanders to become skilled in considering all these elements in the process of decision-making.

The "insufficient training" factor is felt in particular when subunits and units engage in joint exercises in a training area. For all the significant material expenditures (it costs millions of rubles on average to launch a target or a guided missile, or to send a plane on a training mission), crew efficiency will be minimal if a target fails to be identified and fired upon through the fault of the personnel. This is why military science is yet to substantiate the required level of training of opposing sides at joint exercises. The existing three categories of complexity of the air situation fail to cover the plethora of combat uses of forces and assets of opposing sides. This task becomes even more difficult due to current under-financing, so much so that in the middle of a training period one has to urgently adjust training plans, frequently disrupting the logical sequence (consistence, periodicity, etc.).

A promising line in crew training and teamwork during joint TE (TAE) is using modern training equipment (TE) developed on the basis of a unified military-technical policy and utilizing on a broad scale new information technologies and modern hardware. Confirming this conclusion is the fact that it costs 9-12 times less to train antiaircraft missile crews with the help of simulators than to let them fire at real aircraft.

An analysis of the capacity to create modern training equipment for AMF combat crews suggests that combat training should be based on promising TE and modern simulator complexes and simulator systems derived from it. These ought to form indoor facilities for joint training. Along with simulators that assure practical workplace teamwork and coordination, the promising TE should include an automated teaching system to probe students' basic knowledge and theoretical grounding in the needed types of training and to evaluate their individual training levels.

The agenda for today is centralized automated command and control of all-arms forces and assets (strike aviation, air defense forces of different subordination, etc.) in combat operations. As is clear, this type of command and control should also be trained during exercises (first experimental and later planned combat training). Held at Ahuluk in 2000, a large-scale exercise of this kind, Oborona-2000, showed that quite a number of problems would have to be addressed in this area.

Our research institutes, universities and combat employment centers study issues related to the utilization of new and modernized WME models and weapons. They also develop new methods of combat operations and tactical techniques. It is clear that before being sent to line units all of that must be tested in training areas in the course of experimental TE (TAE).

Finally, one cannot but point to the important role the MAF training areas and exercises held there play in matters of international military cooperation. The armed forces of member countries of the unified CIS Air Defense System regularly take part, jointly with the RF Armed Forces, in Sodruzhestvo exercises. In effect, that affords the only opportunity for real peacetime combat training of national troops and Air Defense Forces.

MAF training areas are used for tactical exercises with field firing by armies of other countries, which operate our combat equipment. From this point of view, it can be said that the training areas are important for strengthening Russia's international prestige in the military sphere.

Lt. Gen. V.G. STYTSENKOV

Air Force Combat Training Chief

Vladislav Grigoryevich STYTSENKOV was born in Kuibyshev on March 29, 1954. Graduated from Armavir Air Defense Higher Military School of Pilots (1975) with a distinction, Yu.A. Gagarin Air Force Academy (1986) with a distinction, and RF Armed Forces General Staff Academy (1999) with a distinction.

His service positions range from that of pilot to commander of an aviation combined unit to chief of a training center for flight personnel of the frontal aviation (Caucasian Military District, Far Eastern Military District, Moscow Military District). As of February 2002, Chief of Air Force Combat Training Directorate.