Russia is shrinking their military and reorganizing their army, hoping to have more volunteers instead of conscripts:
Back in 2009 Russia decided to shrink its armed forces and reorganize them. The plan was to reduce personnel strength from 1.2 million to one million by 2011 and increase the quality of the troops. Unfortunately reality had other ideas and today the military has only about 870,000 troops. ...
Another big change was converting the force from one based on divisions to one based on brigades. This also includes the elimination of many other Soviet era practices. For example, nearly all brigades will be at full strength in peacetime, eliminating the need to wait for reservists to arrive to fill out the unit before it can get to where it is needed.
Of course, they are a long way from having the people, new weapons, and training to reach Western standards of combat troops (not that there aren't a lot of uniformed civil servants in Western Europe).
But to make sure that the poor state of the entire military doesn't cripple Russia's ability to operate at all, Russia is organizing a military force more ready for action:
Russia is forming a new major command, the VDV (Rapid Reaction Force) which will consist of the current airborne, special operations and marine troops. All these will operate under one VDV commander and VDV staff. The air force and navy will supply transportation in addition to vehicles each unit has and access to the national railroads. The air force and navy will also provide fire support as needed. ...
VDV will have control of about ten percent of Russian military personnel. This is also the most skilled lethal personnel in the Russian military.
This includes 12,000 true special forces types in 10 Spetsnaz brigades; 35,000 in 4 airborne divisions and 4 separate brigades; and 9,000 naval infantry (marines); plus support troops. So total strength will be no more than about 90,000 is seems.
I wonder if the two "elite" Russian divisions in Moscow are part of this or more of a strategic reserve? (Or are they parade ground troops with better uniforms and marching skills than military proficiency?)
The Russians have apparently absorbed the lesson of their war with Georgia back in 2008. Russia won. But it wasn't pretty.
The Russians have recently practiced using a force of that size in an area where they could do some pounding against a small enemy in a short time.
There is no reason we have to let Russia push us around over missile defense in Europe, Ukraine, Syria, Iran, or the Arctic. We aren't small. Except in our thinking.
