The Russian army has disgraced itself: Against the backdrop of the seizure of Siberia: China ridiculed the backwardness of the Russian army at the Vostok 2018 exercises

Against the backdrop of the seizure of Siberia: China ridiculed the backwardness of the Russian army at the Vostok 2018 exercises

Military expert Alexander Kovalenko spoke about a whole series of facts about the backwardness of the Russian army, which was revealed by the Chinese.

“As you know, Russia has completed the largest exercises since the Soviet “West-81”, which were then designed to intimidate NATO with the power of the Soviet army, “Vostok-2018”, which this time were designed to intimidate everyone. Including countries that are officially considered friendly to Russia. In this case I mean China.

What’s noteworthy is that units of the PLA (People’s Liberation Army of China) also took part in these grandiose exercises, and instead of awe and admiration, they emphasized a number of important points that are happily discussed day after day in the Chinese media sphere. Remembering how Chinese propaganda loves to discuss the shortcomings of its northern neighbors, it is not surprising that Vostok 2018 was not so much a triumph of the Russian army in the eyes of the Chinese, but a demonstration of inferiority.

Thus, numerous state-owned Chinese media, such as CCTV, drew attention to the fact that during the exercises, Russian colleagues used the tactics of a changing tank formation - “rotating tanks”. The Chinese emphasized that similar tactics were used by USSR troops during the Zapad-81 exercises, and, therefore, nothing has changed in the training manuals of tank crews for 37 years.

In addition, the Chinese also noted the presence of obsolete T-62s at the exercises, the presence of which at hybrid maneuvers I wrote in the article “T-62s are back in service, or what the “pensioners” forgot at Vostok-2018.” At first, the Chinese could not understand why they were using such outdated tank models, but then they realized that they were intended to wear down a hypothetical enemy.

That is, in defense, it was T-62s that were used to delay the enemy’s advance, and in offensive operations the Russians used modernized T-72B3s.

In fact, the T-62 crews can safely be called suicide bombers, which fits well into the modern concept of the Russian army.

Chinese experts also noted that their units had significantly greater maneuverability, thanks to the division of brigades into medium and heavy ones. The first includes brigades equipped with a maximum of eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicles, and the second includes brigades armed with tracked vehicles, including Type 99 tanks, which, by the way, the Chinese called better than the Russian T-72B3, although the PLA is already changing them to more modern ones.

In turn, the Russian brigades were significantly inferior to the Chinese in terms of maneuverability and efficiency, and used tactics to exhaust the enemy, again using T-62 and T-72B3 tanks, which also corresponds to the concept of the Soviet era. However, such tactics are completely neutralized when artillery is used, which provides cover for mobile medium brigades.

Chinese experts noted that if, in real conditions, Russia were to use similar tactics against medium-sized PLA brigades, its losses would be colossal.

Well, this is an excellent example of joint exercises between two countries with geopolitical ambitions, experiencing, on the one hand, panicky alertness, and on the other, a revanchist appetite for their neighbor’s territories. The Chinese emphasized for themselves many features of the Russian Armed Forces, and to be frank, one thing was enough - over the past decades, little has changed in the tactics of the Russians on the field of large-scale battles since the times of Zapad-81.

How does a friendly neighbor use this? Time will show. But the fact that it was the Chinese media that became the spearhead of the attack on the combat effectiveness of the Russian Armed Forces, revealing unpleasant details about its efficiency, immediately after the joint exercises of the two fraternal countries, already speaks volumes.

Let us remind you that footage of the largest military exercises in the history of the Russian Federation, Vostok 2018, has appeared.

Earlier it was reported that Russia had brought its latest weapons to eastern Ukraine.

Weapons[edit]

Chinese weapons for the National Revolutionary Army were produced mainly at the Hanyang, Guangdong and Taiyuan arsenals.

For regular provincial Chinese divisions, the standard rifles were the Hanyang 88 (a copy of the Gewehr 88). Central Army divisions were generally equipped with the Chiang Kai-shek rifle (a copy of the standard Mauser model) and the Czechoslovak vz. 24. However, for most of those divisions that were trained by German specialists, the standard firearms were the 7.92 mm Gewehr 98 and Karabiner 98k made in Germany. The standard light machine gun was a local copy of the Czechoslovakian 7.92 mm Brno ZB26 machine gun. There were also Belgian and French light machine guns. Provincial units tended to have no machine guns at all, while Central Army units had an average of one light machine gun per platoon. Ideally, divisions trained by German specialists had 1 light machine gun per squad. The NRA did not purchase any Maschinengewehr 34 from Germany, but produced its own copies of this machine gun. The heavy machine guns were mostly indigenously produced water-cooled Type 24s, which were Chinese copies of the German MG 08 and the American M1917 Browning, chambered in the standard 7.92mm cartridge. On average, each Central Army battalion received one heavy machine gun (about a third to half of what German divisions received during World War II). The standard weapon for sergeants and officers was the 7.63 mm Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol or the Mauser M1932/M712 automatic pistol. These automatic versions were used as replacements for submachine guns (such as the MP 18) and self-loading rifles, which were rarely supplied to the Chinese army until the end of World War II (for example, of the 306,031 rifles supplied from the United States in 1942-1945, only ONE self-loading M1 and 63,251 submachine guns). Throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War, especially in the early years, the NRA also made extensive use of captured Japanese weapons and equipment, as its own weapons were in short supply. Some elite NRA units also used American equipment supplied under Lend-Lease as the war progressed (306,031 rifles were supplied under Lend-Lease: 152,241 M1917, 107,470 M1903, 40,000 Li Enfild, 6129 Boyce PTR, etc. 63 251 0.45 caliber submachine guns, 31,501 machine guns (23,798 Bren, 3,663 M1917A1, 1,218 M1919A4 and M1919A6, and so on)). Also from the USSR, from October 1937 to September 1939, 100 thousand rifles and 14 thousand machine guns (1300 Maxim-Tokarev, more than 2600 DP and Maxim) and 150 million cartridges for them were supplied.

Spears and swords in addition to rifles were used by the Muslim forces of the Ma Clique of the National Revolutionary Army, which became famous for their excellent cavalry. The Muslim units of the NRA had an assortment of rifles: German, British, Russian and others.

Change in numbers

On January 28, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree on the organization of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The number of the Red Army by September 1918 was already almost half a million people. And by the end of 1920 it increased to 5.5 million people. pic.twitter.com/58Jj22osnL
— Stalin — Center ☭ (@StalinCentr) January 28, 2020

Let's use information about the quantitative composition of the USSR Armed Forces from encyclopaedia-russia. During World War II, the country mobilized all its resources, putting more than 11 million people under arms. Despite the conflicts that flared up every now and then in the world (Korean War, Berlin, Caribbean), the Soviet state is heading towards reducing the army. Its population is 5.76 million people. in 1954 fell to 3.6 million in 1960.

Since the 1970s, the process changed direction, and in 1980, as the russian7 website reports with reference to materials from headquarters memos and military archives, “the number of military personnel in the Soviet army exceeded five million.”

Graph 1. Dynamics of the number of SA at the time of the collapse of the USSR. Source: compiled by the author according to encyclopaedia-russia

In 1991, the formerly united one was divided into 15 independent armies of the former sister republics. In Russia at the time of its formation there were 2,870 thousand people. After 1992, several rearmament programs were adopted: from the first, in November 1996, and subsequent ones, in 2002, 2006, 2010, to the new one in 2020.

But the size of the Russian army is determined by decrees of the country's president - the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Let's turn to them.

Reference! The annual budget of the RF Armed Forces in 2020 was 3.287 trillion rubles. This is 5.4% of the country's total GDP. Source: Military Review

Equipment[edit]

Generally speaking, regular provincial army divisions did not have any artillery. However, some divisions of the Central Army were equipped with 37 mm Soviet anti-tank guns of the 1930 model (180 delivered from the USSR 03/15/1938 - 09/1/1939) or PaK 35/36 (a few delivered from Germany until 1937 - the start of the war with Japan), and /or mortars from Oerlikon, Madsen and Solothurn. Each of these infantry divisions ideally had 6 French 81 mm Brandt mortars and 6 20 mm Solothurn automatic cannons. Some individual brigades and artillery regiments were equipped with 76-mm cannons of the 1902/30 model (more than 160 delivered from the CCCP 03/15/1938 - 1939), 114-mm howitzers (more than 80 delivered from the USSR 03/15/1938 - 1939), 72 -mm Bofors L/14 or Krupp L/29 mountain guns, 150mm Rheinmetall L/32 sFH 18 howitzers (24 purchased in 1934) and Krupp L/30 sFH 18 (24 purchased in 1936). In total, from October 1937 to January 1942, 1,600 guns were supplied from the USSR (mainly 37-mm anti-tank and 76-mm field guns, 50 76-mm anti-aircraft guns of the 1931 model with tractors and anti-aircraft fire control devices) and 2 million shells him.

At the beginning of the war, the NRA had three tank battalions armed with 119 tankettes, tanks and armored vehicles: 46 Carden-Loyd Mk VI tankettes, 20 Vickers 6t E/F tanks; 20 Italian CV-33 tankettes, 15 light German Panzer I tanks and 18 German-made armored vehicles Sd.Kfz.221 and Sd.Kfz.222. After the defeat at the Battle of Shanghai, the remaining tanks, along with 82 T-26 tanks acquired from the Soviet Union, were reorganized into the 200th Mechanized Division.

Uniform[edit]

The infantry uniform was created on the basis of the classical Chinese Zhongshan costume. Coils were standard for soldiers and officers, since the main mode of transportation for NRA troops was on foot. The troops were also given embroidered field caps. Helmets were the most distinctive feature of those divisions that were trained by foreign military specialists. From the time the German M35 helmets (standard issue for the Wehrmacht until the late battles of the European theater of World War II) rolled off the production lines in China in 1935 until 1936, the NRA imported 315,000 of these helmets, each of which was marked on the side emblem of the Republic of China, adopted in 1928. These helmets were worn by both elite divisions trained by German military specialists and regular divisions of the central army. Other helmets used by the NRA were: the French Adrian helmet, the British Brodie helmet and later the American helmet. Other equipment included straw shoes for soldiers (or canvas shoes for central army soldiers), leather shoes for officers, and leather boots for senior officers. Each soldier was issued ammunition for his weapon along with an ammunition bag, water canteen, combat knives, food bag and gas mask.

Links



Types of armed forces	Ground Forces (Special Forces) • Navy • (Marines • Naval Aviation) • Air Force • (Airborne Forces • Air Bases) • Strategic Missile Forces

Command

Combat Command Zones	Northern • Eastern • Western • Southern (Hong Kong • Macau) • Central

Insignia and awards


Awards	Hero's Medal • Meritorious Service Medal

Outfit	Type 07 (uniform) • Type 99 (camouflage) • Type 97 (uniform)

Content

1 History of the PLA
2 Program and defense spending
3 Structure of the Armed Forces 3.1 Ground Forces
3.2 Air force
3.3 Navy
3.4 Strategic missile forces
3.5 Strategic support forces
3.6 Logistics support force
3.7 Chinese People's Armed Militia

4 PLA participation in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations

5 Protection of Chinese citizens abroad

6 Requirements for military personnel

7 See also

8 Notes

9 Links

Notes

[russian.china.org.cn/russian/163156.htm Hu Jintao called on the army to firmly fulfill its historical mission]
[www.strana-oz.ru/?numid=26&article=1146 New army of the Celestial Empire. Full text of the article on the website of the journal “Otechestvennye zapiski”, 5, 2005]
Antosyak A.V., Semin V.V., Vasilyeva N.V. et al.
Military-political cooperation of socialist countries. - M.: Nauka, 1988. - P. 123. - ISBN 5-02-008439-5
[nuclearno.ru/text.asp?10727 Chinese submarine fleet challenges the United States]
N.I.
Shishkina. [rusrand.ru/analytics/kitayskaya-voennaya-strategiya-chego-opasayutsya-ssha Chinese military strategy. What is the US afraid of?]. Center for Scientific Political Thought and Ideology (08 May 2015).
[www.infochina.ru/Zhang-Yuxia-met-with-the-forces-commander/ Zhang Youxia met with the Commander of the Australian Defense Forces | infochina]
lib.urfu.ru/player.php P. 226
[rusplt.ru/world/Kitay-armiya-7994.html?utm_source=smi2_russia&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=russia The Chinese army is aimed at Siberia and Taiwan] // Russian Planet
[russian.cri.cn/841/2016/02/02/1s573187.htm Five combat command zones have been officially formed in China instead of the previous seven military regions], China International Radio
(February 2, 2016).
[warsonline.info/inostrannie-armii/kitay-vpervie-obnarodovala-chislenniy-sostav-i-strukturu-svoey-armii.html China for the first time announced the size and structure of its army] // Military Observer
↑ 12
[lenta.ru/articles/2009/07/22/china/ Big neighbor] // Lenta.ru
[nvo.ng.ru/forces/2011-12-30/1_china.html The phenomenon of Chinese military power is still underestimated] // Independent Military Review
↑ 1 2
[ria.ru/world/20160101/1352804440.html Three new types of troops have been created in the Chinese army],
RIA Novosti
(January 1, 2016).
[tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/3619077 Joint logistics support forces have appeared in the Chinese army], TASS
(September 14, 2016).
↑ 1234
www.ifes-ras.ru/images/abook_file/china_in_world_politics18.pdf
[www.ng.ru/world/2014-06-18/8_china.html China: the best soldiers emerge from bachelors] // Nezavisimaya Gazeta
[izvestia.ru/news/376999#ixzz2buDGM4ow Snoring recruits in China were declared unfit for combat]
[www.military.com/daily-news/2015/02/13/china-to-link-military-promotions-with-weight-fitness.html China to link military promotions with weight, fitness] // Military.com

Requirements for military personnel

Those young people who have tattoos on their bodies cannot serve in the PLA. Tattoos with a diameter of more than 2 cm, located on “visible” parts of the body (including a short-sleeved shirt), as well as more than 3 cm in places hidden under clothing, were prohibited. According to the authorities, any tattoos on the body of a recruit spoil the image of the “most powerful and disciplined” army in the world. (Now cancelled[16].)
According to a 2006 directive, the country's military schools are now closed to those who snore. “Persistent snoring can disrupt the normal functioning of other cadets and have a negative impact on their military training,” says the new rules for admission to military schools[17].
The official website of the PLA stated that obese military personnel are automatically deprived of career opportunities in the army[18].

Participation of the PLA in peacekeeping and humanitarian operations

China's participation in UN peacekeeping operations began only in 1990 with the sending of 5 observer officers to the Middle East[15]. As of 2012, about 2 thousand Chinese troops were already involved in UN peacekeeping operations, mainly in Africa[15]. The Chinese fleet fought against Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden for several years, and in 2010-2011. a large hospital ship visited a number of affected countries in Africa and the Caribbean to provide medical assistance to their residents.[15]