A decade of reforms in the Russian military have wasted a
lot of money and produced little in the way of useful changes. One of the more
obscure but interesting failures was an attempt to build a modern, computerized
and networked C2 (command and control) system. Called the Unified Tactical
Echelon Command and Control and Fire Control System (YeSU TZ for short, in
Russian anyway), the new system was meant to get away from the Soviet era C2
system, which was too slow for modern combat operations. This was made
dramatically clear during the August 2008 invasion of Georgia
(a former part of the Soviet Union, just south of Chechnya
in the Caucasus). Although the Russians won this brief
campaign, it was a clumsy and sloppy victory against a much weaker opponent.
By the end of 2008 YeSU TZ was in development. A major goal
was to reduce the time it took for an order from the top (in Moscow)
to reach a brigade commander in, say, Georgia.
In 2008 it had taken 24 hours. YeSU TZ was supposed to reduce this to an hour
or less. That did not happen. The problem with this project was that no one was
in charge and everyone could make demands or suggestions. This has been the
usual cause of similar major development disasters in the United
States. As a result YeSU TZ was developed
without much feedback from the actual users or reference to budgetary
constraints. By 2010 someone noticed that the equipment to equip one brigade
with the required radios, computers and other gear would cost over $260
million. This was absurd and senior defense ministry officials tried to put someone
in charge, and, as they later discovered, failed.
One of the problems was the insistence that all the hardware
and software come from Russian companies. While there was certainly enough
local talent to create the software, most of the people who could make YeSU TZ
work were tied up in more lucrative jobs at software companies that did not do
military projects, or with criminal gangs involved in the current Internet
crime wave. Russian industry was nowhere near ready to supply the needed
hardware. Worst of all, the Russian military no longer had (if they ever did)
uniformed or civilian experts who could tell the manufacturers exactly what was
needed. The specs for YeSU TZ appeared to have come from Internet searches for
details on similar systems used in Western military forces.
YeSU TZ was supposed to be ready in 2010, but it wasn’t.
That led to several hundred million dollars being squandered and only resulting
in some more embarrassing field tests. The equipment usually did not work and
the developers blamed it on the users. But even highly educated and computer
literate officers complained that the YeSU TZ interface was incomprehensible
and that even when you did figure it out, the underlying system did not work.
The YeSU TZ project has reached that point where most of
those involved are spending the bulk of their time trying to shift blame to
someone else. There were several similar development disasters during the
Soviet period (1923-91), but were largely kept secret or pushed forward and
produced in small numbers and, after a few years, quietly replaced. These
details were discovered during the 1990s, when former Soviet military officials
felt free to talk. Now, you have a much harder time keeping anything secret,
even if you really want to. YeSU TZ’s problems were kept quiet until recently,
but it has become such an expensive train wreck that it’s becoming an example
of how dysfunctional current efforts to reform the Russian military have become.
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