Aviation Week & Space Technology - January 15, 2015

40 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 15-FEBRUARY 1, 2015 AviationWeek.com/awst

U.K. ROYAL AIR FORCE

A member of the U.K. RAF, fl ying

in a Quick Reaction Alert Typhoon,

snapped a shot of this Russian Tu-

95 “Bear” in international airspace

north of Scotland.

PERSON OF THE YEAR

Maxim Pyadushkin Moscow

Out of the Shadows

Russia’s ongoing military transformation

became apparent in 2014

A

lthough the threat of global con-
flict seemed to dissipate with
the end of the Cold War, the res-
toration of Russia’s military might have
been on Vladimir Putin’s agenda from
the very beginning. He came to power
in 2000, when the armed forces relied
on the remnants of Soviet arsenals due
to the sharp decrease in military ex-
penditures in the 1990s.
But Russia faced regional threats
to its national interests in the post-
Soviet era as well as challenges from
insurgents on the North Caucasus. The
successful second Chechen War in the
early 2000s lent vast public support
for Putin’s rule.
At the same time, it showed that the
country’s armed forces—a Cold War-

era mobilization

giant—could not

respond quickly to

local threats. The initial plan called for

two dif erent forces—troops constant-

ly at the ready along with traditional

mobilization units. But in 2008, the

mixed results of the fi ve-day war with

Georgia over the breakaway republics

Abkhazia and South Ossetia triggered

the more radical transformation of the

Russian military into a smaller, but

more ef ective force.

The reform of Russia’s military,

officially launched in October 2008,

downsized the armed forces. T he

structure shifted from four tiers to

three. In 2010, Russia reduced the

number of military districts to four

from six, with their planned transfor-

mation into strategic commands: west,

south, central and east. And lean units,

intended to be fully deployed only dur-

ing wartime, were merged into full-

size constant-readiness formations.

Concurrently, Russia’s major rapid

deployment force—airborne troops—

Russia and Ukraine had the company
“closely watching what is going on be-
cause we have production sites in both
countries.” But he noted a May mission
that lifted an Airbus-built communica-
tions satellite to geosynchronous orbit
for Paris-based fl eet operator Eutelsat
went smoothly. “For the time being, we
are not af ected by these tensions.”
In December, however, Moscow
signaled plans to take over the Sea
Launch program and use it to col-
laborate with Brazil or other so-called
BRICS countries, an acronym for fi ve
major emerging national economies in
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa.
“A very interesting dialogue on the
level of experts is taking shape,” said
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmi-
try Rogozin—a Kremlin insider who
has been the target of U.S. Treasury
Department sanctions—in a Dec. 24 in-
terview on the Rossiya 24 news channel.
“The idea of joint launches may
be generated in the BRIC format or
in bilateral relations with Brazil,” he
said, noting that the Sea Launch fl oat-
ing pad built specifi cally for the Zenit
rocket is based in California.
“Now, after the latest events in

Ukraine, one may forget about indus-

trial production [there] , let alone high-

tech manufacturing. It’s dead,” he said,

citing the Sea Launch platform’s prox-

imity to the U.S. coast near Los Ange-

les. “Naturally we will take it away for

our own use.”

COMMERCIAL AVIATION

Similarly, the events in Ukraine set in

motion by Putin changed civil aviation

in a way that could hardly have been

imagined one year earlier. On July

17, 2014, at 1:30 p.m. UTC, a Malaysia

Airlines Boeing 777-200ER from Am-

sterdam to Kuala Lumpur with 298

people on board was in cruise over

eastern Ukraine when a surface-to-

air missile—fired from an area near

a village controlled by Russia-assisted

rebels—shot it out of the sky.

The exact circumstances of the at-

tack remain shrouded. Recovery of

wreckage, luggage and human remains

is still subject to the goodwill of local

warlords and has been suspended for

months, long enough for crucial evi-

dence that would shed light on events

to be removed. The indications are

that pro-Russia fi ghters were behind

the shoot-down. Where the equipment

came from—whether it was stolen

from Ukrainian forces or brought in

straight from Russia in support of the

allies in the neighboring country—is

not known.

Those details do not change much,

and neither does it much matter wheth-

er the attack on Flight 17 was a cruel

mishap from a missile actually intended

to hit Ukrainian military aircraft. Civil

aviation has been, if not a target, then

certainly a victim of a war fueled and

directly supported by Putin’s Russia.

MH17 was not the first instance in

which civil aviation has been unwillingly

involved in military confl icts. In fact, it

often is. What makes MH17 so dif er-

ent is that a civil aircraft was caught

up in a war that had nothing to do with

the origin of its fl ight, its destination or

its home country. The aircraft just hap-

pened to be in the wrong place at the

wrong time.

The attack has destroyed the indus-

try’s confi dence in a somewhat impro-

vised reporting system that alerts air-

lines about confl ict zones, one heavily

dependent on a carrier’s home nation’s

capabilities. MH17 was also fl ying at

33,000 ft., an altitude that seemed safe

(^) from ground attacks because the kind