Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future - Strategic ...

eforms of the Russian military, offered an excellent
overview of Vostok-2010 as an operational-strategic
exercise. McDermott correctly pointed to the role of
the exercise in testing concepts associated with the
“new look” reforms of the Russian Armed Forces and
called attention to the testing of the speed of deployment
of brigades, their combat readiness, and their
capacity to engage in combined arms combat in an
air-land battle, and their logistical support to sustain
combat actions. He also noted that while the scenario
dealt with a wide range of combat actions, including
anti-piracy, to counterterrorism, the senior military
leadership, including Chief of the General Staff General
Nikolai Makarov, stated that the opponent was
hypothetical and was not intended to simulate “any
one country or bloc.” McDermott, however, concluded
that the actual objective of the exercise was a test of
the defenses of Siberia and the Far East from attack by
the PLA of China. McDermott raised the very threat
about which the Russian political and military elite
could not speak openly. 56 To understand this silence,
one needs to understand the political-military context
of this exercise.
Anyone who has been involved in the construction
of a scenario for a wargame or exercise knows that the
creation of the documents for the conduct of such an
operational-strategic exercise involves the creation of
a road to war, which brings about conflict between the
contending sides, usually labeled “red” and “blue”
in the case of Russian war games—with “blue” being
the color associated with the aggressor forces against
which Russian “red” forces defend. In the case of the
“Vostok-2010,” the Russian forces involved in the exercise
were facing a “hypothetical opponent” (uslovnyi
protivnik). At a press conference at the start of the exer-
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