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Informed sources report that the GRU’s Space Reconnaissance
Directorate has put several Tselina-2 satellites over Chechnya. 319 These
satellites, and others with similar functions, were used in the first Chechen war
as well. A satellite signal intercept was used by Russian forces to direct a
precision-guided weapon to kill former Chechen President Djokar Dudayev in
1996. Other satellite uses have been less successful. For example, Russia’s
Intelligence Service, when asked “with purported great satellites, why can’t you
find Shamil Basayev?” answered that the GRU’s main reconnaissance satellite
only crosses Chechnya for twenty minutes every twenty-four hours. Thus, it is
impossible to find Basayev in such a short period of time. At such speeds, the
representative noted, it is not possible to align the objective lens on a moving
vehicle column. 320
The Russian General Staff recognized the impact of new-generation
weaponry on military art several years ago and began to work diligently to
adapt to it. For example, a former chief of the Main Operations Directorate of
the Russian General Staff, Colonel General Viktor Mikhaylovich Barynkin,
wrote in 1996 that operational goals are now achievable just by the use of
reconnaissance-fire operations (battles). 321 These changes have caused an
evolution in Russian reconnaissance-strike and fire planning. In the past, this
activity was called either the reconnaissance-strike complex (razvedyvatel= noudarnnyy
kompleks or RUK) or the reconnaissance-fire complex
(razvedyvatel= no-ognevoy kompleks or ROK). Today, Russian theorists are
discussing the reconnaissance-strike system (razvedyvatel= no-udarnaya
sistema or RUS), the reconnaissance-fire system (razvedyvatel= no-ognevaya
sistema or ROS), and the reconnaissance-fire operation (razvedyvatel= noognevaya
operatsiya or ROO) as additions to the RUK and ROK concepts. 322
319 Soldatov, “Probing Action.”
320 Andrey Soldatov, “Spy Satellites,” Versiya [Version], 27 February 2001, p. 7, as
translated and downloaded from the FBIS website on 9 April 2001.
321 Viktor Mikhaylovich Barynkin, “Effect of Precision Weapons on the Nature of
Combat Operations and on the Evolution of Military Art,” Vooruzheniye, Politika,
Konversiya [Equipment, Politics, Conversion], 1996, No. 4 (11), pp. 17-21, as
translated and downloaded from the FBIS web page on 2 May 1997.
322 Some are the author’s abbreviations. They were not used in the original Russian.
The terms RUS and ROS were used by the Russians.
178