YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia. April 21 (Interfax-AVN) - Russia's Eastern Military District has started getting ready for the planned Vostok-2014 (East 2014) strategic command post exercise in the autumn, the district commander said.
"The [district] will have an important test of professionalism this autumn, the Vostok-2014 strategic command post exercise, where there will be no right to a mistake. The commanders in all tiers and the personnel will have to make maximum use of all the knowledge and skills that they have acquired in the course of combat training for a positive result," Col. Gen. Sergei Surovikin said at a meeting in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk of the district command.
Surovikin said combat training in the district had become much more intensive.
"During the winter training period, more than 70 command post and tactical exercises were held, including one bilateral exercise in which two general army units were involved. Sixteen of them, including the bilateral tactical exercise, were held in the Sakhalin operational area. For comparison's sake - there were 131 tactical exercises in the district for the whole of 2013," the general said.
He said the greater intensiveness of training was the result of a snap inspection of the district in July 2013.
"There haven't been such large-scale exercises not only in the district but also in the armed forces as a whole for many years. It was in the Sakhalin operational area that one of the main parts of that snap inspection took place in," Surovikin said.
"More attention is now paid in combat training to long-distance redeployments, to marches with heavy weapons and regroupings by combined methods, to training marines and paratroops for beach landing, to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and long-range precision weapons, and to other tasks," he said.