MOSCOW. June 27 (Interfax-AVN) - The U.S. smart defense concept will enhance the dependence of European armies on the Pentagon, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has opined.
"Smart defense is a cunning way to deprive NATO member countries of fully-fledged national armed forces. Meanwhile, the United States possessing every arm and service of the armed forces sets tasks for the allies: your specialty is mountain troops, your specialty is logistics and so on and so forth. As a result the Europeans will completely lose their sovereignty in defense issues and become fully dependent on the Pentagon," Rogozin wrote on Facebook on Friday.
Researcher Vasily Kashin from the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies told Interfax-AVN that the NATO smart defense concept might experience problems in the case the alliance had to engage in a complex and massive military conflict that met a mixed response in member countries.
The NATO smart defense concept stipulates a more efficient use of alliance resources amid the limited budget capacities of member states. Its core is specialization of the armed forces of alliance member countries in a mutually supplementary fashion and elimination of duplicating functions, Kashin said.
'Thereby small-sized countries will not have to maintain fully-fledged armed forces with a full range of services and troops. It will suffice to develop and maintain the combat readiness of a particular combat arm, in which they have amassed the biggest potential," he noted.
In Kashin's words, smart defense pools funds of alliance member countries for the joint procurement of newest armaments, which they cannot afford buying and using on their own.
The role specialization suggested by the concept "has been developing in NATO for a rather long time and it is now being enhanced," Kashin said.
A classic example of the role specialization is the protection of the Baltic airspace by larger NATO countries, while the Baltic countries assign troops on NATO operations (for example, an Estonian unit deployed in Afghanistan), the expert continued.
"To some extent, the NATO armed forces resemble the armies of ancient oriental despots who put every subordinate nation in charge of a particular combat arm. For instance, the Persians had Phoenician sailors and Greek infantry. As a result, same as the ancient empires, NATO is dealing with a pressing issue of cohesion and integrity: the refusal of a country possessing the needed role specialization to participate in a joint operation may create problems for others. At the same time, the armies of largest NATO states will obviously try to preserve their competences in every aspect of combat operations," Kashin said.
He believes NATO states will foster joint procurement and operation of the most expensive systems, mostly reconnaissance gadgets, within the framework of the smart defense concept in the foreseeable future.