MOSCOW, January 19 (AVN) - Engineering units and formations of all Russian law-enforcement agencies will undergo considerable reduction in the course of the military reform, a spokesman for the engineering troops chief's administration said on Friday.
The engineering troops will set up regional formations that will operate in the interests of all law-enforcement bodies in peacetime, the spokesman told the Military News Agency.
According to him, the engineering troops reform has been in progress since 1997, and the Defence Ministry believes that it is developing in the right direction. Engineering units have been set up in permanent-readiness bodies. They are equipped with the latest engineering devices and their manning level varies between 95 and 100 percent.
Besides, the troops have set up units with the reduced number of personnel and storage bases for armament and engineering equipment, the spokesman said. They are establishing separate engineering and sapper brigades subordinate to the central command or military district commands for relief works at nuclear power plants and chemical industry installations.
The Gulf War, hostilities in Yugoslavia and armed conflicts in CIS nations have proved that the role of the engineering troops has increased, Major-General Alexander Averchenko, head of the Defence Ministry's 15th central R&D Institute, said. "In the modern war and military conflicts the role of engineering troops in direct infliction of damage on the enemy, disturbance of its manoeuvres, reduction of his weapons' efficiency and enhancement of own troops' survivability is growing," he said.
The engineering troops reduction plan envisages enhancement of the troops' efficiency by means of modernisation of their weapons and purchase of new types of armament.