MOSCOW. Jan 17 (Interfax-AVN) - The Northern Fleet has begun implementing the combat training schedule for 2003, Rear Admiral Valery Agafonov, chief of combat training of the fleet, said in an interview with the Krasnaya Zvezda daily, published Friday.
"By the end of the winter training period, the Northern Fleet will have exercised action of homogeneous groups, in particular, strike and search-and-strike groups. Both submarines and surface ships are in for cruises to various regions of the World Ocean. The ships of the fleet are also likely to pay visits to several foreign ports," Agafonov said.
The summer training period will end up in a combined combat exercise cruise, he said.
There is hope that by that time the repairs of a number of surface ships and SSNs will be finished, and they will be commissioned for active duty again. The Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser will leave the docks in time to take part in the naval parade to be held on the occasion of the Navy Day (July 28 - Interfax-AVN) and the 70th anniversary of the Northern Fleet," Agafonov said.
"She will come to Severomorsk on her own steam," the admiral noted. He added that the carrier would be assigned most serious tasks in 2003, related to the employment of deck-based aircraft.
Agafonov also said that the Northern Fleet would keep on helping in orbiting Russian- and foreign-made weather and communication satellites. "That is why we have planned both combat training and scientific launches of ballistic missiles from SSBNs," he said.
The admiral emphasized that the material base of the fleet did provide for good combat training. The simulators in the training center of the fleet can not only create a tactical background for a single ship or a group; a close-to-reality naval operation may also be simulated.
In Zaozersk, where the SSN squadron is based, officers of the local training center have developed a Zapadnaya Litsa simulator enabling the crews to exercise various missions like repulse of a submerged attack or security measures necessary when departing from the base, Agafonov said.
He said that the main problem of the fleet was enlisted conscripts.
"We are not pleased with the quantity and education of the conscripts. Therefore, the command of the Northern Fleet is trying to man the Admiral Flota Sovetskogo Soyuza Kuznetsov, the Petr Veliky, and the SSNs with professionals," the admiral concluded.