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Alisa, a 12-year-old girl from St.
Petersburg, wants to be a military pilot. She even asks for career
advice on websites for aerobatic teams, where no one has the heart
to tell her that the Russian Air Force does not accept girls.
If it is any consolation, one of Russia's top gun schools, the
Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy, for the last three years,
has not accepted boys either, as it languishes crippled by a
massive reorganisation that has been lambasted by many active and
retired pilots.
Sometimes even existing opportunities go untapped: the first ever
open cosmonaut recruitment drive in Russian history, which wrapped
last month, only had some 300 applicants, compared to 6,000-plus
at NASA's most recent drive in 2011.
Military pilots and cosmonauts have been a staple of Russia's
national elite since the Soviet era, but both occupations fell on
hard times these past two decades, and their prestige has
plummeted.
The most pressing issue - that of underfunding - has been at least
partially fixed in recent years by Vladimir Putin's increasingly
tech- and army-conscious administration.
But money alone cannot deliver professional management or a clear
strategy, both of which remain lacking in Russian military
aviation and, to a lesser extent, the space industry.
As long as these problems persist, public support for the Air
Force and space programme will falter, despite enthusiasts such as
Alisa.
That means flying a fighter plane or spaceship will never be as
popular as in the days of pre-War aviator Valery Chkalov -
Russia's own Charles Lindbergh - or Yury Gagarin, the first man in
space, professionals in both industries said.
"I expect no improvement in the coming years," said Igor Sulim, a
former military pilot discharged after he turned whistleblower.
"And the public is disappointed by what it sees."
Improving Wages
Yevgeny Fatyanov, who graduated from the Zhukovsky Air Force
Engineering Academy, says he has only the best memories about his
school, which trains pilots, engineers and other specialists for
the Air Force.
But after completing his education in 2002, he went to work as a
financier, not an engineer.
"This had to do with poor monetary rewards at the defence
ministry," he said carefully, weighing every word to spare his
school any criticism.
A starting position in the Air Force offered a salary of 5,000
rubles ($160 in 2002 prices) around the time of Fatyanov's
graduation, he said.
Today, the average salary a pilot can expect is 50,000 to 60,000
rubles ($1,600 to $1,900), several pilots said.
The situation used to be as bad in the cosmonaut training
industry, but things have picked up in the past few years, Sergei
Krikalev, the head of the Yury Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center,
told RIA Novosti.
Krikalev said earlier this year that a top-grade Russian cosmonaut
makes 70,000 rubles ($2,250) a month, compared to the national
average of 26,400 rubles ($850). A similar job at NASA pays
between $5,300 and $11,600 a month.
(No) Strategy for the Masses
But it is not all about the money: manned spaceflight is in crisis
because it has neither clear goals nor a long-term strategy, said
Igor Lisov, an expert with Novosti Kosmonavtiki, a respected
aerospace industry monthly.
"They've been flying (into orbit) for 50 years, but the people
don't see any results from these trips, and so public support for
manned spaceflight remains shaky," Lisov said.
A draft long-term strategy for Russia's space industry, published
by the Federal Space Agency this summer, names manned spaceflight
as only the third priority, after commercial satellites and
unmanned fundamental research.
Krikalev complained about the low turnout at Russia's first open
cosmonaut recruitment drive, which had about 300 applicants and
produced eight prospective spacemen.
"The nation's priorities have changed, it seems. Our new recruits
say every kid wants to be a spaceman, but looks like it's not the
case," Krikalev said at a press conference in Moscow in November.
Only five percent of adult Russians actually wanted to grow up to
be cosmonauts, with doctors, teachers, truck drivers and aviators
all being more popular, according to a study held in 2011 by the
Public Opinion Foundation.
The poll covered 1,500 respondents and had a margin of error of
3.4 percentage points.
The Reform That No One Liked
With the military, public support is not so urgent an issue: the
army remains the country's fourth most trusted institution after
the President, the Prime Minister and the Orthodox Christian
Church, according to a series of Levada polls between 2009 and
2012.
But it is mired in drawn-out and controversial reforms launched by
recently-ousted defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov, who earned the
unreserved loathing of most military professionals.
"They've destroyed everything," fumed Magomed Tolboyev, legendary
test pilot and truculent critic of those who head Russia's army
and aerospace industry.
The Air Force saw dozens of pilot schools closed and/or
reorganized as part of these reforms.
The Zhukovsky Academy was merged with the Gagarin Air Force
Academy (not to be confused with the Gagarin cosmonaut training
centre) and moved from Moscow to Voronezh, 500 km south of the
capital - skipping three years' worth of admissions and losing
1,500 staff, including many qualified instructors unwilling to
move.
On the plus side, the force is set to get 1,600 new aircraft
between 2011 and 2020. It needs them, having lost no fewer than 25
planes to incidents between 2009 and November 2012, most of them
blamed on outdated planes or poor pilot training.
Russia's military pilots increased their flying hours to 100 a
month per aviator, up from 20 hours a month in 2000-2004, Major
Gen. Sergei Dronov, a senior Air Force officer, told Military
Press blog in August.
But Russia is still behind Kazakhstan, Armenia and Belarus on
flying hours per pilot, said Anatoly Tsyganok, head of the
Moscow-based Military Forecasting Center.
The Air Force lacks bases, especially for long-range aviation, and
the pilots remain under-skilled, both Tsyganok and Tolboyev said
in separate comments.
Even the wage hike had drawbacks, because much of the funding was
to be distributed by unit commanders, which fostered intrigue and
nepotism, said Dmitry Koposov, a retired military pilot and
longtime member of the aerobatic team The Swifts.
Several officers at the Lipetsk Air Base face trial on accusations
of extorting 7 million rubles ($225,000) from their pilots. But
the base's head was only reshuffled, while pilot Sulim, who broke
the story, got the boot in May.
"They're ruining the army's spirit, the military camaraderie,"
Sulim said.
"The public would have no respect for the army as long as it sees
such botched reforms," he added.
Unwanted Aces
A case study is Russia's aerobatic teams, scandal-mired and
problem-ridden despite their international recognition.
The head of the Swifts team, Colonel Valery Morozov, was
discharged from the force in October on allegations of embezzling
some 35,000 rubles ($1,100), which remain to be proven in court.
The case prompted an exodus of his subordinates.
In July, the Russian Knights team - the dream job of little Alisa
from St. Petersburg - saw its trip to the Farnborough Airshow in
Britain scrapped at the last moment due to bureaucratic mishaps
that were never adequately explained and dealt a PR blow to
Russia's military.
Pilots from both teams have said that they feel ignored and
discriminated against by the defence ministry. They fly
20-year-old planes that have outlived their useful life, and are
not even allowed to paint their helmets or buy their own
jumpsuits, said former Swifts member Koposov.
The groups only fly in public several times a year, while their
foreign peers perform more than once a week, and their shows are
recognized as a vital element of the army's PR. Britain's Red
Arrows fly 15 to 20 times a month, according to their 2012
schedule.
"The government seems to have no need for aerobatic teams since
the mid-1990s," said Oleg Chernikov, who heads a grassroots group
with the self-explanatory name The Revival of the National
Aerobatic Teams.
Chernikov's group campaigns for the government to spell out a
strategy for aerobatic teams - something that it has not found the
time to do since the Soviet Union's demise.
The campaign has so far elicited no reaction from the Air Force's
command.
Fly Us to the Moon
Still, some experts believe that things are picking up in both
military aviation and the space industry, albeit at a glacial
pace.
The Russian Air Force was in crisis long before Serdyukov, along
with the rest of the army, and his reforms were a step in the
right direction, said Ruslan Pukhov, who heads the Moscow-based
Center for Analysis of Stategies and Technologies.
Military education needed to be reformed, and even deprioritizing
aerobatic teams was understandable because aerobatics is a very
costly practice, he said.
The reform was poorly executed and further discredited by the
squabbles between the defence minister and the military staff,
said whistleblowing pilot Sulim.
"(But) you couldn't leave the army the way it was, it was 100
percent clear," said Pukhov.
The space industry is also bouncing back, said former cosmonaut
Yury Usachov.
"I find enough young enthusiasts dreaming to become spacemen at
every school I visit," said Usachov, who gives public lectures.
Manned spaceflight will never go away even if its romantic veneer
from the 1960s and 1970s is fading, said Vyacheslav Rodin of the
Space Research Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"If man can fly to the Moon, he will," Rodin said.
(Alexey Eremenko writes for RIA Novosti. The views are his own.)
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