Force Structure Review – News

 

Year of Strategic Reconsideration of Defence Capabilities

30.07.2010

Our first year was a year of strategic reconsideration and refocusing on defence capabilities under conditions of transparency, accountability and considerably limited resources, said Defence Minister Anu Anguelov at a press conference held today, 30 July, at the G. S. Rakovski National Defence Academy.

We have launched the first Strategic Force Review, which employs the top-down approach and is not aimed at reaching “the absolute minimum possible” or at dismissing staff as an end in itself; instead, it effectively assesses the tasks not only of the Ministry of Defence and its structures but also of the Army, the changed security environment and the taxpayer’s financial capacity, Minister Anguelov pointed out.

The strength of the Bulgarian Army will be reduced, but not radically, not as drastically as some would imagine, and not in the numbers quoted by some media, Minister Anguelov revealed. Later on, he specified that according to the preliminary calculations of the working groups, the reduction in the Army’s strength may be between three and five thousand of the current personnel of the Bulgarian Army.

What is most important is that the changes in strength will be the result of new or strengthened defence capabilities and of disposal of defence capabilities no longer needed. The analysis is based on in-depth consideration of possible scenarios for the development of the geostrategical situation around Bulgaria. On the basis of those scenarios, specific tasks have been identified to be performed by the services and the units of the Bulgarian Army. This will determine which of those will be kept, which will be disposed of, and which will be developed and possibly considerably increased in strength, some even by more than 25%.
We are aimed at making the formations more compact and effective. We will be trying to retain the main garrisons of the Bulgarian Army. This is one of the tasks we've set ourselves.
What we are set to achieve is that the country has a single set of forces, which will be adequate to the new threats within the financial resources available.

As a result of the Review, until the end of the year and over the next 2-3 years we will be working in several main directions.

Firstly, we see a possibility for essential reorganization of the command structure of the Bulgarian Army so that the same structure will be able to perform tasks both in peace time and under the conditions of crisis and in war time. This will result in change in the designation of some operational command units, change in the subordination of individual operational units and disposing of some operational units established in 2009 which we deem inapt and not effective enough to continue to exist. What we have in mind is discarding the Logistics and Support Headquarters.

Reorganization of the Land Forces combat units is in store, including consolidation aimed at greater completeness, compactness, independent logistics and options for an independent budget of the units in 2012. For that purpose, the number of the Land Forces brigades will be reduced by one, and new structures will be established – to some extent, we are going back to the regimental organization as regards forces providing combat support and sustainment to the Army.

As regards the Navy, we are going to dispense with a branch of force – we are going to decommission the submarine we have. We are also going to dispose of several ships which have reached the end of their service life.

With reference to the Air Force, we are focusing on the greater compactness of the ground air defence. We are going to redeploy a unit of Anti-aircraft and Missile Forces to an area in the vicinity of Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant. We are going to phase out of service types of air defence missile systems delivered several decades ago. Over the next few years we will resume the Air Force modernization process.

We envisage changes in the education structure aimed at greater flexibility, as well as reorganization of the administration of the Military Academy and the higher military schools.
The final decision will be made at the Defence Council to be held on the 26th of August, after which we will submit for adoption by the National Assembly a draft White Paper on Defence and the Armed Forces. We will start working on a plan for the development of the Armed Forces, which is to be completed by the end of the year. We will start the restructuring and reorganization process as early as 2011, remaining faithful to the top-down principle, and we expect to complete the process in 2013, and to enable the structures to start work in 2014.

 

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