President Vladimir Putin (right) is at home in Russia's new high-tech national defence centre. Picture / AP
President Vladimir Putin (right) is at home in Russia's new high-tech national defence centre. Picture / AP
"Gentlemen. You can't fight in here. This is the war room!"
It could have been a scene straight out of Dr Strangelove when President Vladimir Putin stepped into the Russian Ministry of Defence's brand new, three-tiered, multibillion-dollar control centre this week, for a war briefing that had its fair shareof movie-like pageantry.
The fortified National Control Defence Centre was Putin's first stop after officials confirmed that the Russian charter jet crash that claimed 224 lives last month was the result of an act of terror.
On movie theatre-size screens, live broadcasts showed long-range strategic bombers taking off from Russian air bases to fly sorties over Syria. Putin instructed commanders in Syria to "make contact with the French and work with them as allies" as Russia seeks a central role in a proposed anti-terrorist coalition.
But the real star of the show may have been the building itself, which is designed to be a new nerve centre for the Russian military that will co-ordinate military action around the world, including ballistic missile launches and strategic nuclear deployments.
The building is roughly the equivalent of the US National Military Command Centre used by the Pentagon, but as one Russian state news agency noted in a breathless headline last week, "Russian Defence Data Centre Outperforms US Facility Threefold: Official." The centre, which is fortified and said to sit on top of a maze of underground tunnels, is on the Frunze Naberezhnaya on the left bank of the Moscow river, 3km from Red Square.
It was finished in 2014 and is part of a massive, decade-long modernisation of Russia's army, which has cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but has also produced noted improvements, from the expertise of Russian troops deployed during the Crimea operation to the recent cruise missile strikes launched from the Caspian Sea. The centre also includes a helicopter pad that was deployed on the Moscow River and can accommodate Russia's Mi-8 transport helicopter. In case of a war, it would be the country's premier communications centre in a war. Washington Post-Bloomberg
