Russia is celebrating the Conscript Day. 130 thousand young people are going to be conscripted this year including about 2,500 recruits from Crimea. Unlike the previous years, they aren't going to serve exclusively on the peninsula but also in other regions of Russia. On the one hand, the number of conscripts is decreasing every year, with contract soldiers growing in number. On the other hand, army service becomes increasingly prestigious. Students no longer use universities as a mean of evading conscription but as a way of getting in an elite unit.
Alexander Revunov is reporting from a science company near Voronezh.
Wings, fuselage, flaps now can be thoroughly studied in a classroom. The program for making 3D-models of machine parts is currently being designed by a Bauman-graduate Vyacheslav Bragin. Paying his honors to the Motherland, a Master of Engineering is now serving in a science company.
Vyacheslav Bragin, senior operator of the science company: "I submitted my CV at the government website, I was contacted, sent a test assignment which I successfully completed".
Each one of them went through a rigorous selection process, with GPA's no less than 4.5. Graduating cum laude gave additional benefits. The occupation of the cadets corresponds to their major.
Andrey Ageyev, Zhukovsky-Gagarin Air Force Academy: "Their level of expertise corresponds to the level research of scientist or research assistants. Our cadets work responsibly and get things done".
Guided by their superiors, the young uniformed scientists are working on enhancing the plane engine and conducting experiments with radio-electronic warfare equipment. And in this laboratory, they are trying to teach a drone to land automatically. The recruits of the scientific company spend most of their service in laboratories which doesn't, however, exclude regular drills.
The Air Force Academy rivals any Russian university in term of technical equipment. The cadets study the construction of a plane both in theory and in practice. Vladimir Voloshin was among the first conscripts of the science company. He contributed to designing the software for this flight simulator. Now he's about to get a higher doctorate, and it's he who supervises the science cadets.
Vladimir Voloshin, Zhukovsky-Gagarin Air Force Academy: "I teach our future operators so that they don't make the same mistakes I did so that they improve something the designs of the models, for instance. And the time it takes to create a model has significantly decreased over the years".
Unlike regular soldiers, the cadets of the science company live in dorms, rather than barracks. The command tried to make their living conditions as comfortable as possible assuming, that our country would only benefit from its scientists feeling warm and cozy. By the way, thanks to the science company, the Academy has 20 patented developments and almost 500 research letters.
Alexander Revunov, Andrey Kutsov, Mikhail Shum for Vesti from Voronezh.
