Article It appears that Roscosmos really is recruiting soldiers for the Ukraine War

[C C]

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/it...raine-war/

INTRO: A new report in the Financial Times appears to confirm that the main Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, is recruiting and training a militia to join the country's war effort against Ukraine.

The "Uran" battalion, which translates to Uranus, is to be made up of employees of Roscosmos, as well as those from its dozens of state-owned subsidiaries in the aerospace business. Recruits will receive a 100,000 ruble ($1,200) sign-up bonus, and a monthly frontline duty salary of 270,000 rubles, according to the report. This is far above the wages paid to most employees of Roscosmos.

Among the recruitment efforts are glossy posters, showing soldiers Photoshopped next to space vehicles, and videos that aggrandize participation in the war. In one of these advertisements, the announcer states, "State corporation Roscosmos calls on you to join the Uran volunteer battalion, where you will be trained for victory in this great war." The report indicates that these recruitment videos are playing in the facilities of some Roscosmos entities, where there are 170,000 employees spread across Russia.

The recruitment campaign is an effort to bolster Russia's military forces, which have been bogged down into a less-than-successful invasion of Ukraine for the last 16 months. The Russian government does not want to conduct a draft of its citizens, which could be disastrous to public morale. Rather, with this effort by Roscosmos and other state corporations, such as Gazprom, the Russian government appears to be attempting to persuade its citizens to join the military rather than compel them... (MORE - details)

[stryder]

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/it...raine-war/

INTRO: A new report in the Financial Times appears to confirm that the main Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, is recruiting and training a militia to join the country's war effort against Ukraine.

The "Uran" battalion, which translates to Uranus, is to be made up of employees of Roscosmos, as well as those from its dozens of state-owned subsidiaries in the aerospace business. Recruits will receive a 100,000 ruble ($1,200) sign-up bonus, and a monthly frontline duty salary of 270,000 rubles, according to the report. This is far above the wages paid to most employees of Roscosmos.

Among the recruitment efforts are glossy posters, showing soldiers Photoshopped next to space vehicles, and videos that aggrandize participation in the war. In one of these advertisements, the announcer states, "State corporation Roscosmos calls on you to join the Uran volunteer battalion, where you will be trained for victory in this great war." The report indicates that these recruitment videos are playing in the facilities of some Roscosmos entities, where there are 170,000 employees spread across Russia.

The recruitment campaign is an effort to bolster Russia's military forces, which have been bogged down into a less-than-successful invasion of Ukraine for the last 16 months. The Russian government does not want to conduct a draft of its citizens, which could be disastrous to public morale. Rather, with this effort by Roscosmos and other state corporations, such as Gazprom, the Russian government appears to be attempting to persuade its citizens to join the military rather than compel them... (MORE - details)

At least they mentioned it was a war and not a drive for a "special operation".

[Yazata]

I assume that the best use for the "Uran Battalion" would be using their rocket expertise developing new missiles and space hardware for the Russian military. I doubt very much whether they will end up in trenches with rifles.

I think that the idea is that Roscosmos is a civilian agency that isn't supposed to be designing weapons for the military. Not dissimilar to NASA in that regard. The current Roscosmos Director is less hyperbolic and outspoken than Dmitry Rogozin was, but he's also a guy with a background in military R&D. Which is probably why he was appointed to the position, to bring Roscosmos into closer coordination with military space efforts. So I expect that he's trying to recruit the resources of Roscosmos (essentially Russia's entire space industry) for the war effort. Having the "Uran Battalion", an element of the Russian armed forces, doing it instead of Roscosmos (even if it's the same people working for both) would preserve Roscosmos' civilian reputation.

The US would (and does) do much the same. Except that here most of NASA's hardware is manufactured by private companies that are simultaneously major military contractors - Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, even SpaceX and Rocketlab. NASA does still build rockets (such as the SLS) but much of the engineering talent and crazy creativity these days is in the private sector. So American talent could more easily be redirected to war work building hardware for the Space Force, simply by awarding contracts to the private contractors, without NASA having to change its peaceful/scientific persona and reason for being.