UK Ministry of Defence trains up Russian military as sysadmins

Cold war well and truly over

13 June 2003

Next time you have an argument with your sysadmin, be wary if he has a strange accent - he may be ex-Russian military. Even more curious, his training will probably have been paid for by the UK Ministry of Defence.

In a peculiar state of affairs, the UK government is funding the retraining of Russian military men to help them enter civilian life. And one of the most popular courses to be offered at the Rostov State Civil Engineering University is the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

The funding is part of a wider aid package agreed between Russian and British defence ministers in 1992. The first courses aimed at helping Russian officers enter civilian life during a time of major reform by giving them highly sought after qualifications started in October 1995. It has since expanding to 10 retraining centres across Russia at the cost of £2m a year. So far, 17,000 officers have benefited.

Cisco gave the institute Academy status three years ago and networking courses have been running since September 2001, the project manager and serving RAF officer Maxwell Jardim told us. While Cisco doesn't put in any money, the Academy status entitles them to a 50 per cent discount on routers and switches for training purposes.

As for the success rate, Jardim says: "There is only one person who hasn't passed - they are very highly motivated people."

The vast majority of the men on the course are officers, Jardim says, and all are professional servicemen from the army and air force. "We do not have any from the navy yet." They are also drawn from all specialisms.

To be eligible all officers have to have served five years in the military (or have been discharged on medical grounds) and be within one year of discharge. They apply to the course and if taken on and trained are then free to work anywhere.

Mr Jardim says that most remain in Russia - where demand for their skills is high - acting as networking specialists or sysadmins, but that he knows of at least one that has taken a job in London, so think twice before you start firing off angry emails to your IT administrator.

But what about a possible security risk? "From a military point of view, there is no security risk attached," Maxwell assures us. "The information they are getting is not of a military nature." Well, there you have it then.

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