MOSCOW -- Segments of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces have been paying too much attention to making money in the commercial space arena and not enough in maintaining and modernizing the nation's military space capability, according to recent reports in Moscow newspapers.

As a result, the Security Council of the Russian Federation has ordered RSVN -- the Russian acronym for Strategic Rocket Forces -- to be reorganized in an attempt to diminish the stature of one of the key groups partly responsible for launching Russia's workhorse Proton rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Ironically, if the reorganization happens later this year -- something that appears to have the support of Russian president Vladimir Putin -- it will undo a move engineered in 1997 by then-president Boris Yeltsin to bolster the RSVN's importance and clout within the government.

Three years ago Yeltsin shuffled RSVN's structure to include the Military Space Forces and the Rocket Space Defense Forces. It was apparently hoped by some that this would lead to increased funding for the RSVN, money that would be used in part to pay for a new missile system called Topol.

Instead, it is alleged, RSVN concentrated on the commercial opportunities and neglected the military community.

The launch record supports this supposition: 14 military satellites were flown during 1997 while only four were launched during 1999. During this same three-year period, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, RSVN pocketed some $100 million in profit by launching commercial satellites.

Moreover, critics say RSVN has failed to develop new high-accuracy weapons that would rely on space-based devices, was unable to provide needed reconnaissance information to federal forces in Chechnya and has mismanaged the Russian space-based navigation-satellite constellation such that only nine of the 24 GLONASS spacecraft are operational.

As a result, the Security Council of the Russian Federation on August 11 recommended the Military Space Forces and Rocket Space Defense Forces be moved out of the RSVN, undoing what Yeltsin did in 1997 and jeopardizing the RSVN's future stability.

In any case, although the future of RSVN is in doubt, the ability to reliably launch Proton rockets from Baikonur is not at issue according to representatives from the Khrunichev Space Center, which is responsible for building the Proton rocket and marketing them in the United States as part of International Launch Services.

At Baikonur it is the Military Space Forces segment of RSVN that launches Protons, and whether that group continues to report to RSVN or winds up part of the General Staff, senior Khrunichev managers believe it won't affect Proton launch operations in Kazakhstan.