MOSCOW – Russia's defense minister announced Tuesday a sweeping reform of the military that will cut hundreds of generals and disband nine of every ten army units, the defense minister said Tuesday.

Though downsized to 1.13 million from the 4 million-member Soviet Army, the military has done little to reduce its number of officers. It maintains almost the same number of military units as in the Soviet era, though many exist only on paper.

By 2012 Russia will reduce its armed forces to 1 million, including around 150,000 officers, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said in televised remarks.

Serdyukov said the Russian military now has 355,000 officers – about one-third the total strength of the military. That's a far greater share than in other nations, he said.

Serdyukov said the number of generals will be cut to 900 from the current 1,100 by phasing them into retirement.

He said the armed forces will abolish the balky Soviet-era structure, disbanding divisions and regiments and forming brigades instead. The number of army units will be reduced from 1,890 to 172, Serdyukov said.

The number of Air Force units will be cut from 340 to 180 and the number in the navy will be cut from 240 to 123, he said.

The Defense Ministry will cut its Moscow headquarters' work force by 60 percent, to 8,500; the number of military academies will drop from 65 to just 10, he said.

At the same time, the military will boost the number of junior officers, such as lieutenants, by 10,000 to 60,000. Officials and military analysts long have pointed that the military is facing a shortage of junior officers because of low pay and meager conditions.

Independent military observer Viktor Litovkin hailed the reform as “reasonable and long overdue.” He wrote in the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal that the changes would make the military more mobile and capable.

Serdyukov, appointed defense minister in February 2007, has already presided over a series of minor reorganizations and cuts.

The military brass has resisted past efforts to cut the officers' corps. And mandatory service remains in place, though the term has been reduced from two years to one.

Retired Gen. Leonid Ivashev, the former head of the ministry's international cooperation department, has criticized Serdyukov as having done “more harm than a NATO agent.”