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  • Reformation of the Russian Military

    This is the first article from Stratfor at WWW.Stratfor.com.

    I thought this should be interesting and thought provoking.

    Good luck

    Fred

    Part 1: Geopolitics and the Russian Military

    February 9, 2009 | 1214 GMT

    Summary
    As the heart of the Soviet Union, Russia reached the height of its military power during the Cold War. Having a vast empire required a vast army to defend it. But geography and poor infrastructure demanded that a heavy army be poised to guard against the West and garrisoned throughout the union to contain civil unrest. By 1991, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the success of Operation Desert Storm and the pending disintegration of the Soviet Union cast doubt on the Soviet military model and imposed a strange new reality for Russian military planners.
    Editor’s Note: This is part one of a four-part series on the reformation of the Russian military.

    Analysis
    By the end of World War II, the Soviet Union — a constitutional assembly of socialist republics in existence since 1922 — had come to encompass a massive amount of territory. Covering what would later be known as the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet counteralliance to NATO), the Iron Curtain fell across a vast swath of Eurasia, providing Moscow with immense strategic depth — more than it had ever controlled before, or has controlled since.

    To the south and southwest, the Kremlin commanded critical geographic buffers like the Caucasus and Carpathian mountains, and to the west, where there were no such mountain barriers, the North European Plain offered an effective defense in depth. Moscow was more than 1,000 miles from NATO’s front lines, and these geographic circumstances — along with the long-standing realities of Russian geopolitics
    — favored land forces. Hence the Red Army, in its many forms, has traditionally been the pre-eminent branch of the Russian military.

    At the end of World War II, the Soviets commanded a vast wartime industrial machine. The demographic, agricultural and industrial strengths of the western Soviet republics and Eastern Europe meant that Moscow was positioned to sustain an enormous military well after the conclusion of the Great Patriotic War — and it proceeded to do just that.

    These two factors, geography and industry, were deeply interrelated and interdependent. The vast territory required a vast military to defend it. The perennial Russian problem of long, indefensible borders had not been solved by the creation and expansion of the Warsaw Pact; the borders had simply been pushed out to a more comfortable distance from Moscow, to include actual geographic barriers to invasion, such as mountain ranges. Further complicating matters was Russia’s second perennial problem: poor transportation infrastructure — not just bad roads and a limited rail network, but terrain on which it was difficult to build infrastructure and the lack of a river system conducive to commerce.

    These problems continue to plague Russia. Unable to quickly move large forces and their equipment across the country — even today, Russia spans nearly the entirety of the Eastern Hemisphere — Russia must disperse large, standing military units around the country. While Russia’s focus has always been westward, it maintains a significant, if at times neglected, presence in the Far East. Meanwhile, the territory that provided Moscow with strategic depth required extensive internal security apparatuses to quell dissent. These widely dispersed forces depended on the people, agriculture and industry of the newly acquired territories for sustenance.

    Nevertheless, by the end of World War II it looked as though the stars had finally aligned for Russia. The Soviet Union would become so militarily powerful that Europe — and the combined forces of NATO — trembled at the prospect of a Soviet invasion from Russia, rather than the reverse (which had historically been the case).

    Naturally, this newfound power made deep and lasting impressions on military thinking in Russia. It reinforced deep-seated Russian conceptions of strategy that figured in terms of overwhelming numbers, where quantitative superiority compensated for qualitative inefficiencies. The military continued to be organized to carry out large, coordinated maneuvers that demanded strict adherence to higher command. Quantitative superiority dictated a large, conscripted force of necessarily young, poorly educated soldiers with limited training, and equipment and organization had to account for this.

    At the same time, the military continued to be the primary, privileged beneficiary of the entire Soviet economy — and remained so for the remainder of the union’s existence. This put immense resources at the Kremlin’s disposal, so immense that military thinking began to be taken to a perverse extreme. By the time the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Moscow had more than 50,000 main battle tanks deployed west of the Ural Mountains — so many that it is doubtful the Soviet Union could have provided sufficient gasoline to fuel the much-feared invasion of Western Europe. But even then, in terms of the size of the military and the territory it occupied, Soviet military strength was very real.

    When the Berlin Wall came down, the floor collapsed under the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist in 1991. Soviet territory contracted to the borders of Russia proper. On the North European Plain, the border retreated from the Elbe River in Germany to a point less than 100 miles from St. Petersburg. Moscow found itself 250 miles from an independent Belarus and less than 300 miles from an independent Ukraine. Russia also lost the demographic, agricultural and industrial capacity of Eastern Europe and the western republics that had helped sustain the enormous Soviet war machine.

    But this was only the beginning. In 1991, the utter devastation of Iraq’s military at the hands of U.S. and NATO forces undermined the credibility of the Soviet military model. At the time, far from the weak military for which Iraq has come to be known, the Iraqi military was among the largest in the world. Its troops were battle-hardened from nearly a decade of war with Iran — and they were equipped with Soviet hardware and followed basic Soviet doctrine. Desert Storm called into question the central tenets of Soviet military thinking, leaving a Russian military awash in problems and uncertain of even its most basic assumptions.

    Meanwhile, then-President Boris Yeltsin began to build inefficiency and incoherence into the Russian military in order to forestall a military coup (though he was hardly the first Russian leader to do this). Decay and disarray gripped all of Russia. The military itself began to rust and atrophy, even as it entered into the first bloody and protracted civil war in Chechnya. The ruble experienced what can only be described as a free fall. Birth rates declined dramatically. Former Warsaw Pact allies — and even former Soviet Socialist Republics — began to be accepted as full members of NATO. Everything that had made the Soviet Union geographically secure, and much of what had made the Soviet war machine possible, was no longer Moscow’s.

    Thus, the perennial Russian problem of insecurity and vulnerability to invasion was profoundly complicated by the rapid retraction of territory at the same time that basic subsistence for the military was becoming a problem. The Russian military was simply no longer capable of defending what limited (yet still vast) territory it was responsible for, to say nothing of meaningful offensive or expeditionary capability.

    This situation was not just a massive blow to the Russian military — it also imposed a strange new reality for which long-standing Soviet military doctrine was completely unprepared. The underlying structure of the military, in other words, was in complete disarray just at the moment when the military, as an institution, had to grapple with completely new circumstances and challenges.

    In dealing with the situation, the Kremlin came to rely increasingly on its nuclear arsenal as the guarantor of territorial integrity. Observers of Russian training exercises began to note the simulated use of nuclear weapons to stem the tide of an invasion. In these scenarios, Russian forces fight qualitatively superior forces in a slow retreat culminating in the use of tactical nuclear weapons to hold the line.

    Weak points in the Russian deterrent certainly remain — its ballistic missile submarines hardly ever conduct patrols, and the bulk of its deliverable warheads are carried aboard aging Soviet-era heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles. But there is also little doubt that Moscow retains a modern nuclear capability. Russia continues to field a very sizable arsenal that includes established missile designs that work, even as it continues to toy with maneuverable re-entry vehicles and penetration aids to improve its capability against ballistic missile defenses.

    Russia’s nuclear posturing — especially its defensive exercises — was thus a message to the West to not try anything, even though the conventional Russian military appeared weak. But it was also a warning of how Moscow would be forced to escalate matters if it felt threatened. The nuclear arsenal became the trump card that the Kremlin clung to in an increasing number of defensive scenarios. In reality, the Kremlin no longer had any offensive scenarios.

    This obviously was not a tenable position for Russia, and the need to reconstitute conventional military forces was clear. But this would take time. It was only when Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999 and began to consolidate control over the country that the Kremlin could stop fretting about a military coup and begin to think seriously about meaningful military reform. In other words, the power of Putin allowed the Kremlin, for the first time since the Cold War, to begin strengthening the military. Soon, however, the process of reform began cutting against the grain of the military’s old guard, so the challenge was to strengthen the military from the outside despite the best efforts of the military itself.

    Even under the most optimistic of scenarios, Russia will never rebuild the Soviet army. The Kremlin simply lacks the capacity to sustain an army large enough to compensate for the profound geographic disadvantages Russia faces in the 21st century. Although a mass military is no longer feasible, however, Russia’s borders and transportation constraints are even more problematic than they were during the Soviet era. The only rational solution is to push for increasingly mobile and agile military units.

    Russia will not embrace this reality completely; it will likely retain some semblance of a large military, including a great number of conscripts. But Russia is attempting to build more agile units, to be known as “permanent readiness forces” (PRFs), trained to be poised and prepared for quick deployment in a crisis.

    The concept of “permanent readiness” is very Russian. History and geography have informed how Russia conceives of military operations. Russia has long had forces located geographically and equipped to fight a specific type of war — namely, heavy armored combat with NATO on the North European Plain. By comparison, the United States has been conducting expeditionary overseas operations for almost its entire existence. The U.S. military has long been intimately familiar with the logistical requirements of overseas deployments, and the rotations and training cycles required for sustaining expeditionary forces.

    Only about a quarter of the Russian military is expected to fall under the PRF umbrella. Manned by professional contract soldiers and with a presence in each of the six military districts, such units will form the vanguard of the army in those regions, and will be trained to quickly react to any contingency. Missions can range from humanitarian and disaster relief to counterterrorism, or even military intervention along Russia’s periphery in operations akin to the August 2008 invasion of the breakaway Georgian enclave of South Ossetia.

    While this is an attractive concept in the abstract, however, there are numerous obstacles to achieving a new military paradigm in Russia.
    Semper Fi

  • #2
    Part 2 from Stratfor:

    Part 2: Challenges to Russian Military Reform

    February 10, 2009 | 1227 GMT

    Summary
    During the time of the Soviet Union, the Soviet armed forces were privileged institutions. As the primary beneficiary of the entire Soviet economic and political system, the military became a key foundation of Soviet power around the world. Not surprisingly, much of today’s Russian military remains a legacy of the Soviet armed forces, although it is a shadow of its former self. Although the Kremlin intends to implement broad military reform, profound challenges remain, such as a top-heavy officer corps as well as difficult cultural, demographic and financial conditions.
    Editor’s Note: This is part two of a four-part series on the reformation of the Russian military.

    Analysis

    The Russian military will always be a product of Russian history, Russian geopolitical imperatives and Russian thinking. It will never be measurable entirely by Western military standards. At the same time, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the realities of the 21st century demand some of the most radical military reform in Russia’s modern history. And this reform is not simply a matter of getting a fresh start. In order to build a new military, Moscow must also deconstruct what remains of Soviet military structure and organization. It must push past much of the Soviet-era thinking that has governed the Russian military for the better part of a century. And it must do so while working against the grain of profound institutional inertia.

    Officers
    This inertia is embodied in the upper echelons of the officer corps, something we pointed out nearly 10 years ago in our 2000-2010 decade forecast. Stratfor also indicated that only the very top rung of Russian leadership had been replaced since the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving much of the old Soviet mindset still firmly entrenched. Not only is this cadre of senior officers the intellectual product of Soviet military education, but the upper echelons in which they reside were both incidentally and deliberately overloaded.

    Incidentally, because Moscow held tightly to the reins of the Soviet military in the days of the Soviet Union, the majority of officers were Russian. When the union collapsed, a disproportionate number of enlisted personnel — conscripts and volunteers alike — from the western Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet republics were lost while the vast majority of the officers remained part of the Russian military. The result was that the ratio of officers to enlisted personnel in the Russian military became extremely high.

    Deliberately, because every Russian or Soviet leader before Vladimir Putin was concerned about the military consolidating against the Kremlin, even though Russia has not faced a successful military coup in over two centuries. As a result of this paranoia, various inefficiencies have been deliberately and systematically built into the military by many leaders in order to keep the officers too numerous and disorganized to ever achieve such consolidation.

    Indeed, future President Boris Yeltsin helped turn the tide against a 1991 coup supported by rogue elements of the military against former President Mikhail Gorbachev. Upon becoming president, Yeltsin greatly increased the number of officers both to keep the military in disarray and to insert political allies into the military.

    In large part due to Yeltsin’s efforts, the officer corps today remains immense, with over 300,000 members, tipping the scales at more than 30 percent of the total force (including conscripts). As a point of comparison, commissioned officers in the U.S. Army amount to 15 percent of its personnel, a percentage far more commensurate with modern, Western models. Although the Russian military cannot be judged or understood entirely through the prism of Western military thought, it is a bloated, top-heavy and ultimately unsustainable force structure — even for Russia.

    So far, progress in reducing the number of officers has been stop-and-go. But the transition of presidential power from Putin to Dmitri Medvedev has now been completed, which could position the Kremlin to challenge the entrenched interests of more than 1,100 generals and admirals. These general officers have also been an expensive financial burden, since they occupy the most senior and well-paid positions with the most assistants and perks. Efforts are underway to shrink their ranks by some 200, bringing the figure closer to, though still greater than, the U.S. military’s general-officer ranks (fewer than 900).

    The current goal of reductions to 150,000 officers by 2012 — a cut of more than 50 percent — is nothing if not ambitious, but even getting in that range would be an enormous step for Russia’s military because it would free up resources and help increase the institutional agility of the armed forces as a whole. Indeed, the reduction in the senior officer ranks is even more dramatic than the 50 percent cut suggests, since the Kremlin hopes to dramatically expand the ranks of junior officers and noncommissioned officers (NCOs).

    But concerns about job security in the midst of the global financial crisis and a tumbling ruble have already led Prime Minister Putin to make public assurances that cuts to the ranks of the military will not be precipitous and that only those near retirement will be let go — with pension and (a tradition in Russia) housing. No matter how the Kremlin manages it, significant rises in entitlement spending are in the cards for the military budget, and questions remain about just how quickly Russia will be able to push forward with major reductions in the senior officer ranks.

    Culture
    For the remainder of the Russian military, there are two broad issues: culture and demographics. The new “permanent readiness forces,” poised and prepared for quick deployment in a crisis, will be smaller and more agile, with different chains of command. This will necessarily increase reliance on junior officers and NCOs. By pushing command down to the lower levels, the demand for initiative and small-unit leadership will rise accordingly. But there is little tradition in the Russian military for either, and it is not clear how well young officers and NCOs will cope, even though an expanded training pipeline is in the works.

    There is also a culture of violence and leadership through brutality in the Russian military. The heart of this problem is the conscription program, which remains an enormous embarrassment for the Kremlin. Rampant brutality and hazing known as dedovshchina (formerly practiced by those in their second year of conscription before the two-year term of service was reduced to one year) often results in serious injury and death, including suicide. (Dedovshchina reportedly resulted in the loss of several hundred conscripts in 2007, several years after the problem had been identified and reforms had begun to be implemented.)

    Not unrelated is a culture of drunkenness, drug abuse and desertion — not only among conscripts but also in the ranks of professional contract soldiers. As the U.S. military found after Vietnam, this sort of cultural affliction can take a decade or more to remedy, and unlike the U.S. military in Vietnam, Russia hosts major heroin smuggling routes from Afghanistan. Black-market alcohol, as well as illicit drugs, are coursing through Russia’s veins, making the reduction of alcoholism, drug abuse and corruption even more complicated for the Russian military.

    Demographics
    A far more concrete problem is demographics. Junior officers, NCOs, professional soldiers and conscripts are all going to come from essentially the same pool (even with some variation in age and educational achievement). By cutting the conscripted service period in half, Russia has effectively doubled the number of youth it must conscript each year. While eligibility for the draft runs for nearly a decade, technically, the vast majority of youth are conscripted at age 18, and Russia is now attempting to conscript young men who never knew the Soviet Union. The 1990s were not a particularly buoyant time for Russia in terms of the birth rate, and the number of Russian men turning 18 each year is declining, just when the Kremlin needs to press more and more of them into service. Although there will be a small rebound starting in 2017, according to birth-rate projections, nearly a decade of dramatic population decline will occur before then, and long-term prospects are much worse.

    The declining youth population is a reminder that Russia is approaching a much more problematic demographic crisis beyond 2025 — namely, the decline of Russian society as a whole. Birth rates are not sufficient to sustain the population, infertility, AIDS and alcoholism are rampant and the Russian people are growing increasingly unhealthy with diminishing life spans.

    Finances
    The other major problem is money. Awash in cash during Putin’s presidency due in large part to high commodity prices, Russia was able to sock away some US$750 billion in total currency reserves. This sum has begun to erode because of the invasion of Georgia and the ongoing financial crisis and is already down to around US$400 billion. Russia still enjoys vast reserves, but the ruble continues to tumble as the financial crisis works it way through the Russian economy. Russia may be able to sustain some planned increases in military spending by tapping its reserves, but the implications of the financial crisis on Russian military reform remain to be seen.

    Actual spending on Russian national defense — around US$40 billion in 2008 — has continued to rise steadily in real rubles, but as a portion of gross domestic product and the overall budget it has remained relatively constant. What this means is that the Kremlin has not been excessively lavish with national defense even when its monetary resources were expanding dramatically. Instead it has exercised the power of the purse — now embodied in the appointment of a tax man, Anatoly Serdyukov, as defense minister. The Kremlin is all too aware of how much money is being lost through corruption,
    inefficiency and waste (Moscow is willing to acknowledge some US$75 million in 2007, but the real figure is almost certainly much higher).

    The global financial crisis comes at a particularly difficult point in Russian military modernization. Increases in defense spending and procurement had been talked about before, but the confluence of a flood of petrodollars and the successful transition of power to President Medvedev in 2008 held the promise, at last, of actual implementation. Then came the onslaught of the worldwide recession. While the Kremlin may continue to sustain military spending out of its reserves, its budgets will undoubtedly be tighter than anticipated for the duration of the crisis.

    Further complicating financial matters is an ongoing clan war in the Kremlin between the two main factions working under Prime Minister Putin. The faction led by Vladislav Surkov controls both the country’s finances and the GRU, Russia’s shadowy military intelligence agency, while the defense establishment (both ministerial and industrial) is controlled by the other faction, led by Igor Sechin. This conflict has likely played a role in impeding the implementation of military reform.

    But even if the clan war subsides and Moscow’s coffers stabilize, money cannot solve everything. The myriad obstacles in the way of genuine military reform are daunting ones, difficult to overcome even in the best of times. And these are not the best of times. Russia has devised ambitious military reform plans and revised time and again to accommodate the realities of the moment, often departing from the plans’ original goals. This time around, as Russia tries to reassert itself as a regional power, broad military reform is a critical priority for the Kremlin. Some progress is certainly in the cards, and although it will not likely conform to previously articulated plans, it could lead to limited successes that are sufficient for Moscow’s needs, such as the Georgian operation in August 2008.
    Semper Fi

    Comment


    • #3
      Part 3 from Stratfor:

      Part 3: The Russian Defense Industry

      February 11, 2009 | 1159 GMT

      Summary
      Russian military hardware gets a bad rap from Western analysts, who unfairly use Western standards to evaluate it. Even the best Soviet equipment — much of which is still quite capable and relevant — was designed with lower quality control, mass production and crude maintenance in mind (for easier use by poorly trained conscripts). The fact that some production capacity has endured through the hardships of the post-Soviet era is remarkable, representing a solid technological footing for military reform. Moving forward, it all depends on how innovative the defense sector can be.
      Editor’s Note: This is part three of a four-part series on the reformation of the Russian military.

      Analysis

      The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 hit the defense industry particularly hard. Once the premier sector of the Soviet economy, with immense production capacities, the defense industry suddenly found itself without a market. The economic paradigm that supported it was broken and the customers it existed to serve (the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact) were no longer buying.

      For a while, the industry was able to sustain itself by feeding off Soviet-era stockpiles of raw materials. But this was hardly a sustainable solution, and as the industry began to consume those stockpiles, it soon had to confront the realities of a completely new economic paradigm: the market economy. The centrally controlled Soviet economic system did nothing to prepare the industry for working in a modern business environment.
      That the Russian defense industry has survived at all is not because of military procurement investment but because of foreign sales. Following the demise of the Soviet Union, China became the principal financier of the Russian defense industry, though Chinese purchases have dropped off significantly. Having learned much from imported Russian military technology, Beijing is becoming quite capable of making its own military equipment. India, Algeria, Venezuela and Iran are picking up the slack as importers of Russian military hardware (and thus financiers of the defense industry).

      The bottom line is that the Kremlin, since the end of the Cold War, has yet to invest enough in its own defense industry to sustain it. The new 2011-2020 procurement plan will likely try to do that, but only time will tell whether a reasonable degree of implementation can be achieved.

      Meanwhile, Moscow is attempting to eliminate corruption and incompetence and consolidate successful industries under unified aegis like the United Aircraft Building Corporation and the United Shipbuilding Corporation. While much of the defense industry is as bad off as the Russian military during the dark days of the 1990s, certain sectors are nonetheless cranking out quality hardware.

      At times, Russian military hardware is still derided by Western analysts who inappropriately hold it to Western standards. This is to misunderstand Russian military hardware. Even the best Soviet equipment was designed with lower quality control, mass production, particularly rugged operating conditions (even by military standards) and crude maintenance in mind.

      In fact, the Russian defense industry has made incremental and evolutionary improvements to the best of late-Soviet technology and is able to produce the results and sell them abroad. The Su-30MK-series “Flanker” fighter jets are highly coveted and widely regarded as extremely capable late-fourth generation combat aircraft. The industry is already working on not only a more refined Su-35 but a larger fighter-bomber variant known as the Su-34.

      Russian air defense hardware also remains among the most capable in the world. The Soviet post-World War II experience greatly informed the decades-long and still vibrant Russian obsession with ground-based air defenses. The most modern Russian systems — specifically the later versions of the S-300PMU series and what is now being touted as the S-400 (variants of which have been designated by NATO as the SA-20 and SA-21) — are the product of more than 60 years of highly focused research, development and operational employment. Though the S-300 series is largely untested in combat, it remains a matter of broad and grave concern for American and other Western military planners.

      That this production capacity has endured through the hardships of the post-Soviet era is simply remarkable, and it represents a solid technological footing for Russian military reform.

      While certain Russian products — night and thermal imaging, command, control and communications systems, avionics and unmanned systems — are neither as complex nor as capable as their Western counterparts, they are often more durable and more user-friendly in the hands of poorly trained troops. Products from the T-90 main battle tank to the new Amur diesel-electric patrol submarines are still extremely capable, as are supersonic anti-ship missiles like the SS-N-27 “Sizzler”.

      Some of these products come from a Russian design heritage specifically tailored to target American military capabilities (read: U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Groups) and are attractive to a number of customers around the world.

      There are two caveats to this. The first is that Russian military hardware is increasingly competing directly with the products of Western defense companies in places like India. Not only is Russian after-market service reputed to be abysmal, but high-profile problems with quality and on-time delivery (though hardly unique) give pause to potential customers with viable alternatives.

      The second caveat is that even the newest Russian products have their roots in incremental and evolutionary upgrades from late-Soviet technology, though this is not as problematic as it may seem. Much of the military hardware close to being fielded when the Soviet Union collapsed was quite capable and continues to have very real application and relevance today.

      This incremental and evolutionary progression continues, even as Russia’s industry begins to venture into less familiar territory, such as stealth and unmanned systems. These are areas that will require more innovation and present greater challenges and for which there will be less foundation from Soviet days.

      This is where the industry’s prospects become particularly cloudy. Declines in both the Russian population in general and intellectual talent in particular have been profound. From software programming to aeronautical engineering, what native talent Russia does possess has been finding work abroad. Those who remain are not attracted to the defense sector, which has done a terrible job of recruiting bright, young employees.

      And what expertise the industry does have is nearing retirement age. The youngest engineers with meaningful design experience during the thriving Soviet era (i.e., who were not hired the year before the entire apparatus came crashing down) are already in their 50s, and even those without Soviet experience will be that old within a decade. The financial crisis of the late 1990s prevented the hiring of new workers and the transfer of institutional knowledge.

      While Russia recognizes the problems inherent in the defense sector, the window is closing for the transfer of knowledge and experience to a newer generation. Manufacturing can always be outsourced, but without the ability to innovate and move beyond the legacy of late-Soviet designs, the Russian defense industry will be hard-pressed to keep from becoming irrelevant (though it would likely retain some prominence as a small-scale provider of specific — if impressive — niche products like fighter aircraft, air-defense equipment and anti-ship missiles).

      To compensate for the erosion in broad capability, the Russian defense sector has occasionally cooperated with foreign countries, notably India and China. Most recently, work on the Brahmos supersonic cruise and anti-ship missile combined Soviet-era research and development with Indian intellectual capital to produce a successful product. Moscow is attempting to replicate this experience with the Sukhoi PAK-FA program to build a modern, stealthy, fifth-generation fighter (though the long-anticipated prototype may prove to be little more than a modified airframe with the engines, avionics and subsystems of the Su-35).

      Countries like India and China have essentially used Russia to gain access to late-Soviet design work and to learn all they can in order to create independent domestic defense industries. Some Russian defense equipment is among the best in the world today and, with even moderate upgrades, will remain relevant for a decade or more. But the Russian defense industry has yet to demonstrate the ability to make a bold generational leap in terms of technology. This does not bode well for the industry’s long-term competitiveness and viability.
      Semper Fi

      Comment


      • #4
        The last article in this series.

        Part 4 from Stratfor:

        Part 4: The Georgian Campaign as a Case Study

        February 12, 2009 | 1210 GMT

        Summary
        In August 2008, Russia’s short war in Georgia lacked many of the hallmarks of Western military effectiveness, including communications, intelligence and reconnaissance. But the Russian military has always been a fairly blunt instrument, and it managed to get the job done with old equipment that was sufficiently maintained and deployable. For all its flaws, the Georgian campaign demonstrated an effective warfighting capability on Russia’s periphery and can be seen as a benchmark in Russian military reform.
        Editor’s Note: This is part four of a four-part series on the reformation of the Russian military.

        Analysis
        Many observers were quick to note the very real failings of the Russian military in Georgia in August 2008 when it went to war in support of the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia. Indeed, there were significant deficiencies in the conduct of the short war that revealed the limitations of Russian military capability. In our view there were three flaws that were emblematic of the campaign’s many failings and shortcomings:

        In its target selection process, the air force reportedly was woefully ignorant of Georgia’s military disposition (even against locations that were publicly known). In some cases, unused military installations were bombed while critical new locations were unscathed. This was a failure of basic intelligence gathering and indicates poor situational awareness and interservice coordination.
        The Russians apparently attempted no meaningful suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), even though the air defenses were meager. Air superiority belonged to Russia almost by default. The small Georgian air force was composed of eight Su-25 “Frogfoot” ground attack aircraft, and the Russians quickly destroyed the runway at the Georgian air field where they were based. While it was not out of the question for the Kremlin to deem the minimal Georgian air-defense threat an acceptable risk, the lack of any real attempt to hunt down the SA-11 “Gadfly” surface-to-air missile systems that Tbilisi reportedly had purchased from Kiev (which Moscow had to have known about) likely cost the Russians combat aircraft, including a Tu-22M Backfire bomber conducting reconnaissance. Even more important, it called into question the Russian capacity to conduct SEAD.
        Secure tactical communications was abysmal, with commanders reportedly relying on personal cell phones and even reporters’ satellite phones. While the Georgian military was not capable of taking advantage of these insecure and haphazard methods, they do raise real concerns about the status of Russian communications equipment. Either useful equipment was not deployed in sufficient quantities or, when it was deployed, it proved ineffective and unreliable. Of these three deficiencies, communications is a particular concern because the Russian military does not have a tradition of initiative by lower level officers and has always emphasized firm unit control by higher command.

        All in all, many of the hallmarks of modern military effectiveness in the West — command, control and communications; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR); joint planning and operations — were either not evident during the Georgian operation or were executed ineffectively. And the short thrust into South Ossetia hardly confirms the Russian military’s ability to sustain long-range military operations — South Ossetia is on the Russo-Georgian border and there was already a substantial Russian military contingent spun up for exercises and poised to strike.

        While the operation demonstrated weaknesses in Russian military capabilities, it is important to keep in mind that the Russian military has always been a fairly blunt instrument, and Georgia was no exception. With few major additions of ground equipment to the Russian ground arsenal since the Soviet collapse, Moscow managed to get the job done with 1980s-era equipment that was both deployable and in a sufficient state of repair.

        Indeed, Russia’s military “failings” must be understood in context. The United States and NATO developed technological capabilities and an economy-of-force specialty because of their quantitative Cold War disadvantage on the North European Plain. A new generation of precision-strike weapons and methods of command and control and ISR were just coming online when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and would soon be put to the test in Desert Storm in 1991. In the years since, these technologies have been refined in a variety of military operations, and the result has been a continual process of doctrinal integration, operational experience and tactical evolution.
        Related Special Topic Pages

        Russia, on the other hand, has had little opportunity to integrate late-Soviet technology into military operations and doctrine since the collapse of the union, and flaws in its Georgian campaign should have come as no surprise. Indeed, Georgia was the first warfighting in which the Russian military had engaged outside of Russia since the collapse. There was certain to be an element of trial and error in the operation. And despite its inefficiencies and failures, the ultimate success of the campaign — the achievement of the military objective without unreasonable losses — is clear: Abkhazia and South Ossetia each now host some 3,700 additional Russian troops and have been recognized by Moscow, over Georgian objections, as independent entities.

        The bottom line: Moscow succeeded in establishing a military reality through the exercise of force on its periphery. In so doing, it achieved its foremost objective of making a credible statement to the rest of the world — particularly Washington and the states on Russia’s periphery. The message was not meant to start a shooting war with NATO. After securing territorial integrity, the foremost mission of the Russian military is to ensure that integrity by keeping peripheral states compliant. The military accomplished this in Georgia in relatively short order, without any meaningful response from the West.

        Of course, Georgia’s South Ossetia was low-hanging fruit. Its population has close ties to Ossetians across the border in the Russian Republic of North Ossetia and is almost entirely pro-Russian. How effectively could the current Russian military influence other key peripheral states? Kazakhstan and Ukraine both have substantial strategic depth but also military forces that are in worse shape than Russian forces. In any case, invasion would not be necessary. Merely parking Russian military units on the border would be an unequivocal reminder to Astana and Kiev of a resurgent Russian military — one more lever to reverse the gains of the 2004 pro-Western Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

        On the surface, the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are even more vulnerable to Russian military pressure. Their militaries barely exist and their capitals are each roughly 100 miles from Russian territory. Occupying essentially open ground with no strategic depth, the Baltics would be hard-pressed to defend their territories on their own. Their only saving grace is their NATO membership, which affords them NATO protection under Article 5 by making an armed attack against one an armed attack against all. (At present, a small squadron of fighter jets from another NATO country monitors the airspace of the three small countries.)

        In short, Russia’s campaign in Georgia — blemishes and all — proved that the current force as equipped and fielded could have significant deterrent value in Russia’s sphere of influence. Moscow can credibly threaten the use of force precisely because it applied force in Georgia. This is not lost on peripheral states large or small. In each case, the capability to defend against that force is questionable at best unless Article 5 is invoked. By that measure, the Russian military has already regained the fundamental capacity for influencing events with military force on its periphery.

        And that development is a reminder that, despite the many challenges to reform, a chapter of history remains to be written that will likely include, once again, Russian military power as an element of Russian national power.
        I do hope you folks enjoy this. Looking forward to debate.

        Good luck

        Fred
        Semper Fi

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        • #5
          A very good read Chief. Thanks.:)
          Fortitude.....The strength to persist...The courage to endure.

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          • #6
            A sobering assessment. It puts the Air Force cutting 50,000 officers thing into perspective.

            It's crazy how much I'm learning about Russia (and everything in general) here. You guys rock.
            Last edited by Masada; 14 Feb 09,, 00:13.
            USS Toledo, SSN 769

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            • #7
              The article reads very much as a background story but i was expecting something more detailed from Stratfor , they are some questions that it did not address.
              1. Ground forces.
              - How much soldiers intends Russia to field in 2015 or 2020 ?
              - What is going to do about conscription ?( in one year you cannot train a soldier at a level comparable to that of a professional soldier nor u can afford to train, feed, house, equip all of them when they reach 18 and let them go when they turn 19.)
              -How much % of the GDP would be available to develop a new army and how much it goes for maintaining the army that they already have?
              -Have they identified the equipment that needs to be phase out in the next 5 years or the next 10.Or what equipment they need to refurbish to be operational for the next 15 years.Based on the estimated % of the GDP for the next decade, have they decided how much new equipment they are going to buy?
              - The superior officers are going to comprise of how much % of the total ground forces personnel ?
              -The equipment and training that they have determines they're military doctrine or the doctrine that they have determines they're military training and choice of equipment?

              Enough questions for one day , i`ll get back on this latter.

              Comment


              • #8
                How many soldiers? I doubt Putin could tell you.

                What is your point about conscription? Keep them for two years, half your costs.

                Probably as a percentage of GDP it has recently raised quite a bit. Their economy is collapsing.

                Stratfor gave a good strategic analysis. You want a tactical analysis out to 2020. That does not exist right now. And which weapons and systems are secondary to first stratigic goals then tactical implimentation. As to their newer ground forces you will probably see a mix of modern asymmetric warfare combined with old Soviet mass capabilities.

                Go figure.

                Fred
                Semper Fi

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Chieftain View Post
                  How many soldiers? I doubt Putin could tell you.

                  What is your point about conscription? Keep them for two years, half your costs.

                  Probably as a percentage of GDP it has recently raised quite a bit. Their economy is collapsing.

                  Stratfor gave a good strategic analysis. You want a tactical analysis out to 2020. That does not exist right now. And which weapons and systems are secondary to first strategic goals then tactical implementation. As to their newer ground forces you will probably see a mix of modern asymmetric warfare combined with old Soviet mass capabilities.

                  Go figure.

                  Fred
                  Romania has a smaller army compared to that of Russia but all of the questions that i have ask, have clear answers in the strategic transformation of our armed forces .

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Masada View Post

                    It's crazy how much I'm learning about Russia (and everything in general) here. You guys rock.
                    Didn't I tell you;)Σου είπα wab Καλή ήταν

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Romania has a smaller army compared to that of Russia but all of the questions that i have ask, have clear answers in the strategic transformation of our armed forces .
                      If they do, tell us what they are.

                      The only place I don't understand is when you ask future tactical questions about future Strategy. No one can answer them.

                      Go figure.

                      Fred
                      Semper Fi

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Chieftain View Post
                        If they do, tell us what they are.
                        Fred
                        1-2
                        Romania joined NATO in 2004. As a consequence, extensive preparations have been made for the abolishment of conscription and the transition to a professional army by 2007. The new armed forces include 90,000 men and women. About 75,000 of these are the military personnel, while 15,000 is made up of civilians. 60,000 of the 90,000 will be the active forces, while 30,000 comprise the territorial forces . Out of the 75,000 troops which comprise the actual military, ca. 45,800 make up the Romanian Land Forces, 13,250 are the Romanian Air Force and 6,800 are in the Romanian Naval Forces, while the remaining 8,800 serve in other fields.
                        3.
                        The total defense spending currently accounts for 2.05% of total national GDP, which represents approximately 2,9 billion dollars .However, the Romanian Armed Forces will spend about 11 billion dollars in the next five years, for modernization and acquirement of new equipment.
                        4.
                        The Land Forces completely overhauled their equipment in the past few years, and today they are a modern army, with multiple NATO capabilities.
                        The Romanian Military will essentially undergo a three-stage restructuring. As of 2007, the first short-term stage has been completed. 2015 marks the end of the second stage when the armed forces will reach a superior compatibility with NATO forces. In 2025, the long-term stage is to be completed. The stages aim at modernizing the structure of the armed forces, reducing the personnel as well as acquiring newer and more improved technology that is compatible with NATO standards.
                        5.
                        The superior officers comprise of ~5% of the of the total ground forces personnel.
                        6.
                        Our doctrine determines the military training and choice of equipment.If equipments left from the Soviet style organization fit our doctrine, it is kept. if it does not, it's phased out.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Since my country is undergoing a military reformation of it`s armed forces from soviet style organization, It is relevant to mention it.

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