The Russian Army invaded Ukraine on 24 February, 2022. Most
Western defense experts and NATO military experts anticipated a rapid Russian
Army combined arms attack with massive Russian Air Force precision strikes, and
a comprehensive cyber-attack that neutralized all Command and Control (C4I)
nodes across the Ukraine. The consensus from these analysts, observers, and
experts calculated a 3-5 day operation before the capitulation of the Ukrainian
Armed Forces.
Of course, the experts sometimes get things wrong. What is
apparent now, is that Western analysts including the collective Western
intelligence community not only got it wrong, but didn’t fully understand the
true conditions of the Russian Armed Forces. Intelligence services are
scrambling to reassess and develop a much more detailed and accurate
appreciation of the situation on the ground in Ukraine and more specifically,
the status and readiness of the Russian Armed Forces now deployed in the
Donbas.
Outstanding items of note from the conflict include the
lethality of the Western armed Ukrainian Army (with Javelin, Panzerfaust and
NLAW Anti-Tank Guided Munitions), the excellent use of armed Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles (U-CAVs), the Ukrainian intelligence collection and exploitation
efforts, the aggressiveness of the Ukrainian Army and the loose, decentralized
nature of the active and passive operations across Ukraine by her Armed Forces
and volunteers.
Most shocking: the inability of the Russian Air Force to achieve, let alone maintain air superiority and dominance over the skies of Ukraine. The Russian ground forces have been paying a price for this inability i.e. the Ukrainian mastery of synchronizing and coordinating intelligence collection, surveillance, and targeting via the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles.
Additionally, the absolute sign of decay or a sure sign of a
very unprofessional armed forces (aside from conduct, discipline, training,
Officer-NCO relationships etc) is the complete and total failure of the
logistics arms of the Russian Armed Forces.
The attack on four or more non-mutually supporting axes
demanded independent and non-supporting lines of communications, logistics
bases, and the security of main supply routes to each axis of attack.
Obviously, they struggled and continue to struggle with basic
pushing forward of supplies such as rations, ammunition, fuel, and medical
supplies. Speaking of medical supplies, the Russian Federation has provided the
individual Russian service member a novel piece of kit:
The Russian Kit (Top) and the Ukrainian Kit (Bottom: modeled on U.S. IFAK).
More importantly, however, is the glaring deficiencies of the Russian Armed Forces and specifically, the lack of an NCO Corps within the Russian Army. A headlines from the Sunday Guardian states it succinctly: “What is surprising to the military analysts in the West, is the ineptitude of Russian forces in a war that the Kremlin still insists on calling a ‘special military operation’.”[1] This observation has been discussed across open-source news networks and amongst professional observers of the Russian Federation.
Live news feeds have introduced the world the Russian Way of
War: direct attacks on all civil life including the looting of Ukrainian homes,
the killing of innocents, and the seemingly unending attacks across Ukraine
that serve no other purpose than complete and total destruction of
infrastructure.
What has not been discussed by pundits and news sources
including retired members of the U.S. Armed Forces is that rot on display
across the Russian Armed Forces goes beyond and outside the Russian military
services. It is the culture, the very depths of Russian society, the Russians
themselves that are corroded and rotten.
The officers of the Russian Armed Forces are certainly
corrupt. But so too is every aspect of Russian society. Russia possesses the
trappings of Western Europe in say, Moscow or St. Petersburg. But, much like
the Armed Forces, the sophistication of the Bolshoi Ballet, the writings of
Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Dostoyevsky, the famed architecture, the music of
Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky are all but a grand illusion.
The Soldiers of the ‘Stumbling Colossus.’ (I wonder what Col David Glantz would think!)
The Russians are many things but mostly deceivers. Disinformation (dezinformatsiya) is often used to embrace a number of other concepts: ‘strategic deception’ (strategicheskaya maskirovka), ‘active measures’ (aktivnye meropriyatiya), information operations, psychological operations, concealment and deniability.
What began in the 1990s as a serious effort at reform of the Armed Forces eventually focused on the tangible; new equipment, updated uniforms and personal kit, and paint on what is now evident: old armored vehicles. The Russian Armed Forces Reforms of the 1990s settled on an Army that “should be partially conscripted, partially volunteer. The peace-time "cadre" army should be small, but Russia will retain a mobilization potential to drastically expand forces in an emergency.”[2]
Surprisingly, the Russian Army all but did away with an NCO Corps after the Second World War. The severe discipline of the Soviet Army helped cover any deficiencies of an Army without sergeants. More importantly, the very concept of Red Army operations in the post-World War II era was predicated on mass. The Second World War taught the Soviets that replacements, mass, and the offensive were keys to victory.
The Russian Army, fully aware of the Western Armies NCO Corps, are mostly satisfied with their system. “Although the Russian military understands the institution in the US/West, they do not think it would be a good fit for the Russian military due to different military decision-making processes, histories, and social conventions. Russia does not want well-rounded enlisted leaders, they want narrowly-focused, technically competent, professional, enlisted soldiers.”[3]
Gil Barndollar, writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in 2020 writes that “A functional NCO corps is also a prerequisite for conquering one of the Russian military’s most persistent problems: hazing. In the Red Army, brutal hazing – dedovshchina – was systemic. Originating in the gulags, dedovshchina’s rigid, seniority-based caste system came to dominate every aspect of conscript life. Senior soldiers subjugated, robbed, and brutalized junior draftees while officers looked the other way.”[4]
The MYTH: Russian Conscripts in New Kit.
What the haphazard embarrassing multi-pronged and non-mutually
supporting axes of attack the Russians attempted to execute on 24 February,
2022 has demonstrated, is the supreme heights of the Russian art of
“dezinformatsiya” but with a grand caveat. They would fool only themselves.
The Russian Armed Forces will eventually end their operations, the so called 'special military operation' in due time. They will then announce the ‘completion and success’ of their special military
operation. And some of them, afterwards, will make a meager attempt to implement reforms, to
build a professional Corps of Non-Commissioned Officers.[5]
The efforts will fade in time of course because after all, the society they will continue
to recruit from is empty.
Russia is the house of cards, the glass house, the ornate and
empty chamber. Far be it from me to ever quote scripture but Matthew 23:27
states “…You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside
but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”
[1] John Dobson, “Why Are the Russians Performing so Badly?,” The
Sunday Guardian Live, April 9, 2022,
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/world/russian-armed-forces-performing-badly.
[2] Pavel Felgenhauer, “Russian Military Reform: Ten Years Of
Failure,” Defense and National
Security Editor, Sevodnya Newspaper, Moscow. Proceedings of a conference held
at the Naval Postgraduate School on March 26 and 27, 1997.Ed. by Elizabeth
Skinner and Mikhail Tsypkin, https://nuke.fas.org/guide/russia/agency/Felg.htm.
[3] Maj. Charles K. Bartles, “Russian Armed
Forces: Enlisted Professionals,” Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort
Leavenworth, KS,
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/nco-journal/docs/2019/March/Russian-NCOs/Russian-NCOs.pdf
[4] Gil Barndollar, “The Best or Worst of Both
Worlds? Russia’s Mixed Military Manpower System,” The Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), September 23, 2020,
https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/best-or-worst-both-worlds
[5] Dave Majumdar, “Not So Scary: This Is Why Russia's Military Is a Paper Tiger,” The National Interest, October 20, 2015, the transition will take time to complete. Only about a quarter of Russian ground forces are fully staffed, well-trained professional troops. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/not-so-scary-why-russias-military-paper-tiger-14136
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