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Russia’s enormous cost in invading Ukraine is a consequence of not following its own military doctrine.
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Russian commanders have often gotten the basic principles of military operations wrong, a RAND expert said.
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The Russians also did not have the size of invasion force necessary to follow their combat doctrine.
The US Army’s new manual on Russian tactics is an impressive-looking document. There are 280 pages full of details and diagrams of how Russian soldiers should fight.
It’s also a testament to one of the main reasons why Russian troops have often fought poorly in the Ukraine war: they are not following their own playbook.
“Many of the basic elements of this doctrine are solid enough that they can form a basis for successful operations,” Scott Boston, a Russian military expert at the RAND Corp. think tank, told Business Insider. “But you have to follow them.”
To be clear, the US Army manual – ATP7-100.1, “Russian Tactics” — specifies that it is “not intended to represent how the Russians are currently fighting in Ukraine.” However, armies try to fight according to their doctrine, or the fundamental principles that are intended to guide military operations.
For example, when a Russian division or brigade conducts an attack, the units must advance in multiple echelons – or waves – of troops and tanks, closely synchronized with reconnaissance, flank protection, engineering, artillery and air defense elements. The objective is to hit hard, move quickly, break through defenses and advance deep into the enemy rear. To minimize the resistance they face, assault troops must concentrate in multiple columns to “spread attacking units both wide and deep to disperse and reduce the effects of nuclear or precision fires,” according to the manual. ATP7-100.1.
But when Russia tried to take Kiev with a lightning advance in the early days of the war, armored columns were sent down narrow, congested roads. Trapped by roadblocks and ambushes, they were decimated by Ukrainian artillery, drones and anti-tank missiles. The manual also does not describe how the Russian army is fighting today. Instead of quick, well-coordinated maneuvers with its once-vaunted Aerospace Forces, the attacks rely on destroying Ukrainian defenses with artillery or glide bombs, or flooding them with large numbers of freed convicts and others. “disposable infantry”.
The cost was enormous: a estimated 450,000 Russian casualties and 3,000 tanks destroyed. Moscow’s best pre-war units were decimated and its best tanks and other equipment destroyed.
“Doctrinally sound attacks can still fail,” Boston highlighted. “But many of their mistakes were failures to follow doctrinal guidance that exists for good reason. Like, have a guard force at the front so that your main body doesn’t jump into combat and get involved decisively. all its strength on few roads. Don’t leave your support troops unprotected. These were pretty basic things.
Assessing current Russian doctrine is difficult. Much of it derives from the Soviet era of tightly controlled mass armies. “The commander directs the fight, is responsible for key elements of the plan, and generally does not expect initiative or flexibility to the same degree from his subordinates as compared to a good U.S. commander,” Boston explained.
However, military reforms enacted after 2008 were supposed to create smaller, more agile, Western-style forces. “When that system failed in the first few months after February 2022, they reverted to older, more traditional approaches that eventually included much more emphasis on mass,” said Boston, a former U.S. Army artillery officer.
However, the problem may not have been so much Russian doctrine as the overall strategy of the war in Ukraine. Soviet plans to invade Western Europe were based on sending millions of Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops, supported by huge arsenals of weapons and supplies. With an initial assault force of just 180,000 soldiers attacking across a 600-mile-wide front against a smaller but still substantial Ukrainian army, Russia was unable to generate the overwhelming mass that its doctrine counted on. Russian leaders also expected – as did many Western experts – that Ukrainian resistance would collapse and the country would be quickly occupied. The assault units were not even informed about the attack until shortly before the war began.
“It’s not impossible to win battles with an inflexible army, but to have a reasonable chance of doing so, having a good plan helps a lot,” Boston said. He pointed to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq: commanders had hoped Iraqi forces would not put up strong resistance, but the invasion plan assumed they would. “It would have been irresponsible for the U.S. military to do otherwise. But Russia’s plan was of this level of irresponsibility. Units were directed to move into Ukraine and seize key locations on aggressive schedules and without significant warning or time to plan in case things go wrong. Doctrine and training can only do so much when you’re sent to do the wrong thing with the wrong tools for the job.”
To be fair, some areas of Russian doctrine have turned out to be quite solid, especially in defense, where Russia stopped Ukraine’s counteroffensive last summer. “There are many aspects of your defense that are entirely consistent with your historical practice and doctrine,” Boston said. “And in some cases, they improved their doctrine, increasing the depth and density of the minefields.”
One question will plague historians for years to come: Could Russia have taken Kiev – and likely won the war – in the early days of the invasion? “This is a complicated counterfactual scenario,” Boston said. “If Russia had made more adequate preparations, Ukraine might have noticed and reacted differently. But Russia had some substantial advantages that it squandered with the initial plan and its slow adaptation over time. If Russia had tried a better plan, things would have gone much worse for Ukraine much more quickly.”
Ironically, Boston feels that vilifying Russian military prowess does a disservice to Ukrainian skill. If the Russian military was so bad, then maybe the Ukrainian military wasn’t so good? “We underestimate the damage the Ukrainians did against actual Russian military capability if we think the Russians were all just terrible,” Boston said. “I don’t think they were terrible. I think they were terribly misled by their leadership.”
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine and other publications. He holds a master’s degree in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him Twitter It is LinkedIn.
Read the original article at Business Insider
