Tag Russia

Back To The Future: The Return Of Sieges To Modern Warfare

Ruins of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which was besieged by Syrian government forces from July 2012 to December 2016. [Getty Images]

U.S. Army Major Amos Fox has published a very intriguing analysis in the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare Landpower Essay series, titled “The Reemergence of the Siege: An Assessment of Trends in Modern Land Warfare.” Building upon some of his previous work (here and here), Fox makes a case that sieges have again become a salient feature in modern warfare: “a brief survey of history illustrates that the siege is a defining feature of the late 20th and early 21st centuries; perhaps today is the siege’s golden era.”

Noting that neither U.S. Army nor joint doctrine currently addresses sieges, Fox adopts the dictionary definition: “A military blockade of a city or fortified place to compel it to surrender, or a persistent or serious attack.” He also draws a distinction between a siege and siege warfare; “siege warfare implies a way of battle, whereas a siege implies one tool of many in the kitbag of warfare.” [original emphasis]

He characterizes modern sieges thusly:

The contemporary siege is a blending of the traditional definition with concentric attacks. The modern siege is not necessarily characterized by a blockade, but more by an isolation of an adversary through encirclement while maintaining sufficient firepower against the besieged to ensure steady pressure. The modern siege can be terrain-focused, enemy-focused or a blending of the two, depending on the action of the besieged and the goal of the attacker. The goal of the siege is either to achieve a decision, whether politically or militarily, or to slowly destroy the besieged.

He cites the siege of Sarajevo (1992-1996) as the first example of the modern phenomenon. Other cases include Grozny (1999-2000); Aleppo, Ghouta, Kobani, Raqaa, and Deir Ezzor in Syria (2012 to 2018); Mosul (2016-2017); and Ilovaisk, Second Donetsk Airport, and Debal’tseve in the Ukraine (2014-present).

Fox notes that employing sieges carries significant risk. Most occur in urban areas. The restrictive nature of this terrain serves as a combat multiplier for inferior forces, allowing them to defend effectively against a much larger adversary. This can raise the potential military costs of conducting a siege beyond what an attacker is willing or able to afford.

Modern sieges also risk incurring significant political costs through collateral civilian deaths or infrastructure damage that could lead to a loss of international credibility or domestic support for governments that attempt them.

However, Fox identifies a powerful incentive that can override these disadvantages: when skillfully executed, a siege affords an opportunity for an attacker to contain and tie down defending forces, which can then be methodically destroyed. Despite the risks, he believes the apparent battlefield decisiveness of recent sieges means they will remain part of modern warfare.

Given modern sieges’ destructiveness and sharp impact on the populations on which they are waged, almost all actors (to include the United States) demonstrate a clear willingness—politically and militarily—to flatten cities and inflict massive suffering on besieged populations in order to capitalize on the opportunities associated with having their adversaries centralized.

Fox argues that sieges will be a primary tactic employed by proxy military forces, which are currently being used effectively by a variety of state actors in the Eastern Europe and the Middle East. “[A]s long as intermediaries are doing the majority of fighting and dying within a siege—or holding the line for the siege—it is a tactic that will continue to populate current and future battlefields.”

This is an excellent analysis. Go check it out.

The Combat Value of Surprise

American soldiers being marched down a road after capture by German troops in the Ardennes, December 1944.
American soldiers being marched down a road after capture by German troops in the Ardennes, December 1944.

[This article was originally posted on 1 December 2016]

In his recent analysis of the role of conventional armored forces in Russian hybrid warfare, U.S. Army Major Amos Fox noted an emphasis on tactical surprise.

Changes to Russian tactics typify the manner in which Russia now employs its ground force. Borrowing from the pages of military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who stated, “It is still more important to remember that almost the only advantage of the attack rests on its initial surprise,” Russia’s contemporary operations embody the characteristic of surprise. Russian operations in Georgia and Ukraine demonstrate a rapid, decentralized attack seeking to temporally dislocate the enemy, triggering the opposing forces’ defeat.

Tactical surprise enabled by electronic, cyber, information and unconventional warfare capabilities, combined with mobile and powerful combined arms brigade tactical groups, and massive and lethal long-range fires provide Russian Army ground forces with formidable combat power.

Trevor Dupuy considered the combat value of surprise to be important enough to cite it as one of his “timeless verities of combat.”

Surprise substantially enhances combat power. Achieving surprise in combat has always been important. It is perhaps more important today than ever. Quantitative analysis of historical combat shows that surprise has increased the combat power of military forces in those engagements in which it was achieved. Surprise has proven to be the greatest of all combat multipliers. It may be the most important of the Principles of War; it is at least as important as Mass and Maneuver.

In addition to acting as combat power multiplier, Dupuy observed that surprise decreases the casualties of a surprising force and increases those of a surprised one. Surprise also enhances advance rates for forces that achieve it.

In his combat models, Dupuy categorized tactical surprise as complete, substantial, and minor; defining the level achieved was a matter of analyst judgement. The combat effects of surprise in battle would last for three days, declining by one-third each day.

He developed two methods for applying the effects of surprise in calculating combat power, each yielding the same general overall influence. In his original Quantified Judgement Model (QJM) detailed in Numbers, Predictions and War: The Use of History to Evaluate and Predict the Outcome of Armed Conflict (1977), factors for surprise were applied to calculations for vulnerability and mobility, which in turn were applied to the calculation of overall combat power. The net value of surprise on combat power ranged from a factor of about 2.24 for complete surprise to 1.10 for minor surprise.

For a simplified version of his combat power calculation detailed in Attrition: Forecasting Battle Casualties and Equipment Losses in Modern War (1990), Dupuy applied a surprise combat multiplier value directly to the calculation of combat power. These figures also ranged between 2.20 for complete surprise and 1.10 for minor surprise.

Dupuy established these values for surprise based on his judgement of the difference between the calculated outcome of combat engagements in his data and theoretical outcomes based on his models. He never validated them back to his data himself. However, TDI President Chris Lawrence recently did conduct substantial tests on TDI’s expanded combat databases in the context of analyzing the combat value of situational awareness. The results are described in detail in his forthcoming book, War By Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat.

Are Russia And Iran Planning More Proxy Attacks On U.S. Forces And Their Allies In Syria?

Members of the Liwa al-Baqir Syrian Arab militia, which is backed by Iran and Russia. [Navvar Şaban (N.Oliver)/Twitter]

Over at the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Jennifer Cafarella, Matti Suomenaro, and Catherine Harris have published an analysis predicting that Iran and Russia are preparing to attack U.S. forces and those of its Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) allies in eastern Syria. By using tribal militia proxies and Russian mercenary troops to inflict U.S. casualties and stoke political conflict among the Syrian factions, Cafarella, et al, assert that Russia and Iran are seeking to compel the U.S. to withdraw its forces from Syria and break up the coalition that defeated Daesh.

If true, this effort would represent an escalation of a strategic gambit that led to a day-long battle between tribal militias loyal to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad, Syrian government troops, and Russian mercenaries and U.S. allied Kurdish and SDF fighters along with their U.S. Marine and Special Operations Forces (SOF) advisors in February in the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. This resulted in a major defeat of the pro-Assad forces, which suffered hundreds of casualties–including dozens of Russians–from U.S. air and ground-based fires.

To support their contention, Cafarella, et al, offer a pattern of circumstantial evidence that does not quite amount to a definitive conclusion. ISW has a clear policy preference to promote: “The U.S. must commit to defending its partners and presence in Eastern Syria in order to prevent the resurgence of ISIS and deny key resources to Iran, Russia, and Assad.” It has criticized the U.S.’s failure to hold Russia culpable for the February attack in Deir Ezzor as “weak,” thereby undermining its policy in Syria and the Middle East in the face of Russian “hybrid” warfare efforts.

Yet, there is circumstantial evidence that the February battle in Deir Ezzor was the result of deliberate Russian government policy. ISW has identified Russian and Iranian intent to separate SDF from U.S. support to isolate and weaken it. President Assad has publicly made clear his intent to restore his rule over all of Syria. And U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to indicate that he has changed his intent to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.

Russian and Iranian sponsorship and support for further aggressive action by pro-regime forces and proxies against U.S. troops and their Syrian allies could easily raise tensions dramatically with the U.S. Since it is difficult to see Russian and Iranian proxies succeeding with new Deir Ezzor-style attacks, they might be tempted to try to shoot down a U.S. aircraft or attempt a surprise raid on a U.S. firebase instead. Should Syrian regime or Russian mercenary forces manage to kill or wound U.S. troops, or bring down a U.S. manned aircraft, the military and political repercussions could be significant.

Despite the desire of President Trump to curtail U.S. involvement in Syria, there is real potential for the conflict to mushroom.

Details Of U.S. Engagement With Russian Mercenaries In Syria Remain Murky

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, SYRIA (May 15, 2017)— U.S. Marines fortify a machine gun pit around their M777-A2 Howitzer in Syria, May 15, 2017. The unit has been conducting 24-hour all-weather fire support for Coalition’s local partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, as part of Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. CJTF-OIR is the global coalition to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Matthew Callahan)

Last week, the New York Times published an article by Thomas Gibbons-Neff that provided a detailed account of the fighting between U.S-advised Kurdish and Syrian militia forces and Russian mercenaries and Syrian and Arab fighters near the city of Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria on 7 February 2018. Gibbons-Neff stated the account was based on newly obtained documents and interviews with U.S. military personnel.

While Gibbons-Neff’s reporting fills in some details about the action, it differs in some respects to previous reporting, particularly a detailed account by Christoph Reuter, based on interviews from participants and witnesses in Syria, published previously in Spiegel Online.

  • According to Gibbons-Neff, the U.S. observed a buildup of combat forces supporting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad in Deir Ezzor, south of the Euphrates River, which separated them from U.S.-backed Kurdish and Free Syrian militia forces and U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) and U.S. Marine Corps elements providing advice and assistance north of the river.
  • The pro-regime forces included “some Syrian government soldiers and militias, but American military and intelligence officials have said a majority were private Russian paramilitary mercenaries — and most likely a part of the Wagner Group, a company often used by the Kremlin to carry out objectives that officials do not want to be connected to the Russian government.”
  • After obtaining assurances from the Russian military chain-of-command in Syria that the forces were not theirs, Secretary of Defense James Mattis ordered “for the force, then, to be annihilated.”
  • Gibbons-Neff’s account focuses on the fighting that took place on the night of 7-8 February in the vicinity of a U.S. combat outpost located near a Conoco gas plant north of the Euphrates. While the article mentions the presence of allied Kurdish and Syrian militia fighters, it implies that the target of the pro-regime force was the U.S. outpost. It does not specify exactly where the pro-regime forces concentrated or the direction they advanced.
  • This is in contrast to Reuter’s Spiegel Online account, which reported a more complex operation. This included an initial probe across a bridge northwest of the Conoco plant on the morning of 7 February by pro-regime forces that included no Russians, which was repelled by warning shots from American forces.
  • After dark that evening, this pro-regime force attempted to cross the Euphrates again across a bridge to the southeast of the Conoco plant at the same time another pro-regime force advanced along the north bank of the Euphrates toward the U.S./Kurdish/Syrian forces from the town of Tabiya, southeast of the Conoco plant. According to Reuter, U.S. forces engaged both of these pro-regime advances north of the Euphrates.
  • While the Spiegel Online article advanced the claim that Russian mercenary forces were not leading the pro-regime attacks and that the casualties they suffered were due to U.S. collateral fire, Gibbons-Neff’s account makes the case that the Russians comprised at least a substantial part of at least one of the forces advancing on the U.S./Kurdish/Syrian bases and encampments in Deir Ezzor.
  • Based on documents it obtained, the Times asserts that 200-300 “pro-regime” personnel were killed out of an overall force of 500. Gibbons-Neff did not attempt to parse out the Russian share of these, but did mention that accounts in Russian media have risen from four dead as initially reported, to later claims of “perhaps dozens” of killed and wounded. U.S. government sources continue to assert that most of the casualties were Russian.
  • It is this figure of 200-300 killed that I have both found problematic in the past. A total of 200-300 killed and wounded overall seems far more likely, with approximately 100 dead and 100-200 wounded out of the much larger overall force of Russian mercenaries, Syrian government troops, and tribal militia fighters involved in the fighting.

Motivation for the Operation Remains Unclear

While the details of the engagement remain ambiguous, the identity of those responsible for directing the attacks and the motivations for doing so are hazy as well. In late February, CNN and the Washington Post reported that U.S. intelligence had detected communications between Yevgeny Prigozhin—a Russian businessman with reported ties to President Vladimir Putin, the Ministry of Defense, and Russian mercenaries—and Russian and Syrian officials in the weeks leading up to the attack. One such intercept alleges that Prigozhin informed a Syrian official in January that he had secured permission from an unidentified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative in Syria in early February.

Prigozhin was one of 13 individuals and three companies indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller on 16 February 2018 for funding and guiding a Russian government effort to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

If the Deir Ezzor operation was indeed a clandestine operation sanctioned by the Russian government, the motivation remains mysterious. Gibbons-Neff’s account implies that the operation was a direct assault on a U.S. military position by a heavily-armed and equipped combat force, an action that all involved surely understood beforehand would provoke a U.S. military reaction. Even if the attack was instead aimed at taking the Conoco gas plant or forcing the Kurdish and Free Syrian forces out of Deir Ezzor, the attackers surely must have known the presence of U.S. military forces would elicit the same response.

Rueter’s account of a more complex operations suggests that the attack was a probe to test the U.S. response to armed action aimed at the U.S.’s Kurdish and Free Syrian proxy forces. If so, it was done very clumsily. The build-up of pro-regime forces telegraphed the effort in advance and the force itself seems to have been tailored for combat rather than reconnaissance. The fact that the U.S. government inquired with the Russian military leadership in Syria in advance about the provenance of the force build-up should have been a warning that any attempt at surprise had been compromised.

Whether the operation was simply intended to obtain a tactical advantage or to probe the resolution of U.S. involvement in Syria, the outcome bears all the hallmarks of a major miscalculation. Russian “hybrid warfare” tactics sustained a decisive reverse, while the effectiveness of U.S. military capabilities received a decided boost. Russian and U.S. forces and their proxies continue to spar using information operations, particularly electronic warfare, but they have not directly engaged each other since. The impact of this may be short-lived however, depending on whether or not U.S. President Donald J. Trump carries through with his intention announced in early April to withdraw U.S. forces from eastern Syria.

The Third World War of 1985

Hackett

[This article was originally posted on 5 August 2016]

The seeming military resurgence of Vladimir Putin’s Russia has renewed concerns about the military balance between East and West in Europe. These concerns have evoked memories of the decades-long Cold War confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact along the inner-German frontier. One of the most popular expressions of this conflict came in the form of a book titled The Third World War: August 1985, by British General Sir John Hackett. The book, a hypothetical account of a war between the Soviet Union, the United States, and assorted allies set in the near future, became an international best-seller.

Jeffrey H Michaels, a Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies at the British the Joint Services Command and Staff College, has published a detailed look at how Hackett and several senior NATO and diplomatic colleagues constructed the scenario portrayed in the book. Scenario construction is an important aspect of institutional war gaming. A war game will only be as useful if the assumptions that underpin it are valid. As Michaels points out,

Regrettably, far too many scenarios and models, whether developed by military organizations, political scientists, or fiction writers, tend to focus their attention on the battlefield and the clash of armies, navies, air forces, and especially their weapons systems.  By contrast, the broader context of the war – the reasons why hostilities erupted, the political and military objectives, the limits placed on military action, and so on – are given much less serious attention, often because they are viewed by the script-writers as a distraction from the main activity that occurs on the battlefield.

Modelers and war gamers always need to keep in mind the fundamental importance of context in designing their simulations.

It is quite easy to project how one weapon system might fare against another, but taken out of a broader strategic context, such a projection is practically meaningless (apart from its marketing value), or worse, misleading.  In this sense, even if less entertaining or exciting, the degree of realism of the political aspects of the scenario, particularly policymakers’ rationality and cost-benefit calculus, and the key decisions that are taken about going to war, the objectives being sought, the limits placed on military action, and the willingness to incur the risks of escalation, should receive more critical attention than the purely battlefield dimensions of the future conflict.

These are crucially important points to consider when deciding how to asses the outcomes of hypothetical scenarios.

Human Factors In Combat: Syrian Strike Edition

Missile fire lit up the Damascus sky last week as the U.S. and allies launched an attack on chemical weapons sites. [Hassan Ammar, AP/USA Today]

Even as pundits and wonks debate the political and strategic impact of the 14 April combined U.S., British, and French cruise missile strike on Assad regime chemical warfare targets in Syria, it has become clear that effort was a notable tactical success.

Despite ample warning that the strike was coming, the Syrian regime’s Russian-made S-200 surface-to-air missile defense system failed to shoot down a single incoming missile. The U.S. Defense Department claimed that all 105 cruise missiles fired struck their targets. It also reported that the Syrians fired 40 interceptor missiles but nearly all launched after the incoming cruise missiles had already struck their targets.

Although cruise missiles are difficult to track and engage even with fully modernized air defense systems, the dismal performance of the Syrian network was a surprise to many analysts given the wary respect paid to it by U.S. military leaders in the recent past. Although the S-200 dates from the 1960s, many surmise an erosion in the combat effectiveness of the personnel manning the system is the real culprit.

[A] lack of training, command and control and other human factors are probably responsible for the failure, analysts said.

“It’s not just about the physical capability of the air defense system,” said David Deptula, a retired, three-star Air Force general. “It’s about the people who are operating the system.”

The Syrian regime has become dependent upon assistance from Russia and Iran to train, equip, and maintain its military forces. Russian forces in Syria have deployed the more sophisticated S-400 air defense system to protect their air and naval bases, which reportedly tracked but did not engage the cruise missile strike. The Assad regime is also believed to field the Russian-made Pantsir missile and air-defense artillery system, but it likely was not deployed near enough to the targeted facilities to help.

Despite the pervasive role technology plays in modern warfare, the human element remains the most important factor in determining combat effectiveness.

TDI Friday Read: Links You May Have Missed, 30 March 2018

This week’s list of links is an odds-and-ends assortment.

David Vergun has an interview with General Stephen J. Townshend, commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) on the Army website about the need for smaller, lighter, and faster equipment for future warfare.

Defense News’s apparently inexhaustible Jen Judson details the Army’s newest forthcoming organization, “US Army’s Futures Command sets groundwork for battlefield transformation.”

At West Point’s Modern War Institute, Army Lionel Beehner, Liam Collins, Steve Ferenzi, Robert Person and Aaron Brantly have a very interesting analysis of the contemporary Russian approach to warfare, “Analyzing the Russian Way of War: Evidence from the 2008 Conflict with Georgia.”

Also at the Modern War Institute, Ethan Olberding examines ways to improve the planning skills of the U.S. Army’s junior leaders, “You Can Lead, But Can You Plan? Time to Change the Way We Develop Junior Leaders.”

Kyle Mizokami at Popular Mechanics takes a look at the state of the art in drone defenses, “Watch Microwave and Laser Weapons Knock Drones Out of the Sky.”

Jared Keller at Task & Purpose looks into the Army’s interest in upgunning its medium-weight armored vehicles, “The Army Is Eyeing This Beastly 40mm Cannon For Its Ground Combat Vehicles.”

And finally, MeritTalk, a site focused on U.S. government information technology, has posted a piece, “Pentagon Wants An Early Warning System For Hybrid Warfare,” looking at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) ambitious Collection and Monitoring via Planning for Active Situational Scenarios (COMPASS) program, which will incorporate AI, game theory, modeling, and estimation technologies to attempt to decipher the often subtle signs that precede a full-scale attack.

Russian Body Count: Update

Map of the reported incident between U.S., Syrian, and Russian forces near Deir Ezzor, Syria on 7 February 2018 [Spiegel Online]

An article by Christoph Reuter in Spiegel Online adds some new details to the story of the incident between U.S., Syrian, and Russian mercenary forces near the Syrian city of Deir Ezzor on 7 February 2018. Based on interviews with witnesses and participants, the article paints a different picture than the one created by previous media reports.

According to Spiegel Online, early on 7 February, a 250-strong force comprised of Syrian tribal militia, Afghan and Iraqi fighters, and troops from the Syrian Army 4th Division attempted to cross from the west bank of the Euphrates River to the east, south of a Kurdish Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) base at Khusham. The Euphrates constitutes a “deconfliction” line established by the United States and Russia separating the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from those of the U.S.-supported SDF. The Syrian force was detected and U.S. combat forces fired warning shots, which persuaded the Syrians to withdraw.

After dark that evening, the Syrian force, reinforced to about 500 fighters, moved several kilometers north and attempted to cross the Euphrates a second time, this time successfully. As the force advanced through the village of Marrat, it was again spotted and engaged by U.S. air and artillery assets after an alleged 20-30 tank rounds impacted within 500 meters of the SDF headquarters in Khusham. The U.S. employed field artillery, drones, combat helicopters, and AC-130 gunships to devastating effect.

Speigel Online reported that U.S. forces also simultaneously engaged a force of approximately 400 pro-Assad Syrian tribal militia and Shi’a fighters advancing north from the village of Tabiya, south of Khusham. A small contingent of Russian mercenaries, stationed in Tabiya but not supporting the Syrian/Shi’a fighters, was hit by U.S. fire. This second Syrian force, which the U.S. had allowed to remain on the east side of the Euphrates as long as it remained peaceful and small, was allegedly attacked again on 9 February.

According to Spigel Online’s sources, “more than 200 of the attackers died, including around 80 Syrian soldiers with the 4th Division, around 100 Iraqis and Afghans and around 70 tribal fighters, mostly with the al-Baqir militia.” Around 10-20 Russian mercenaries were killed as well, although Russian state media has confirmed only nine deaths.

This account of the fighting and casualty distribution is in stark contrast to the story being reported by Western media, which has alleged tens or hundreds of Russians killed:

[A] completely different version of events has gained traction — disseminated at first by Russian nationalists like Igor “Strelkov” Girkin, and then by others associated with the Wagner unit. According to those accounts, many more Russians had been killed in the battle — 100, 200, 300 or as many as 600. An entire unit, it was said, had been wiped out and the Kremlin wanted to cover it up. Recordings of alleged fighters even popped up apparently confirming these horrendous losses.

It was a version that sounded so plausible that even Western news agencies like Reuters and Bloomberg picked it up. The fact that the government in Moscow at first didn’t want to confirm any deaths and then spoke of five “Russian citizens” killed and later, nebulously, of “dozens of injured,” some of whom had died, only seemed to make the version of events seem more credible.

Spiegel Online implies that the motive behind the account being propagated by sources connected to the mercenaries stems from the “claim they are being used as cannon fodder, are being kept quiet and are poorly paid. For them to now accuse the Kremlin of trying to cover up the fact that Russians were killed — by the Americans, of all people — hits President Vladimir Putin’s government in a weak spot: its credibility.”

The Spiegel Online account and casualty tally — 250 Syrian/Shi’a killed out of approximately 900 engaged, with 10-20 Russian mercenaries killed by collateral fire — seems a good deal more plausible than the figures mentioned in the initial Western media reports.

TDI Friday Read: Links You May Have Missed, 02 March 2018

We are trying something new today, well, new for TDI anyway. This edition of TDI Friday Read will offer a selection of links to items we think may be of interest to our readers. We found them interesting but have not had the opportunity to offer observations or commentary about them. Hopefully you may find them useful or interesting as well.

The story of the U.S. attack on a force of Russian mercenaries and Syrian pro-regime troops near Deir Ezzor, Syria, last month continues to have legs.

And a couple stories related to naval warfare…

Finally, proving that there are, or soon will be, podcasts about everything, there is one about Napoleon Bonaparte and his era: The Age of Napoleon Podcast. We have yet to give it a listen, but if anyone else has, let us know what you think.

Have a great weekend.

Russian General Staff Chief Dishes On Military Operations In Syria

General of the Army Valeriy Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and First Deputy Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation [Wikipedia]

General of the Army Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia, provided detailed information on Russian military operations in Syria in an interview published in Komsomolskaya Pravda on the day after Christmas.

Maxim A. Suchkov, the Russian coverage editor for Al-Monitor, provided an English-language summary on Twitter.

While Gerasimov’s comments should be read critically, they do provide a fascinating insight into the Russian perspective on the intervention in Syria, which has proved remarkably successful with an economical investment in resources and money.

Gerasimov stated that planning for Russian military operations used Operation Anadyr, the secret deployment of troops and weapons to Cuba in 1962, as a template. A large-scale deployment of ground forces was ruled out at the start. The Syrian government army and militias were deemed combat-capable despite heavy combat losses, so the primary supporting tasks were identified as targeting and supporting fires to disrupt enemy “control systems.”

The clandestine transfer of up to 50 Russian combat aircraft to Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia, Syria, began a month before the beginning of operations in late-September 2015. Logistical and infrastructure preparations took much longer. The most difficult initial challenge, according to Gerasimov, was coordinating Russian air support with Syrian government ground forces, but it was resolved over time.

The Russians viewed Daesh (ISIS) forces battling the Syrian government as a regular army employing combat tactics, fielding about 1,500 tanks and 1,200 artillery pieces seized from Syria and Iraq.

While the U.S.-led coalition conducted 8-10 air strikes per day against Daesh in Syria, the Russians averaged 60-70, with a peak of 120-140. Gerasimov attributed the disparity to the fact that the coalition was seeking to topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime, not the defeat of Daesh. He said that while the Russians obtained cooperation with the U.S. over aerial deconfliction and “de-escalation” in southern Syria, offers for joint planning, surveillance, and strikes were turned down. Gerasimov asserted that Daesh would have been defeated faster had there been more collaboration.

More controversially, Gerasimov claimed that U.S.-supported New Syrian Army rebel forces at Al Tanf and Al-Shaddidi were “virtually” Daesh militants, seeking to destabilize Syria, and complained that the U.S. refused Russian access to the camp at Rukban.

According to Russian estimates, there were a total of 59,000 Daesh fighters in September 2015 and that 10,000 more were recruited. Now there are only 2,800 and most militants are returning to their home countries. Most are believed heading to Libya, some to Afghanistan, and others to Southwest Asia.

Gerasimov stated that Russia will continue to deploy sufficient forces in Syria to provide offensive support if needed and the Mediterranean naval presence will be maintained. The military situation remains unstable and the primary objective is the elimination of remaining al Nusra/Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (al Qaida in Syria) fighters.

48,000 Russian troops were rotated through Syria, most for three months, from nearly 90% of Russian Army divisions and half of the regiments and brigades. 200 new weapons were tested and “great leaps” were made in developing and using drone technology, which Gerasimov deemed now “integral” to the Russian military.

Gerasimov said that he briefed Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on Syria twice daily, and Shoigu updated Russian President Vladimir Putin “once or twice a week.” All three would “sometimes” meet to plan together and Gerasimov averred that “Putin sets [the] goals, tasks, [and] knows all the details on every level.