A conclusion that Fox alluded to in his article, but did not state explicitly, is that in a sense, the Russians “held back” in the design of their operations against the Ukrainians. It appears quite clear that the force multipliers derived from the battalion tactical groups, drone-enabled recon-strike model, and cyber and information operations capabilities generated more than enough combat power for the Russians to decisively defeat the Ukrainian Army in a larger “blitzkrieg”-style invasion and occupy most, if not all, of the country, if they had chosen to do so.
This clearly is not the desired political goal of the Russian government, however. Instead, the Russian General Staff carefully crafted a military strategy to fulfill more limited political goals, and creatively designed their operations to make full use of their tactical capabilities in support of that strategy.
This successful Clausewitizan calibration of policy, strategy, operations, and tactics by the Russians in Ukraine and Syria should give the U.S. real concern, since itself does not currently seem capable of a similar level of coordination or finesse. Now, the Russian achievements against the relatively hapless Ukrainians, or in Syria, where the ultimate outcome remains very much indeterminate, are no guarantee of future success against more capable and well-resourced opponents. However, it does demonstrate what can be achieved with a relatively weak strategic hand to play through a clear unity of political purpose and military means. This has not been the U.S.’s strong suit historically, and it is unclear at this juncture whether that will change under the incoming Trump administration.
Map depicting the encirclement and withdrawal of Ukrainian forces in the Debaltseve area, 14 January – 20 February 2015 [Map by Goran tek-en (Wikipedia)]
In Fox’s analysis, despite the decisive advantages afforded to the Russian Army and their Ukrainian Separatist proxies through “the employment of the semi-autonomous battalion tactical group, and a reconnaissance-strike model that tightly couples drones to strike assets, hastening the speed at which overwhelming firepower is available to support tactical commanders,” the actual operations executed by these forces should be characterized as classic sieges, as opposed to decisive operational maneuver.
Fox details three operations employing this approach – tactical combat overmatch enabling envelopment and the subsequent application of steady pressure – that produced military success leading directly to political results advantageous to the Russian government.
The Second Battle of Donetsk Airport from September 2014 to January 2015, which inflicted substantial casualties and equipment losses on the Ukrainian Army.
The Battle of Debal’tseve in January-February 2015, which inflicted further military and civilian losses on the Ukrainians and triggered the Minsk II agreement.
According to Fox, the military strategy of siege operations effectively enabled the limited political goals of the Russian government.
What explains Russia’s evident preference for the siege? Would it not make more sense to quickly annihilate the Ukrainians? Perhaps. However, the siege’s benefit is its ability to transfer military power into political progress, while obfuscating the associated costs. A rapid, violent, decisive victory in which hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers are killed in a matter of days is counterproductive to Russia’s political goals, whereas the incremental use of violence over time accomplishes the same objectives with less disturbance to the international community.
Fox believes that this same operational concept was applied by the Syrian Army and its Russian enablers to capture the city of Aleppo last month, albeit with somewhat different tactics, such as substituting airstrikes for long-range artillery and rockets.
He advises that the U.S. would be prudent to plan for and prepare to face the new Russian land warfare capabilities.
These new features of Russian warfare—and an understanding of them in the context of that warfare’s very conventional character—should inform US planning. The contemporary Russian army is combat-experienced in combined arms maneuver at all echelons of command, a skill that the US Army is still working to recover after well over a decade of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. This fact could prove troublesome if Russia elects to push further in Europe, infringing upon NATO partners, or if US and Russian interests continue to collide in areas like Syria. Preparing to combat Russian cyber threats or hybrid tactics is important. But the lesson from Ukraine is clear: It is equally vital to train and equip US forces to counter the type of conventional capabilities Russia has demonstrated in Ukraine.
Over, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Ian Williams, Kathleen Weinberger, and Colonel John O’Grady have assembled data on NATO and Russian anti-access/area denial (known as A2/AD, love it or hate it) capabilities, which has been turned into a fascinating interactive graphic. The capabilities depicted include “air defenses, counter-maritime forces, and theater offensive strike weapons, such as short- or medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and other precision guided munitions.”
Information on the map is divided into six categories:
Russia – Air Defense: Includes deployments of long-range Russian anti-air missile systems. Specific systems represented are the S-300 and S-400. Not included in map are Russia’s shorter ranged, highly mobile air defense assets, such as the Buk family of surface to air missile systems. These “shoot and scoot” launchers are embedded with Russian ground forces, and thus do not have fixed locations.
Russia – Land-based Strike: Includes deployments of short-range offensive ballistic missile systems, such as the SS-26 or Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, as well as deployments of Russian Oniks anti-ship missiles to Kaliningrad.
Russia – Naval strike: This category reflects the range (from notional locations) of Russia’s sea-based SS-N-30A Kalibr-type cruise missiles, and its SS-N-27 Sizzler anti-ship missiles.
NATO – Air Defense: Shows the estimated coverage areas and home-base disposition of NATO PATRIOT missile units, separately showing ballistic missile and air defense coverage areas. Although not reflected in this map, NATO is heavily reliant on fighter aircraft for air defense.
NATO – Naval Strike: Reflects the estimated range of U.S. Tomahawk Block IV (TLAM-E) sea-based cruise missiles.
NATO – Ports of Debarkation/Embarkations (PODs): These points show key logistical infrastructure, such as airports and seaports (APODs / SPODs), that could be used by NATO forces.
Figuring out how to fight effectively in this environment is what is keeping American and Western national security thinkers and planners up at night these days. The Third Offset Strategy was the first crack at doing so. Whether it will survive into the incoming Trump administration remains to be seen, though some signs indicate that it will. Stay tuned, folks.
Goofus and Gallant at Sea, or the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov (l) and the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning (r). [The Telegraph and China Stringer Network, via Reuters]
The Kuznetsov began military operations on 8 November, but just six days later one of it’s brand-new MiG-29KR multi-role fighters crashed. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated that the accident was the result of an unspecified fault in one of the Kuznetsov‘s four landing arrestor cables, but the Russian newspaper Gazeta claimed the aircraft crashed when it’s engines failed while waiting to land. IHS Jane’s has speculated that the aircraft likely ran out of fuel. The MoD called attention to airstrikes launched from the Kuznetsov against Syrian targets the next day, 15 November. MoD video showed Su-33 fighter-bombers loaded with unguided bombs but no MiG-29KR’s, leading some to conclude that the latter had been grounded due to the crash.
Satellite photographs subsequently taken on 20 November of Humaymim Air Base in Syria’s Latakia province showed eight Russian Navy Su-33 and one MiG-29KR jets alongside Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) aircraft, suggesting that the Kuznetsov‘s air wing had been temporarily transferred to land to continue flight operations.
On 5 December, the MoD announced that “while landing after completing a combat task over Syria, an Su-33 fighter jet skidded off the [Kuznetsov‘s] deck because the arresting cable gear broke.” The announcement did not specify a date for the crash, but it was believed to have occurred on 3 December, less than three weeks after the first incident.
Last week, Russia announced that it would begin withdrawing its combat forces in Syria, beginning with the Kuznetsov task force. The Russian military commander in Syria, Colonel General Andrei Kartapolov, asserted that in two months, the Kuznetsov had launched 420 air combat sorties against 1,252 “terrorist targets.” No announcement has yet been made for when the long return voyage to the Kuznetsov‘s Barents Sea home port of Severomorsk, Russia, will begin, nor whether any country along the route will allow the flotilla to refuel.
Meanwhile, in early January 2017, the Chinese Defense Ministry announced that it’s only (current) aircraft carrier, the Liaoning(the Kuznetsov‘s sister ship, néeRiga, thenVaryag) and five escorts would conduct a “‘cross-sea area’ training exercise, involved J-15 fighter jets, as well as several ship-borne helicopters” in the South China Sea. The Chinese then proceeded to rattle cages in the region by unexpectedly sailing the Liaoning carrier group through the volatile Taiwan Straits yesterday, prompting Taiwan to scramble F-16 fighters and to divert a frigate in response. Just two days earlier, Japan and South Korea had launched fighter jets in response to an incursion by Chinese aircraft into the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan. This follows the seizure of a U.S. Navy underwater drone by a Chinese warship off the coast of the Philippines last month.
While the actual military capabilities of the Kuznetsov and Liaoning may be modest in comparison with U.S. aircraft carriers, the political and military reactions they have elicited indicate the value of sea-going air power. The diplomatic utility of power projection should not be underestimated. Imagine the results if the Russians or Chinese possessed aircraft carriers comparable to the U.S.S. Nimitz, which conducted its own politically-charged transit of the Taiwan Strait in 1996.
Reports of the collapse of resistance by forces fighting the regime of Bashar Al Assad in Aleppo, Syria have overshadowed news of the recent recapture of Palmyra by Daesh fighters. While the conquest of Aleppo is a significant victory for Assad, the loss of Plamyra – which had been recaptured by the Syrian Army earlier in the year – clearly indicates that success will not be decisive in bringing the five-year old civil war to an end.
Reliable estimates of force strengths for the various factions are hard to come by, and figures for the Syrian Army are particularly variable. The Syrian Kurds are currently aligned against Daesh and Jubhat Fateh al-Sham (the current name for al Qaeda fighters in Syria). They seek independence from the Assad regime but are not fighting against it at this time.
Even the most optimistic estimates based on back-of-the-envelope counts of the raw numbers do not credit the Assad regime and its patrons with enough of a force ratio advantage to overwhelm their opponents in the sort-term. If the pessimistic estimates are more accurate, despite local successes, the Syrian government may struggle simply to maintain the status quo.
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to intensify U.S. efforts effort to defeat Daesh and to work with Russia to that end. Analysts believe, however, that Russia supports Assad’s calculated strategy to defeat Syrian Sunni rebels first to eliminate the political threat they pose to his regime, before seeking to defeat Daesh and al Qaeda. Precisely what the incoming Trump administration will do differently than currently and the extent of actual military cooperation with Assad and Russia remains to be seen.
Special Forces (spetsnaz) personnel of the Russian Federation federal agencies receiving awards from Russian President Vladimir Putin during an official reception.
On Russian foreign and military affairs, I have a lot of time for British academic Mark Galeotti. I recommend his work to anyone interested in these topics. An expert on Russian history and government, he is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of International Affairs Prague, and Principal Director of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence.
In a piece at War on the Rocks, Galeotti acknowledges the traditionally cited sources for Russia’s so-called “hybrid war” approach: its relative post-Soviet economic weakness and a military/political inheritance from the Soviet and Tsarist eras. However, he argues that the Putin government’s approach to foreign and military policy is a reflection of the hybrid nature of the current Russian state:
Today, Russia is a patrimonial, hyper-presidential regime, one characterized by the permeability of boundaries between public and private, domestic and external. As oligarch-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky put it:
[W]hat distinguishes the current Russian government from the erstwhile Soviet leaders familiar to the West is its rejection of ideological constraints and the complete elimination of institutions.
Lacking meaningful rule of law or checks and balances, without drawing too heavy-handed a comparison with fascism, Putin’s Russia seems to embody, in its own chaotic and informal way, Mussolini’s dictum “tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” — “everything inside the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” Parenthetically, Mussolini sent what could be called “little blackshirt men” to Spain in the 1930s to fight on Franco’s side during the civil war. All notionally opted to do so of their own volition (as the Voluntary Troops Corps) and initially without insignia.
In Russia, state institutions are often regarded as personal fiefdoms and piggy banks, officials and even officers freely engage in commercial activity, and the Russian Orthodox Church is practically an arm of the Kremlin. Given all that, the infusion of non-military instruments into military affairs was almost inevitable. Beyond that, though, Putin’s Russia has been characterized — in the past, at least — by multiple, overlapping agencies, a “bureaucratic pluralism” intended as much to permit the Kremlin to divide and rule as for any practical advantages.
Galeotti asserts that the Putin regime believes itself in a “geopolitical, even civilizational struggle” with the West, and its approach to the conflict mirrors the way the regime operates, with “blurring of the borders between state, paramilitary, mercenary, and dupe.”
Fox assesses current Russia Army tactical and operational capabilities as quite capable.
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. These methods stand in stark contrast to the old Soviet doctrine of methodical, timetable-and echelon-driven employment of ground forces that sought to outmass the opposing army. Current Russian land-warfare tactics are something which most armies, including the U.S. Army, are largely unprepared to address.
Conversely, after achieving limited objectives, Russia quickly transitions to the defense using ground forces, drones and air-defense capabilities to build a tough, integrated position from which extrication would be difficult, to be sure. Russia’s defensive operations do not serve as a simple shield, but rather, as a shield capable of also delivering well-directed, concentrated punches on the opposition army. Russia’s paradoxical use of offensive operations to set up the defense might indicate an ascendency of the defense as the preferred method of war in forthcoming conflicts.
These capabilities will pose enormous challenges to U.S. and allied forces in any potential land combat scenario.
Russia’s focus on limited objectives, often in close proximity to its own border, indicates that U.S. Army combined-arms battalions and cavalry squadrons will likely find themselves on the wrong end of the “quality of firsts” (Figure 4). The U.S. Army’s physical distance from those likely battlefields sets the Army at a great disadvantage because it will have to hastily deploy forces to the region, meaning the Army will arrive late; the arrival will also be known (location, time and force composition). The Army will have great difficulty seizing the initiative due to its arrival and movement being known, which weakens the Army’s ability to fight and win decisively. This dynamic provides time, space and understanding for the enemy to further prepare for combat operations and strengthen its integrated defensive positions. Therefore, U.S. Army combined-arms battalions and cavalry squadrons must be prepared to fight through a rugged enemy defense while maintaining the capability for continued offensive operations.
This will mark the carrier’s first combat mission, although it has been deployed to the Mediterranean Sea four times previously, in 1995, 2007, 2012, and 2014. The U.S. Sixth Fleet monitored the Kuznetsov‘s 2012 voyage closely, out of concerns that the aged and problematic vessel might suffer mechanical troubles sufficient to cause it to sink, requiring a complex rescue operation. Such concerns were validated when the Kuznetsov‘s boilers “blew out” off the coast of France on it’s return voyage, and the ship had to be taken under tow by an accompanying Russian ocean-going tug.
The present squadron also includes a tug, a practice that appears to have become standard Russian Navy procedure in recent years.
Image by Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
In several recent posts, I have alluded to something called the Third Offset Strategy without going into any detail as to what it is. Fortunately for us all, Timothy A. Walton, a Fellow in the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, wrote an excellent summary and primer on what it as all about in the current edition of Joint Forces Quarterly.
The Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG) articulated 10 missions the [U.S.] joint force must accomplish in the future. These missions include the ability to:
– deter and defeat aggression
– project power despite antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) challenges
– operate effectively in cyberspace and space.
The follow-on 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review confirmed the importance of these missions and called for the joint force to “project power and win decisively” in spite of “increasingly sophisticated adversaries who could employ advanced warfighting capabilities.”
In these documents, U.S. policy-makers identified that the primary strategic challenge to securing the goals is that “capable adversaries are adopting potent A2/AD strategies that are challenging U.S. ability to ensure operational access.” These adversaries include China, Russia, and Iran.
The Third Offset Strategy was devised to address this primary strategic challenge.
In November 2014, then–Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced a new Defense Innovation Initiative, which included the Third Offset Strategy. The initiative seeks to maintain U.S. military superiority over capable adversaries through the development of novel capabilities and concepts. Secretary Hagel modeled his approach on the First Offset Strategy of the 1950s, in which President Dwight D. Eisenhower countered the Soviet Union’s conventional numerical superiority through the buildup of America’s nuclear deterrent, and on the Second Offset Strategy of the 1970s, in which Secretary of Defense Harold Brown shepherded the development of precision-guided munitions, stealth, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems to counter the numerical superiority and improving technical capability of Warsaw Pact forces along the Central Front in Europe.
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has built on Hagel’s vision of the Third Offset Strategy, and the proposed fiscal year 2017 budget is the first major public manifestation of the strategy: approximately $3.6 billion in research and development funding dedicated to Third Offset Strategy pursuits. As explained by Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, the budget seeks to conduct numerous small bets on advanced capability research and demonstrations, and to work with Congress and the Services to craft new operational concepts so that the next administration can determine “what are the key bets we’re going to make.”
As Walton puts it, “the next Secretary of Defense will have the opportunity to make those big bets.” The keys to making the correct bets will be selecting the most appropriate scenarios to plan around, accurately assessing the performance of the U.S. joint force that will be programmed and budgeted for, and identifying the right priorities for new investment.
It is in this context that Walton recommended reviving campaign-level combat modeling at the Defense Department level, as part an overall reform of analytical processes informing force planning decisions.
Walton concludes by identifying the major obstacles in carrying out the Third Offset Strategy, some of which will be institutional and political in nature. However, he quickly passes over what might perhaps be the biggest problem with the Third Offset strategy, which is that it might be based on the wrong premises.
Lastly, the next Secretary of Defense will face numerous other, important defense challenges that will threaten to engross his or her attention, ranging from leading U.S. forces in Afghanistan, to countering Chinese, Russian, and Islamic State aggression, to reforming Goldwater-Nichols, military compensation, and base structure.
The ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq show no sign of abating anytime soon, yet they constitute “lesser includeds” in the Third Offset Strategy. Are we sure enough to bet that the A2/AD threat is the most important strategic challenge the U.S. will face in the near future?
Walton’s piece is worth reading and thinking about.
The Russian General Staff is not only repositioning these units back where they were before 2009, it’s also rebuilding a capable combat grouping on Crimea — albeit one that’s largely defensive in nature… It also secures the Russian vision for how this conflict ends: In a hypothetical future where the Minsk agreement is actually implemented, Russian forces may withdraw from the separatist enclaves in the Donbass. If the deal fails to hold or Kiev reneges on the terms, Russian divisions ringing the country from its north to very southeast (not including Crimea) would be poised to counter any Ukrainian moves by striking from several directions.
Kofman also sees this strategy as seeking to maintain Russia’s political dominance over Ukraine in the longer term.
The string of divisions, airbases, and brigades will be able to effect conventional deterrence or compellence for years to come… Russia will retain escalation dominance over Ukraine for the foreseeable future. By the end of 2017, its forces will be better positioned to conduct an incursion or threaten regime change in Kiev than they ever were in 2014.
Kofman recommends that the U.S. and its allies carefully think through the implications of this strategy. He believes it will take Ukraine five to 10 years to rebuild an effective military, but even if successful, the future correlation of forces and the aggressive positioning of Russian forces could make the situation more unstable rather than less so.
U.S. policymakers should think about the medium to long term — a timeline that is admittedly not our strong suit. If this conflict is not placed on stable footing by the time both countries feel themselves capable of engaging in a larger fight, it may well result in a conventional war that would dwarf the small set-piece battles we’ve seen so far. Beyond imposing a ceasefire on the current fighting, the West should think about what a rematch might look like several years from now.
U.S. Army Major Amos Fox, currently a student at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, has produced 
