Russian Doctrines and Way of War

Russia’s Doctrine and Way of War

It is important to understand how devastating the Russian way of war would be for the Ukrainian population and for that matter the world.?

Militarily, Russia has been tuning up its military for large scale mobilization and combat since the 2008 invasion of Georgia. Snap exercises have become routine. The dismal performance of the Russian military force of 45,000 in Georgia 2008 set Russia on a massive, sustained rebuilding path. Georgia special forces even managed to ambush and kill the Russian General leading the attack. This first time since WWII a Russian General was killed in combat.

Improvements in military readiness, communications, command and control, and the quality of its equipment has been extensive. It’s investments in electronic warfare to erode NATO’s net-centric capabilities was alarming.?Much equipment investments and doctrine have focused on new communication and data delivery to direct combined arms tactical groups consisting of one or two battalions. Military modernization efforts have improved intelligence, command and control, and fire capabilities of the reconnaissance strike complex matched with powerful and comprehensive Electronic Warfare (EW) capabilities.?

The readiness of Russian military has improved significantly since 2008. Military deployments in Syria, the Crimea seizure, and the fighting in the Donbas has seasoned approximately 90 percent of the Russian military with real world combat experience.?

Russia’s new training and doctrine match overwhelming military force with better communications, extensive electronic warfare, and a premium on rapid maneuver operations that have been on full display during extensive exercises on land, sea, and air – including the ZAPAD national mobilizations across the entire Russian territory. The results have been a renewed level of confidence and a more lethal capability that challenged NATO’s and mimicked the net-centric warfare of the US military.

This past year, the Russian Navy and Marines conducted large exercises in the Black Sea area closing off extensive sections for live fire operations.??In late 2021, the Russian Army deployed an intimidating force of 100,000+ troops along the Ukraine-Russia border, including Belarus.??These exercises and previous massing of troops along the Ukrainian border, test Western resolve and gage responses using military deployments as part of an information warfare plan, analyzing, testing Ukrainian military responses, and factoring Western resolve and diplomatic response. It uses threats very effectively in subjecting its enemies to unrelenting psychological warfare to degrade their will to fight. This especially targets the NATO alliance and its political leadership.

The Russian way of war employs a whole of government approach from influence operations, including deception, disinformation, psychological operations, and subversion.??Russian military uses?maskirovka?– military deception – on the opposing military observers and analysts, as well as in Russia itself and, importantly, extending to the Western audience and alliance structures.

With all this preparation, Putin dropped the diplomatic and propaganda hammer. A series of outlandish and unreasonable demands were presented the US and NATO, including reference to non-existent military threats and grievances, and the right of Russia to dictate who can or not become a member of NATO. In short Russia demanded its own sphere of influence and most recently in his hour-long address has denied the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state with spurious historical arguments and in announcing the decision to further invade to save the population from humiliation and genocide.??He also announced his intention to rid Ukraine of Nazism, a curious description from the man who invaded Ukraine.

Understanding the Techniques of Russia’s Way of War

The best way to understand the Russian Army is an artillery army with significant amounts of tanks and armored vehicles. Russian doctrine uses massive artillery, rocket fire and aircraft bombardment for “shock and awe” and overwhelming force against its enemy.??It will focus a blistering attack on critical infrastructure, command centers, political leadership, military units, and military concentrations.??

Building on traditional Soviet military doctrine, Russia has developed twin concepts for the identification and destruction of high-value targets in near-real time. This utilizes multiple variations of these twin military doctrines. This includes the Russian doctrine of radio-electronic-strikes (REU), and radio-electronic-fire strikes (REOU), information-strike and -fire operations (IUO) for strike operations, and reconnaissance-strike?and -fire complexes (RUK and ROK).?

Prior to unleashing the Russian military’s concentrated fire power will be cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure and a disinformation campaign to justify and confuse the international community and domestic audiences inside Ukraine and Russia. These cyber operation attacks (RCW) are part of the Russian information-strikes to cripple the opponent’s ability to resist the impending ground force attacks.

Later after this blistering artillery and rocket fire has subsided, further capabilities will be employed to conduct tactical strike maneuvers combined with Russian ground forces as they advance in coordinated fashion. The Russian Military uses artillery strikes as a tactical maneuver element for defined missions. The Reconnaissance Fire Complex (ROK) is the tactical equivalent.??The ROK connects intelligence data, precise targeting to a fire-direction center where tactical artillery can destroy high-value targets in near-real time as mechanized ground troops advance.?

The information-strike operation (IUO) is the totality of information strike engagements coordinated by missions, synchronized by time, and place. The aim is to disorganize an adversary’s troops and weapons command and control system by destroying his ability to use information and intelligence in combat.?

This is the Russian wholistic understanding of Information Warfare.??The goal of systematic information warfare is to gain information supremacy in both hard and soft versions including: political, messaging, propaganda, psychological, and other non-military measures, as well destroying the ability of the opponent to organize his military resistance by decapitating his information, communications, and command-and-control abilities.??

This doctrine of information dominance is the foundation of all Russian military strategy.

Today, Feb. 23-24, 2022, Ukraine is experiencing the initial phase of a major invasion to capture Kiev and beyond.