Russia’s Ground Forces: Organization, Armament, Prospects

the Center for Strategic and Internet um thanks for joining us on this foggy Monday to talk about Russia's ground forces we're really pleased to have Nick say Tom here to introduce this discussion Alexei is a highly experienced military journalist as well as a former member of the of the Russian armed forces he is now editor of military affairs at izvestia as discussant we have Michael Kaufman from the center for naval analyses before we get started just very and I'm of course or Golic er I direct the Russia Eurasia program here at CSIS and I will be moderating this discussion if in case I'm also the person who in case of any emergency will tell you what to do though you could probably see the exit signs and if we do have to evacuate the building the assembly point is out the door to the left and to the left in front of National Geographic that could happen almost certainly I am going to turn the floor over to Alexei so that we can get started and I'm looking forward to a very interesting conversation please silence your cellphone's solution so if you're if you don't speak Russian make sure you've got a headset [Music] it is my pleasure to speak into the in front of this audience on such a difficult topic and that's why I will speak in Russian today's topic is Russia's ground forces organization armament and perspectives you can see it on this slide let's start the Russian ground forces are undergoing very complicated reform reform is rather global which was the goal of which is to create new structures that would be able effectively deal with missions considering techno new technologies modern ACMs and specifically a new control systems and guidance system we are planning that the reform would be completed or at least we will get to the finish line is 2021 we should understand that the rush has grown four forces have specific special status within their Armed Forces if we look at the names for example regiments Brigade divisions they are always called combined arms army which means that during combat missions they there are several representatives of various types of arms forces participating in it because not only ground forces infantry or signals and chemical tanks reconnaissance intelligence and other units participating in it in addition to that russia's ground forces have very interesting neurons this is the only unit part that has its headquarters I mean if we are talking about other types of firms they have their staff we have hard waters and the headquarters of the ground forces is responsible for all other types of armed forces even air and Navy and others should coordinate their programs with ground forces let's move to the next slide please here we can see two main structures of the future ground forces here these two terms are the main for the new reform the task of new reform is to create integrated forces that would be able to deal with any missions for ground forces independently first combined task forces combined means and it explains what it is that means that they have units of all types of Armed Forces of there are we have the army the Navy and Air Force the next one is mixed task forces mixed mixed means that it includes units and parts structures of various types it could it could be infantry artillery engineering companies and units etc right now combined task force is the military districts that were just recently created in Russia they were created long time ago but as a result of the reform they were modified and now they are going through another reform that was not actually discussed a lot but changed their mission and structure if we look at our Military District the commander of this unit of this district has is in charge of oh everything in that area if earlier we had the main staff for infantry or for Air Force then they still were able to control their own units but right now they they the only head and commander is the ground force staff if we are talking about combine tests we have various groups their various units if we it is rather simple the mixed task force is as a general Armed Forces general so that's the break around which we create combined task forces the army is has the task for the theater and this is the actually brick that deals with all the missions there other representatives of combined task force will support that mission for example defense in some area so the the this combined task force will be in charge of the mission the rest of units Aaron Navy etc they will support this task force so this the commander of for example infinite ground ground forces are is in charge and is above his visa fees or his colleagues from other units now we started to talk about the next the specifics of today's reform is to create self-sufficient and integrated armed ground forces the main specifics of ground forces today is that their combined arms army integrates everything and they are able to fire in real-time identified targets and hit the targets so up to 500 kilometers in real time they can identify plan fire destroy conduct reconnaissance of the next target and everything is done in real time before that there was some planning before that there were some difficulties in mission identification for various units right now everything is smooth so actually everything is done like in computer game in real time how is it done the main one unfortunately at the part of it is not seen is the Strelitz system for communication and intelligence right now this is a special special complex that allows the commanders to identify targets and the information to staff and also get in important information for implementing the mission for example the staff can say that the intelligence said that there is for example it's a regiment that there was some kind of enemy and they are able to react to it at the same time the company commander can identify the armed armed ammunition and then provide that information for the above command so this system was created for a very long time it took a while but right now the system is already implemented and it is already included not only in mixed text forces but also in combined arms armies so recently we had exercises - they were training for targeting some targets from the sea on the ground and also by caliber rockets missiles and this system Alive's allows to identify coordinates sent that coordinate and provide all the information necessary for targeting for for firing the target so use automated Russian automated system that is c4i similar to c4 I system which was very difficult to implement because a lot of work was done there were some complications technical complications software and all ideological issues how to integrate at what time who which commander will have better access to this command control system computers and intelligence system so right now this that works this includes crews Strelitz so that we see about and thanks to this the commanders have access to the system that I'm talking about technically the combat mission is done is real-time the commander can see where which Union is located where is the enemy enemy how they can go around him how to target the enemy the next element was very important and I understand that that might be surprising but it's a UAVs where the Russian Federation I understand that somebody is sceptical about it because they say that Russia does not have UAVs but they wouldn't the concept of mission and ground forces creation the UAV fleet that we have it meets completely all the needs of all our missions it works within the system that we are developing right now by the military command of the Russian Federation and the net next a high precision high precision munitions for rifle and react and jet artillery as we see that right now we have the artillery system but some systems were lost and till to lip PP&E and other systems it looked like they were not needed and not in demand but right now when we are talking about control the shells they are integrated very well in the system of range of fire and they are very effective and compatible with UAVs effective with the gross rillettes and also can be controlled through usage SC and thanks to this the commanders are able to get targets Andry and fire targets without using aviation air force and at the same time within very short period of time the system is very simple right now for example the position is either a fortified position is identified for example the commander identified this position of the enemy and probably some 45 units and maybe it could be the same company so the commander of our company provides target using crew Strelitz and will identify the mission and this mission will be sent through the mission and maybe there is some need for UAVs or maybe they will be already there and after that the tool part to lib for example this system will get the coordinates and hit the target so this system will work and provide all Corrections if needed to get the to hit the to provide precision of the hit of the attack so it might take less than a minute all of this might take less than a minute let's look at how many of combined-arms army are within armed with it ground forces one thing is very important which I missed at the beginning the reform that we are talking about right now the draft of it were or actually is formulation was created during the time of marshal a guard of who was the chairman of General Staff who requested at the time in use of UAVs at that time the first tactical request for automated system automated command control and communication system and the system this relates were created for that although it took some time because of the breakup of the Soviet Union economic difficulties icon said Yukos initiatives that actually delayed the development of ground forces and in the 60s the concept was developed but required some additional work right now that work is done and we are technically at the homestretch for the creating of ground forces that are able to implement any combat mission that the Russian Federation at the time the Soviet Union were planning so here is just a referral informations information so you know about their armies that we have each of such combined arms army can work not only can can actually act within their other Armed Forces or independently that would be able to create its own mixed Task Force using the representatives of various units and other and other combined arms armies the good example is this operation in Syria when it's understandable that the Central Command was created from various combined arms armies and we're able to continue the operations and their work therefore here I would like to note the following they exercise in this area and creation based on the army this kind of combined arms I mean they are going on all the time the staff of combined arms army can get divisions of brigade under at them and they were learned how to work together and communicate cooperate which is necessary for commanders on ground for battalion brigade division commanders to learn how to get interoperable entered our interoperability with other armies with our units so before this it was very hard to create the command post but some organizational logistical mental issues were in place there was some tension at some point so they needed to get some joint protocol get some understanding we can remember the war in gorge country of Georgia in Chechnya but right now we were able to overcome these difficulties if not at least in the process of overcoming them the commanders are taught that they are not permanently stationed they can move for example the one of the for example one of the regiment could be moved to another unit so this is something that I already described earlier at during the previous SAS site so this is our command control and communication system cruise control and they do not need to work with a lot of papers documents so the regimen comes gets the information transfers relays the information so that's we have to pay attention to the by Kalia and far east as you can see the most serious group is there meaning combined-arms or me this is not because of some political issues but in the Russian Federation this is traditional that the Far East area would have parallel arms forces that's due to difficulties with transportation from central Russia to Far East and that's why we needed to create large units there or large groups that can be self-sufficient because we are not always able to dislocate something from central Russia to that area because of the distance and that's why we have representatives for forum is here the strongest one is first guard tank army and in Northern Caucasus so I will not talk about all of them in details but one of the armies has only one motorized Rifle Brigade having this brigade the we will discuss that here later what is included in it this is one of the combined arms army it has one motorized rifle brigade and that's why it all depends where it is and the mission of the group meaning of the mixed task forces and a combined arms army so this is rather pilot program in the 58th combined arms army is the one that we everything tests on and we are allowed we are able to do some experiments the most trained and well trained personnel is there and we are able effectively to assess how the new structure or new system is working or is not working whether it's working or not working so what is the combined arms army or mixed task force as said each of the armies has the army set this is using computers like this is they actually the board that includes all division combined division brigades regimens something that allows the army to be effective in its missions what is included in this combined arms Army artillery brigade first as you see it has very good fire equipment MSD SMS TAS later it will be replaced by coalition but that one is still in experimental stage that's why it's not implemented here so we cannot take say that this is artillery system that's why I included it in brackets but after the after while MST a s will be at a lower level that will be on the next slide there are also rocket Brigade oricon one the pictures are already on the internet although some information is still not public but this system would allow to actually fire by not only regular multiple rocket launcher system but other systems so right the day brigades army brigades added some till pan to s4 and beyond to as seven I am NOT I do not have all of the information the information is still confidential but how the exercises are done and what is open for 207 to as for use a very high precision fire so their artillery is learning how to use regular shells to actually improve their or keep the same level at the professional level but we are using high precision systems there the next is very important is the rocket brigade which includes is come their M so actually a requirement of all brigades by Iskandar is this is at the completion stage tochka-u the old system in 2021 will be actually not sent to somewhere but maybe just stored somewhere and destroyed maybe at some later time is can there as we know can target they can hit the target and when the information is received and they have self controlled warheads that it goes optical and other system and Iskandar has cruise missiles are 500 the anti-aircraft Brigade book M 3 is the newest system so we are replacing old system book m2 is still in place will not be remote not destroyed or soul it will be at a lower level than bootcamp 3 because initially bootcamp two was actually removed but recent work showed that book can be rehired repaired and overhauled this system can live for a long long time after certain work that's why the decision was made to put it on a lower level and we'll talk about it somewhat later what is in you and what we can see here and something that we didn't have in combined arms army artillery brigade rocket Brigade anti-aircraft Brigade they were always part of army as in the Soviet Union done but here we have reconnaissance Brigade reconnaissance Brigade is a very interesting experiment something that technically became a formation and this will be part of all combined arms armies what is interesting and important here we can see here the development of military thoughts initially when these brigades were created it was something similar to your regiment tanks artillery Special Forces and also airborne forces and also some UAVs and also yes ECM system so that's what something similar to armored tank units of the United States and those who that was stationed in Europe but this instrument is not balanced it's hard to manage and therefore in within the current concept of the development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is not needed and therefore there were several works done and we found the place for it is historically these brigades we wanted to dismiss actually close them and dissolve them initially so this brigade was in the situation and that was the idea of Serdyukov and mcaro to create actually this unit instead of dismantling in and the work was done and what is it is included in reconnaissance brigade UAVs and also the battalion of actually as you battalion and this reconnaissance battalions and brigades are two for reconnaissance and intelligence that's when that's what was important for any intelligence that is identified and hit the target if we are talking about special force companies those are raids or assaults or something like that while the reconnaissance Brigade are equipped by modern vehicles at the time typhoon K tiger that's because the intelligence reconnaissance is of course we can do it while walking but they are you they're going to use vehicles they would read and we had experimental exercises or using these systems and these are not like during World War two when the visions and France units were standing shoulder-to-shoulder now they are more spread and not as close to each other and therefore we can use these vehicles and the Brigade formally is called communication right now it's signal brigade but we call it actually the command system because this is the heart that launches the systems for a command system so this is the element that creates the rest of the elements of this system right now the information is not open about these brigades there I can just tell you that it will be upgraded and modernized in the nearest future but I didn't put anything here but the main special complex is used for this brigade that creates networks and channels for space signals these are the systems that were we saw in the 80s and 90s we don't have those these are very new signals and communication systems the second level of combined-arms army is chemical and engineering army before there today we're counting on global combat missions using chemical weapons nuclear weapons because they needed to process a lot of technologies personnel in landscape right now the chemical Brigade is simplified and there and one of the important age is the heavy dose system cos company those companies who were not early included in this they are were used during the second chechen war sometimes they were used during access and the Ministry of Defense didn't know what to do with these units whether they need the tosses or not yes right now whether they need have a rocket the engineering company was also included for heavy artillery shelling when their everything was destroyed their bridges their roads and after that the roads and the bridges and everything we needed to restore the this the assault engineering companies appeared within these units and we saw that there also the presence of ground UAV is those rope robots are part of assault engineering company and the ECM battalion right now the ECM units are very different difficult position they right now we are buying a new ISM ECM systems but recently there were some changes replacing them we have even newer Siam's and that's why there are some nuances in that part each combined arms army will include Brigade motorized Rifle Brigade Brigade not division which will be a reserve for the commanders of combined arms army which allows to conduct long rates or be an element that would prevent the enemies from from moving forward let's look at the motorized Rifle Division something we were talking just recently three motorized rifle regiments and here you have artillery regiment anti-aircraft regiment intact regiment the structure is standard what is interesting that at the level of company they have UAV company UAV reconnaissance units what is interesting here they include some self-propelled 219 units are s after they react waived their artillery brigades will include two s nineteen battery and there will be also a battery of four counterbattery fights also we have anti-aircraft tours here if tours so we're only privileged for division for anti-aircraft divisions right now their regiment and the re equate with book M two tours are going lower than that and their regiment will include you principally new ground force actually anti-aircraft systems and will include UAVs visually nobody saw it they are just still tested but these are principally new systems that's all we know about which was recently by accident mentioned by the head by the chairman of the our ground forces tachyon or LAN and others are the basic for it each division will include the ECM companies and the they will include new Crittenton system and carnet deem let's go on the Armed Forces have one tank division only one and it looks like a smaller version motorized rifle regiment two tank regiments that's all at the same time the Armed Forces will include something that was very interesting is that the future division to make Americanized rifle regiments and two tank regiments and probably that will be tank division in the future so to make mechanized rifle and two tank regiments why the the the decision was made to move back to division we had battalions before that they have a tactic battalion the protected group battalions that was actually in charge of the mission that was actually done after chechnya at that time we were not equipped and they actually there the regiment was not completed and therefore they needed some support from others and right now the regiment is this self-sufficient unit that can actually fight on its own so we are going to regiment groups that can dealing with all the missions in defender please we have mechanized rifle regiment and tank regiment there will be a module tactic group out of this and would be able to deal with other missions more difficult vision and we have two future division the battalion has 51 tanks that is half of tank regiment this will be just a few minutes how the concept of of a firepower looks like thanks to the implementation and use the 90 and t-80 BVM that will be the basic for the our armed forces and their armament system is identical they have same capacity thanks to automated system of target guidance and they are equipped of heat vision I give you two more minutes serious no more than two minutes and then you sit down I will not need more than two minutes this allows us to use this equipment to hit the target at the range of five kilometers so what they are going to do we don't know exactly maybe this will be some kind of reserved for anti-tank reserved or they will support some units if there are urban battles of fights this is how it looks how the firepower looks here 500 kilometers and they can hit and completely destroy the targets here anti-aircraft or these are again including mix test for book m3 allows the range of 70 kilometers prerogative of commander than their world be booked in divisions and tours were there and of course we did not show on this slide anti-aircraft rocket and systems so again all of this this can actually complete the mission without aviation thanks to high precision assault thank you I'm sorry for talking this long I am done with the presentation thank you very much I think I think we all have learned a great deal in this a bit enough fire hose we could have split me such about maybe four or five different presentations and have easily filled full sessions with that so I give Mike the somewhat unenviable job of responding to as much or as little bit you would like though very in mind that we do want to give the audience a chance to also a game yeah I'm somewhat disadvantaged of course because I say a next a lot of my time but I will do my best to offer some summate of comments that I hope will be complementary to was pretty comprehensive and detailed presentation and I guess my goal was a discussant would be to me please just some of us into context right which is I think they focused on kind of command and control and organization and the inner workings of the force structure of divisions brigades combined arms armies I'll talk a little bit about kind of for structure posture and what it's all about from my perspective it struck me really that in the early period of military reforms and modernization Russia fundamentally was not looking at problem set as a Eurasian land power and was procuring a lot of things for aerospace defense tactical aviation strategic nuclear forces the Navy saw and so on and through the period early period of military reforms the ground forces were actually gutted and was the airborne that was left as the fact of the emergency force for the Russian military in event of any high end contingency on russia's borders during this process Spetsnaz were also constantly moved and reformed and they too were gutted and lost a lot of manpower so there's a great deal of chaos but the early focus of these reforms 2008 to 2012 and modernization program the initial one that was launched in 2011 really focused on non-contact warfare and that's still a very strong strain in the way the Russian military thinks about how it's going to fight however when the thank you however when the conflict began with Ukraine does its Russian first seizure of Crimea and then the conflict in eastern Ukraine contact warfare and the ground client fight came back in the very big way Russian forces were actually quite unprepared for it both in terms of structure in terms of posture there were no heavy Russian ground units positioned on Ukrainian borders in terms of organization of the force and and experience and commanding it whether you think of whether you were talking about the combined task force of the mixed task force a lot experimentation took place so my general sense of what we've been seeing since 2014 is there are some reorganization and reorientation around contact warfare again and around they need to have a much larger ground force that is mobile able to solve its first challenge which is getting out of Russia to the point of conflict on Russia's borders and effective and imposing its will and on any neighbors adversaries so um the overall conclusion I have is that this this design to recreate divisions back from brigades has created a pretty substantial sucking sound on both men and materiel in Russia and it's created this push-pull where one percentage of the force is trying to dramatically increase its capacity for standoff warfare long-range precision guided munitions aerospace forces and what you may consider to be six generation warfare the way the United States tries to fight naturally adapted for the Russian forces and then that's other part of it isn't expanding much larger ground force that are still reforming reorganizing that requires a lot of Tanks a lot of infantry fighting vehicles a whole ton of artillery and when we always look at the Russian military at the heart of it we'll find the ground force and if we pull pull dunya in the part a little deeper at the heart the ground force will of course find lots of heavy artillery right both self-propelled towed and mrs so if we look at the creation of divisions first driver of russian changes in posture was the prospect of a much larger war with Ukraine right and that led us to immediately to the creation of three divisions on Ukraine's borders the third 140 4th and the 50th the expansion of what were only a few maneuver regiments in the 2nd and 4th division 1st tank army now they're getting fully filled out as real divisions with they're gonna have both gonna have six regiments each the creation of the 8th combined arms are I mean southern Military District which had that Universal 150th division that they say talked about sort of the heavy metal division as it's called and that division is pretty well well geared in terms of equipment and will likely be the Rapid Response intervention force in the event that Ukraine ever tries to retake the don't boss potentially so that said when we look at the kind of the key bilities of the ground force I think beyond the ground forces specifically as themselves there are other notable trance right creating divisions side which is that Russian airborne is getting tanks and Russian naval infantry is getting things back again and tanks don't fly so what you're actually seeing is that other aspects of our military are getting a lot heavier now part of the reason is that in order to create they found that yes they can restore t-80 tanks they have quite a few in supply and they also found that somebody was sitting on a lot of t-80 engines so they would be easy to modernize and maintain it's a pretty large stockpile but on top of that you have seven New York Tillery regiments they've created since 2013 then you reinforced álvarez battalions that I actually spoke about with the Gorgon m1 220 millimeter systems are coming online and you have pretty pretty fast and rapid modernization and ear defense in ground-based missile brigades I mean Russia intended to get 10 Iskander brigades us by 2020 they completed that many years in advance because they make about to the skander brigades that's per year so they're well ahead of schedule in that department and then the expansion of the part that's kind of least interesting but probably most relevant which is the MTO material support troops the railway troops the communication troops you know as always the amateur talk about tactics professionals talk about logistics and the actual logistics of supporting sustaining the fight is what Russia continues to work on improve over time and then you have these other much more mobile forces that right on to your vehicle's typhoon case that I actually talked about which now allowed to do much greater maneuver warfare detached from the heavy ground formations to do reconnaissance behind enemy lines so on and so forth some kind of issues concerns but it all comes out where I think we're still is a long way to go so I'm understanding that yes the Russian ground force brings in its backpack all the joint fires it needs it doesn't it's really happy if the air force ever shows up to the fight but doesn't expect it to come it can affect air denial from the ground it can affect long-range fires he can do fires in tactical tactical operational space brush and coastal defense industries be coastal defense infantry is basically ground forces with anti-ship missiles so we can hit everything at sea as well the fact that we this kind of it has all the joint fires that the land force could possibly need however I still think we're also dramatically struggles in seeing targets right the roster has one endemic weakness which is the foot same weakness of the Soviet Union had does the Soviet Union was a brutal mauler but I had trouble seeing if I could see something you could definitely kill it and I tried to compensate for lack of being able to see things with colossal amount the firepower both area-of-effect and also Ray the fire the Russian Luther is getting a lot better in this department some of the tactical solutions I'd say spoke about like distribut system and all that that gives Russia the ability to real-time target fires but still in that tactical space of maybe 30 40 50 kilometers when we talk about the much further space out the tactical operational you're 100 to 500 kilometer mark Russia has capabilities that can hit that far out mlrs Iskander whatnot but it doesn't have the ability to see moving targets in fact it though I mean if all fairness it has the drones as a solution to this problem right but drones are really great in an uncontested environment in a contested environment the types of rooms the Russia has many of them are short-range and the other ones that are not short-range are the ones that will be first to die yeah you know they're not going to last very long I'm sorry to say so still a really big question as to whether or not one the Russian military can't see much beyond in the range that it's fires can can successfully hit targets and then - we're in a contested environment that is our stack of what they would what they have attached to it will actually last the the recon strike loop beyond that you know there's there's a lot of Russian ground force equipment that's modernization but still there's very little in terms of breakthrough I think the main thing we can talk about is precision guided munitions in artillery that that is a pointer to but looking for the route a lot of Russian equipment still suffers from Soviet design problems and equipment that prevents them from being able to engage in certain tactics so the tactical level is still disadvantaged both in terms of range start things you can do and then lots of things they're always a paradox you know like Russian airborne BMD for EM finally has thermal panoramic sight for commander but the Russian take of course cannot get thermal panoramic sight we can only hope that t90 MS finally will have it but t-72b3 t dbvm and the rest of them just don't have the system which is a bit of a disadvantage knuckles on that I have a couple other comments but uh I think one point that the nerdy nerdy my new point says that people in the United States focus a lot on the size caliber and range of Russian weapons in artillery this is pretty good but in other forces there are a lot of questions about the quality and capability of the current generation of Russian ammunition all right ammunition is also a very important factor in what kills tanks and in many areas Russian ammunition is probably a generation behind where the West currently is and other cases where it's not behind it's not available in large supplies or quantities so that's the long area of development and growth thanks Mike I mean first that only matters if you're planning to fight Western armies right which is one of the questions I think that's worth exploring but it's not actually the one I'm going to ask because we've heard a lot about equipment we've heard a lot about organization one of the things we haven't talked about although we've talked about so many things as people and I think that's and worth raising the question of what has happened and what still needs to happen to make sure that the Russian army as each Russian ground forces as they shift to all of these new capabilities new technologies new ways of doing things have the personnel that can actually do this stuff are you know are they trained are they able we get pretty moral I understand your question I can tell you the following the modern ground forces have all trained personnel to implement all options that are identified within my presentation a lot of work has been done the number of contract personnel includes their training has changed and how the certain positions appointees are done and also the infantry those hordes that use high technology and high precision technology there are specialized courses that train operators for UAVs and high-precision systems we are used to listen that this Russian arm is conscript army only but technically it is not right that's the same right now that we have less and less conscript forces we cannot completely exclude them we have to train the reserve that can be well organized and would be able to be used and replace some of the personnel if there is a need so I did not include the personnel training in my presentation but there is a very important part training of reserve this is a separate topic rather complicated we are working that area but conceptually we still don't know how the reserve should look like it is clear right now we do not have specialists a person can get sick or resign or leave if or and then we need to equip two men these unit so there are some difficulties there but the leadership of the armed forces of the Russian Federation can have some contracts for 10 years and you can choose how long you serve on active duty and how many years you are in reserve so the system is rather complicated who knows why they are creating that system but this is outside of today's topic question and then to see if he agrees and then I'll let an exhale respond briefly to Mike's comments you know personally I think it's a great question but will overly focus on capabilities opposed to the actual quality of the force so Russian armed forces weren't credibly successful expanding the contract share of the force in the last five years by oh maybe over 200,000 strong so now it's more than 50% of the force probably the weakest branch which is representatives still the ground forces other parts other branch have much higher contractor share but in the ground forces conscripts can do a lot of jobs they don't need to be special cosmonauts or I could scientist to do a lot of duties and ground forces to begin with that said the growth of the contract forces stalled out in the past the air show it was brief now two years in a row that's three hundred eighty four thousand strong which suggests that basically a lot of three-year contracts expired in 2017 and they've had trouble getting people to realized at that number as we look for the route we have to remember that in terms of demographics of manpower availability so the last year during which Russia declining birthrate was 1999 that means starting this year there will be more manpower available in 18 to 27 bracket every year from now on till probably 2032 so that process may somewhat help both the changes in recruiting and whatnot also the fact that there should be actually more men available to do service every single year moving forward even even the occasional women and women are now increasing it allowed to do more things in the Russian military than I did before that said however overall the ground force is still not that large I mean if we look at all the middle-sized powers turkey or Pakistan we might find an echo comparable even larger ground force in terms of just you just boots on the ground and the issue of reserves is a profound one so where she did create territorial battalions system of reserves to protect infrastructure right in the event of a large-scale war people who could organize fallen on equipment protect critical infrastructure at home but 10 years after the launch the reforms Russia is still talking about what modelling shape the operational reserve system will take as opposed to having an actual reserve system so this is one of the lagging things after the Soviet mass mobilization certain army was was destroyed this is one of the big left sort of unsolved problems I think in the Russian military which is the operation reserve any general professional reserves that you can count on in large-scale war so like I mean I hope that answers the question and and then I think see and I should argue about what about Russians can see or hit anything beyond 100 kilometers saij takes three minutes to respond to some but perhaps not all of Mike's points I would like to argue with my opponent in a few why not opponent my colleague rather in this let's start with the following the division creation was a long time before Ukraine so the idea was adopted long time ago before Ukraine's issue here emerged so motorized rifle divisions were created or at least the idea existed they the only thing is one 150 motorized Rifle Division appeared after Ukraine's but the idea was long before and the next one very important point the president of the russian federation putin have set a good mission there armed forces should not completely bankrupt the country but the system are so we are trying to be maximum effective and with the least cost so of course there are some change some problems there for example for the guidance but there is very important point here about the cost and with regard of UAVs I understand that it is very popular to say that the UAV is in Russia bed are not flying far but the latest exercises show that our London and the capacity and you know how many UAVs we have they are allowing to cover the whole area under one commander so the commander knows where to send and so they our UAVs cover the whole area for one command and munition it is nice to hear that you didn't pay attention to the modern developments in Russia there is new guidance that Rockets a new munition but we cannot talk about them yet it's too early I do not have enough information to give you to talk about it maybe people who are authorized to talk about it will talk there are munitions and very modern ones I can tell you that you are lovely and quite erudite audience what I'm going to do because I would like to get as many questions in as possible I'll take three questions at a time and then give them over to our panel to discuss Peter please identify yourself even if I've just identified you I may know who you are but everybody else may not and please do ask a question yes good morning Peter's walk over at National Defense University a question for the panel while we talk about the the evolving Russian ground forces and their modernization can you talk a little bit about the economics of such we read and hear every time the Russian government speaks there's a different quote on on the defense budget it's been ostensibly ticking down the oil prices have come back somewhat can you talk about can you talk a little bit about the economic aspects of forced modernization great question okay let's take two more great thank you Jeff Edmunds from CNA Alexei great presentation thank you so much my question has to do with the the new systems the command and control systems you've mentioned how much of the new forces is reliant on space-based assets a good question and third question let's just keep going back to David Jennifer from the national interest with regard to the air defenses for the Russian army can they realistic speaking actually go on a company if they were going on the offensive because I mean even with this sort of set up against some of the 935 you may not have enough left of your force after they got done with you great question okay alexei it was it was the work after the spacing that is video sitting a height of the city so Putin yes yeah by use your super after it special isn't she yeah I am afraid to disappoint you but the question might be asked differently the third one what happened with c35 when it is with uh within the air defense system you shouldn't say that Russian the engineers creating new system will not take into consideration Western developments and new equipment so they are very maneuvered and they can move around fast if you compare the two systems then the ground for systems are prevailing and higher than similar from air force and they are able to hit modern aircrafts and also UAVs and high-precision artillery we can cruise we can hit cruise missiles and bombs and guided bombs and others so I don't think this will be equal we are on equal footing in all depends about skills of ground forces and personnel and also the pilot skills with regard to the first question I understand that it is a very important issue that is economics that is they cut in military budget increase on card but as an editor I am NOT talking about not economic aspects I am focusing more on military aspects less on economics of course I can talk about the propeller the oil prices and how they impacted but this is not quite my topic and would like to connectors refrain from the discussion what doesn't doesn't happen it or does it happen so yes if I can tell you the the reform that is already launched and the main driving force behind is already there so all of the work has been done probably some combined arms armies will not get everything but if we are talking about major parts the groups were created they we are talking about combined task forces that they are upgraded now modernized according to the current and modern needs of course if the budget is not zero I don't think that it will impact our ground forces capacities and as to the space systems for reconnaissance reconnaissance that is very important part of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for that we have special system for the processing of information and of course the Russian command on ground gets all the necessary information from space-based systems but the UAVs are used as intelligence everywhere division army the number of intelligent officers probably not at their level that we would like to see so the concept everything I have I have it's only mine I am NOT relying on somebody else I'm not relying on other units so probably not everything as good as we would like to see it in that area is sure all common briefly so the economic foundations behind the modernization defense budget so in general there's absolutely nothing in terms available your funds and suggests to us that they cannot sustain either the forces its current size readiness really the level of modernization right budget cuts are ceiling models the Defense Ministry of Defense has managed to defend its position relatively well compared to the other departments and agencies despite whatever you may hear from our dear colleagues and Citicorp absolutely completely wrong in their 20 percent defense budget cut from 2016 to 2017 they are wrong in the way that Jeanne's was wrong before though so both of the overall military pension cuts are probably less than 5% maybe towards 3% and their sustainable the state armament program is also fairly sustainable it's currently budgeted and since they're over the hump of revitalization of large sectors of the defense industry and they've already done pretty well in certain areas of procurement they actually don't need as much of a Porsche if we look out the next 5-10 years to answer the question the way we ask that though is well since we're looking out in two five-year plans it is very clear that certain of the more expensive fantastical when really toys that people want to have but surely need to have will be pushed out to the second part of the five-year plan to 2022 so if you look about what would goal necessarily if they have to go so some of the things on people's wish list like maybe the newest platforms for the ground forces which they will get unlimited numbers but serial production will be pushed off into the early 2020s they'll see how much money they have most of the need is sorta megalomania and all the large platforms that they wanted to get that they don't actually need will also disappear right and some of the larger fantasies of airspace forces as well so a lot of the newer things that Russia doesn't necessarily need where modernization can get them a lot towards the capabilities are looking to have those things will not be canceled but they'll be pushed off further down the line into when they'll see how much money they have until 2022 and 2023 I think your defenses those actually was actually pretty good question they so let me let me rephrase this question to you in a different way given the immense payload that the Joint Strike Fighter carries in its internal Bay by which I mean not a lot how many swords would it take well the Russian air defenses even work or not how many sorties would it take the West let's say in a hypothetical magical fight to take out all of us and integrated air defense and would we would we not be out of precision guided munitions by the end of that fight alone independent whether or not any of them could even see a Joint Strike Fighter and take it out because let's be frank neither on the United States has never tried to take on and eat and consume an adversary of that size so the creature is very large if you even just think about so you're asking about this little tactical matchup but from an operational strategic point of view it's really debatable whether or not we are either prepared ready or really able to consume something with that much air defense I'm just no great ok let's take three more questions all right Paul Schwartz at CNA I'm curious if you can comment on the lessons learn from Syria for the ground forces and to what extent and how have they been incorporated into current Russian plans for ground force modernization and evolution going behind the side of the room is so quietly Chris we saw Scott USA I wanted to really briefly ask about the prioritization of modernization of ground sources across the Russian Federation and if the panelists could comment briefly on the Far East in particular thank you great and let's take one more let's go to this side of the room Andy Koch from the University of Leicester obviously we saw the Varni group of voice leave Germany back in 1994 now a lot of names and structures don't really look that much different and then they were going back to restructure at that point in terms of combined arms brigades and we've got 25 years of lying in between yes we've seen some modernization of equipment but what's really different let's start with the last is asked what we did in the last 25 years because we see the same we saw when we were in Germany but let's look at the Armed Forces of other countries the US Armed Forces yes they reformed but they're reformed were associated with the participation Afghanistan with the war in Afghanistan in Iraq and countering terrorism in Europe all of the changes were associated with the reduction of funds that's why they moved to brigade from divisions and I set the concept as I said the concept was developed before and it was effective even in the 80s therefore if there is a good organization now and staff structure why do we need to change there is no need to change and create some super staff if we can effectively arrange very cost-effective system as we see this allows us with some changes we do not need to create some super mega mega regiment if we have a regiment with three motorized rifle and three tank divisions and that's enough we do not need additional and just provide new army notion why this new system is good because of implementation of command and control system UAVs these new systems do not lead to the creation of some mega division we can just get what we have and improve some of it and have very good well world so to speak mechanism the experience of Syria the we pay great attention to the experience in Syria in this presentation I didn't mention it but we created the whole motorized rifle brigade based on our experience in Syria using pickup using trucks and she had jihad mobiles we call them jihad mobiles that central 30th Brigade the we pay great attention to using artillery and regular arms or they experiences Syria showed that we do not need as much precision guided munition because there are some missions that can be dealt with with just regular munition and therefore we have some new methodologies and using artillery and new maneuvering and new elements of fire but experience in Syria is analyzed all the time and implemented we were at an exercise recently and there is a slogan let's implement the Syrian experience is in our life that meaning in our personnel training the question is about which is repeating the question about the Far East territorial district there's that the changes are implemented there but this is rather logistical apart as we if we are talking about consistency there for East territorial district there's a bi college sorry they are not similar to the ones that are in central Russian and Western territorial district we will make some reforms there but if we right now we in the Far East we are working on creating bases for these units improving the life of personnel creating transportation artillery etc so they want to create a division in the eastern some coastal divisions no that's actually the question for my colleagues from the Navy yes there will be a division closer to the north pole but I take division is something something a different it's a different topic we are paying a lot of attention to this issue but that's a different topic for a different time it's a short question of what's different changed in the last 25 years well aerospace blitzkrieg became the dominant form of war in the last 30 years so if you don't have any answer to that you're not in the game when it comes to fighting the United States and NATO so that's the first thing that became different the second thing that became different is Russians got a clear perception that given the colossal amount of long-range confess offensive conventional power the United States had that they believed United States could achieve effects that back then were comparable to tactical nuclear weapons that you can employ conventional military power in mass and you could really destroy either Russian command and control over military nuclear forces a large percentage of infrastructure right so that became that really then refocused was from thinking a lot on one anticipatory operations before conflict and the initial period of war so the big difference is that if maybe I don't know 70s 80s operational maneuver group would go first and break things open today ground forces are basically maybe very good last and the initial period of war will be airspace attack airspace the fans and all such things and then and that entire reconsideration and focus live of course to air space forces heavy investment and air defense missile defense so on and so forth to try to be able to blunt and then eventually invest in a parity of capability of their own right to be able to conventionally retaliate and punish so to be able to effect conventional deterrence against the west and I got somewhat up I think observed in the last couple of years where the ground force was in many ways either abandoned where areas of it were over reformed they were reformed too much such as a too many personnel well often those too much chaos and and so a lot of what we see now is a reconsolidation rican healing of russian ground forces and figuring out okay how they're gonna actually operate in a strategic direction as supported by all their units you know beyond that I think probably agree with most of these answers serious application of ground force I mean we probably the one thing we in Nationals chaos or which is getting a lot of really good experience in Syria right which is the resurrection of tier one Special Forces capability in Russia and how it can integrate with the rest of the force right other than that again serious an interesting test of will all these things that we talked about in terms of how well can rush to complete this recon contour how well they can target things in real time and there's been real advancements because the Russian military that want to even to Syria in 2015 is not the same one that's there now I mean early on they kind of started out and I saw real deficits right trouble being able to hit moving targets having munitions that were way too big for the targets they had to hit you know and everything was most things were sort of like hey please stand still so I can drop FA B 500s on you and then eventually it switched to very different force that out that's operating there right you know you have the Vicker long arm of combat aviation you now have more better precision guided munitions you have smaller ones etc etc so this is evolving and it's starting to actually prove some of those advertising of oh in the tactical environment we can in real time hit targets yeah well they've gotten there but again that environment in terms of the adversary is a lot less contested than you know the high-end fight that they actually the day I should plan fight for and this is sort of where disagreement may lie where I think Russia can do pretty well you know on that in that in a tactical space but further out operational ranges they can do really well against buildings and targets that don't move very fast after that it gets a little it gets so scary but frankly everybody has a hard time hitting things that far out that move and I'll piggyback a little bit type say just sorry I'll take color just to make one point on that no actually you made a great point that all these divisions were announced before the war in Ukraine was a Russia analyst I think a different approach from here from the United States which is inverse of things that decided and announced but the ratio of decisions made and decisions implement that is very far from a hundred percent so they look at is weird decisions were implemented and when they were implemented and why because I probably have at least four different orders from Latur Putin announcing creation of reserve for Russian armed forces and we are still talking about reserve of Russian Armed Forces one will it be in what shape it will take 10 years later so I have to make the small repast point to say that a lot of things in Russia announced the question is what's implemented once implement and why it's implemented alexei do you want to respond to that I can say only one thing right now the creation of new military units are associated with the creation of infrastructure for them one of the colleagues who asked about Eastern territorial district there was a very good term during the Soviet Union time is assault assault assault and create something create something can be done as fast as possible right now we are doing differently if we are creating for example the regimen then we create an infrastructure for it when Putin's test us with creating of new units we created units and infrastructure for the units initially the man's cult Emir of division created recreation this tunnels and cities that were actually abandoned after the reforms of Sudoku they tried they modernized upgraded and rebuilt those towns I also mentioned that were some research is done when these two divisions were created the analysts analyzed all the sisters situation what kind of changes should be made and at that time we understood that tomato division a mask division will not be the same as it was before Sergey curves but instead you cause reforms well we decided that okay we need for example a company ECM company or the UAV companies so that's why we come back delayed it and it happened to be at the same time when Ukraine happen but we are talking about 85th Siberian division that was also done so in the city in the town they created new infrastructure etcetera that was before the Ukraine's conflict I for those of you who are interested in what the Russian forces have learned from Syria we actually have an event on Wednesday afternoon from 2:00 to 2:30 when Anton Lavrov who is sitting here in the audience will talk about what were for what we can see from Russia's operations in Syria what that tell us about reform so just a plug for that come back I think same bad place same bad time yep we'll be right here so you should do that but 2:00 p.m. but in the meantime please join me in thanking onyx a Mike for a really stimulating and informative discussion and thank you all for [Applause]

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 5,274

Rating: 4.625 out of 5

Keywords: Tags, go, here!

Id: JbdQX5GY-Vo

Length: 83min 35sec (5015 seconds)

Published: Wed May 23 2018