Russian Force Structure for Large Scale Combat Operations

great good crowd all right good good morning everybody thank you for joining us this is a great turnout for a Friday morning in late June I think the fact that we have so many people here testifies to the reputation of our guests today there's a lot of interest in them and and what they have to say I'm very happy to introduce dr. Lester growl and Charles Bartles from the foreign military studies office at Fort Leavenworth Kansas dr. growl has been with the US Army for 51 years and has authored 15 books and 250 articles in that time so he's been very productive he's an expert on the Soviet war in Afghanistan and we're going to hear about today Russian conventional forces to his left Charles Bartol is an analyst and linguist at the foreign military studies office who focuses on Russian and Central Asian military force structure modernization tactics and similar issues to my far left we have Mike Coffman from the Center for naval analysis is gonna be our discussant today les and Chuck are going to give a presentation for somewhere around 30 45 minutes then Mike is going to make some framing points and then we will open it up to discussion we are recording so we are on the record there should be a video posted at some point probably next week in the meantime please silence your cell phones and other noise making devices and if there are no objections I will turn the floor over to our guests thank you very much what's a pleasure to be here and thank you for your come out here it's nice to get away from the flooding fort leavenworth s-- airports been under water now for months so were fortunately Kansas City because he's still in business but it's yeah it's been a lot of fun out there and we work for a funny little place called the foreign military studies office were basically linguists and we deal exclusively an open source so I don't have the great secrets I have what they say and basically it's more than enough to keep to keep your busy so what we'd like to do is talk about rushing for structure for large-scale combat operations when we had this thing called the Soviet Union they had some 210 211 motorized rifle and tank divisions 17 artillery divisions 8 Airborne Division's for air defense divisions and 8 rear support divisions Wow now they weren't all full there were mobilization divisions they were waiting for the big one and they were going to mobilize so and what we're looking at today is certainly not 210 divisions it's a different army it's a different time you have a military that is heirs to the old system you have a known you have three militaries basically within Russia the forces of the Ministry of Defense the forces of internal security and the forces of the FSB in the past you have had separate militarized intelligence services these or more of an anti coup device back in the old days today they have merging more they are becoming more more trusted I guess but basically what do you need a military for in Russia and this spans a large large gap from soccer riots and local unrest to color revolutions to border conflicts to local wars to break away secessionist movements and now considering conventional maneuver war absolutely under nuclear threatened conditions are returned to the old days and this is something that they have been looking at under the new force structure and trying to figure out how they're going to get on top of it and in fact and you'll talk more about the National Guard recently they've recently stood up a 200 to 300 thousand men National Guard which looks nothing like our National Guard they are basically a militarized police force for internal security think of a highway patrol with artillery and we'll talk more about that there's been a great shake up the military force structure they have had the biggest military reform in the past century and basically what they have done that they've started from the top down they have truncated military districts back to for now coming back to five but military districts used to be primarily an administrative tool that would handle things like conscription and depo management and [Music] getting provided forces but the general staff would do the command of the forces that were located in the various military districts under the new system which has changed the military districts now control the army air force air defense forces naval forces should they be in their district and so they are basically also a wartime headquarters in the old days they had fronts and army groups as large forces they've been calling the front a historical term but we're seeing indications that the front may come back into the vocabulary here in the future but basically bringing the commands under the military districts are their version of the goldwater-nichols because they've done something else with the military districts as they believe them operational strategic commands and so they're in charge they're calling the shots and so the your district commander has a far more significant role than in the past in the restructuring of the forest structure they had gone from a force of army groups divisions and regiments to now you have joint Strategic Command you have army groups and you have brigades why brigades brigades are a lot more mobile they're a lot more flexible you have the largest landlord earth and the world and how do you cover it and what you do it with is of mobile flexible forces now you've seen something probably that they brought back a couple divisions and why would you bring back divisions divisions have more combat power the if you dig a minute a defense they're very tough to get through but they're also beastly to move about any any length of time and brigades are far more mobile every year with the the maneuver brigades have a snap exercise quick notice exercise and they pick up and remove about a thousand kilometers to a training area they haven't been at before to work out now since you have folks who serve much longer with their units and commanders who command a longer with their units what this gives them is a cadre of people who know how to do a unit with long-range unit movement and from my military career I only did two unit lose by rail they were both disasters or as a learning experience both times but this is one of the things that hoping to get there but the brigades there they're smaller they're lethal but this seems to be the primary force you put divisions on those paths on the areas where you're not might be that extra punch that extra power next to basically in the reorganization of the Armed Forces the Soviet Union used to have the world's largest Air Force Russia has the fifth largest air force airframes are expensive and when you don't have all the money in the world maintaining at a large Air Force is tough what they have done is combined the strategic air defense forces air forces and space forces into what they call the aerospace forces the primary force in in the Russian army is the ground forces maybe pretty much organized yes again and how this is different a different way we looking at this is we think about how the Russians fight right now and hear about that people talk about battalion tactical groups we're talking about large-scale combat operations you know you need to be on different scale so we're not talking about battalion so that's not what the Russians are thinking about you know but towns that base unit of tactical maneuver but in order to win you have to think operationally and when it comes to thinking operationally you know combat needs to be conducted with you know I think on the level of armies and military districts or or joint strategic commands that's kind of the way the the Russians are thinking so if you look at the diagram up here you can kind of see that the two main blocks we have outlined as though is the joint strategic commands or the military districts those are kind of one in the same when we talk about military district it's usually you know that geographical area in relation to how they're doing a conscription or the more mundane rear services and we talk about joint strategic commands we're talking about you know the commander's operational control of troops that's it's the same commander but he has two different hats that he wears there's two different things and you know kind of the base unit for up for joint maneuver for the Russians is the is the combined arms army and you'll see that red box that lower red box and this is a very different system that we have in the United States you know in the u.s. system you know we have a combatant commander and you know he can he didn't designate a Joint Task Force and they can come out of the Army Headquarters Navy headquarters Air Flow headquarters Marine headquarters the Russians aren't set up like that the Russians are gonna set up a joint task force headquarters something similar they're gonna set up on one of these army groups they just don't have the staff in the air defense or the Navy to do that so they're their joint keeping village that kind of wrapped around these uh army group headquarters so uh looking at the kind of the outlay of the Russian military districts when they when they went to this new military district system you know they broke down into four military districts and then they stood up a new one the northern joins teach a command I think in 2015 and either December 2014 right around 2014-2015 and that's how they're doing the operational command and control therefore so you kind of see how the forces are arrayed and just wanna talk a little bit about this northern joint strategic command it is pretty significant has a very different structure than the rest of these joint strategic commands they have their headquarters the joint Strategic Command headquarters is just based on the Northern Fleet headquarters so when they decided to stand up another big headquarters instead of going out there and grabbing all these assets and put on all these staff officers together and making a huge hierarchy you know huge military hierarchy putting out there they decided just to go and just to augment an existing headquarters and the intent of this is to have you know the operational command and control of the forces that's necessary but not to have all that extra overhead from extra staff and extra general officers so that was kind of the intent and we see the Russians are very interested in making new military districts you know dividing up some of the military districts to have smaller areas so they can provide that better command and control and we predict they may have utilized the same use the same method of of command and controls because it gives that that ability to provide that operational and control without having the extra overhead you talk about like Russian disposition of military forces and if you look at a map of Russian military forces you know you see assets spread all over the map but if you look at where these Army Group dispositions are you can kind of see how they're kind of a raid against the where they perceive as the potential areas of threat obviously against NATO to the west and to the south against China the North Korean border so you know when you look at you look at this map you really get an idea of how the Russians are kind of perceiving that that threat to them that's where they're putting their military assets let's talk a little bit about the the Army Group structure and interestingly the Russians have army groups and Army cores in their system which the violence line they have I think about 12 combined armies and for Army cores you know talk to American person you know you talk to us servicemen you talk you know talk about our army and a Corps you know they'll say that the Corps is automatically subordinated to the Army it's not that way in the Russian system just as the divisions are brigades aren't subordinated divisions and the Russian system Army cores are not subordinated to combined arms armies the way the Russians kind of see it is that the the army cores are all on maritime salience and also Borden ated to Fleet headquarters so basically the the command and control of the fleets ground forces is controlled by this asset and the army cores and the combined arms armies are pretty much even though they have different names that pretty much provide the exact same capabilities and it's that way of providing like a joint command and control element for that for that ground force [Applause] you got a look at here it like the standard structure most of these you notice that lemon combined arms armies and tank armies have a they'll have different structures but this is kind of the baseline structure that the Russians are going to right now and they're trying to give all of their combined arms armies this kind of assets and width and kind of see how it's what guys too much the anything was okay and so this is kind of if they're going to war this is the structure that that they that they use this you know that the large-scale structure and interestingly you know we think of like a core level commander in the US or in Joint Task Force command everything it like a three or four star officer and these army group series are commanded by a one or two star general so you know the ranks a lot lower and so it's a very different ass very different way of doing things and so this is kind of the baseline structure but you know in a in a go to war fitting you can definitely we can probably assume that they're gonna add gonna do some additions we have some attachments to this talk about what those attachments look like based on Russia's previous actions and recent military conflicts and actually you know even don't have the Soviet times typically when the Russian Russians at the Soviets go to war they typically designate a command and then they'll attach these other you know other military and some other militarized intelligence services will be attached to that in that command and give you an idea here of the different commands that could be attached to the different units that could be attached to that to that army group and also significant is another significant difference between the the way that they fight is in the u.s. system we have a combatant commander and the combatant commander typically have his assets and it'll push those down to a to the Joint Task Force in the Russian system it looks like they're they the actual the joint Strategic Command commander actually has assets which he or she can achieve controls and he fights those assets and this is kind of in line with the way the Russians kind of see the nature of future warfare you know they just don't see a large scale conflict is happening all the borders of all the borders of the country you know there may be a large-scale conflict happening all the borders but there could be you know maybe hostile information operations happening in the rear you know stirring up dissent in the rear and basically the Russians believe they need to have a mechanism for command and control to have control the whole depth of Defense now so the whole military the whole Military District needs to have military assets provided there there can be command and control case there's some sort of insurgency in the rear or Special Operations now they need to have that different structure so the military district commander the operations the joints future command commander it's also fighting that fight what is future war going to look like and I think that is one of the things that is driving this we all are familiar with World War two and continuous defensive lines and building up great forces to smash through defensive lines and as Russian looks at future war they don't see a repeat of World War two they talk about something called Anna chocolately battlefield an fragmented battlefield where you are going to fight with open flanks and you're going to protect your flanks with artillery with blocking positions with counter-attacks but you are going but it's not going to do this large continuum of forces linked up fast to mass and pushing forward and you are going to be fighting at several depth during this time and if you notice where the armies are positioned here where is your main threat and historically the threat to Russia has come from the West from the south and this is where they have most of their concern and the bulk of their forces and then of course they have the large problem with the China and what do you do about that looking back at their who were there military theorists that are in favor well we got to go back a little ways but in the 1920's 1930's there was a great debate in the soviet union between two schools of law strategic fought one was led by marshal marshal Tukhachevsky and Tukhachevsky thought was you don't want to let the other guy visit the destruction of war on the motherland so if you're attacked the response is to have a prompt massive counter strike against the enemy to visit the destruction of war on his home lab and the other thought was led by general sketchy and such and said look well there were a big country we don't have a lot of our in big cities on the borders our terrain that we're probably going to fight on is rolling plains mighty rivers swamps forests and it's an absolute beast to get anywhere during the spring thaw or in the on the rains so what we want to do is draw the enemy within the depths of the motherland where he stretches his supply lines reaches his culminating point and then strike him and took a jetski won the debate neither one of them survived to see World War two due to the Stalinist purges and in World War two starts Germany invades Poland the Soviet Union invades Poland they move their defensive lines from prepared defenses to the interior of Poland Germany attacks and the response is counter strikes and they are weak they are feeble they don't work so the next thing is strong forward defense and they darn near lose the war at that point and only through the grace of the stubbornness of the Russian people and mother winter do they manage to survive the other problem they're going to face is reserves and they're trying to put their reserve system together again but right now how do you do specials the favorite theorist today but how do you do that type of thing and when the during the initial period of war because until you've got your reserve system in hand you've got a problem dad kind of talked a little bit about you know if they fight what's that going to look like you let's talk about how they had these militarized intelligence and security services and they've recently did a big reform where they've they've took in a lot of these internal internal security services and they kind of wrap them into this Russian National Guard and kind of the cornerstone or that the primary element in this Russian national guard is the Russian Ministry of Interior troops the nutrient voice soldiers so well you're talking about maybe two or three hundred thousand uniformed personnel and this is important because we if you talk about how big the Russian armed forces are you know most estimates of the Russian Ministry of Defense has maybe about approximately 850,000 servicemen give or take and that's a pretty good chunk of people but you know a lot of people don't consider the National Guard as how they're gonna augment the fight if the if the Russian Federation goes to war and two or three hundred thousand people that's a lot of people under arms that can it can be brought into the fight and they probably won't be brought in in terms of you know they aren't going to attach all 300,000 of those soldiers to the Ministry of Defense you know they have their own district system the National Guard has its own district system in the Russian Federation and they're actually the military the National Guard districts are different than the military districts there's like seven or eight National Guard districts but they are congruent with the military with the mo D districts so they fall within those military districts none of them cross a border line there so I believe the intent there is that you know they'll hand off some of those units some of the more higher readiness units some of those units as we have infantry fighting vehicles and armored almost all met armored personnel carriers so you know they're if you saw them on the street you probably would be able to tell the difference between them and a Ministry of Defense unit and have artillery systems so it's a pretty big force multiplier they're gonna have and not only are these guys you know some of these force are gonna be out there fighting on the front lines I'm also going to be doing that rear security mission which is you know rear air security no securing the rail lines of communication it takes a lot of forces takes a lot of manpower and you know the Russian mo D force to be able to put their combat troops up towards the front and have these these military forces kind of in the rear doing that mission so that's also a big force multiplier oh I'll talk a little about out you know kind of the relevance of why this is important you know in the US Army you know we still have pretty much the same model for going doing large-scale combat operations that we had in the Soviet times we have you know the field army and the theater army and the Russians you know when they went just massive downsizing they decided that you know the system that they had in Soviet times is not gonna work for this this new threat so they need have a way of you know a small far small far smaller military they need to come up with a new way of providing advocate command and control with these new threats and downsizing so they don't have as many of these you know staff officer positions and general officer positions and this is kind of the way that the Russians have chosen to do that they're trying to go to this system where they have these joints repair these are joint strategic commands and these army groups is kind of their their primary levels of of action so if you look at the very bottom level at the tactical level it's the battalion or the time tactical group the combined arms level it's the Begay or the regiment division and then at this joint structure it's the army group or the campari the billets are the joints contingent coming up and looking a lot of the training what you see in a lot of training and what they call the maneuver defense which is not our mobile defense and unfortunately a lot of Russian gets translated into mobile defense but it's it's maneuvering defense mobile defense means you keep the bulk of your forces back you you intend to lose ground and then you're going to retake it maneuver defense means you may not be back there but what you're going to do is you are going to a trip the attacking force constantly on the way back and so they artillery plays a large role in maneuver defense and this should be no surprise because Russia and the Soviet Army have always been artillery armies and they have a lot of pegs but artillery enables maneuver and artillery can be used in a variety of ways artillery is a maneuver force and you can take ground with artillery these are not Western concepts but this is how they look at warfare and if you look at the brigade structure a motorized Rifle Brigade as three motorized rifle battalions a tank battalion for artillery battalions to holitzer one mlrs and one anti-tank a Engineer Battalion Support Battalion Signal Battalion all right and radio electronic warfare company company at Brigade level so it is a very competent standalone force when it has to the ledger oh yeah sorry [Laughter] yeah that's it's a smaller brigade we have its but it's fairly lethal and it's got everything you need and so and it's a lot easier to move you have anything stirring to end the trip we'll leave it to Mike for the stirring bit okay alright I think it's a wonderful presentation John thank you good and the turnout has been fantastic for a Friday morning quite impressed I'd like to if I can maybe frameless a bit from my perspective style of somewhat and and take us to a place where we can all have a great collective conversation good Q&A so first for me on the history of how the Russian military got to word us today from from the Soviet military they inherited I think in the Russian Armed Forces most people when write in military thought they make sure to cite the key main strategist from Tukhachevsky to a sectional that you can't get on without it but to me this is really ultimately the consistency I see in Russian military reform and the reform to the Russian military form under Sharia Gras some of the consistency is really the intellectual product of the regardeth period of 1977 to 1984 and these are really Marshall or gar cuffs intellectual children that finally come back whom in many respects to build the military and transform the Soviet Armed Forces in the way that he sought to do but was unable to do for different reasons he had too much opposition the Soviet Union was economically dying at the peak of its technological might when it collapsed he sought to transform the Soviet military into a new eteri that could answer what they saw as the fundamental challenges of the character of war and of the u.s. character of war where things were heading in 1980s and 1990s both the technologies the capabilities that were deployed and the operational concepts and how they had evolved and and to me you know a gark of back then really sought to address the problems he identified with Soviet Union having fallen well far behind in communications advanced weapons pious art I actually use them battle space management targeting and especially automated command and control many of the weapons capabilities we see deployed today through the Russian military or really concepts that date back to that time period of mid to late 1980s who have finally been realized and deployed across the bar some forces the envisioned a balance force that consisted of what is the idea behind this big force structure a general purpose force for war fighting local regional large-scale Wars right he forced us able to affect what Raghava dreamed of which was a non-nuclear strategic deterrent that is can play in the game of long-range conventional precision strike and can engage United States or NATO in the European theater a capable force on non strategic nuclear weapons that have shifted into the escalation management role and perhaps less war fighting a tactical level a force that feels high readiness combat groupings of Nyx forces able to conduct either offensive or defensive operations along their science strategic direction the map that we see with the military districts and the army grouping show us three main strategic directions right the Southwest the west and the north in the European theater and military of operations as these forces are arrayed he envisioned the strategic importance of air defense and the integration of the Air Force and the air defense forces which we finally saw realized in recent years with the development of the aerospace forces that combine air defense missile defense in the Air Force why because the 1980s the Soviet General Staff understood the United States where war was really shifting towards an initial and rather effective airspace blitzkrieg attack that airspace power was proving increasingly decisive and the initial period of conflict that we need to find a way to defend against it to develop an effective strategic operation for air defense and their own offensive strategic air operation as well in the forced institution of high end command staff exercises to work out questions of operational art strategy and refine all these command relationships and ash London's if you follow the Russian Armed Forces you know that they change esalaam and command relationships kind of all the time and exchanged for structure all the time as they play with it and play with it some more and reorg andrey oregon reorg such as the nature of things and today you even see them kind of going to the next level from the strategic command command staff exercises where one military district and their joint strategic command takes on a whole bunch of units from other district and commands in order to field them in the strategic direction to getting to a place where officers from one combined-arms army let's say can taking divisions Brigade in units from a different combined arms army and actually fuel demand exercise in order to make it more and more interchangeable why so it has a lot to do also with the Russian vision of what is the current character of war and that is the belief that ultimately a conflict with NATO is going to be a large-scale war that goes from Norway to Turkey it is a war in entire European theater of military operations there is in my view know this Russian sense that there's going to be some small fight in the Baltics over a small piece of terrain with a deploy and then they defend and then it's going to be a matter of how other you know US forces get in there no it is a preparation for large-scale conflict why we call it large-scale combat operations and when they look at the nature of large-scale operations they believe that there are two decisive periods of war the threatened period of war who shapes the environment who deploys in during the crisis to the run-up to the conflict and the initial period of war and in their view the initial period of war will be a matter of weeks the large-scale operations given the current character of war will not last a long time one side will be proven wrong the other side will be proven right right or what most likely will happen as it tends to happen a war both sides will be proven wrong and the side that adapts and reacts best of their assumptions having been proven wrong is the most flexible is the one that will ultimately prevail however they don't expect the conflict to be sustained for a long period of time and that has a lot to do with the view about the character of war that does go back to original thinking strategy war is not a contest of material and manpower attrition is about who can perform best at the operational level to effectively destroy the other side's ability to sustain combat operations and their view is that in a war event that we know is a contest of wills there are two systems there's the military system and the military systems ability to fight and sustain the fight it's not about tanks killem tanks or planes killing planes although we understand that's necessary it is about how do you destroy the other side's systems ability to sustain the fight in the theater and there's a political system and the political system has resolved and it's a question of how do you flick the right amount of Taylor to prescribe damage to shape the political systems resolve such that they will not want to continue the fight or that they will want to pause the fight in the go she ate about the fight depending on the states at hand but you get the gist next and I'll conclude with these two points there's often a conflation I think of Russian force planning and structure for different levels of war why I'm excited that were very focused on large-scale combat operations today because Russians see there's you know there's crisis conflict there's local conflict local war which is to them what Georgia and Ukraine is there's regional war and there's large-scale war okay and so there's often been this perception that this force structure might somehow generate as Chuck and Lester rightly put but tallying tactical groups for a particular fight no that's how the Russians think they will handle a conflict from Georgia or another local conflict because this force has good rating that's and you can force generate battalion tactical groups and it can manage a small military without a promised short noodles to be pretty mobile but for an actual conflict with a country like China or with the United States this force thinks about large-scale combat operations the hub of that is the combined arms army which is the operational level command that then has lots of things attached to it but that army basically leads to fight and is intellectually that really the center of the war fighting at the operational level and that's why divisions came back brigades are too small to light they won't last long in the fight brigades have really shifted to be the operational reserve that is if the division breaks through the brigade can follow to help exploit and if the division fails in defense the brigade can move in to close the gap where enemy forces are broken through but the brigade is not going to last long certainly not against necessarily a u.s. armored Brigade Combat Team and last but not least I make this one point that there is now that they've built out this force and they've exercised it and it's certainly not the largest force that Russia has ever filled it's actually probably one the smallest if you look at the overall ground force combined with a the airborne troops it's maybe about 350 plus thousand strong it's not that large as the ground force component but now that they build it out it's probably about the highest readiness that's ever been at it's certainly probably much higher readiness than the Soviet Union was over in 1980s now they're increasingly looking to balance the radius of the force the mobility they have with the actual size which is that the density mass that can bring to the battlefield and that's a conversation about what percentage of the force should be mobilized that is would percentage readiness do they really need and staffing in these divisions versus in a threatened period of war if they expect a crisis leading up to a fight with the United States or NATO for 30 days or plus how much manpower can they bring in to fill these units at what level do they need to be staffed right and and sort of balance out because I think increasingly their view is that they need a larger force but you don't pay for a larger force on active duty so part of the force will have to be mobilized to some extent right that is you know they'll be though they're now now reducing probably the degree of readiness while building out the overall size of the force and that gets into a conversation which we can have about the reserve system and the two different models and ideas essentially the two different reserve systems build out okay on that I don't talk too much yeah how long I've been talking let's let's turn over to to Jeff and he can have a soft 2qa okay thanks we've covered a lot of ground so to speak I guess we're gonna open it up to questions from the audience now I have a couple of questions I wanted to ask so I'm gonna abused the moderators privilege to do that then we'll open it up wait to be called on if you want to ask a question they'll be microphones coming around when you get the microphone please identify yourself please be brief please ask a question rather than make a statement okay so let me start with a couple of questions I had one go back to the map that showed the disposition of the different army groups and cores yeah okay anyway when you attack sergeant yeah it's okay the basic question I had was you showed where the different force structures were distributed around the country and they were concentrated along the western frontier and along the southeast near the borders with China what's the relative weight of those different groups what percentage of men and material is in each of those fronts and how capable is the Russian military of moving those assets back and forth depending on where a crisis may emerge and then the second question I had which is kind of related is you talked about the Russian forces inside Russia what role do Russian troops who are based outside the country in places like Tajikistan or Crimea Armenia what role did they play in the overall operational planning and what's their relationship to the military forces that are concentrated inside the country yeah well percentage-wise I don't have the exact ones that I would remember we're open-source but if you remember the map the forces are concentrated on the western direction to the south we're very concerned about the Baltic republics but there's really not anything of significance except an Airborne Division between them and st. Petersburg and if there's any place that the sechín doctrine is not going to work it's the hundred kilometers between Estonia and and st. people so I would say that primarily the forces are facing Ukraine and there facing the South forces outside and what they can do well Syria has been proving a good materials and all it has spread has strained their logistics system they are not an expeditionary force the history of Russia is not a history of expeditions they may fight with their back to Mother Russia or in Mother Russia with a few minor exceptions and they have basically beat up there and fibia s-- capability trying to keep the the Syrian operation going but they have been trying on all sorts of new systems technology yeah and doing some rather spectacular things like long-range missile strikes and etc and then playing a political role the so what about Armenia well that's that has a dual role it's it sends a message but it's also it's also tucked right in with the caucuses and that's an area that you need to keep some reaction next to and that was basically a war were older the Russian forces that are distributed in mostly the former Soviet countries play instead of overall thinking yeah I mean generally the stuff out in the Far East is a little bit lower level of readiness you know if there's something happens with China I don't know if a conventional force is gonna stop you know the Chinese military is so huge that probably some other way or they convention where they would stop it but in terms of the logistics how they support big difference between the Russian armed forces and the US one is the importance of pipe and rail so a lot of the strategic reserve assets for the for the Russian military's kept out in the in the Central Military District in the Second Army around the katarina Berg like that 90th tank division so you know if they need to fight they can get that division you know it can get pretty much get anywhere in the country because all that rail hub is out there and then once they get it out there you know they have a rail infrastructure where they can supply it and they have a pipe infrastructure where they can bring that fuel to them as opposed to the US military which does a lot of stuff by trucks these guys are primarily it's a rail base to military so functionally add to colleagues already great points yeah central military districts a swing district to support East and West depending on where the fight is East really represents an independent combat grouping of forces because of how strained the infrastructure is lines of communication to them and it's meant to be able to pull the fight by itself and it's arranged differently if you look at the forces there it has much larger sort of filled out ground force chargeable says way more missile units than typical other military districts have assigned to them for a particular reason Eastern Military District is it's both disadvantage and heavily advantage by distance right that's whenever we talk about Chinese military say well if you attacked Eastern Military District the good news is sure you can have a large force but then you've actually won terrain an Eastern Military District and have fun with that as far as readiness I think probably southern Military District is by far the the highest followed by Western MD joint arctic district is transitioning to become a real full-fledged military district is there's a discussion on app to flesh it out some more on Jeff's points regarding external bases in the foreign base and all that well these are really like key for posts and they can serve as really good hubs for Russia and other other Russian forces to arrive right so we see where they are from Transnistria down to Armenia down to take a stand they've gone through some forced transitions and sighs basically being downgraded in some respects but have a better standing force that's there and as always I agree absolutely let's reverse smelters fundamentally not an expeditionary force but there's a country that's capable of expeditionary operations which is not scalable but it can intervene fairly effectively with a small force and proved decisive in a conflict Syria has shown that one thing that I suggest those of you who followed us topic really should follow the changes of structural reforms that are happening taking place to the Russian airborne which I long overdue and they've been in progress for some time with a rush in the airborne is probably one that's filling out as a bigger force that's finally getting back to three regiment divisions I have two regiments and it's building itself as a force with two missions it still has the strategic airborne parachute assault mission and Russian like long-range transportation parked VTA is not great but it's probably capable of delivering like to be TGS or a regiment almost anywhere within Europe and if you kind of if you're not following that it really should reflect 20 years ago on June 12 the the Russian movement to Pristina and yeah yeah let's let's reflect on our history so it's important not to get surprised and not to tell ourselves story that well Russia and the airborne is not capable of like an expeditionary throw some thousand kilometers from their borders because it actually very is capable of doing that and of seizing an airfield and then of several Air Assault regiments then arriving on that airfield and one of the reason why you want to have bases outside is any place where you can have an airbase Russian airborne can arrive within 24-48 hours and if they can land on that airbase then they can unload and they can probably unload that the current state of readiness at least several regiments alright and that's kind of like the beginning of an intervention so yes it's not that expeditionary but given they are like one ethers landmass and they have decent reach from that one-eighth okay great let's go to questions start over here thank very much we're forces yeah filled the one on the private military companies up you talk about large-scale combat operations I mean private military companies are great for you know this kind of low-level insurgency stuff that goes on and you know maybe it's Syria or these different places but you know we talked about this large-scale fight I mean these private military company basically a sideshow I mean it's such a small element that I mean you know we're talking hundreds of thousands of people fighting with large-scale combat operations private military companies you know maybe a couple hundred guys so in terms of in terms of a large-scale combat operations probably private military companies not really important but like I said I do think it's important but for this these other smaller topics going on and that's for the other thing was also a gas problem yeah you know like securing some of the facilities but but not for fighting large-scale the Russian Navy is still capable of course of operating in the Persian Gulf what I was talking about is primarily their amphibious landing ships they primarily the rapado class which a great deal of them were built in the 60s in Poland all in desperate need of overhaul they've been borrowing them from the various fleets basically doing the doing the run for Syria and they've been using it was logistics because of their their roll-on/roll-off capability but that that part of the Navy really needs some work the other the rest of the Navy is pretty much the same the money has been going primarily to the ground forces and [Music] maintaining the Air Force's the Navy is not happy with that situation and they're looking for more they are bringing new ships online all but not not to the degree that the Navy likes okay in the back dr. Alaine disability hang on just a second we had a Mike had a sorry that's okay we've gone Navy up Daniel to your question the Navy had been effectively transitioning to a very capable green water force with ships that have much lower endurance but have all the capability of a Soviet class destroyer of heavy anti-submarine warfare ship and reality and so today there is the fact the fact of a permanent standing squadron of our smaller squadron in the eastern Mediterranean right of some ships and two submarines that are permanently seemingly based out of Tartu that said you it's the presence is there what the ships can do themselves on the size and the size of platform the capability can deliver has transitioned quite a bit right on on Luster's point regarding of STIs did not seriously invested in native of like organic naval support for expeditionary operations they're only now laying down a couple LP DS most of syria cargo support for that mission was daunting for cargo ships bought from turkey so here are the two truths yes they've not invest on that they are not a military with massive global sea lift architecture and infrastructure like we do with basis and all these other things the United States does actually nobody else right that being said the demonstrated that actually you can effectively supply an expeditionary operation was just a handful of cargo ships you can do that pretty well it's not world on roll off but they also hardened decks on cargo ships as well so they can transport a lot of gear on top of them and as always we should like be very as I say should be careful not to think like us that we didn't buy a massive platform for a particular mission and so if the other person didn't buy a massive platform for a particular mission that they can't affect that mission when the time comes okay sorry dr. Alaine sorry associate rector of UAC you and Kiev Ukraine could you address how this reorganization will be perceived by the border nations will in effect how they see their relationships going forward with the u.s. in light of the bit in light of the reorganization along the Russian border and if so how so thank you you know we we spent our full time reading Russian publications and so I certainly not qualified answer they don't really reorganize there's no you know this isn't a special reorganization that's happened in the last couple years this is the I believe the way that it's always been kind of intended for this this large-scale fight you know this is for the survival of the state this is not something that's been done and in the last couple years now they're they're tweaking individual places to it and they're changing certain things or improving things but this is not a new totally new development this is just part of the you know I imagine most nations have a have a plan to defend themselves militarily and this is just part of that part of that plan and tweaking that plan briefly comment so I thought really you know under the initial period of tumultuous reforms to the to the new-look army under McCarthy Cove their plans were a little bit crazy because they really were not building out a military necessarily designed for a large-scale ground fight with NATO and they essentially had left the airborne as the Rapid Response Force they were investing a lot in a strategic role of air defense and airspace right but the they were actually not well set up in terms of Brigade structure they were building and the commitment for for large-scale combat operation in Europe nor did any of the command relationships make any sense and they quickly figured that out when they started doing strategic exercises with the new-look force because McCarville surgical want to eliminate the combined arms army echelon entirely and somehow osk was going to command brigades and divisions and and then get rid of divisions themselves you just didn't make a lot of sense so when under gossamer showing by fuel they went to in a much more sensible and balanced direction and this is now a force that is able to handle the full range of contingencies of you know local conflict crisis whatever it is the local war is on Russia's borders to high end fight with NATO in the full theater and military operations to effect theater and nuclear escalation war fighting missions - and it's got that that full scope I have no idea how the the smaller nations look at it I that that that part that part is difficult to comment on I would only say that piloting checklist you'd agree that a percentage of the force in recent years for structure that's been created on Ukraine's borders after 2014 is verily clear very clearly met with Ukraine and mine in the event of a continually an event that they need to intervene that they have established a number of divisions have brigades and new combined arms army and they filled them out not all of them but parts of them they fill that already almost completely and as a very very large conventional ground force in the event that they do require to intervene in Ukraine again okay over there on the yes our Frank Fletcher with Daniel Morgan graduate school in the Soviet system traditionally counterintelligence was only entrusted to the KGB what is the state today of counterintelligence Authority is it only the FSB penetrating all the other services including the new National Guard we do tanks I also do thanks planes and ships but I intelligence this is a great question there is no the sort of unified KGB hub because remember in those days there were KGB units those KGB eternal televisions a lot be with you inside KGB tag next to them I think that's very much a shared between FSB and GRU right depending depending on what you are doing in counterintelligence sent but in Russia is a perpetual fight between intelligence services as to who was the mission and what type of counterintelligence you're doing right like cyber security is always going to be a consistent fight between different intelligence services to who really has the lead and as a assets on that and that's one of the most important forms of characters today that we didn't have in 1970s so I hope this part of it makes sense but this is that question we're just probably not the best I think expert was a quick crowd to the day answer on who does CI okay over here Stanly Kober I'm trying to figure out what the point is if your economic model of an empire which is what of an imperial expansion is the Middle Kingdom gets to exploit the tributary states then it makes sense but what we have seen over the last century in particular is that the financial flows go in the opposite direction the money flows from the center to the periphery that is why the Soviet empire collapsed that is why the other empires collapsed what is the point let us say Russia is successful what in the world could it do now that it has to rule millions and millions of people who will hate its guts yeah I don't think we're we don't we're not proposing the Russians are setting up this force structure to walk and they other countries I mean we're talking about yeah if it does get into military conflict what you know what is it gonna do I don't I mean I think I don't usually speak for less but I think me and less are generally of the opinion that if Russians are gonna be involved in military activities that probably are gonna go much outside of the the former Soviet Union you know I'm worried about the Russians going into France you know that's not it's not feasible what's that yeah I mean but yeah I think the other side taking territory you know they could do some military operation to achieve some objective and it's not necessary about just taking territory or occupying more territory it's you know there's other reason for fighting than just taking turns worried I mean I think this doesn't offer us an opportunity to tee off sort of the Russian thinking in an initial period of war of what this force is meant to do whether its posture really is and I think the best way to describe that is probably counter surprised because intellectually the General Staff had always believed after June 1941 but the one thing that the Russian military must never permit again to happen is a large-scale initial surprise attack that successfully destroys a substantial percentage of forward base forces and that inflicts a huge amount of pain the fact of finding an industrial skilled war based on attrition on the Russian territory itself and so this force and as well as challenges with it is that in order to be effectively positioned for counter surprise you have to have a pretty high degree of readiness you're a pretty high degree of mobility and there's a force you have to consistently exercise your ability to first absorb an attack and then to effectively counter attack and that is where Russian forces consistently do in their strategic exercises most of them begin with an initial attack that they are deflecting and reacting to and then a substantial counter-attack that they are engaged then I mean to me this is kind of for large-scale operation at least what the force structure concept is and then beyond of course understanding that in modern-day conflict the geographical space doesn't matter right the United States NATO between all a long range standoff conventional arsenal airspace attack there's no real depth you can go counter value right at the beginning you can take out ground lines of communications you can hit critical objects so the sort of like there's sort of an imaginary hundred kilometer distance separating ground forces but in reality when it comes to the nature of modern warfare it doesn't separate anyone at all and then standing that they given the pace of modern of modern warfare that that force needs to be positioned to both absorb in the airspace attack and to be able conduct some effective strikes of its own okay you touched on this very briefly but wonder if you could give a little more detail about your thoughts son as Russia increases its emphasis on the Arctic how might that affect the force structure not just in the northwest but of course the entirety of the Arctic coast well they have been doing quite a bit in the Arctic with the northern sea route economically the Arctic is has been and is a major factor in their economy the knurl produces a great deal of all sorts of metals that can only come out through the Arctic and then over to Murmansk and under the railroad rail lines etc a lot of natural resources are up there the Yamal Peninsula they have three major liquid natural gas projects going on right now which are major investments for them but they're also bringing in a lot of foreign partners on that they are opening liquid natural gas facilities off Kamchatka drawing off of this they're basically the Arctic is one of the things that is a major economic factor and their continued to develop it and put money in it and they have built up the the ground and naval forces in that area to to protect it and they have brought their air defense forces back into the region as well as Air Force it's not to the same degree as before but they are quite concerned about the security that or they see we're out and I'm what am i well basically they're doing a lot of rail to support this it's not just military it's it's about the economy it's about areas they can get into now with the receding cap up there they're building all sorts of icebreakers they've got 42 working the area and they have six on an order right now that are nuclear-powered and they're very serious about the Arctic so yeah the Arctic this is your for your fifth military district and operational strategic command and the only one headed by the Navy and maybe a model for if they create further military districts from what they have they improve the model as we look at it the ground forces is only three brigades but I pour an Arctic force that's pretty big so lots of great comments I think it's principally given by in one economic project to military projects a lot of us also particularly driven by the military the economic project is know attacking the LNG ship which to them is really an interesting commercial development project with viability unlike Gazprom and the Arctic is one the main things the political system is interested in it's a bit of a really great fantasy frontier and they spend a lot of money into it in it and even if it doesn't seem like a economic rationale it has a lot of economic rationale because you can spend lots of money out of state budget and just give it to a bunch of people to build things there and it's opposed way it it makes sense giving the way given the way the Russian political system and economy is set up that it's very profitable for the people engaged you know even if you don't think that the projects themselves have an economic rationale on the military side two brief comments one first the aerospace domain you know it's part of modernization they rebuild the early warning radar Network and then they started selling a picket radars there with short-range air defense around those pickar radars why because a huge piece of terrain that's a massive access point to Russia over the top over which you have didn't have visibility so first of all they want to gain visibility on it then they want to serve some picket radars there why cuz very obvious that from their perspective you have come easily over the top and can got conduct a large cruise missile attack with air forces of course we would never do that we are very nice peace-loving people and we have never thought of that now that said there was issue one issue too because maritime domain their view being of course that United States and other services obviously can operate missiles up there I'm sorry now submarines with cruise missiles on them those submarines can also launch cruise missiles film app from that area and they could Hammond to Russia again you want to see incoming cruise missile strikes you might say that's no big deal but remember it wasn't that long ago during the late period the Cold War and after the Cold War - that those cruise missiles were teal immense and is absolutely nothing to say that there won't be some next generation of something that looks like teal a man but there's much worse that won't come down the line and Russians of course are thinking twenty to thirty years out because in the Arctic if you want to be in a particular place with infrastructure you want to be thinking twenty years ahead and building stuff now it's very hard to work and operate on them right so there's always not slouching and they're trying to picture what the cut what the operating environment will be twenty years from now and what are the various things the United States or other people might do good morning gentlemen and uh thank you for a very interesting presentation my understanding your presentation is that while this is a Russian force that's smaller in the aggregate it has become more lethal and more agile and that in part that's due to its ability to operate jointly it's bring together joint effects so my question to you is if I was a military planner in a large-scale conflict with the Russian military at what extra line of command should i target my effects to kind of disaggregate that force to make it less lethal less agile less mobile and what if those what would those type of effects be what would be the best type of effects to do that so that's great I'm glad that you framed in terms of large-scale operations the support of some weird contrived small fight or a very small piece of terrain on the Baltics that the poor gamers like to have but nobody in Russia in the reality is planning to have it's like let's have to the world's leading nuclear powers have a very very tiny fight in the closet in this remote piece of terrain and that's going to be really the battle and that's how it's going to open up so first and foremost the level you won't be dealing with the Russian military always the operational level I'm gonna make a point at Hope College of Ag Ruth but Sir my experience in the whole US military and sir strategic culture really does excel at the tactical level but we sometimes have that tactical level of excellence disease where we get chauvinistic towards militaries that aren't good as a tactical level in Russian military has never been as good to tactical level but is fairly consistently beaten militaries that were better than them at the tactical level because they were not so good at the operational level in terms of operational art and their strategic thinking was not that great because there were technology fetishes and they thought hey the problem you can procure your way out of it we should buy lots of stuff and we're good at the tactical level and lots of good stuff plus excellence of tactical level equals win all right and it does not consistently does not against the Russian forces it can at times what one's a good example but more often not it just does right so for me you really won't be focused on the level of the combined arms army right and and maybe Chuck and Lester might have a different view here but that's where you want to target your fat your effects that's where the leadership will be that will organize the the fight in that particular front and the higher echelon is obviously the joint strategic command but I don't know if you're going to be the commander that's gonna have the capabilities to shape that sort of thing yeah we're Johnathan I mean you see that the general staff people will be at three different echelon so I'll be in that combined arms army the joint Strategic Command and then the General Staff headquarters that's where that operational level planner sits kind of a kind of a cast of people it's not like the u.s. where we rotate people through assignments they leave these guys in these assignments for a very long time you know once they get in this General Staff system they're gonna rotate between those three assignments so these operational level planners are in those three different commands so those would be the three different levels you'd have to target if you wanted to target the you know I did you weigh in turns out those catechin believe it having the General Staff of course has its advantages not not subjective what they call the trade union mentality but it's it's it's looking at the total package okay further question I'm a John shakey Department offense first thanks for the conversation today it's very interesting and if I'm glad you guys put it together two questions first thing I didn't see on your chart anything about Special Operations Command so if you can talk a little bit the Special Operations play in large-scale combat operations and the second question a given the description that the panel has how the Russians think about warfare and how the opening stages that a conflict will be they will be highly lethal probably that means the intensity will be very high the rate of ammunition use will be extremely high so where is the logistics capability to sustain that fight and you know initial days yeah just talking about the special operation you know they don't have a SOCOM or whatever like what we do and you know the special operations forces are a lot smaller there are big differences you know we think of elite in the u.s. system we think of Special Operations the Russians don't make that you know there's not a is not a equal sign between the word elite and Special Operations they have elite units in the Russian military that are not Special Operations units some of their Special Operations units are not that elite so it's the you know the biggest chunk of the Special Operations guys we call Special Operations guys are in these GRU Spetsnaz brigades if I meet ten of them the 1,500 guys per Brigade and you know it looks kind of like a motorized Rifle Battalion I mean they're on BTR they're on armored personnel carriers you know they're their jobs pretty much reconnaissance they do you know the reconnaissance for that army group you know finding those targets destroying key targets but I mean in terms of the the fight I mean it's much much less these special operations forces are much less important for the Russians than they are for us I mean they do have an important role granted you definitely but it's kinda like private military companies you know that you know it's definitely less important than these massive conventional units that they have you know they have a supporting role I to follow up on that if you're looking for the elite force it's the airborne the strategic reserve and they are now getting tanks so they're getting heavier but but these if you're looking for where is the elite it's it's the airborne yeah I'd add to that was always a naval infantry yeah airborne is getting restructure against getting tanks again it had tanks before it lost tanks is getting tanks it's losing tanks this is always a state of horse and the airborne but it's like building out to to both maintain the strategic air assault mission the standard air assault divisions and brigades is getting a lot more mobility were you gonna get were you gonna get William was because they bought a metric ton helicopters during during the first state armed and program a lot and so far some military is really regained air mobility and as increased Google can see what they can do with it and starting to do force restructuring and that sort of short tactical operational level so since these units can basically airlift take strategic terrain right behind enemy lines and and and do things like that I agree to a check so that means specialized areas really sort of base recon elite infantry in support of conventional ground force formations for large-scale combat operations they wanted to do we're kind of a bit more what you will solve does but they just didn't get that mission if anyone has that that's kso Special Operations Command the one neat thing about it that lonely air with that to us is that as Russia will G is genuinely implementing recon strike recon fire loops right and it's increasingly able to see the battlefield at tactical operational depths all right to engage targets in real time to do real-time battle damage assessment re-engagement right and to add precision to their traditional advantages of density and mass of fires on firepower right these users also have an important role because they add redundancy to the ISS are platforms that the military is able to field a person would you know Australis or other type system forward can mark Amelie for artillery targets and at the tactical range can have them engage these targets which is something that you know probably Spetsnaz from ATS could only a dream or so it's becoming relevant terms of the big changes and command and control of taking place in Russia move and this to me as always I say this was or gargles fantasy this dream of a military able to engage in non-combat precision and smart weapons to its traditional advantages and firepower that already had on the battlefield did anyone want to take the logistics question I can hook up so like I said earlier it's pipe and rail I mean if the rear logistics support areas for these combined arms armies and probably even the brigades are gonna be congruent with these rail lines and though they may you know if it's a large-scale combat operation they may have to follow that rail either because just the way they do logistic support you know if you look at the the number of trucks on the Russian army it's not a lot of trucks and so they that's kind of the way they envisioned it and when they do they do do a massive recall of reservist a lot of these guys will be truck drivers and we have to pull some of these trucks out of the civilian economy but the road network is not that good either yeah but generally it's it's this rail rail of pipe system and that's how they're that's how they envision logistical e supporting these and the rail that the railroad troops are a major chunk of the Russian forces and how hard is it to take out a rail well not that tough how long is it to take it out for any period of time that's the that's the question it's like the railroad troops they aren't actually going out and driving the trains necessarily the Royal troops are just there to defend the rail lines and rebuild them if necessary you know they rely on their civilian you know that kind of quasi state government rail line of rail line infrastructure and we're out roads and trains on it so to bring up the supplies to the front they're not relying on these railroad troops the guerrilla troops are just maintaining the lines in combat areas so yeah so I mean they can they can build new lines that build a few you know in Ukraine they've got a couple areas where they had it closed off and they built you know these railroad troops went out there and built lines around the partition off area so it's it's a it's a pretty pretty important mission they have a lot of capability they're just pulling out in a civilian economy that was just that and bridge troops because seeing a lot of our Sun exercise where they practice often or not is of course bridging and the ability to give across rivers assuming the bridges have been taken out I think there's been a brigade yeah yeah a lot there's a pond two brigade I think in the mean part of the reorg was to fix the problem with combat service support MTO because the new-look reforms initially the waster dekopon makar food it made absolutely no sense there was no combats or support for these brigades that they built it was like okay the brigade goes and who's gonna provide the kind of support for once the meats actual combat and how does it look gistic simply organized and they said this doesn't work you have to go back to the divisional structure the division has enough of that kit in it and then the combined arms army itself as the operational level command will have the logistics unit given to it by the osk and they will support the divisions but yeah this is so I mean this might be that that's probably it's certainly not the most exciting and room riveting topic of railway troops and combat service support and logistics but there's one the bigger one the bigger important changes that have taken place in Russian Armed Forces over the last couple of years okay we've got time for one or two more questions so alright let's go up front and then in the back well we can go back to front I guess I just hang on wait for the microphone my name is rich Guffey and the question is with all the ongoing reforms continuing across doctrine policy use application whatever modernization what are we not paying enough attention to that you think the Russians are doing well and what do you think that they're gonna they're think they're doing well but really they're not and we should just let them do it I call I have to go first you guys okay wait were they not the world that we think that that they think they should they do well and we should let them that's a tough cross-generational and I gotta say that is you're gonna get me in trouble you know this old joke has no problem with freedom of speech the only problems with freedom after speech I'm originally from the Soviet Union and you're not gonna leave me out to that plane that said I mean what I think they are probably really doing increasingly well is actually arranging the force at the operational level and coming up with a way to basically field mixed combat formations and inter-service formations of maybe two types one that's sort of more tactical operational perhaps around the division with different types of you know supporting it and the other one really around the combined arms army and they have different versions of it they've started to really conceptualize their experience in Syria and basically seeing how an inter service combat grouping could be affected and commanded and then looking to see in the actual high-end fight in Europe how a combined arms army could form the Corps the hub of the inter-service grouping and then have air assets and other assets assigned to it and this is kind of again to me in some ways was was a Garko stream but they're finally putting the pieces together and they're finally really putting the pieces together for a way to add precision and to really see it at operational depths the big problems we often have right and we talk about watch the military is technology focused we focus on weapon capabilities on the ranges and all that the reality is that for a longest time you know Soviet Union always said this problem just couldn't see it had great firepower it had good ranges but couldn't see very well in most cases and it couldn't make use of a lot of that firepower that's why have so much area of effect and the big changes that the Russian military increasingly really can see a tactical operational depth and further out as the capabilities to certainly hit things critical objects that don't move and and so it's adding it's really adding force multipliers to what already is a fairly capable force in terms of firepower that to me is interesting the latter part are totally gonna punt on yeah I may be the this recon fire strike system that they're that they're trying to develop this way of integrating fire sensors and computer technology they seem to be making big advances what they do I mean it it's a the system is called Strela t always here at mentioned in their in their system they seem to be they seem to be getting this this concept rights going down the right Road and in terms of the problem and I think al it's a logistics problem not the logistics part of getting supplies up to the front but the logistics part in in large-scale combat operations will be able to sustain all this new technology that they're getting in you know they've got a lot of new technology but uh I don't know if they're gonna be engaged in a large-scale combat operation if how long they can sustain this technology you know a lot of stuffs can be breaking down you know it's not like the old Soviet days where you can just you know take the truck back and a couple guys could pull the engine out put a new one or put the transmission in a lot of this stuff has to go back not just to the Depot back to the original equipment manufacturer and has to be rebuilt there in order to be you know in order to be serviced so I don't know if they have that kind of you know technological capability to keep that to keep that large skill you know industrial production going on what we in the middle of a large-scale combat operations yes I would say what they do well is designing equipment appropriate to their terrain it's designed to fight and operate optimally on they're not being an expeditionary force they don't have to build something that functions optimally in the desert in the Arctic and the jungle etc it's the same system so ok I'll take the one last question in the back Thank You Mario from the Polish embassy here in DC I have it may be a little bit naive questions when you look at this emerging for structure and modernization process Russian Armed Forces can you read the intentions of Russians whether they are purely defensive or whether there are some offensive elements I'm not talking about the large-scale operations but as microcytic just small small on the fringe of the NATO or Russian thank you I mean I don't know any country that doesn't want better military capabilities or spend your defence dollars better than they are so I mean I you know even if there wasn't this current problem going on with this tension going on between Russia and NATO right now I think they would still be going through it and and trying to improve a lot of these systems but you know as for intense obviously this this impedance is this this current contour this current tension between NATO but I don't know if you really discern out 1/10 less well I I just think if you look at Russia's history they're surrounded by people who have come to see them uninvited and they there's awful also people out there who've come long distances who see them uninvited and they have perceived that they are surrounded by hostile people's and this has got to affect how you look at the world we haven't been invaded by Canada yet though we've tried on the other side and fail four times Mexico yeah well ponch Sylvia did come across in Columbus New Mexico for a very shortened desert that didn't turn out well for him and got General Pershing down to visit for a while and Mexico has had a few problems with us but we don't have that same historic fear of our borders and what's coming at us next and I think that has to have some impact on how you look at the world and how you can see and your worldview okay on that note I think that's a good place to end on thank you again for joining us let's thank our speakers [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Views: 19,447

Rating: 4.7070065 out of 5

Keywords: Tags, go, here!

Id: -DpW9yaSXiI

Length: 91min 20sec (5480 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 21 2019