Posted on 08/11/2008 8:38:27 PM PDT by JerseyHighlander
Military Learning Between the Chechen Wars
By: Michael Coffey
The downward spiral of the Russian military that began with Afghanistan is often compared to the U.S. army’s experience in Vietnam. However, unlike the American experience, the conflict did not serve as an impetus for drastic military reform. In fact, the decline of the Soviet army continued through the 1980s, leading to the defeat of the Red Army’s “ghost” in Chechnya in 1996 at the hands of a few rebels. Three years later, President Vladimir Putin ordered the army back into Chechnya. The military did not undergo dramatic transformation in the intervening years, but performed remarkably better the second time around.
Two sequential questions are a necessary prelude for this paper’s attempt to explain this. First, how do military organizations learn and what are the prevailing theories of military learning? Second, how did the Russian armed services perform at the operational level during the two Chechen wars? This paper will argue that improved performances exhibited by Russian ground troops and artillery, an increased emphasis on elite units, and marginally better interoperability between forces suggests the Russian military underwent internal low-level learning between the Chechen wars. However, these lessons – some of which run counter to current trends in international norms – will be quickly forgotten without a deeper reformation.
-SNIP-
Analysis and Conclusion
Pavel Baev and Roy Allison both argued for a void of innovation in The Russian Military: Power and Policy over the course of the Chechen wars.[78] Baev argued the joint interpretation that innovation only occurred with the “convergence” of external and internal factors.[79] He blamed internal opposition for the Russian military’s failure to reform, but also the disintegration of the armed forces as a whole in the 1990s. General officers eager to maintain their status militated against any streamlining that threatened their prestige.[80] He said that only an end to the Chechen conflict could provide space for genuine reform.
Allison also believed that the war in Chechnya impeded reform and development, but he did not assess the situation as starkly. The first Chechen war did not create a large movement for reform and politicians failed to exert external pressure. The few changes that occurred at the tactical level did not portend significant change and learning because Russia did not incorporate Chechen lessons for every other local intervention by Russian military forces.[81] Allison also viewed a lack of adherence to international norms as indicative of a Russian military learning failure.[82] The first assumption, about incorporating Chechen lessons and applying them to every instance of operations other than war, is a broad and simplistic transference. For example, the trans-Dniestr region has never required the same application of force as Chechnya. The second assumption about respecting human rights in modern conflict is based on the assumption of norms that are not universally held.
Allison further disallowed military learning by crediting internecine Chechen conflict with allowing Russia to create a “construct” of imagined Russian power.[83] Allison also included several caveats about performance during the second war: the Russians gave troops better training and conducted command staff exercises; tactics at the individual level evolved; air power improved; and organizational and command structures underwent change.[84] His criticism ultimately centered on the absence of a “modern counterinsurgency doctrine” for the second war. This remains a significant deficiency that will impair Russia’s ability to achieve a lasting victory, but Allison’s exceptions acknowledged a broad range of changes. The failure to establish permanent readiness mobile response forces also received criticism. Politicians supported the idea, but military necessity demanded attention to the immediate war in Chechnya instead. This prioritization, according to Allison, evinced a rejection of change – but was likely rather a practical response to the most pressing demands on the ground.
The Russian military operated more effectively at the tactical and operational levels during the second war. The Russian military learned to use brute force in the second Chechen war because it did not have a military that was capable of conducting a modern “bloodless” war. Russian soldiers learned to apply their superior firepower on the battlefield more effectively, while simultaneously increasing their own chance of survival. An effective chain of command could have taken advantage of minor battlefield achievements by sharing this learning vertically and horizontally within the military. Or, general staffs and military colleges could have evolved new strategies that took battle-tested units and coordinated new doctrines and joint operations. Neither event took place, limiting Russian military improvement to low-level internal learning.
The Russians did not just reinvent the World War II wheel in Chechnya, as Sean Edwards suggested in his assessment of military operations in Grozny.[85] When Russian forces moved into the southern mountainous portion of Chechnya, the armed forces had to relearn counterinsurgency tactics developed during the Afghanistan campaign. Conceivably, the Russians could have considerably boosted military efficacy by integrating special forces with aircraft modernized for precision strike. Such jointness would have considerably improved the ability of troops to amass firepower on defined enemy targets. The military did increase its focus on special operations troops, but it also used tanks and artillery indiscriminately against population centers. Thus, the army learned to use its troops more effectively, but not to train effective soldiers. The increased dependence on special military units had a downside as well: this will increasingly balkanize the military hierarchy at a time when the chiefs are attempting to unify commands. More chains of command make joint operations and combined arms warfare harder to realize on the battlefield.
The changes between the two wars suggest learning. However, a weak institutional memory – due in part to turnover among conscripts, a non-existent non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps, and an organization that is reluctant to change and adapt – is unlikely to retain these lessons if fighting ceases completely. A “learning organization that institutionalizes the organization’s learning philosophy,” as described by Lt. Col. Stephen Gerras, calls for a more thoroughgoing transformation of discourse and cooperation in military operations than what occurred between the two Chechen wars.[86] The Russian military learned from the first conflict, but a system trained to understand, develop, and disseminate new theories did not emerge.
The Russian Military Doctrine of 2000 called for a military that could effect:
standardized command and control of troops and control of weapon assets, communications, intelligence-gathering, strategic-early warning, and electronic warfare systems, and precision mobile non-nuclear weapons and the information support systems for them.[87]
The military showcased few of these improvements during the second war although it succeeded by focusing on already-existing strengths: greater numbers, massive firepower, heavy weaponry, and dominance of the sky. General officers have not created an institution where leaders spend as much effort thinking about learning as they do carrying out the basic functions of command.[88]
Change is taking place at the tactical level rather than in headquarters, leaving the army unprepared to move beyond the current crisis in Chechnya. Russian fighter pilots “trained” in combat and special forces troops received more training and money as the conflict progressed. Yet, too often those were standalone improvements - such as new sensors for aircraft or radios for troops on the ground - done without any view towards creating an integrated and responsive military force. Ground forces learned to avoid close quarters combat and blast their enemies from a distance. These changes improved military efficacy in the short-term, but these tactics have not led to new doctrine and the Russian army does not seem prepared to continuously learn from its mistakes and widely disseminate lessons learned at the lowest levels of combat.
Second Chechen War, 1999-Present
Mark Kramer and many other authors writing about the second Chechen war noted Russia's improved performance against the rebels. The Russians seized and held cities, and most counterattacks failed to route Russian forces. The Russians adopted different tactics against the Chechens in 2000 and different leaders sent better trained forces into battle. Security services created a more efficient media blackout during the second war, but the two wars still offer an excellent comparative case study for military learning.
Planning and Organization
The military spent so much time planning and organizing the second campaign that Timothy Thomas of the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth joked the Russians not only read lessons learned in 1996, but they reread histories of the conflict between Imam Shamil and tsarist forces in the early 1800s.[48] In 1999, Russia amassed 100,000 troops for a multi-phase operation that involved – 1) cordoning Chechnya from the rest of the Caucasus; moving the cordon south to the Terek River; 2) establishing complete control over Chechen territory where Russia could create a model Chechnya; and 3) finally dealing with remaining terrorists in southern mountains. Additionally, the Russians attempted to establish a single command to control the army, internal, and other security forces.[49] In February, 2001 Putin placed the Federal Security Service (FSB – Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti), successor to the Soviet-era KGB, in charge of the Chechen mission.[50] This change indicated a desire to complete combat operations and move on to a low-level counter-terrorism phase of conflict. Events did not unfold as hoped, but to its credit, the Russian military did plan for the second war.
Command, Control, and...
Improved planning before the onset of conflict improved the Russians’ starting position compared to the 1994 invasion, but primitive systems hampered effective implementation. In the 1990s, U.S. war planners developed net-centric warfare theory. Generals wanted to eliminate Karl von Clausewitz’s “fog of war” with perfect real-time knowledge of the battlespace. In 2001, the report “Building and Development of Armed Forces Plan for 2001-2005,” acknowledged Russian backwardness.[51] The plan called for reinforcing the south and unifying command and control (C2) systems.[52] Conventional militaries need to integrate communications and intelligence at multiple levels to succeed in modern warfare. Yet as late as 2001, the Russian command structure still struggled to establish authority over subject power structures.
Ground Forces – Infantry
Ground forces bombarded cities and populated areas at range. Russian soldiers’ poor tactics in urban terrain and a fear of ambushes encouraged them to mimic western standoff bombing, but without western precision, using high-explosives and superior firepower to destroy urban landscapes from a distance. Whether or not this proved the local assumption that the Russian conscripts were afraid of Chechens, it did show a capacity to innovate and change.
Soldiers used land-based multiple-launch fuel bombs called “Buratino” (Tos-1) against population centers in the second war, weapons largely absent from the first.[53] The thermobaric blast zone created by the Buratino is deadly against closely packed soldiers in urban settings. The Russians also used RPO-A single-shot flamethrowers against fortified bunkers.[54]
Urban Warfare
Lester Grau and Timothy Thomas, writing for the FMSO and Marine Corps Gazette, argued unequivocally that Russian military commanders learned from the two previous battles for Grozny - January 1995 and August 1996 – in a third fight for the city in January 2000.[55] Russian forces surrounded the city and refused ceasefires that would allow the Chechens to resupply and rearm. Russian troops in the city learned to advance to contact the enemy, but quickly pull back 300 meters – the maximum effective range for the RPG-7 and Kalashnikov.[56] Once Russian troops located the enemy, they called in heavy artillery from the surrounding hills. They also depended on former mayor Bislan Gantemirov and his local militia to act as scouts.[57]
Ground Forces - Armor and Artillery
Instead of entering Grozny where they were vulnerable to RPG fire, tanks and artillery took up station on hilltops ringing the city to provide indirect fire support. Troops used zonal-targeting, which allowed a rifle company to quickly contact battalion-level officers for additional indirect fire support from nearby assets.[58] The decentralization of authority plus the addition of mortars and batteries allowed for a concentration of firepower not seen in the first Chechen war.[59] Building on this, Russian forces employed several tactics not employed since Afghanistan, including the fire block, artillery sweep, defensive box barrage, and fire corridor.[60]
Air Force
The first air campaign provided valuable training for Russian pilots, but the Russian military failed to upgrade aircraft and weapons during the interregnum to the point where air power would play a decisive role in 1999. Stephane Lefebvre wrote that the Russians introduced the Pchela-1T unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the second war, but reports placed the UAV in the field as early as 1995.[61] Lefebvre also noted the introduction of Ka-50 prototypes, but the helicopter never entered full-rate production.[62] The night-capable Mi-28N will not enter service in significant numbers this decade. Combat experience improved pilots’ skills, remedying inadequate training hours, but aircraft never received real-time, all-weather, and precision technologies necessary to capitalize on accrued experience.
Some analysts suggested the air force learned to depend more heavily on the Frogfoot during the second conflict, but this is only backed by generalizations.[63] The Finnish Fighter Tactics Academy said Russian Su-25s led the second air campaign, but Frogfoots and Fencers both played an active - if sometimes ineffective - role in both conflicts.[64] The air force flew 5,800 missions in less than a year according to Col. Gen. Anatoly Kornukov, but these were not nighttime strikes and there is little indication of the prevalence of forward air controllers, who are necessary – barring aircraft upgrades – to improve ground attack accuracy.[65]
Some technical improvements for aircraft are underway, but funding issues perpetually delay upgrades. The MoD is equipping Su-27s with new radars and precision weaponry and Su-25s are being upgraded with new displays and terrain-mapping radars, but as few as five upgraded versions of the latter platform could enter service in 2006, more than a decade after the first war began.[66] The Ministry of Defense regularly announces planned upgrades and improvements, but few programs are ever carried through to completion. In 2000, the Russian military still had not procured the planned “N”-version Hind helicopters; by 2001 a “PN”-version night- and fog-capable Hind was still in the experimental stage.[67]
Special Forces
Special forces in Chechnya continued hunting high-value targets in the second war, but their success has been mixed. Russia’s FSB assassinated Samir Saleh Abdullah Al-Suwailem (also known as Khattab) in March of 2002, with a poisoned letter delivered by messenger.[68] On March 8, 2005 the FSB claimed credit for killing former president Aslan Maskhadov in Tolstoy-Yurt.[69] However, Russian forces failed to capture or kill terrorist leader Shamil Basayev, despite numerous reports of his demise.[70] In fact, Basayev claimed responsibility for assassinating Chechnya’s Russian-backed President Akhmad Kadyrov during a parade in May 2004.[71] In February 2000, during a three-day battle, Chechens wiped out the 2nd Battalion of the 104th Paratroop Regiment, Pskov Division that parachuted into the Argun Gorge.[72] An OMON group later took heavy casualties in the same region.[73]
Still, Russian special operators are considered competent and capable forces, while regular forces remain undependable. Russian high command believes it can train and improve special forces units. Accordingly, in 2006 the Russian Security Council ordered security agencies with special operations arms to boost training and equipment and develop long-term strategies for their organizations operating in the Caucasus.[74] With training and new equipment, special forces should be able to operate in rugged areas like the Argun, the implication being that such operations – regardless of state investment – are beyond the capability of regulars.[75]
Because Russian special forces are effective, military leaders are giving them a greater combat role, command authority, and boosting their numbers. In 2005, Defense Minister Ivanov announced the creation of two special Defense Ministry mountain warfare brigades for the Caucasus.[76] Meanwhile, the Interior Ministry created a special anti-terrorist crime center with a command responsible for OMON, SOBR and special interior forces (VV – Vnutrennikh Voisk).[77]
Good post for the military minded.
btt
Interesting that the Russians relied on traitors to act as scouts and a 300 m stand off range for rpg 7’s and Ak’s...
It also shows that while the US gets criticized a lot for fighting the 'last war,' the Russians are actually fighting using the WW2 playbook.
That is not to say it is not effective ....imagine being a smaller country and knowing that the only way to fight Russia is to go guerilla, and in the process see all your nations infrastructure get (literally) bulldozed. However it does show that the Russians are nowhere as good as the Us is.
The reason is: they cannot fight the way we can, but if we WANTED to we could fight they way they can (hey, carpet bombing is not hard, and saturating a city with MLRS is also very capable .....it is just that the US prefers 'cleaner' wars, but if it had to it could). We have far greater operational capacity.
The ONE thing that the Russians have that is to their greatest advantage is political will. Most of the people support Putin (he is the real leader there), and from what it seems it is real support (not the Soviet-esque 'ya better support me yah'). No US president can have that, especially with the country split 50/50. A God-sent Republican president will only have 50% support at most, and the same would be true if the heavens decided to send a Democrat who was good. 50% at most. You also have to consider that the media would be doing everything to hamstring the POTUS, and most important the American people have a very low level of war-stamina. Unless it is video-game perfect, bloodless, and short; even the most 'worthy' war starts to cause domestic dissension very quickly. Now, add to that politicians who are more interested in getting re-elected than for the greater good of their country, and that 50% max approval will quickly drop.
Although, if we had to we could take the Russians. The problem is that we have no will.
In a couple of years replace 'Russians' with 'Chinese,' because you can bet your bottom buck that Beijing has been looking at this little debacle with gleeful eyes. It confirms their suspicions, which have also been confirmed by nothing occurring in regards to Iran (yeah, some new battle groups went there, but they'll most probably be sailing back in a couple of weeks).
Maybe I am wrong ....
Great post. Thanks for the concise anlysis.
Basic tactics, using your strengths. They learned from the disastrous first Chechyn war, esp. the iniitial armored column into Grozny that was destroyed.
True, the Chechens perhaps should have upped their rifles to ones with longer effective ranges, and used mortars instead of Rpg’s?
I find the traitor angle interesting, that has a number of implications such as local knowledge of “who’s who” which would hurt any sort of resistance movement, and the knowledge of local terrain would help the technically crude Russian Armour negotiate around choke points..
The effective urban anti-armor tactic evolved by Chechyns (using only available weapons) involved groups of 3 man “hunter killer teams.”
These consist of one sniper (dragonov), one machine gunner, and one RPG man. The sniper and machine gunner would try to pin down dismounted Russian troops while the RPG man would get close enough for a shot.
At least 3 teams would attack a Russian armored vehicle, hopelfully when it was isolated by terrain and buildings. Three or more RPGs fired at once was the goal. This was very effective, but obviously the hunter killer teams must be very motivated and would take a lot of casualties. (Allah akbar, etc.)
The Russian answer was to pull back out of range of where these guys could be hiding, and shell the area to rubble.
bump to above
L
IIRC, the Sovs lost about 300 tanks when they rolled into the Czech republic back in 1968 to (get this) Molotov Cocktails! That's a lot of gasoline and a lot more jugs of wine.
It's not too difficult to hang tanks up without even firing a shot. Lay out enough staked down razor wire and even more coils of wire and as soon as those drive wheels roll over it the cogs will snap it up and roll it around like a spindle until the whole tank just locks up. 'Course, it's still a fixed pillbox and rather deadly since they'll be pretty PO'ed at whomever did that. But if it's wound tight enough only a cutting torch will do the job and with folks sniping at the entire operation it won't be any fun.
It's almost the same thing with choppers. Run enough wires from the tops of trees down to a single point on the ground where an LZ would most likely be set up and attach them to that stake for example. A chopper coming in might not see the wires in time and get all tangled in the rotors causing an abrupt and final plunge the rest of the way. That is, if you run the wires high enough and at the proper angle.
It still takes a lot of motivation and fearlessness to take on tanks and attack helos!
It’s said that on at least one occasion of the capture of a VC/NVA bunker back during the war, there was an inscription the wall translating to “Don’t shoot at the skinny helicopters”.
Agreed. But the Czechs had it in 1968 even if in the end they had no chance of success. Just look at the example of Israel when you think of being outnumbered and outgunned. They have to win every game or they will indeed be wiped from the face of the earth. True, now they have a formidable military. But back in the original series of conflicts it was British armor, weapons and sheer guts.
Our Sherman tanks out fought the Nazi Tigers at the Battle of the Bulge despite being out gunned and out numbered. However we did have the decided advantage of having a lot of fuel on hand. But the 101st at Bastogne had hardly any gear,having been caught unprepared for the weather and the sudden siege. I'd put that event on a par with Washington's winter campaign against the British in the American Revolution. Granted the armored technology is not the same, but doesn't all war come down to essentially the same paradigm: Man against man? Can't even distill it down to the strategy. As Patton once said: "A good plan executed with appropriate violence and motivation today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."
The question as you put it so well in this instance is: Do the defenders have the motivation and guts to take on a committed invasion? Because it must come down to a repeat of the Afghan solution. Insurgency and death by a thousand cuts.
That conflict was often called the Russian's "Vietnam." By the looks of this one, I'm not certain they remember the lessons. I'll remind you that the Afghans were badly outnumbered and outgunned using in many cases 18th century technology to defeat 20th century machines. Sure we gave 'em STINGERS but that was really when they almost had it won anyway.
What else did the Afghans have that MIGHT be lacking in this event? How about their blind commitment to Jihad? Allah is a great inspiration in cases like this. Funny thing is that the philosophy of the north Vietnamese was exactly the same when they faced US! Essentially they would be willing to expend thousands of men to kill just one of ours and in the long run, they were confident of a win. That held true. We didn't lose vietnam militarily, we lost it politically and that was driven by our electorate, sick of expending their sons in a butcher shop without end. But the communists are atheists! No Allah-Hu Akbar, here! Yet both philosophies may still ring true. It depends on the fortitude of the defenders and their reasons for so doing.
You sure about that?
It was my understanding that before we gave them Stingers, the helicopter gunships pretty much went where they wanted when they wanted.
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