Changes in Russian military organization.

I recently saw a series of presentations by a think tank of strategic studies, with audience members including diplomats and retired officials, discussing recent streamlining of Russian military organization in a major shift to adapt from Soviet doctrines to a modern Russia capable of fighting a modern war with the economy, industry and logistics they actually have available.

Obviously it was fascinating, especially from a DCS mission builder perspective.

Being facetious, it does slightly resemble Grand Moff Tarkin's relation of the Emperor's new organizational command structure in Star Wars; district commanders now have full authority of combined forces, including missile regiments within their district and coordinate for national defence. I guess it's like the district commanders effectively replace Stavka and a lot of red tape, it also means each district is now designed to support any kind of military operations independently, with a virtual encyclopedia of brigade attachments for each "combined forces army". Again being facetious it's almost like Putin's answer to the rogue commander threat is to simply give them their fiefdoms, it's a logistical and political benefit.

Organizationally it's been streamlined. Russia has completely done away with the Soviet era structure of Army Groups, Divisions, Brigade attachments and Battalion tactical units since they no longer deal in terms of hundreds of Divisions. They also performed a brutally honest self examination of doctrine and realized the "old Guard" had designed a strategic plan which, under its own weight simply could not be logistically supported in warfare. The new structure uses just a handful of strategic expressions: the Combined Forces Army, Regiments and independent Army Corps. Each district now forms the Army Group. So, for example in the Caucasus region and Black Sea theatre, the RF territory is the Southern District, Army Group HQ Krasnodar, with three Combined Forces Army HQ at locations approximating Krymsk, Maykop and Mineralnye Vody, these forming the Army Group commanded from Krasnodar by the district commander. Generally the tactical unit deployed is the self contained Regiment as opposed to a Battalion as it can support and sustain its own operations. If necessary the district commander can utilize tactical nuclear response within his region without further authority, as part of Russia's stated current strategic doctrine. Border skirmishes or other small scale tactical response would be countered by the self contained Regiment, including all support elements and interservice attachments required for operations. It also means the field commander is now only twice removed from the theatre commander so would enjoy far greater tactical freedom than similar commanders traditionally would've. The units are all understrength, with mobilization to reflect the national state of readiness for war. In formation size a Regiment tactically deployed without notice to a sudden border skirmish for example might resemble a traditional Battalion in strength and mobility but is actually an understrength Regiment, with its own understrength air attachments, naval attache, Intelligence operations, arty command, transport and logistics, a partridge in a pear tree. This examples the new doctrine versus the old, where a Battalion would be the tactical quick response and the things it needs to do its job independently would take time to get there, but when it does it'll probably be 18 Divisions to avenge Battalion which was undoubtedly destroyed holding the line with limited functionality. In the new system the "Battalion" that gives immediate tactical deployment has roughly 20% of each and every thing a self sustaining Regiment has at its disposal so everything from helicopter gunships to strike aircraft deploys together at the drop of a hat, just scaled to reflect the state of national readiness, nominally 20%. It's still very Russian in that it seeks to overwhelm the enemy but where Soviet doctrine amounted to numerical superiority and cumbersome organization the new Russia is about force coordination at every scale of conflict and very streamlined organization.

Russia's strategic plan, like its new organization was described very simply, it's neat and streamlined and quite Russian. It almost completely dispenses with the concept of small scale warfare, disregards border conflicts and policing actions as local tactical concerns and structures its strategic plan upon the premise that any war involving major powers in any way invariably has a front which stretches from Norway to Turkey and all field decisions, including the role of the navy are made upon this basis. It means essentially Russia has no hesitation about using tactical nukes as a deterrence for escalation at the very onset of any conventional skirmish with major powers. Unlike American doctrine which is that tactical nukes invariably leads to escalation into strategic nuclear exchange, Russia's view is the opposite, that in order to present viable strategic deterrence the threat must be believable and so where conventional threat may suffice, field units such as naval units may be required to provide strategic deterrence in which tactical nukes would be employed. As written, Russian strategic doctrine is that limited nuclear exchange is not only possible, without escalation into strategic nuclear exchange but in fact is necessary for believable deterrence. That is not to say each Russian ship is going to have nukes primed and armed, but simply that ubiquitous warhead delivery systems capable of launching both conventional and tactical nuclear armaments are part of the Russian strategic plan as much as Boomers are the backbone of the US deterrence.

Anyway that's how I've understood things.

It's all very interesting, regardless of whether I might be glossing a bit and missing a bit, it was a lot to take in, the main thing I came away with was much easier mission building on the Caucasus map and how to populate it believably within hours instead of days of head scratching and then winding up with way too much to render trying to make it believable. I was putting in old soviet formations but under the entirely accurate new system I can scale everything way down and still have every kind of support in a small scale tactical operation. It's actually how they work now. Mission building just got fun again.

Edit to note what I mean by saying above that Russia is doing away with this formation type and that is purely as strategic expressions, presumably the common (Prussian) order of battle remains the international standard of military organization, ie. traditional formations and composition on paper, but no longer as strategic expressions.

Very interesting, thanks for the neat writeup! :thumbup:

Especialy the new doctric on the usage of tactical nukes and the corresponding "escalate to deescalate" concept has caused some interesting discussions within security study circles in recent years.

wouldnt structuring missions based on this be anachronistic though?

Cheers, thanks for the comments fellers.

I have been noticing the general trend since the late 90s but whenever I looked it up everything said, oh no no Russian Federation is still structured exactly like the Soviet except the air forces structure was revised in the 90s. Hearing these presentations at the think tank kind of vindicated what I'd been thinking was happening all along, since for a start every time I started building a 90s mission, this was back when FC2 was nearing release I kept looking up news stories in Crimea, Moscow, Kuban (translated obviously, but local indie journos talking period politics at personal risk), and just using logic and what I knew of the late/post soviet strife militarily since the early 80s, and I was thinking there's just no way they can field like that, it's logistical cum tactical suicide and they'll just lose even small skirmishes. Soviet frontal strategy was based upon war by attrition, the Russian military in the 90s simply couldn't support it. But interviews of military personnel at bases suggested despite lack of wages for months or years at a time some were still going about their job as usual, virtually as a volunteer force would act under local command authority and engage tactical operations if required. It's like a militia mentality. Some also sold black market weapons out of the supply dumps but not everybody tries to be good. Now remember the Admiral who fired missiles from the Moscow into Georgia in the mid-90s, Russians stated he acted without orders and it represented a great concern in the west at the time of rogue military district commanders in the former Soviet states. This was when ex-soviet base personnel still in Ukraine after the breakup were illegally shipping nuclear-capable missiles to Iran and there was a lot of talk about policing black market weapons trade on the Black Sea. Now let's say Iran went completely insane and decided to go over the Caucasus and take the Kuban soviet training facilities and their war materiel stockpiles in a national burglary, it's not really a strategic threat but at the time the tactical organization to repel it in a laughable border skirmish near Georgia ostensibly doesn't exist in this period of turmoil. What it appeared would happen is local field commanders like that rogue Admiral would simply turn around with whatever they had stockpiled locally and throw a genuine force at it without so much as a call to the Kremlin, then probably ask for a seat on the Duma as a reward later. I'm thinking the new strategic plan was bottom up observation of logic and subsequently implementing an official and intelligent plan of it, not a top down decision that was thought up and will begin to be implemented over the coming decades. The whole type of functionality involved here is also about force coordination being it's just not a massive standing military with thousands of infantry brigades to throw around, but most likely a luck as falls force composition with whoever is still hanging around to shoot with it, you kind have bits of everything to be thrown at you on any scale because it's the best they can do with what's left and a trickle of maintenance, industry or support. So I believe thinking was already in place, out of sheer desperation rather than conception.

After all it's basically the great fundamental difference between small nation Wehrmacht lethality and classical strategic doctrine, which itself is merely representative of strategic thought shifting with the impact of dramatic war technologies and the willingness to adopt them, ie. tanks and CAS lending to field authority with logistical support as opposed to trenches and artillery and a table with toy soldiers on it in the command tent with a runner delivering tactical decisions. More than this an entire shift in the thinking in command tents both at base and in the field about best tactical expression of new war technologies being employed, which is all related. In a sense Russia has really come late to the party...or so it would seem. In reality it wasn't until the Gulf War that the US formally adopted the combined force strategic doctrine on paper, right up to then still existed the presumption of wars being fought by attrition in one form or another, so primarily fought by the army with independent interservice support, an environment with interservice rivalry and tactical miscommunications so poor coordination of force in the field despite stellar strategic plans on paper in priori, it's such a competitive environment that nobody wants to give up any power, whether holding logistical priority or giving instructions in Washington, so fluidic field requirements are not only missed but tend to outdate the strategy before it's employed. In a sense, until the 90s the world (NATO) military leadership of the US had updated old thinking (post-mediaeval) to new (Wehrmacht) thinking mainly in a purely tactical sense and primarily through consistent, intensive study of Wehrmacht doctrines and prodigious publications since 1942. Not that field commanders and even some general staff haven't been very aware since the 50s and vocally frustrated during conflict in strategic capability and tactical achievement by red tape. In a sense you could say the combined force doctrine crept into the general staff from the bottom up and wasn't so much a top down decision as an observation and lending official support to it at the highest military level. It wasn't like the old guard were twiddling their thumbs and giving stubborn refute, they were occupied with a high survivability doctrine as the new military focus for previous decades and the main shift in thinking, it just so happens the two work beautifully together.

In mission building terms for a 90s fictional conflict, the way I was being told despite my gut saying otherwise is that essentially local forces would comprise of a handful of militia using stockpiled, mostly obsolete equipment and a handful of newer gear still essentially being field tested when the soviet world collapsed, under command of a local warlord and marching to their own tune, probably the warlord's personal ambitions and insanities, whilst the general staff and whatever forces are centrally organized still structured its thinking around tossing thousands of infantry battalions in the soviet style of warfare so expect battle readiness of any formal military response from point of mobilization you know, in a month or two but good luck with the border skirmish. And if I build a mission where you go from attacking some defunct outer bases, barely operational in the 90s to a formal response and military presence, it's about two days worth of populating the map with a large enough force to have all the things you really need to see on the battlefield in modern warfare. Logically this military response simply didn't exist in reality.

What it appears now is we have a formalization of the combined force doctrine and regional authorities but I believe it is the only manner in which conflict with any actual tactical threat (standing militaries as opposed to rebel insurgencies), could have been fought and what sounds logical is that local "rogue" commanders would act under their own authority with support under the table from Moscow scaled to the seriousness of the threat. Basically the new doctrine in a nascent form: the son and the father making day plans in the kitchen whilst grandpa is asleep in the loungeroom. I think the new military organization was already functionally in place as the only direction sheer desperation would force the formal Russian military to respond against a national military. It's just now they're going to do it on purpose.

Very interesting and I concur with your interpretation. Another inkling of this is the shift from conscripts to contract aoldiers with better wages and terms of service. The Soviet style ''moshpit of death'' is a no go for a nation with reduced and even dwindling resources. I've long interpreted it as a shift toward smaller independent units, but I didn't realise the extent to which it had taken place already. Very interesting.

Thanks Zhukov; and you reminded me about mention during the presentations about the roles of private military and special forces in the new doctrine, which was also fascinating as it just related things I never knew and loved learning. The Russian special forces being so very different from the entire western conception, which is in fact only really mirrored by standing guards divisions of the regular military, say compared to Navy Seals and Army Rangers. Spetsnaz is essentially a kind of SWAT version of contract military police, transferred from GRU, except for blue beret airborne troops, which are traditional special forces of the SAS variety and comprise the entire airborne. This represents the completely different way Russian military conceives of special forces. It's the Guards divisions that get the special training and royal treatment in equipment selection and it's they whom get transferred to missions NATO would be using special forces to accomplish. Spetsnaz used to work for GRU pulling the fingernails out of spies in Afghanistan but now they're attached to the military killing insurgents hiding in South Ossetia...in a Hind-D. And it's weird because they carried over the whole honorary officer rank without actually having any rank thing Ian Fleming liked, so they're pretty damn intimidating. When they rolled over to Chechnya I'm guessing a lot of rebel leaders changed addresses and hid their loved ones smartly. But if you've got a tactical objective like disable the field command outposts during a land invasion they don't use Spetsnaz, they compose a team of Guards formations for an independent op, just like NATO would use special forces teams with command authority on support. Ostensibly Spetsnaz are designed to function in occupied territories so are really a kind of paramilitary contractor.

So militarily I really think of Spetsnaz more like Algemeine SS totenkompf in 1940 and say Waffen SS in 1944 are the Guards divisions of the standing military, or Green berets or whatever. SAS is mirrored by the airborne, which used to be part of Spetsnaz but were under the strategic forces command on loan from GRU as best as I can reconcile them, now they're just under the district command of the combined forces armies. And they're not much different from regular US air cavalry. So whilst Spetsnaz also has a naval contingent their role is more grey and political and the traditional naval/marine special forces operations are performed by Guards formations.

Fascinating from this Russian point of view that they have a type of special forces that doesn't exist in western thinking: Guards air forces formations, special forces Flankers haha :lol:

Seriously though, it's part of the fundamental precept as stated. A Guards fighter pilot gets special training, personal choice equipment/materiel selection and comparative Rockstar status from an otherwise fairly depersonalized military culture.

I already knew that, since the Great Patriotic War the Guards formations received this elevation in terms of Russian military culture but what I didn't know was why being they are functionally the special forces divisions of Russian military and get those mission taskings. And what they refer to as special forces they use basically like assault military police functioning in occupied territory, like the SS-verfügungstruppe in the early war, who could tend to get a little excited in the field so maybe they're a bit like that too. I'm making some speculations here, amusing myself so please take me light-heartedly but it's all interesting to contemplate. Documentaries are very US heavy in our market and I'm just so fascinated by Russian militaria, I'd love an English documentary on Flankers and Fulcrums and the Kirov, etc. Maybe one day.