Gerasimov on Future War

Army General Gerasimov addressing the conference

Russia’s General Staff Chief and First Deputy Defense Minister Army General Valeriy Gerasimov delivered the keynote before a “military-operational conference” at the Military Academy of the General Staff yesterday.

His address rehashed the Kremlin’s view of the world (and of the U.S.) but it also picked up where President Vladimir Putin left off in his March 1 speech on Russia’s new “invincible” weapons.

But rather than Russia’s putative future strategic weapons, Gerasimov focuses on deterrence, command and control, and conventional operations. He describes “inter-service groupings” and cruise missiles deployed in strategic directions. He stresses destruction of the enemy’s command and control and improvements in Russia’s. Finally, he discusses integrating reconnaissance to speed mission planning for precision strikes.

In one form or another, Gerasimov’s remarks will almost certainly be the lead story in tomorrow’s Krasnaya zvezda.

Some excerpts published by Russia media outlets follow.

From TASS:

“Today the U.S. commitment to maintaining global dominance and a monocentric world order through every possible means, including military, is critical for the development of the military and political environment in the world. This conflicts with the views of many countries, including Russia, which consider global leadership inappropriate and advocate a just world order.”

“As a result a transnational struggle has sharply accelerated. It is still based on non-military measures — political, economic and information. Moreover, apart from mentioned areas it has gradually spread over all activities of the modern society – diplomatic, scientific, cultural, and has virtually swept across the board.”

“The reality shows that economic, political, diplomatic and other non-military measures taken by the west against dissenting countries go together with the threat of military force employment or its direct employment.”

“The U.S. and its allies often employ military force in circumvention of generally accepted norms of international law or on the base of distorted renderings of those norms for its own benefit, under the slogan of protecting democracy.”

From Interfaks-AVN:

“It goes without saying that each military conflict has its own distinctive features. Broad employment of precision and other types of new weapons, including robotic ones, will be fundamental characteristics of future conflicts. The enemy’s economy and state command and control system will be the priority targets. Besides traditional spheres of armed struggle, the information sphere and space will be actively involved.”

“Countering communications, reconnaissance and navigation systems will play a special role.”

“These are just the contours of the most probable war of the future. Together with them, the spectrum of possible conflicts is extremely broad and the Armed Forces have to be ready for any of them.”

“The possibility that armed conflicts will arise simultaneously in various strategic directions predetermined the creation of inter-service groupings of troops and forces in the military districts which guarantee the effective conduct of combat actions by military personnel in peacetime as well as in wartime.”

TV Zvezda quotes Gerasimov as saying the experience of recent “local wars” and operations in Syria has “given a new impulse” to the development of Russia’s weapons systems. He also said:

“In each strategic direction, groupings of long-range air- and sea-based cruise missile delivery platforms capable of deterrence in strategically important areas have been established.”

Again Interfaks-AVN:

“In the future, the increase in possibilities of precision weapons, including hypersonic ones, will allow for transferring the fundamental part of strategic deterrence from the nuclear to the non-nuclear sphere.

More from Interfaks-AVN:

“Improvements in the structure of command and control organs, the establishment of special information support sub-units, and also the introduction of computer systems allowed for reducing the time to prepare to use a long-range precision weapon in combat by 1.5 times.”

Interfaks-AVN again:

“Reconnaissance-strike and reconnaissance-fire systems are being developed which aim to support the effectiveness and continuity of fire suppression on the enemy. The integration of reconnaissance-information and information-command systems with the weapons systems of services and troop branches is being implemented.”

“Work to develop an inter-service automated reconnaissance-system is being conducted. It should result in reducing the time cycle for completing fire missions — from reconnaissance to target destruction — by 2-2.5 times. At the same time, the accuracy of targeting will increase by 1.5-2 times, and the potential for delivering precision weapons will expand.”

And back to Interfaks-AVN:

“The broadening scale of using unmanned aviation systems (UAS) and the difficulty of defeating them with existing air defense systems requires creation of an effective system of counteraction. Future systems to counter the employment of UAS, including those based on new physical principles, are being developed and have started to enter the force.”

“Priority attention is being given to developing the Armed Forces’ command and control systems. Development of modern means of combat control and communications integrated in a single information space is being realized. The system of modeling the Armed Forces has received new development.”

“The level of automation of the processes of situational information collection and analysis and combat action planning will grow because of the introduction of the unified automated system of troop and weapons command and control at the tactical level [YeSU TZ], the development of which was finished last year. This year supplies of it in sets to motorized rifle and tank formations and units are beginning.”

And finally TASS with more on UAS and EW:

“Currently the development of future multipurpose systems is being completed. Their introduction into the inventory will allow for fulfilling not only reconnaissance, but also strike missions where the employment of other means is difficult or less effective.”

“The troops are being outfitted with systems of electronic warfare against aerospace means, navigation systems and digital radio communications. Means of counteracting precision weapons are being perfected.”