Category Archives: Military Operations

Let’s round out what Russian General Staff Chief Valeriy Gerasimov said on March 24. Though the conference was held at the Military Academy of the General Staff, Gerasimov was actually addressing a plenary of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences.

The Academy is technically non-governmental, but more accurately quasi-official. It counts many senior Russian military officers, scientists, and researchers (and even more retired ones) in its membership. It’s an august unofficial think tank for the MOD.

One can be sure of a couple of things.

First, Gerasimov’s remarks would have differed had he spoken to a strictly MOD audience. But the General Staff likely shares most of its thinking about modern war with the Academy of Military Sciences. Second, it’s unlikely KZ covered every aspect of what Gerasimov said. Some portions probably weren’t reported. One wonders what the entire, unfiltered speech sounded like. 

At any rate, Gerasimov had this to say about Russia’s involvement in Syria:

“Before Russia entered the conflict on the government’s side, this country actually conducted an undeclared war for the right to exist for more than four years. There’s no clear answer when this struggle transformed from internal disorder into military conflict. No state openly declared war on Syria, but all illegal armed formations are armed, financed and controlled from abroad. With time the list of participants in the military conflicts there is broadening. Together with regular troops, the internal protest potential of the population is active, as are terrorist and extremist formations.”

“Today independent military specialists see the military conflict in Syria as the prototype of a ‘new generation war.’ Its main feature is the fact that Syria’s state-enemies conduct covert, undetectable actions against it, without being dragged into direct military conflict.”

Then KZ paraphrases Gerasimov:

“The changing character of armed struggle is a continuous process, and all previous military conflicts substantially differ from one another. The content of military actions itself is changing. Their spatial scale is growing, their tension and dynamism are increasing. The time parameters for preparing and conducting operations is being reduced.”

“A transition from sequential and concentrated actions to continuous and distributed ones, conducted simultaneously in all spheres of confrontation, and also in distant theaters of military operations is occurring.”

The MOD daily quotes him again:

“The requirements for troop mobility are becoming more severe. The transition to systematic destruction of the enemy on the basis of integrating the forces of all strike and fire means into a single system is occurring. The role of electronic warfare, information-technical and information-psychological actions is increasing. The growth in the share of precision weapons supports pinpoint and selective target destruction, including critically important ones, in real time.”

On the growing size of theaters of military operations:

“They encompass areas with installations of military and economic potential located at a significant distance from the zone of immediate military actions. The scale of employing remotely-controlled robotic strike systems is growing. In a complicated, rapidly-changing situation, the capability to control troops and forces effectively is acquiring special importance.”

This is when Gerasimov said every conflict has its own features and talked about targeting the enemy’s economy, C3, reconnaissance, and navigation systems.

He said:

“The organization development and training of the RF Armed Forces is being realized accounting for these tendencies in the changing character of armed struggle.”

KZ paraphrases the General Staff Chief’s words about balanced development of the armed services and the provision of modern weapons. Reserves and the VDV — with their new tank, EW, and UAV capabilities — will reinforce troop groupings in strategic directions. Here Gerasimov also mentioned the extension of air and fleet deployment areas — including to the Arctic. Then Gerasimov described groupings of cruise missile launchers established in all strategic directions, reducing the time to fire them, and developing unmanned reconnaissance-strike systems.

According to KZ’s account, Gerasimov referenced President Vladimir Putin’s March 1 description of Russia’s future strategic weapons. He said new missiles and other weapons — including hypersonic ones and those “without foreign analogues” — will have increased capability to overcome U.S. missile defenses. He ended with his statement that new precision systems — including hypersonic missiles — will allow for non-nuclear strategic deterrence.

It’s quite a vision of the Russian military and what it needs to do in the future. It sounds like it describes the situation in a military already at war. But Gerasimov and his troops have a way to go to achieve all of this.

One senses in the General Staff Chief’s comments a reaction to Russia’s recent participation in old-school kinetic conflicts (albeit with the use of modern ground-, sea-, and air-launched missiles) in Ukraine and Syria. It could be a call to develop Russia’s command and control warfare capabilities.

Finally, it’s possible to hear the lingering echo of Soviet Marshal Nikolay Ogarkov’s words from 34 years ago:

“. . . rapid changes in the development of conventional means of destruction and the emergence in the developed countries of automated reconnaissance-strike systems, long-range precision terminally-guided combat systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, and qualitatively new electronic control systems make many types of weapons global and make it possible to increase sharply (by at least an order of magnitude) the destructive potential of conventional weapons, bringing them closer, so to speak, to weapons of mass destruction in terms of effectiveness. The sharply increased range of conventional weapons makes it possible immediately to extend active combat operations not just to border regions, but to the whole country’s territory, which was not possible in past wars. This qualitative leap in the development of conventional means of destruction will inevitably entail a change in the nature of the preparation and conduct of operations, which will in turn predetermine the possibility of conducting military operations using conventional systems in qualitatively new, incomparably more destructive forms than before.”

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.”