The Russian-Ukrainian War Thread

John Fedup

John Fedup

The Bunker Group
Feanor said:
I think Putin didn't realize how badly Shoygu had slowed the development of the armed forces during his tenureR would have on the battlefield.
Click to expand...
Isn't the overall corruption of the oligarch Russian regime more significant than Shoygu's failures? Just asking, I have no idea on his failures. Putin owns the Ukraine C-F IMHO.
 
Feanor

Feanor

Super Moderator
Staff member
John Fedup said:
Isn't the overall corruption of the oligarch Russian regime more significant than Shoygu's failures? Just asking, I have no idea on his failures. Putin owns the Ukraine C-F IMHO.
Click to expand...
2009-2014 the Russian Armed Forces developed quite quickly. They overcame many issues that had built up since the Soviet era and made substantial institutional improvements, including making their payrates competitive, living conditions significantly better, and creating a situation where an enlisted military career (as an NCO) was a viable option even for some college graduates. There was also a lot more openness with military units working together with civil society organizations, and even opening their doors to bloggers during press events rather than just officially accredited media. This time period was marked by many problems coming to light but also many problems being corrected. Hard decisions had to be made, but overall the improvement was dramatic and it showed in the Russian deployments to Ukraine in '14-'15 and to Syria in '15-'18. However after 2014 the pace of improvement started to dramatically slow down, and some improvements were even rolled back. Lessons learned from Russia's engagement in the Donbas were not institutionalized. This is how we ended up with the return of tank divisions at a time when this clearly served no purpose. The entire 90th TD didn't have a single UAV unit in it, even though the fighting in the Donbas clearly showed the need of UAV operators down to the company and platoon level. The Ukrainian army with it's poorly trained and insufficient infantry ran into problems unable to advance into the urban areas of Lugansk, Donetsk, or Gorlovka. But Russia didn't take away the correct lesson of needing fairly numerous and robust dismounts, reducing dismount elements for some units from 6 to 5. The professionalization of the NCOs also slowed down and even partially reversed course. We can see the results of that in the current war where often rank among enlisted means little, and a soldier is often assigned to lead based on their personal characteristics rather than rank. Also information sharing systems that were under development were either not completed, or completed in more limited form. So the link of UAVs to artillery was there to some extent, but it wasn't nearly enough, and the ability to share information with other units wasn't great. The Sozvezdie system was never implemented, despite a version of it even getting exported to India. The Andromeda-D for the VDV went into service but only for them, and it's ability to share data with other units is limited. As a result we have some Russian units coordinating well and having quite a bit of success against Ukrainian forces like the 8th Army's run to Mariupol', or the push into northern Lugansk. Other units flounder hopelessly (like that same 90th TD on the approach to Kiev).

So there are specific issues related to military development that saw the whole thing change course and lead to problems. Note this doesn't take away the overall corruption problems. Those are still there and very much exist. But there was a scenario where an overall corrupt state could have a reasonably competent and large military capable to accomplishing things.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top