Today, the Russo-Ukrainian war has entered its third week, but the war still shows no signs of stopping.
As early as the first day of the war, the Russian army launched a large-scale attack on The territory of Ukraine, and in less than two hours, the Russian Ministry of Defense had stepped forward and declared that important military targets in Ukraine had been completely destroyed, and the Ukrainian Navy and Air Force had become history.
In the earliest few hours, domestic netizens also felt that this was a perfect "blitzkrieg", and it would not be long before the Ukrainian government would fall. The phrase "Putin's one-hour fast access to Ukraine" was also quickly coined. But it is clear that things have not gone as smoothly as Russia claims.
▲ The wreckage of a Russian Su-30SM fighter suspected of being shot down
More than half a month has passed since the start of the war, and the Ukrainian army not only still has the ability to conduct anti-aircraft operations, but can shoot down advanced fighters, including Su-34 fighter-bombers, but even fighters can take off into battle. Although the Russian army has achieved superiority on the battlefield, the casualties have exceeded a thousand, and the technical equipment has been destroyed and abandoned in large quantities, which cannot be said to be exactly the same as the expectations of netizens, but can only be said to be irrelevant.
▲ The "Doyle" air defense system dragged away by the Ukrainian people
In everyone's view, although Russia's military strength cannot be compared with the Soviet period, the skinny camel is bigger than the horse, and it is also the world's top three powers. Fighting such a militarized little brother in Ukraine is not as simple as chopping melons and cutting vegetables? But in fact, the performance of the Russian army in the war is far from being outstanding, and it has not played the level that a big country of this size should have.
I haven't seen it in a few years, why did the Russian army pull it so much?
The skeleton of the Soviet giant bear
▲ The Soviet army is completely a deformed army built around the world war
Whether an army can fight a war, we must first consider a question: For what purpose was this army built? Every army in the world has a different concept of military building, some for the purpose of maintaining territorial integrity, some for the purpose of safeguarding global interests, and some for external expansion. The predecessor of the Russian army, the Soviet army, is more special: the soviet army has only one concept of construction, that is, to fight a world war with NATO that is enough to destroy the world.
▲The elite troops of the Soviet Army are mainly concentrated in Eastern Europe
It is impossible for any country on Earth to maintain a standing army sufficient to win a world war. Under such a military building concept, the soviet army's establishment is highly specialized, in addition to facing the NATO front-line troops, a large number of conventional troops are vacant, and can only rely on mobilizers to rapidly expand troops in wartime.
▲ Almost all of the Soviet army's own troops were under-staffed
During the Cold War, 2/3 of the nearly 300 divisions of the Soviet Army were so-called "shelf divisions" and "mobilization divisions". The personnel of the shelf division is only about 30% of the establishment, and some are even less than 10%, and the tanks are decommissioned and mothballed old models. The mobilization division simply did not have a single soldier, only a few officers and old equipment from the ancient times. Fight and then fill in the recruits to form a unit, for example, the 81st Tank Division in 1987 was equipped with only 320 T-34/85 tanks and 40 BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles!
▲ In the 1980s, the Soviet Army also had a large number of T-34 tanks for combat readiness
Such a formation could theoretically reduce the resource consumption of the army, but because the size of the Soviet army was too large, the personnel and technical equipment needed by nearly 200 ineffective shelf divisions and mobilization divisions also needed funds to maintain and maintain, and the Soviet military expenditure naturally became astronomical. Maintaining such an army was quite difficult even for the Soviet Union, let alone in dissolution-era Russia.
Russian troops in the First Chechen War
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia not only inherited a large legacy of the Soviet Union, but also inherited the large army of the Soviet Army. However, due to the disbandment of western cluster units after the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the large number of soldiers and officers were dismissed, the elite units of the Soviet army have long ceased to exist. The formed divisions originally stationed in the member countries were also assigned to the newly formed CIS countries.
Plans to withdraw troops from Eastern Europe have been called "shameful betrayals"
If the Soviet army is a giant bear that is entrenched in Eastern Europe and fears the Western countries, then the disintegrated Russian army is at most the skeleton of this bear. On the eve of the war in Chechnya, the Russian government was shocked to find that although the Russian army at this time had a million posts, none of the troops could immediately enter the battle!
Serdyukov's "new look"
▲ Serdyukov
After summing up the tragic experience of the Chechen war, the Russian army began to downsize and dismantle the huge shelf division, the well-staffed troops were reorganized into brigades, and the understaffed troops were directly dismantled, either retired or enriched to other units. By the end of the 1990s, the Russian army had finally recovered from the chaos of the disintegration, from a ragtag group of people to an army that was beginning to take shape.
▲ Russian troops in the Russo-Georgian War
But in the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, the reorganized unit still performed extremely poorly. Faced with an opponent like Georgia, the 58th Army, which had fought in two Wars in Chechnya, was a mess. In the battle, the superiors could not find the troops, the soldiers could not find the officers, and the units fought separately. The Russian command troops actually relied on mobile phones to make calls, resulting in the location of the headquarters being discovered by the Georgian army and attracting artillery fire.
▲ Compared to the Chechen war period
The Russian army in the Russo-Georgian War is still poorly equipped
The most elite russian troops have done this against Georgia, so what about other armies? In order to solve the problems exposed in the war, in 2008, the Russian army began a new round of "new look" military reform. The military reform was carried out by the then Minister of Defense, Serdyukov, so it was also called the Serdyukov Military Reform.
▲The Russian army after the military reform does have a "new look"
Serdyukov's military reform abandoned the idea of large-scale all-out war of the Soviet army, combined with the experience of military reform in the United States, as well as the background of the détente between Russia and the West, and the local war on terrorism, hoping to transform the Russian army into an army for small-scale war, and realize synthesis, rapid reaction, and professionalization.
In this military reform, the Russian army further reduced the size of the army, from 400,000 to 300,000, and planned to eventually reduce to 250,000, saving military costs in upgrading equipment and eliminating the rags that have been used so far in the Soviet union. After the military reform, the number of Units of the Russian Army was reduced from more than 1800 to more than 170. Almost all the divisions of the Russian army were reorganized into brigades, the mobilization divisions were directly withdrawn, and the excess officers were also dismissed.
The Russian military hopes to save military costs through disarmament
It can't be open sourced, it can only be throttled
As early as the early days of the Russian military reorganization, improving the professionalization of the army was an important reform goal of the Russian army. On this basis, Serdyukov went further, almost completely withdrew the reserve forces, changed the compulsory military service system to a 1-year system, and increased the number of contract troops in the main force, hoping to take this opportunity to improve the professionalization of the Russian army.
▲ The Russian army has gradually become modernized after the military reform
Overall, the Serdyukov military reform achieved the goal of streamlining the number of troops, eliminating redundant officers and units, and increasing the professionalization of the Russian army. However, due to Russia's economic problems, Russia is unable to support the professionalization of the army, and the changed troops still lack technical equipment and are completely out of touch with the assumptions.
On the other hand, because the cost of contract soldiers is much higher than that of conscripts, the Russian army cannot abandon the compulsory military service system, and a large number of conscripts are still the majority of the Russian army. The 1-year military service system further reduces the combat effectiveness of conscripts, if a war starts, the conscripts who participate in the war only go through a few months of military training, and there is no difference between them and the "strawberry soldiers", almost no combat effectiveness.
Shoigu: He changed it again
▲ Sergei Shoigu
In 2012, Serdyukov stepped down due to corruption, but many people suspect that the drastic military reform touched the interests of the Russian military and was the real reason for Serdyukov's downfall. Subsequently, Shoigu took over as defense minister and made some adjustments to the content of the military reform.
First, Shoigu reinstated some of the divisional units of the pre-Serdyukov Army, such as the 2nd "Taman" Motorized Infantry Division of the Guards, the 4th Tank Division of the Guards "Kantemirovka", and the 150th "Idricha-Berlin" Motorized Infantry Division that conquered Berlin, which were notorious during the Soviet era but were reorganized and reorganized by the Serdyukov Army. In addition, Shoigu has restored the strength of some mobilization divisions.
▲ The "Taman" division is regarded by military fans as Russia's "Royal Forest Army"
The change and dismantling of such forces is obviously unacceptable
Why did the Russian military engage in this kind of "backwards" adaptation? On the one hand, restoring the titles of these honorary units will help enhance the sense of honor of military personnel and have a deeper historical heritage. On the other hand, compared with the small-sized synthetic troops, the large corps with a larger organization and a more single branch of the army have lower requirements for the quality of individual soldiers, which is more in line with the current situation of the Russian army that is still dominated by conscripts.
On the other hand, according to Russian law, conscripts can only be used to defend the homeland from invasion, and are not allowed to be sent to fight abroad at will, and the one-year conscripts themselves have no combat effectiveness. As a result, Shoigu made further changes to the brigade-battalion units in the Serdyukov military reform: the personnel were still mainly conscripts, but when overseas interventions, the brigade-level troops would draw some of the contract troops to form a battalion-level combat (BTG) for combat.
▲ The BTG with brigade-level fire support is far more effective than the average battalion
The BTG is nominally a battalion-level unit, but is equipped with an entire brigade command structure, armored forces, and artillery, and the brigade headquarters is directly subordinated to the battalion to command the operation, forming a temporary composite force structure. Compared to real battalion-sized units, the BTG has brigade-sized firepower and technical equipment, as well as the mobility of small-scale troops. Limited by national conditions, this special grouping model is basically unique to Russia.
▲ The Russian army has achieved quite good results in Syria
But by the time of Shoigu, the contradictions between Russia and the West had deepened. The enemy of the Russian army is not only a few separatist forces or terrorists, but the huge military bloc of NATO has once again become Russia's imaginary enemy. The Serdyukov military reforms, which revolved around small-scale local wars, now seem to be out of line with the actual situation. Although Shoigu made some changes, they did not cause changes in nature.
▲ The experience of the Syrian battlefield is not exactly in line with the situation in Ukraine
In the Syrian war, in the face of terrorist organizations in Syria, the combat effectiveness of the Russian BTG is quite strong, and the tragic situation of the War in Chechnya has become history. The BTG has the support equipment of the entire brigade and even the support forces directly under the group army, and still has a great advantage in the face of Western armies of the same size, such as the battalion combat teams of the US army. From this point of view, the Shoigu military reform can be said to be quite successful.
But in the face of a more modern armed force, even in total war, BTG's significant disadvantage – the small number of people – will be infinitely magnified. If you use the concept of the game to explain, the number of personnel is equivalent to the "blood bar" of an army, the smaller the number of troops the "blood" is thinner, and BTG has the firepower and command system of the brigade-level troops, but does not have the "health" of the brigade-level troops, which is easy to be defeated in high-intensity wars.
▲ Loss of elites and command institutions
It was a devastating blow to a force
On the other hand, the BTG was originally an elite drawn from a brigade, and if a BTG suffered a devastating blow, it was equivalent to the backbone of the entire brigade being destroyed, and the remaining conscripts could not replenish the attrition on the battlefield. Compared with the extremely high battlefield resilience of the large corps in the Soviet period, the BTG's "can't fight a big battle" is obviously seriously flawed.
I don't want to face it anymore
▲ Suspected captured Russian soldiers
In this Russo-Ukrainian war, BTG's disadvantages were almost completely exposed. Compared with the previous small-scale invasion of Syria and the intervention in the Ukrainian civil war, the scale of the Russo-Ukrainian war is much larger, and the Russian army has sent more troops, and it is impossible to fill the front line by drawing elites from brigade-level troops to form BTG.
Putin is anxious to mobilize Chechen troops into Ukraine
There may also be reasons for the lack of elite troops
Although under Russian law, conscripts cannot participate in this "special military operation" in Ukraine, in fact there are a considerable number of conscripts entering Ukraine. These recruits, fearfully sparing only a few shots, marched through a few days in line to the battlefield and plunged into an unprepared war.
▲ The performance of the Russian army on the battlefield is astonishing
Initially, the Russian army did not admit that it had sent conscripts in the operation, but later had to admit that the Russo-Ukrainian war did have conscripts to participate, and there were many casualties and captured conscripts. The Russians claimed that all existing conscripts had been withdrawn from Ukraine, and hoped to exchange captured conscripts as soon as possible. It is precisely because of the addition of these rabble-rousers of ordinary conscripts that the combat effectiveness of the Russian army has seriously declined.
On the other hand, in past wars, only one or two BTGs of the Russian army group were often fighting on the front line, and the resources of the entire group army were actually all allocated to these BTGs. Air support, artillery strikes are almost unlimited, the logistics are fully supplied, and everything looks perfect.
The limited "bandwidth" limits BTG's combat capabilities
But in a large-scale war, the Russian army invested dozens or even hundreds of BTGs into the battlefield, and the situation changed completely. It's like a broadband network, one person can download at full speed, two people use it doesn't matter, but what about dozens of people, hundreds of people? The BTG was put into operation as a battalion-sized unit, but it occupied the "bandwidth" of an entire brigade. This also makes the combat effectiveness of the BTG in Ukraine incomparable with its counterparts in Syria.
▲ The T-90M, a new tank, seems to be "absent" in this war
In recent years, most of the Russian military spending has been given to the Army, which is not without reason. Some military fans decided that Russia and britain would spend more money to build air force and navy, repair aircraft carriers and large warships, and buy more Su-57s, and Russia also wanted to do so, but there was no money to do these things. Even if the existing army equipment is replaced, Russia's military spending is already stretched.
The T-72B3 tank was the main tank of the Russo-Ukrainian War
Since the Shoigu military reform, the number of new equipment purchased by the Russian army has become smaller and smaller, and the new equipment such as the T-90M and the "Kurgan" -25 has not entered the Service of the Russian Army on a large scale, let alone the "concept cars" of the T-14 and T-15. The main forces of the Russian army today, the T-72B3 and T-80BVM, sound good, but it is actually the result of the renovation of old cars from the Soviet period. Even so, the Russian military is still a long way from "equipment modernization".
▲ The Russian army's cutting-edge equipment is basically still being tested
In the end, BTG is only a temporary means for the Russian military to do it in the absence of money. Shoigu still wants to build a full-scale synthetic brigade-battalion force, but Russia's economic strength simply does not allow such large-scale reforms. BTG is still facing a third-rate country like Ukraine, how to fight nato?
▲ What level of your Russian army is now? Just a few people, Gerasimov is the chief of the general staff, can he be? Can't do it! Don't have the ability to know? If you go on like this, you have to lose Ukraine, after losing Ukraine, you lose Poland, you lose Georgia, and then no one loses.
What kind of military modernization is carried out without money is undoubtedly contrary to the laws of history. Serdyukov couldn't do it, and so could Shoigu. Without money, no reform will be able to change the tragic situation of the decline in the combat effectiveness of the Russian army. Today's "humiliating" status quo in Russia on the battlefield is probably not something that can be solved by military reform.