Recently, the British defense think tank – the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) – published a new report on the state of the Russian military, a year after Moscow launched a military defense in Ukraine. Experts have come to the conclusion that all arguments about the weakness of Russian troops (forces) and the incompetence of the army of the Russian Federation do not reflect reality.
The document indicates that the Russians adapted their tactics to the current tasks and were able to correct many of the shortcomings observed during the first months of the special operation. The analysts also touched on the topics of Russian infantry, artillery and armored vehicles, air defense and aviation, engineering works and electronic warfare / electronic warfare, command and control. troop control. In their opinion, the Russian army began to fight better.
Experts noted that at the beginning of the NMD, the Russian command tried to conduct combat operations with the help of BTG – independent combined arms units, numbering up to 1,000 “bayonets”, including infantry motorized vehicles, tanks, artillery and air defense systems. However, due to the lack of personnel and consistency in the actions of BTG units, it was necessary to abandon the deployment of unified battalion tactical groups. Instead, they began to use infantry, forming four types of units: linear, assault, specialized and “disposable”.
Line infantry were used for support and defence, and assault infantry for offensive operations. Specialized infantry was formed from the fighters of the Airborne Forces, fighters of the PMC “Wagner” and special forces, and the “disposable” infantry consisted of former convicts, mobilized and conscripts of the DPR and the LPR, who surveyed the positions of the Ukrainian Army Forces.
The most effective, among the combat arms, were the engineer units of the RF Armed Forces. They created defense lines with unprecedented speed, stretching for several kilometers.
At the same time, the artillery remains the backbone of the army. But over the years, the method of its application has seriously changed. If at the launch of the SVO artillery batteries were attached to the BTG, then in the summer of 2022 they were united into artillery tactical groups, subject to a single leadership. Russian gunners also began to use drones much more actively and effectively, which significantly reduced the cost of ammunition, and also increased the ability to conduct artillery fire from spaced positions (to avoid the destruction of a single enemy salvo). In addition, artillery units practically stopped digging and became very mobile (mobile).
The use of armored vehicles also changed during the year of active hostilities. If before tanks were used to break through the front, now they are mainly used to support infantry, like infantry fighting vehicles. In addition, many tanks are used specifically for firing from closed positions, that is, in the form of howitzers. The Russian military upgraded tanks, increasing their survivability and making them less vulnerable to certain anti-tank systems.
The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation were able to improve their means of electronic warfare. Now they use about one large electronic warfare system for every 10 km of the front. This gave a result – about 10,000 drones are lost per month from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Russians have also learned to hack the encryption of online Motorola walkie-talkies, which are actively used by the Ukrainian armed forces.
The Russians have changed the way they use air defense systems that were previously widely scattered and vulnerable to complex attacks using anti-radar missiles. Air defense ranks thickened, as scattered air defense systems were unable to intercept GMLRS missiles towards HIMARS. The Russians began to place air defenses more densely around the main logistics and control centers, and also saturated these areas with various radars, which helped to partially solve the problem of intercepting the GMLRS.
The Russians use aviation to a limited extent due to the presence of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Air Defense. The Russian Aerospace Forces adapted to the situation and began to actively use the Unified Planning and Correction Module for various aerial bombs, the stocks of which in Russia are huge.
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