It’s just that the Soviet Union died before it could do much about it. The Soviet General Staff had foreseen these developments in the early and mid-1980s. Battle lines, and the advantage of depth, had disappeared as weapons could effectively inflict damage throughout the country. Long-range stand-off weapons could inflict damage and effects that were once reserved for tactical nuclear munitions on the battlefield, to say nothing of nonkinetic means like cyber warfare. The initial period of conflict had become decisive, noncontact warfare (the Russian term for stand-off warfare), aerospace operations were now dominant in shaping the battlefield, and precision guided munitions were immense force multipliers. Leading Russian generals and military theorists understood that the character of war had changed. The whole was less than the sum of the parts. Having missed a generation in the evolution of capabilities and associated war-fighting concepts, Russia remained trapped by the Soviet equipment and operational concepts of the early 1980s. Russia won, but the Russian military simply was not set up to fight a modern war, even against a smaller neighbor, much less a peer competitor. Much has changed since then in the Russian armed forces, but the war still offers valuable insights. Since 2014, there has been a natural focus on Russian operations in Ukraine, and the Russian campaign in Syria, but the August War deserves another look in light of Russian military developments today. As Russia’s then-Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov euphemistically put it, “it is impossible to not notice a certain gap between theory and practice.” In the aftermath, Russia went about the business of reforming and modernizing that military toolkit. The conflict uncovered glaring gaps in capability, problems with command and control, and poor intelligence. It truly was the last war of a legacy force, inherited from the Soviet Union. Moscow was surprised by the poor performance of its air power, and more importantly the inability of different services to work together. Russia defeated the Georgian forces, but the war revealed profound deficiencies in the Russian armed forces. In August 2008, the Russian military fought Georgian troops in a brief five-day war.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |