A few days ago I asked what was really behind the Russian army's epic incompetence in Ukraine. It's a standard war, not a counterinsurgency, so you'd think Russia could do OK. Why isn't it?
A longtime reader writes in with this explanation:
I do have some information as to why the Russian Army is so terrible. The answer is that it utterly lacks a Non-Commissioned Officer corps. This means that there is no enlisted group with institutional memory, nor training, nor technical competence. ALL of that is thrust onto the shoulders of junior officers, and speaking from institutional memory and from experience, junior officers are not up to the many tasks assigned to them. The Russian Army is infamous for its hazing of enlisted personnel, rape is common, and nobody, but NOBODY offers creative solutions in that kind of environment.
I am a retired NCO, son of a career NCO, and you may think that this is prejudice. When I was on active duty, I regularly questioned the judgement of junior officers and at least annually went over their head to a superior officer (with permission). I never got into trouble for that, and never expected to. It takes just one man to sink a ship during combat and it takes just one man to ask a difficult question in difficult times to save it. EVERYONE makes mistakes. When second lieutenants get together to plan an operation, the result is predictable. That’s why those are called a “clusterfuck” (oak leaf clusters).
The Russian Army consists of well-connected senior officers, junior officers who are the sons of the senior officers, and cannon fodder.
OK then. I don't know anything about the (lack of a) Russian NCO corps, but everything I've read about the way troops are drafted and handled confirms that they are indeed treated as cannon fodder. That's a tough assignment for anyone.
Exactly right, and basically since WW2
Longer than that I would bet. Maximum brutality is Russian military doctrine and exercising it among themselves simply makes them think it's training.
It's social conservatism in action, it's the military we'd have if Ron DeSantis ran it.
Social conservatives???? Are you a retard??? It's a left hegelian maxium. The collectivist patriarchy demands tribal genocides. It's why Soviet Russia let all those "Ukrainian" die in the 30's. They needed equipment for industrialization to continue after the GD cut off ability to move goods. Real currency was required.
Desantis is a Jewish/Sardinia mix. Fucking Sardinia.
I think this goof is a bot Kevin installed when he did way with upvotes.
It's like a girl you've never seen before pinning a carnation in your lapel.
I think Kevin is about on the level of Elon Musk with his support for "Free Speech" (though likely more honest about it than EM). How else do explain the persistence of a raving anti-semite in his blog's comment section? (I could use other labels but "anti-semite" seems to be the most persistently applicable one.)
Calling them a "bot" is dismissive of the fact that there is in all likelihood an actual human behind the pseudonym.
What's the opposite of Artificial Intelligence? Because I think this bot has perfected it.
"Artificial intelligence will never defeat natural stupidity".
Nature is a whore. Reality is not what you fantasize.
Yes, Dehumanization is self-perpetuating.
It's not the reason - it's true Russiadoes not have a NCO core, and that prevents excellence but the reason the Russian army is so poor is because it is not respected at any level of Russian society and is feared by the government.
Totalitarians fear armies that can overthrow them, so they starve them of ability while equipping their 'security' forces adequately.
Security forces police people but do not fight nation states - thus the Russianpeople can be policed, but no nation state effectively fought - least thre army that could do that overthrows the dictators at home.
Can confirm that Russian army is at the bottom of society. They are now trying to recruits in Russian prisons, promising release in return for joining the Army. Very few takers because being in prison is more socially acceptable in Russia than is being in the army.
There is more than one reason the Russian army is performing so badly. I have heard several top military men with expertise on the subject say that Russia also uses a top-down “command”model. In contrast the US uses a “mission model” which teaches soldiers to understand what their mission is and be prepared to change tactics if needed to meet that mission. The reason so many Russian generals are getting killed is that Russian soldiers don’t function well without an officer telling them what to do. More NCOs would help but so would well-trained soldiers who think on their feet instead of having to wait for orders.
It might be a holdover from the old Soviet era military structure. For a long time, Russia's army was deliberately "top heavy" with officers, because the idea was that in a war they'd ramp up conscription to rapidly expand the army as needed. But if you're deliberately keeping the enlisted numbers down and mostly new conscripts, you're not going to have a pool of experienced NCOs coming up from it.
Historian Bret Deveraux has also made an excellent point about how this particular aspect of modern warfare - the ability to delegate control and decision-making down to smaller military units, NCOs, etc - is something that authoritarian regimes really struggle with. They do not like delegating decision-making downward, or having enlisted men who can question officers.
That's not just Russian. It used to be common practice (still is though not to the same extent) to promote fairly rapidly even in a peace time army (and, of course, to encourage soldiers to sign up for more than just a conscript's minimum hitch). The result in western countries was that peace time armies had high officer/enlisted ratios and high non-com/private ratios, and were mostly if not entirely made up of volunteers, not conscripts. That way when war broke out a country inducted/conscripted a whole lot of "for the duration" recruits who could be trained as privates and inserted into a command structure that only needed more privates to become a large army.
I think that's a reason why the Russian military has performed so badly. And it's a very important reason. But another reason, which should also be a wakeup call to ourselves, is that the Russian military is simply unprepared to actually fight another military as opposed to simply crushing civilian or the weak resistance of poorly train and equipped national militaries.
I think it simply never occurred to them that they'd actually have to fight another large, well-equipped, well-trained, highly sophisticated, peer military. For them moment, at least, they have no idea what to do when the enemy is an actual military and actually tries to defeat them as opposed to passively watching themselves and their countrymen be bombed and shelled into submission.
Just to be clear, I don't mean to suggest that other deficiencies such as the lack of effective NCO's aren't problems. But my guess is that this lack of mental preparation to actually fight a peer military (as opposed to playing rigged war games) magnifies all other deficiencies tremendously.
Um, WWII?
Yes, eventually the Soviets got it together and built a very powerful military that was able to take full advantage against a Germany that has basically shot its wad.
And you could certainly say the same and even more about the US military—many early mistakes showing that it was not remotely ready to fight a peer competitor but real self awareness and a willingness to confront past errors built a truly effective military.
But I think we’re seeing that if you don’t really think war against a peer military is ever going to happen, you have make believe war games and the ease of bombing and shelling comparatively helplessness opponents creates a degree of rot and lack of meaningful preparedness. This, along with a fragile and inefficient form of government, has certainly caused a massive deterioration of the Russian military. The Ukrainians are far closer to the army that smashed the Wehrmacht and drove relentlessly to Berlin.
...Was 75 years ago. The Red Army that fought Hitler has absolutely no relevance to the Russian Army of today.
Exactly, and its not only mental preparedness, is physical.
200,000 troops to occupy a first world nation of 40 million? That, it turns out, does not want to be occupied?
And is now reinforced by NATO and the US?
This war is Ukraine's to lose. Its not really surprising that they are not losing.
Now, there was the first week, that was Russia's only chance. But that's gone.
Very true, and...all their problems feed into each other, e.g. grift, lack of maintenance, etc.
That said, raining down a shitload of ordnance can still do a lot of damage, no matter how poorly their army is doing.
There are indications that Russia doesn't have "a shitload of ordinance" to rain down. Mariupol has been heavily bombarded, as have a few other places close to the Russian border. The rest of the country from Kyiv to Lviv has received what could best be described as nuisance attacks, without enough concentration of fire to do militarily significant damage. It would be reasonable to suspect that much of Ukraine is receiving no more than nuisance attacks because Russia does not have enough missiles and artillery ammunition to accomplish anything more serious.
I think from a broader perspective, Russia is a somewhat dysfunctional state, and that's without even getting into its complex history. Right now there's quite a bit of autocracy, quite a bit of corruption, quite a bit of distrust, and as a result, you see Russia underperform economically and socially. I think when a state is dysfunctional, its institutions will erode, and that's a problem we have to be wary of here, as well.
I'm a giga-POG O-4. If it weren't for the NCOs, nothing would happen. Company grade officers are too young and inexperiences themselves.
This is a huge part of their failure. But their air force is glorified close air support only, there's the corruption, and all of that.
But yeah big advertisement for non-conscript army if you're going to do imperial shit.
I have read elsewhere that the personnel they do place into those positions normally held by NCO's are selected by officers during training and induction, barely given any instruction on leadership, and then if partially successful leave the military with valuable skills to run a mafia crew. Not snark. There are many different reports of enlisted members from armies across the planet that turn to crime. One example is the Cartels.
The former commander of NATO agrees:
"Another key shortcoming, which surprised me, is the lack of a strong corps of mid-grade professionals in the Russian navy crews. Called chief petty officers in the U.S. Navy, these are sailors with 10-15 years of seagoing experience who lead the sailors on the deck. They are the backbone of the U.S. Navy, and the absence of such a cadre is a major problem for the Russians. (The same weakness — a lack of strong noncommissioned officers — exists in the Russian land forces, a major factor in the problems they are encountering ashore since the Feb. 24 invasion.)
I recently compared notes on the Ukraine sea war with a retired U.S. surface-warfare captain. He reminded me that when he toured a Russian cruiser, the officers wore name tags on their uniforms, while the sailors wore only numbers. This mentality — a reminder that the Russian fleet is in part composed of conscripts — reflects a lack of a coherent chain of command. That can work in peacetime operations, but quickly breaks down in combat."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-19/russia-ukraine-war-sunken-warship-moskva-is-a-warning-to-all-navies
It's a wonder their ships can go out to sea.
I've heard this many times, and it makes a lot of sense to me. But isn't it true of the Ukrainian forces as well?
Maybe they'd suck too if they weren't defending their homes. But high morale only gets you so far. They appear to be making progress in the east, which required coordination, maneuver and logistics. They pulled that off despite their own lack of an NCO corps. How are they doing so well, if they share Russia's fatal flaw?
In 2014, the Ukrainian military began reforming itself with NATO training, purging a lot of incompetent, pro-Russian officers, and rearming with a modern arsenal. They were still a long way from being a fully functional, NATO-eligible army, but are proving themselves vastly more resourceful and better organized than their much larger (on paper) Russian opponents. Also, a lot of the current Ukrainian fighters have cycled through that military previously fighting separatists in the Donbas region (who were themselves trained and armed by the Russians), so they have a wealth of accumulated knowledge not only about that terrain, the cities, etc., but about the enemy. The poorly-trained, abused conscripts from some poverty-stricken central Russian oblast they're up against are in a world of shit.
I’m sure there is some truth in all the factors cited, from extreme authoritarianism to corruption to the lack of a professional NCO corps; but as much as the Russian military has underperformed expectations, Ukrainians have exceeded. I think NATO training has made an underappreciated contribution - the Ukrainian military has proved to be highly adaptable, more mobile, better coordinated, and more proficient in using modern weapons systems. I wonder how much the diversity of NATO forces contributes to their effectiveness - there are nations with long experience in fighting in mountains, arctic conditions, on the sea, in amphibious warfare, in open plains, built-up areas, and anything else you can think of.
One obvious conclusion: if the Ukrainian forces with a few years of NATO training are holding their own, actual NATO forces that have been training and conducting exercises together for decades would tear a Russian attack to pieces. Note that Finland and Sweden have been working closely with NATO for years as well; Putin’s threats against them are hollow.
Second conclusion: I would think that something resembling Brooks’ Law applies to military operations: adding manpower to units that are poorly directed, poorly resupplied and can’t effectively mount combined-arms operations, makes them even less effective.
They might but then again they might nit. The one thing in common with all of countries you mentioned is that they’ve been living with and have genuinely believed in a substantial likelihood of a Russian invasion. There’s been a semi-cold war between Sweden and Russia with their militaries bumping up against each other for decades. And the has been reflected in the seriousness of their military preparation.
By contrast, neither the United States nor Russia has fought anything that e England remotely resembles a large, sophisticated, well equipped, well trained military for decades. The Soviet Empire made several incursions against countries like India but lost all of its small war until Chechnya which, ultimately involved turning lose its forces against unarmed civilians or poorly equipped rebels who lacked foreign patrons.
Similarly, the United States military hasn’t fought anything like a peer competitor since the bloodbath of fighting China to a draw in Korea. Although our country has been at war continually since the end of WW II, our method of war has been mainly bombing the hell out of people and sending massively larger, better equipped ground forces against, essentially, the Little Mothers of the Poor.
There seems to be an implicit assumption in our military planning that our military can posture and preen itself instead of preparing for military conflict with a peer military that’s similarly equipped and large enough to keep fighting for a while. I remember years ago, I was working for a company that built ships for the USN. There was a huge scandal about the use of aluminum (which might actually ignite and burn if hit by a shell or a missile). What was interesting was the implicit assumption that while these ships might fire their guns against all kinds of targets, it didn’t matter what the ships were made out of because nobody would who could shoot back would dare and probably everyone the ship did fire at couldn’t fight back. That’s a very dangerous culture.
I’m inclined to give the US somewhat more credit. At the time of the Gulf War (GHW Bush’s Presidency), the Iraqi Army was considered to be a pretty credible opponent. They had fought Iran, a nation twice their size, to a standstill, and were quite well equipped. The US had an advantage in technology, but the greatest difference IMHO was the brilliant US battle plan, and its coordination of infantry, armor, aircraft in operations.
The U.S. army is certainly much more credible than the Russian army--or the Chinese for that matter. We do fight other militaries on the reg, and we take on missions that require us to put our people in harm's way (i.e., capturing a city instead of just flattening it from over the horizon).
But we still have never fought anything like a peer since Korea. And our peers haven't, either. If a great power war does break out, it's going to be a lot like World War 1: A whole lot of carnage and destruction on all sides as outdated assumptions and strategies are discovered on the battlefield.
Personally, I suspect we will discover that big expensive assets, like aircraft carriers, are now just fancy targets, and the way of future war involves much more loosely distributed forces. So this hypothetical war would start out with us taking horrific losses as our fancy targets get sunk, and then us trying to adjust our strategy on the fly. The good news is that our military is much more flexible than our likely opponents, so I'd still bet on us to win in the end... but it'll really hurt getting there.
(And, of course, that's not reckoning with nuclear weapons. If those start flying, all bets are off.)
I agree that the large platforms likely will prove more vulnerable than we thought. Even tanks and other armor are having to be equipped more and more features for self-defense. I think drone swarms will doom armor, the way air power doomed battleships - when you can be destroyed by weapons that are cheaper and can attack in large numbers, from greater range than your own weapons have, you’re no longer the threat you once were.
I read something from a Finnish volunteer on the ground there, the younger the NCOs get the further they stray from the older soviet model. Being on defense since 2014 has forced them to change where Rus has rested on their laurels, and apparently their old soviet area equipment they've had to drag out of mothballs.
Back in the bad old days of Soviet was much still focusing on the glory days of WW2 , the only victory Russia/Soviet could brag about since the defeat of Napoleon . Secrecy was the key word and in the end was secrecy on the economy and the military so extensive that not even the top leaders had any idea of what was going on. Corruption and mismanagement was widespread since no one had control.
This was the culture Putin revived and most important….no one trusted anyone else.
Military operations are handled by the top officers , no one else dare to take any initiative , but the generals aren’t well informed on the mood among the lower ranks
This is also why the survival rate of Russian top officers are a little “depressing” . They need to be close to the front if one compare to the tradition in other military organizations
Greetings from your Swedish friend
You raise a valid point. From what I’ve read the military and organs of state security have been dramatically reorganized under Putin with an eye towards coup-proofing the system even as it’s been made far less effective at its actual duties. Again, there’s no single cause for the apparent deterioration of Russia forces but each of the things we’ve talked about is a part of it.
You really believe that the reason why Russia is failing in 2022 Ukraine -- but not Dagestan, Georgia, Chechnya, Moldova, and 2014 Ukraine -- is because of a lack of a NCO layer in its military?
I continue to believe that the core reason why militaries fail their objective is because of hubris that starts from the top. Hubris led to Bush moving on from the war in Afghanistan into a simultaneous war in Iraq and his standing on the deck of a carrier with a banner, "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"
Hubris has pulled Putin into sustaining a losing war of attrition that he must hide from Russians.
The lack of an NCO layer is not insurmountable. It puts Russia at a disadvantage, but it is not an obstacle that prevents it from doing stupid stuff and looking like an incompetent force.
I don’t think that’s the single cause of Russia’s problems but that in combination the other things we’ve discussed here probably resulted in the extremely poor performance of their military.
Also, I’m not sure that hubris and grave miscalculations are interchangeable. Russia had was appeared on the surface to be an overwhelming force assembled on Ukraine’s borders. It’s not hubris that caused its collapse but rather internal rot of which Putin was presumably unaware. The other miscalculation was about Ukrainians desire to resist being swallowed by the Russians. Apparently, Putin’s intelligence people had been telling him that the Russians would be welcomed as liberators either because the analysis was corrupted by careerists or analysts terrified of Putin’s wrath. So, poor judgement more than hubris.
Similarly, it's not entirely accurate to say that hubris caused the US to invade Iraq without a plan. There was an overwhelming belief among the Republicans that they would be greeted with flowers and that the only real necessity was to land Ahmed Chalabi somewhere and he’d be greeted like Napoleon returning from Elba. That turned out to be Chalibi’s grift compounded by careerists in the intelligence community and grifters in movement conservatism. So, more a horrible job of being taken in by Chalabi’s con compound by extraordinary mismanagement.
Hubris: exaggerated pride or self-confidence
Where do these "miscalculations" and "poor judgement" come from? HUBRIS. Some of the issues are directly relatable to the lack of NCO layer, but those shortfalls, "miscalculations", and "poor judgement" can be overcome, if not for hubris standing in the way.
Many experts (Pentagon, War College, etc.) still judge that Russia can win the war, if only they applied their full military power to the war.
This is your test, therefore: Explain what Putin/Russia has to do to win the war.
And how long will it be before it's decided that battlefield nuclear muntions are a viable option to a successful outcome...
My optimistic fantasy is that there are private agreements among defense ministers that they won’t obey first-strike orders from the politicians. More realistically, one would hope that the Russians realize that 1) the effects of nuclear blasts can’t be confined to the ‘battlefield’; 2) they would gain little advantage, since the Ukrainians seem to be avoiding massive concentrations of troops or armor or artillery; 3) conquering a wasteland isn’t worth it.
I highly doubt that Putin's defense minister has the stones to point-blank refuse an order from his boss like that. Autocrats don't pick flunkies for their willingness to take principled stands. If the order were to launch a strategic missile at the U.S., self-preservation might kick in, but not for a single tactical nuke against Ukraine.
But Putin himself doesn't seem interested in trying to ramp up the confrontation. I think what he'd really like to do is go back to the earlier state of affairs where he would every so often bite a chunk off some ex-Soviet state, without ever sticking his neck out too far.
I don't think he can actually do that, of course. NATO isn't going to just settle back to sleep after this--even after the public's attention moves on, Western militaries will stand ready to flood support to Putin's neighbors if they get a whiff of little green men. But I doubt he's going to start throwing nukes around, either.
Everything I've heard since the war started agrees with your reader's comments. The Russian army has no NCOs to speak of. The ranks exist but they are not delegated any authority.
The no-NCOs explanation is not wrong, but it is a manifestation of the point I made the previous round, that the Russian army should be understood as a third-world army. These are consistently ineffective. The Argentinian ground forces absurdly outnumbered the British, yet folded in the face of any pressure. This was only to be expected. The question was whether the British could bring even that small number of troops to the fight, given their ridiculously difficult logistical situation. Third world armies are not ineffective merely against first world armies. They are ineffective against other third world armies, if they are on the offensive. They simply don't have the training, morale, or logistics to pull off an offensive. This is why we don't see banana republics invading each other. They don't have the capability. The Russian army was able through sheer size to overcome these difficulties against minor opponents, but in the face of semi-competent defenders all they have is massed artillery. This will kill a lot of people, but it won't take and hold ground.
Interesting read.
I have no doubt that the Russian army has problems with its doctrine and command structure. Behind all that, however, is the Russian military budget of about $60 billion a year. This is considerably less than a tenth of the American budget, and out of that relatively tiny budget the Russians have to support the Strategic Rocket Forces (nuclear weapons), a weak navy, an army with about half the number of soldiers the US has, and an air force that is not succeeding in being competitive with the USAF, but is expensively trying.
That doesn't leave very much money per soldier for the army budget even if none of it was being stolen. The result is old and/or inadequate equipment, low pay for the soldiers, and too many "teeth" for the amount of "tail" that they have the budget for.