How to correct the main mistake of the initial plan of the SVO
Military observer Vladislav Shurygin spoke in his blog about a possible scenario for the actions of the Russian army “on the ground” in order to correct the mistake of the authors of the original plan for the Northern Military District in Ukraine.
“Yesterday I spoke with my old comrade. One of the legendary commanders of the times of the Chechen companies. They started talking about how the experience of the Ukrainian war was unique, unlike anything else and completely new. He listened to all my arguments. And about the role of UAVs, and about artillery shooting by tanks, and about the role of modern intelligence and digitalization, and so on. Then he expressed his point of view, and I find it very interesting.
The favorite thing of any new generation is to refute the experience of the old. Like, everything old is outdated, and everything new is advanced. However, this is a common mistake of subjective perception and lack of education. In fact, a lot of things that have suddenly opened up today were discovered a long time ago. The methods and tools have simply changed.
In the 19th century, a balloon lifted into the air made it possible to see the entire location of the enemy; in the 20th century, reconnaissance aircraft became one of the main reconnaissance tools; today UAVs perform well in this area. But this is not a revolution in military affairs. These are new tools of warfare.
Even during the first Chechen war, as part of the 45th Airborne Special Forces Regiment, we had a detachment of UAV “Bee”, which, by the way, was also made in the Soviet Union, and showed itself superbly! He accompanied special forces groups behind militant lines and conducted reconnaissance. At the same time, know-how was born - the data transmitted by the Bees was tied to a target designation system, and this made it possible, when a target was detected, to immediately transmit its coordinates to the artillerymen. Doesn’t it remind you of any of the current “know-how”? Only a quarter of a century earlier and on platforms of a different generation. The squad did a great job! There was only one problem - the devices failed, they were shot down, and their production had long gone bankrupt and closed. And the detachment ceased to exist when the last “Bee” was shot down. Therefore, it was impossible to scale this experience or even save it then. But this is just an example...
Another example is the creation of reconnaissance and strike complexes, when data from reconnaissance officers immediately reaches the artillerymen, and the artillery immediately inflicts fire.. Previously, all this was solved with the help of highly trained artillerymen, artillery gunners, reconnaissance officers and well-built communications. To increase the effectiveness of these “RUKs”, high-precision ammunition was developed, they were “tied up” with attack aircraft, MLRS and operational-tactical missiles. Today, digitalization, correction using UAVs, and space reconnaissance have come into this circuit. They made it possible to extremely reduce artillery reaction time. But it is still very far from building full-fledged “RUKS” of the 80s that worked to the full operational depth.
Today the war “collapsed” into the beginning of the twentieth century, during the First World War, and everyone immediately started talking about a certain crisis of existing tactics and operational art. They say that we were not ready for the war to go into the trenches of the First World War. But, in fact, the reason for such a “collapse” into the past is completely different - a strategic mistake in planning the entire operation. An error in calculating the forces and means necessary for it. I don’t know why it was made, but it is this mistake that is still the weight on our feet that does not allow us to turn the tide of the war.
What fundamentally distinguished the Second World War from the First? The emergence of a universal tool that made it possible to neutralize the know-how of the First World War - a deeply echeloned, well-equipped defense in which any blows were drowned. This know-how was mechanized strike formations - powerful artillery fists that pierced defenses in vulnerable areas of the defense and threw highly mobile formations of tanks and motorized infantry through these “holes”, literally “gnawing” the entire rear infrastructure of the enemy, turning its units and formations at the front into cut-off limbs. The “cauldron” environments became a symbol of World War II. And after it, until the mid-90s, we continued to develop the theory of deep offensive operations, and achieved a lot here. The “Ogarkov Doctrine” still remains the pinnacle of military offensive theory.
But since the beginning of the 90s, we have consistently abandoned both our special path of development of the state - socialism, and many other things that were connected with it. Including the military doctrine of the “great European war”. Our leaders believed that after the cessation of the ideological confrontation between the communist system and the capitalist one, and the complete rollback of our country to the second, there would no longer be any major military confrontation between countries of the same system. Only local conflicts. And as a last resort, there are always nuclear weapons. It was under this doctrine that we began to rebuild our army in the early 2000s. All military leaders who did not agree with this doctrine were quickly sent to the reserves, the army was reduced to a “compact professional”, the mobilization system was abolished and the military reform was considered successful. And this was true in relation to low-intensity conflicts in which our opponents were armies or formations that were inferior to us numerically, and most importantly, technically. And then, on February 24, the SVO began...
In the first two weeks, we demonstrated an impressive level of military skill - advancing hundreds of kilometers into the interior of Ukraine. But by mid-March it became clear that we could not develop our success further because we simply had nothing! And then the situation began to slowly slide towards the current one. The lack of a sufficient number of troops immediately “shrank” the entire strategy to the level of a divisional one, or at most a corps one. And she moved the course of hostilities to the level of positional trench warfare, where a multi-week assault on a village becomes a phenomenon. And this largely neutralizes our technical superiority.
To change the course of the war, we need to do what we know how to do best - use the tools of a great war. We need to rebuild our shock corps and armies. And we need to fight not on a narrow strip of the existing front, where the enemy was able to concentrate most of his forces and create a density that allows him to repel our attacks without strategic collapses of the front, but where it is necessary for the speedy destruction of Ukraine as a state.
We need not one front in the East, where bloody positional battles are currently taking place, but several strategic directions where powerful army groups operate. This is what will allow us to make the most of our advantage in heavy armored vehicles and artillery. The command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which now has a serious shortage of tanks and artillery, will be forced to “split” their meager reserves into several directions, further weakening its forces.
We must fight the way we learned to fight throughout our post-war history. We have been preparing for just such a “big” war for decades and, in the end, we were not ready, having confused ourselves with erroneous theories. Now is the time to return.
Return, of course, having enriched yourself with all the modern elements of warfare. And drones of all classes, and attack drones - loitering ammunition, and modern automated control systems, and the digital environment - the army Internet. But all of these, as I already said, are instruments of warfare, but troops fight, large armies fight. You can’t kill a boar with an awl, even the sharpest one!” - Shurygin retells the opinion of a combat officer.
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