Russia Defense Report - Jan.16, 2016: Ratnik System
#RealModernWarfare



This post has been edited by justaregularjoe: Jan 16 2016, 03:24 PM

Russia Defense Report - Jan. 22, 2016: Robot Wars

Russia Defense Report - Feb. 6, 2016: Battle for Arctic



Text by J.Hawk exclusively for SouthFront

Russia’s Northern Fleet’s sphere of responsibility includes the protection of the country’s sovereignty and of its economic interests in the Arctic Ocean zone. To this end the fleet has at its disposal not only powerful surface ships, submarines, and aircraft, which make it the most powerful of Russia’s four fleets, but also a sizable land component in the form of two motorized rifle brigades. Recent conflicts in Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen have demonstrated that land forces are the ultimate guarantee of military success, and even though any conflict in the Arctic would be fought mainly by naval and air forces, the decisive role would still fall to the land component. Which is why the Northern Fleet has a sizable land force at its disposal.

The 200th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade is a conventional unit of one tank and three motorized rifle battalions with extensive artillery, air defense, and combat engineer support intended mainly for operations on Russia’s mainland, with the objective of protecting the fleet’s naval and air bases against a NATO attack. In the Far North, Russia borders a NATO country, Norway, which hosts frequent international exercises by the alliance’s Arctic-specialized units, including British Royal Marines. Further raising the level of tensions, Swedish officials have recently declared they are expecting to be engaged in a major conventional conflict in a matter of only a few years and are interested in expanding their cooperation with NATO and perhaps in joining the alliance, and even the neutral Finland has contemplated NATO membership in recent years. In the worst-case scenario, the balance of forces in the North could rapidly shift against Russia.

Defending Russia’s soil against conventional NATO attack is not the only concern. It is becoming clear that the Arctic will soon become the arena of a power struggle for control of this resource-rich region, just as the Middle East has become in recent years. Therefore, Russia’s armed forces are preparing to play their part in the looming conflict. The 80th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade which was activated in January 2015 and which is based in the town of Alakurtti, can also be used for the same purpose as the 200th Brigade, but its organization, equipment, and training exercises indicate a somewhat different main mission. The 80th Brigade is also intended to fulfill the role of force projection alongside the Northern Fleet’s Naval Infantry units. While the Naval Infantry’s main mission is amphibious assault against a defended enemy coastline, the 80th Brigade is equipped and trained not for forced entry, but for extended independent operations far away from friendly bases on the many islands and archipelagoes of the Arctic theater of operation, such as Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, and Spitsbergen, and relying mainly on air and sea resupply. It could play both a defensive role, protecting key Russian military infrastructure such as airfields and early warning radar stations against NATO special operations raids, and an offensive one by pre-empting NATO landings on any contested land areas of the Arctic.

The Brigade’s recent exercises included close cooperation with Northern Fleet’s amphibious assault ships, which were used for transporting its units to their distant exercise areas. The strategic mobility requirement and the need to operate in extreme conditions with limited logistical support means that the 80th Brigade is more lightly equipped than conventional motorized rifle units. It does not have a tank battalion, and its rifle battalions are mounted on MTLB tracked APCs which have good mobility over snow and tundra. It is currently testing a wide range of specialized equipment, including winter uniforms suitable for extended operations in extremely cold conditions of the polar night, snowmobiles, 4-by-4 all terrain vehicles, articulated tracked carriers specially designed for over-snow operations, and other gear specifically adapted for Arctic conditions. Its personnel, which contain a high proportion of contract soldiers, is also receiving specialized training in Arctic warfare. A recent exercise included its reconnaissance company soldiers utilizing dogs and reindeer as a means of transport during a simulated operation behind enemy lines, indicating the brigade has considerable special operations capability.

This highly specialized unit represents an important military capability which contributes to Russia’s conventional deterrence. The ultimate measure of its success in that role may be that it will never have to be used to fulfill its assigned combat role against a real adversary, who will instead be persuaded to address Arctic-related issues through a normal negotiating process.

RUSSIA: Northern Fleet riflemen conduct military drills in Murmansk region

Looks like COD

TUrks ready to start WW3!

Russian military drills: From the bottom of the sea to the clouds in the sky (incl. GoPro footage)

Naval Arms Race: Multirole Naval Platforms of the 21st Century

It's heating up everywhere!



Text by Brian Kalman exclusively for SouthFront

The past fifteen years has seen the United States and its allies engage in numerous military invasions and interventions in the Middle East. All of these operations have utilized strike aircraft, special operations forces and armed and unarmed UAVs as force multipliers. Warships that can provide a platform to transport and support small, combined arms units of strike aircraft, helicopter assault or amphibious assault infantry or marines, special operations units, and reconnaissance and attack UAVs are seen as an essential tool in prosecuting the low intensity conflicts of the future. Almost every nation with a maritime border and a viable navy on the globe has taken notice of these developments.

These Multi-role Naval Platforms or MRNPs, come in a number of different designs. Some of these designs optimize flexibility and provide a balance of command and control, strike aircraft, air and amphibious assault, or cargo space while others are designed to maximize the effect of only one or two of these capabilities. The LHD is the most balanced, and thus flexible of all of the MRNP designs. The LHD is the largest design, requiring the dimensions and space to accommodate a large number of aircraft, troops, light and heavy vehicles, cargo and amphibious assault craft.

The LPD is a well-balanced multirole vessel; however, on a smaller scale than the LHD. It has comparable flexibility, but at a much smaller scale it lacks the power projection capability of the LHD. Although their smaller size limits the scope of their operations, they gain the benefit of being able to operate more easily in littoral waters and are less costly to build and maintain.

The DDH is a relatively new adaptation of the MRNP. The DDH abandons all amphibious capabilities in favor of aircraft assault and aerial strike capability. The only two nations to build and operate DDHs are the United States and Japan. The JMSDF operates three DDHs currently, with a fourth vessel to enter operation in 2016.

It is obvious to see the benefits of these multirole vessels with their inherent flexibility, humanitarian support and power projection capabilities. The benefits are obvious, but why are so many vessels now being built in such a short span of time? These naval building programs are being driven by geo-political developments in two main regions of the globe, the Mediterranean and the Asia-Pacific. This is in direct relation to the wars of regime-change and disruption in the Middle East and the U.S. “Pivot to Asia” and the disputes over contested areas in the East and South China Seas.

Although Russia was denied the two Mistral Class vessels, Vladivostok and Sevastopol when France reneged on the deal in 2014, Russia immediately made it clear that it will acquire indigenously designed and built vessels of similar pattern. These vessels would have proven of decisive value in supporting the Russian intervention in Syria. The two vessels were instead sold to Egypt. It is yet unclear how Egypt will employ these vessels in the future, but may aim to use them in bolstering the Saudi led military intervention in Yemen. Turkey entered into a contract with DCNS to build an LPD based on the Juan Carlos I LHD pattern in the summer of 2015.

The accelerating acquisition of MRNPs in the East and South East Asia regions is the most alarming. With China, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia and the United States all rapidly building and commissioning these vessels in high numbers over the past ten years, it could reasonably be said that there is a naval arms race occurring in proportion to developments related to the South China Sea Crisis.

China has built four Type 071 LPDs of a total of six planned vessels, and has designed LHDs that have a displacement of 40,000 tons. Other claimants to disputed islands and waters in the South China Sea have been encouraged and supported by the United States in their efforts to acquire LPDs to back up their territorial claims with naval power. As the United States accuses China of engaging in a massive military build-up, it must be noted that the United States operates more of these multi-role vessels than all of the major world navies combined.

As the crises in the Middle East and East China and South China Seas continue to escalate, it is increasingly probable that those nations involved will decide to use these newly acquired vessels for the purposes of power projection, deterrence or in response to military provocation. Considering the increasing brinkmanship and saber-rattling between the United States and China, the irresponsible and destabilizing military actions of Turkey against its neighbors, and the recklessness of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the odds that these powerful new naval tools will be used increases with each passing day.

Russia Defense Report - Feb. 17, 2016: 1st Guards Tank Army




Written and produced by SF Team: J.Hawk, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson

The formation of Tank Armies, which were eventually raised to Guards ranks once they demonstrated their ability to defeat Wehrmacht forces, was a major step in the Red Army’s operational evolution during the Great Patriotic War. Even though the Soviets were temporarily surpassed by the Panzerwaffe which gained experience from operations in Poland and Western Europe, once the Tank Armies were formed, German forces could no longer claim to be the most skilled or effective practitioners of armored warfare. The 1st Guards Tank Army was one of six such armies formed during the Great Patriotic War. After the war it became part of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, where it remained until it was withdrawn to Russia in the 1990s.

The changes in the international environment, the desire to cash in on the “peace dividend”, the need to fight the Chechen insurgency, and Russia’s economic crisis all led to the disbandment of tank armies. In the absence of significant external military threat to Russian territory, the only permanent readiness units would be motorized rifle and tank brigades, which were subordinated directly to army headquarters. These brigades would screen the borders and allow the lower-readiness divisions, which were transformed into equipment storage depots with minimal personnel, to be mobilized for war.

The Maidan coup, the high-intensity civil war in Ukraine, and NATO expanding its permanent presence eastward, forced the reversal of the earlier policies. There was now a large country with a hostile, Nazi-friendly regime and close NATO ties right on Russia’s western border. Moreover, the fighting in Ukraine demonstrated the advantage of having large and permanently established maneuver formations. Independently operating battalions, regiments, and brigades lacked the ability to deliver a knock-out punch, and coordinating a large number of such units was difficult for higher headquarters. The NATO-style tactic of putting together task forces and battlegroups out of available units which was used by the Ukrainian army also proved ineffective because units which do not train together in peacetime will not fight well together in wartime. Therefore the Russian Ministry of Defense decided to reactivate 4 divisions and bring 2 existing ones, the 4th Guards Tank and 2nd Guards Motorized Rifle, to permanent readiness status to give the Russian Ground Forces several large high-readiness formations that would pack the offensive punch smaller units did not have and to re-establish the Soviet-era regiment-division organizational structure which is better suited for high-intensity combat operations. But it went one step further by ordering the reactivation of the 1st Guards Tank Army, with headquarters near Moscow, and assigned to the Western Military District. Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu named the activation of the new formations one of the top priorities for 2016.

There is no information yet on how many divisions and brigades the 1st Guards Tank Army will have assigned. Great Patriotic War-era tank armies had two or three division-size units permanently assigned. During the Cold War, each Soviet tank army had four tank divisions. The activation of new divisions suggests that the newly reformed 1st Guards Tank Army is likely to have three or four permanently assigned tank and motorized rifle divisions and a number of separate brigades which would make it the largest permanently organized land forces formation between Urals and the Atlantic. Its reactivation will give the Russian Ground Forces the ability to exploit its superior expertise at the operational level of war, which was already shown during the Crimea operation which NATO was took NATO completely by surprise and which is currently being demonstrated in Syria. The location of its headquarters indicates it will be Russian high command’s strategic reserve, to be used to deliver the decisive blows of the land campaign, following the example of the 1st Guards Tank Army which was among the first Red Army units to enter Berlin in 1945.

In order to ensure battlefield superiority over NATO forces, divisions and brigades of the 1st Guards Tank Army will be the first to receive the new Armata, Kurganets, and Bumerang vehicles once they enter production. In order to ensure high readiness, they will contain a high proportion of contract soldiers. Once it achieves initial operational capability, the army will become an important component of Russia’s conventional deterrence, and a decisive warfighting tool should the need to use it arise.