Strategy&Future

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has predictably fixed a substantial proportion of the Russian Armed Forces. Russian forces are not fighting as battalion tactical groups (BTGs), but this remains the manner in which both the Russians [1] and the Ukrainians [2] are administratively assigning troop movements. As such, this overview will use this denominator as well, though again the evidence from the war suggests that the primary unit of tactical engagement will not be the BTG per se.

Since the publication of my guide calculating how many battalion tactical groups (BTGs) the Russian Armed Forces could generate against Poland, a couple critiques have been levelled at whether this is the best way to understand how Russia would fight Poland and/or NATO at large. My guide was intended only to demonstrate how many of Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s declared 168 BTGs [1] were available to mass on the Polish border and has been taken somewhat out of context. Nevertheless, some of the critiques raise important points worth addressing.

The Russian Armed Forces implemented many reforms after the 2008 Georgian War, consolidating military districts, streamlining command-and-control structure, and switching from a division- to a brigade-centric order of battle. Overall, these reforms acknowledged the futility of retaining a theoretically mass mobilization-capable force in a time when the political conditions for using it are almost impossible to fathom. Instead, the reforms aimed for a military capable of rapidly generating force of flexible size in any of the multitudinous peripheries of the Russian sphere of influence.

The Conceptual Trap of War as a Ballet

War Vs Peace Unit Update Report #10. May 2021

War Vs Peace Missile Report #64. May 2021

War Vs Peace Unit Update Report #9. April 2021

War Vs Peace Missile Report #63. April 2021

March 2021

March 2021

War Vs Peace Missile Report #61

February 2021