The Russian military faced multiple shortcomings after its military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022, including declining soldier morale, insufficient leadership, logistical support failures, and inaccurate intelligence analyses. These issues surfaced despite Russia’s significant efforts to study the future of warfare and create a force capable of executing successful operations. The challenges Russia faced in Ukraine also undermined its security posture, particularly after Finland and Sweden moved to join NATO, and the West imposed economic sanctions on Russia, including on its defense industry. These challenges have profound implications for the future of the Russian military in an increasingly competitive security environment.
In this context, the importance of a study published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in September 2023 by researcher Seth G. Jones becomes evident. Titled In the Shadow of Ukraine: Russian Concepts of Future War and Force Design, the study explores how the Russian military envisions the future of warfare and the design of its force over the next five years in terms of organizing, employing, training, and equipping its military forces.
Russian Military Development:
The interest in Russian military development and force redesign began in the 1970s in response to the growing role of technological innovations in warfare. These innovations necessitated organizational and conceptual changes to adjust the force’s design and structure, with several key pillars guiding these efforts:
Precision Weapons: Among the most significant advancements were long-range, high-precision weapons, which increased the likelihood of targeting the enemy’s command and control facilities. By the 1980s, several concepts emerged, such as “deep operations battle,” “reconnaissance-strike complexes,” “reconnaissance-fire complexes,” and “operational maneuver groups.” These were followed by a redesign of the force through a careful study of U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the Balkans, and other regions, as well as Moscow’s own experiences in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine. Russia concluded that U.S. technological superiority overshadowed Iraq’s numerical advantages, particularly through the U.S.’s use of long-range precision weapons in indirect warfare. As a result, Russia developed its reconnaissance-strike complex, which involved the need for timely intelligence gathering and rapid dissemination to air, land, and sea units to direct strikes. This was aimed at improving command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities on the battlefield, facilitating the coordinated use of long-range precision weapons. This also required sufficient stockpiles of precision-guided munitions and the ability to produce these weapons in large quantities, along with enhanced intelligence and surveillance capabilities to identify potential targets.
Force Design: Russia began redesigning its force, partially based on the active defense strategy. One of the key periods in force design was the “New Look” reforms initiated by Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in 2008, which brought about the most significant changes to the Russian military since World War II. The goal was to create a more flexible and professional army in Russia. To achieve this, the armed forces were reduced in size from 1.13 million to 1 million by 2012, with the aim of having a smaller but better-equipped and trained army capable of handling a range of conflicts.
Hybrid Warfare: Russia adopted a mix of regular and irregular tactics, or hybrid warfare, which involves activities that fall short of conventional war. The goal is to expand the state’s influence and weaken its adversaries. This strategy includes disinformation campaigns, cyber operations, support for state and non-state partners, and the use of economic coercion. In Syria, for example, Russia benefited from the Lebanese Hezbollah forces, which were well-equipped and experienced from fighting Israeli Defense Forces in 2006 in Lebanon. This contributed to their participation in the Syrian war, alongside Russia’s use of private military companies like the Wagner Group. These companies provided training and advisory services to Syrian army units, pro-Assad militias, and foreign militias fighting alongside the regime. Moscow has expanded the use of private military companies to over twenty countries, including in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, where they carry out a variety of tasks, including combat operations, intelligence gathering and analysis, protection services, training, and propaganda to advance Moscow’s interests.
The Future of Russian Power
Russian military thought assumes that the nature of war is evolving rapidly, even though it remains a violent conflict between adversaries. War management now involves swift and complex tactical decision-making, advanced technology, and the weapon systems used by armies. The key aspects of Russian thinking can be understood through the following trends:
Contact vs. Non-Contact Warfare: There remains tension in Russian military thinking regarding the future deployment of contact warfare versus non-contact warfare. On one hand, many Russian military theorists believe that wars employing long-range precision weapons will become ubiquitous. On the other hand, many also believe that war will continue to involve direct, violent contact between opposing ground forces fighting for control of territory. Despite differences among Russian military thinkers on how to fight for territory while dealing with long-range precision strikes from the enemy, they agree that there will be continuous development of advanced precision weapons. These weapons will enable a high level of target destruction, activating non-contact warfare to destroy the enemy’s will and ability to fight from a distance before any direct contact occurs.
Autonomous and Unmanned Systems: Russian assessments of future warfare foresee an increasing role for all types of unmanned systems—air, ground, surface, and subsurface. These systems have become a key aspect of future warfare. Perhaps the most notable example is drones, which are of growing importance due to their usefulness in aerial reconnaissance, target identification for artillery and other weapon systems, precision strikes, attack assessment, terrain mapping for digital maps, and logistics support.
Emerging Technologies: Western investments (particularly by the U.S. and NATO) in emerging military technologies are one area of focus in Russian military thinking. They see artificial intelligence as leading to new forms of attack and defense, such as swarms, autonomous unmanned systems, global cyber operations, and missile defense. This could result in highly autonomous combat systems across all conflict zones and a shift from controlling individual tactical units (weapons systems, troops, specialized equipment) and tactical groups to AI-based command systems. Although the core of war and its objectives remain unchanged, the future nature of war is evolving quickly in ways that may force Moscow to adapt more rapidly. Russia, therefore, aims to achieve several developments in the design of its military power across various sectors as follows:
Land: The Russian army is likely to continue transitioning to a division structure and reorganizing to allow greater mobility and decentralization in response to the long-range precision strike capabilities of the U.S. and NATO. This will involve strengthening the defense industrial base to develop and produce precision munitions and weapons systems for long-term warfare, as well as experimenting with tactical units to enhance mobility.
Air: In the air domain, force design is likely to see some shifts, with a primary focus on drone systems and increasing the size of the Russian Air Force beyond its current structure. Future developments may include the use of unmanned systems for logistics in contested environments, which will require new organizational structures.
Sea: In response to increasing tensions with the U.S. and NATO, Russia will likely expand its naval forces by establishing five marine divisions for the navy’s coastal forces. Additionally, the Russian navy is expected to increase its fleet of unmanned vessels as part of its force design, focusing on the development, production, and use of submarines.
Cyber and Space: The Russian military aims to develop its space and cyber capabilities, including offensive capacities. It is also likely to expand the size and activities of its space forces and various cyber organizations, such as the General Staff’s Main Directorate, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the Federal Security Service.
Diverse Challenges:
Russia is facing numerous challenges that will compel political and military leaders to prioritize changes in force design. Building a naval and air force, as well as increasing the size of Russia’s ground forces, will come at a high cost. This may be constrained by Russia’s worsening economic crisis. Additionally, the war in Ukraine has triggered the worst labor crisis in Russia in decades, while the Russian economy is under severe pressure due to declining growth and a weakening ruble against the dollar.
Related to the above: Corruption and illicit gains remain rampant in the Russian military, which may undermine Moscow’s overall plan to effectively organize, appoint, train, and equip its forces. The Russian defense industrial base is also likely to face challenges due to the war in Ukraine. Russia has already depleted large quantities of precision-guided munitions and other ordnance in the Ukraine conflict, and many of its weapon systems and equipment have been either destroyed or severely degraded.
Moreover, Russia faces a significant challenge from the increasing civil-military friction. Tensions between the Russian military and the population may intensify over time due to a prolonged war in Ukraine and the economic downturn. This makes the restructuring of the Russian army reliant on a certain level of support and sacrifice from the Russian people.
Final Notes:
The study concludes with key observations on Russian military thinking about the future of warfare, including:
Russian military thinking is dominated by the view that the United States will remain Moscow’s primary adversary for the foreseeable future. This view has strengthened since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, with significant implications for the future of warfare and force design. Russian political and military leaders believe that U.S. and NATO aid makes them direct participants in the war. These leaders also think that Washington is attempting to expand its power, continue encircling Russia, and weaken it. These sentiments make Russia a dangerous adversary over the next five years. Moscow’s desire to restructure its military as quickly as possible is likely to push efforts to enhance nuclear and conventional deterrence, prepare to fight the West if deterrence fails, and engage in irregular and hybrid activities as part of its “active defense” strategy.
Russian analyses conclude that the nature of future wars will rapidly evolve, requiring adaptation through Russia’s support for different types of weapons, including (long-range, high-precision weapons, autonomous and unmanned systems, emerging technologies, and hybrid/irregular warfare), with increased coordination with other nations such as China and Iran.
Russian leaders are committed to restructuring the Russian military over the next few years. Although achieving this goal will be challenging, designing and rebuilding military capabilities will help confront the various evolving factors.
Source: Seth G. Jones, In The Shadow of Ukraine Russian Concepts of Future War and Force Design, A Report of The CSIS Transnational Threats Project, The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), September 2023.
