The Russian army is evolving at a rapid pace. Far away is 2022, the first year of the war, when Ukrainian officers and Western military analysts were surprised by the lack of preparation, material and tactics, of the invading troops. It was largely thanks to this that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were able to push back the enemy in so many provinces, from kyiv to Kherson. But the reality today is different. “The Russian military has demonstrated an accelerated ability over the past year to learn and adapt to the battlefield, tactically and technologically,” Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, said April 11. . The Kremlin’s military power, Cavoli added, “has become a learning structure that has little to do with the forces that invaded Ukraine two years ago.”
Ukrainian soldiers on the Avdiivka front, in the province of Donetsk, reported to Morning Express on April 22 of Russian superiority in this area. “They are getting bigger and better, and with better weapons,” concluded one of the testimonies. The war has caused tens of thousands of casualties in the Russian army, in addition to thousands of destroyed armor, artillery and aerial vehicles, but the reality is that the Kremlin is militarily more powerful today than when the invasion began. Cavoli, in his April 11 appearance before the United States Senate, provided clarifying data: “Russia is on track to produce or improve nearly 1,200 new tanks per year, and to produce 3 million artillery shells and missiles per year.” , triple that of the United States and more than the 32 NATO countries combined.” The general confirmed that “whatever the outcome of the war, the Russian army will be larger, more lethal and aggressive towards the West than when the invasion began.”
Cavoli added a worrying aspect for the Atlantic Alliance, and it is the technological leap forward that Moscow’s weapons have taken: “Russia has responded to international sanctions by adopting evasion and import strategies that have allowed it to acquire key electronic elements and machinery. This has allowed Russia to continue investing in exquisite, highly developed weapons to match American strategic advantages.”
Electronic warfare, ahead of Ukraine
The New York Times confirmed on April 23 that Russia has new electronic warfare systems that divert the trajectory of US Himars missiles. The newspaper Pravda published on April 25 an analysis of the invader’s progress in electronic warfare to inhibit the communications of Ukrainian drones: “In stationary electronic warfare devices and in trenches, Russia is far ahead of Ukraine,” stated military analyst Maria Berlinska. In 2023, Russian troops adopted three models of jammers to shoot down drones from the trenches, the Harpoon, Python and Strizh, now in widespread use.
Ukraine was superior until 2023 in the adaptation of civil drones to the battlefield, but the tables have been progressively changing until the current Russian dominance, in number and quality of the devices. Pravda He claimed that in the last three months, the invader had doubled the number of drones on the front.
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The Russian Air Force has incorporated more lethal weapons into its bombing raids this year. The Iranian Shahed bomb drones have been improved to be faster, carry a 90 kilo explosive payload and carry a camera that transmits images and data to their base. New rockets have also entered service, such as the Kh-69 cruise missile – used especially in the current Russian campaign against the Ukrainian energy system -, the Zirkon hypersonic missile and the FAB-1500 guided aerial bomb, which has been in service since February. wreaking havoc on the front. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on April 23 that his troops would soon receive the first units of the S-500 Prometheus defense systems, the fifth generation of Russian anti-aircraft batteries with a range of up to 600 kilometers. against hypersonic missiles. But it is still too early to know the effectiveness of the Prometheus system, which comes into action after years of delay.
In Russia it is also emphasized that it is precision missiles, and not tanks, that can tilt the war to one side or the other. “This is a race. “Whoever produces more high-precision weapons will be able to break out of the current positional impasse and maneuver again,” says Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST), a research institution, in his Moscow office. independent military studies whose opinion counts for the Russian high command. In his opinion, “focusing on the production of obsolete tanks, artillery and shells will not be enough for Russia to achieve significant military success.”
The Ukrainian high command has withdrawn its American Abrams or German front-line Leopard tanks due to their vulnerability to drones. “Drones are especially punishing in open fields. As soon as you reach the city, the urban environment protects you as you move forward. The Russians were able to take Avdiivka thanks to that and the use of guided bombs against the fortifications,” says the director of CAST. The Pentagon and kyiv emphasize that the defeat in Avdiivka, last February in the province of Donetsk, was mainly due to the lack of ammunition and weapons on the Ukrainian side.
The revolution of recent months has been guided bombs. In fact, Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelensky has implored the West for more anti-aircraft weapons to confront the new “Russian terror”: the UMPK, a system that attaches to free-fall bombs and guides them to glide against the target with precision, without the planes that fire them having to expose themselves to the enemy.
Russia designed its UMPK bombs in the past decade, but underestimated them until it had to resort to them earlier this year, because its doctrine placed more emphasis on the development of its aircraft. “To everyone’s surprise,” says Pukhov, “the anti-aircraft guns have managed to block and keep the aviation at a distance in this war.” Smart bombs are capable of destroying enemy fortifications and Moscow manufactures increasingly powerful explosives. The Russian Ministry of Defense announced in January the M54, a new UMPK system that not only has wings and tail, but also a front fairing that improves the aerodynamics of the FAB-1500 bombs.
Pukhov: the Ukrainian front resembles that of the Spanish civil war
“This war has shown us that in Europe we had forgotten what a war was like, that no one believed that a conflict could last for years with so many people and weapons,” says the director of CAST (Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies), in his office. from the center of Moscow. Ruslán Pujov emphasizes that everyone has paid too much attention to the military lessons of the United States in Iraq, Yugoslavia or Libya when this war is more similar to that of Iran and Iraq (1980-1988) and, even, to the Spanish civil war .
“In Spain a long positional front emerged, with relatively low troop densities on both sides, much lower than in the world wars, and the weapons were not powerful enough to break the defensive lines. Franco was able to solve this problem with small crushing attacks and the concentration of aviation in his offensives, which would be repeated by the Germans with the blitzkrieg,” Pujov points out.
The Ukrainian and Spanish fronts in 1938 have a similar extension, about 2,000 kilometers, and similar numbers of combatants. Vladimir Putin declared in December that some 617,000 Russian military personnel were participating in his invasion. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have 900,000 people, and of these, more than half a million would be operating on the front. According to The spanish civil warby historian Hugh Thomas, Republicans and Francoists had between 450,000 and 600,000 soldiers in 1938.
“The Republicans had their chance until the autumn of 1937,” says Pukhov, “but they could not solve the problem of positional struggle and failed in all their offensives. A long war of positions with no prospect of success led to their disintegration: they understood that they could still resist for five months or ten years, but their cause was lost.
Russia also suffers from a similar problem. “The Russian army was not designed for such an intense meat grinder,” admits the director of CAST, although he emphasizes that Russia “will recruit more people and does not spare them, nor the others, nor civilians, nor military.” “This is the Russian way of waging war. And yes, it is bloody and cruel,” he warns. However, both countries have problems recruiting people: “They are two modern post-industrial societies.”
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