I see John Noonan beat me to the punch on this one. I was going to leave aside the technology issues and focus instead on a range of institutional and social issues that make such a reform of the Russian military problematic: 1. Culture of corruption and distrust: Modern warfare requires absolute honesty in the exchange of information between commanders and subordinates. In a culture where everyone lies, and nobody brings bad news to the boss, failure, at least at the tactical level, is almost guaranteed. 2. Lack of initiative: In modern warfare, initiative devolves to the small unit level. In Iraq and Afghanistan, squad and platoon leaders are fulfilling roles formerly belonging to company and battalion commanders. Battalion commanders are filling the role formerly filled by brigade and division commanders, The amount of responsibility given to junior officers, NCOs, and even enlisted men is much greater than in the past. Russian society, with its top-down command orientation is not suited to a bottom-up, entrepreneurial style of warfare. 3. Poor small unit cohesion: Combat power, as Martin van Creveld noted in his book of that name, derives not only from the expertise and competence of commanders, but from the cohesion and solidarity of troops within the “primary group” (squad and platoon, occasionally company). Men may sign up for ideology, but they fight for their comrades and the fear of looking bad in their eyes. During the Soviet era, the Russians almost totally ignored small unit cohesion and kept men in line through external coercion (political officers, KGB informants, punishment battalions). Absent the coercive force of the Soviet state, Russian units have (with the exception of elite airborne, air assault, and Spetznaz troops) shown remarkably little will to fight, whether in Afghanistan or Chechya–which is why the Russians needed to rely on massive (and ultimately counterproductive) firepower tactics to win battles. 4. Lack of Experienced NCOs: One way in which armies develop unit cohesion is through the mediating influence of the non-commissioned officer, who acts as father figure to the men, representing their interests and providing a buffer between them and the officer corps. The Soviet army never really developed an NCO corps in our sense of the word. Rather, corporals and sergeants were selected from the incoming crop of conscripts; having none of the moral authority that comes from years of service, these NCOs controlled their men through brute force (beatings are a fact of life in the Russian army, where suicide among conscripts is rampant). Having little in the way of experience or training, they are not allowed to exercise any tactical initiative. Instead, the Russian army is officer-led, and units are typically articulated one level higher than in Western armies (i.e., jobs done by a squad in the West are done by platoons in the Russian army). Developing a real NCO corps from scratch is extremely difficult, especially given the top-down nature of Russian society. Past attempts to build an NCO corps have foundered on this insurmountable obstacle.
Now, it has to be recognized that in the past the Soviet army was remarkably successful at waging war. Despite all the drawbacks listed above, which were as true in World War II as they are today, the badly manned, badly led, ill-equipped, technologically primitive Soviet Army did defeat the vaunted Wehrmacht at its own game of mechanized maneuver warfare. And throughout the heyday of the Cold War, the Soviet army, particularly its front-line units in Group of Soviet Forces in German (GFSG) were formidable opponents (recent attempts to soft-peddle the capabilities of the Soviet army notwithstanding). They were successful because they recognized their inherent weakness at the tactical level, and instead maximized their strength at the operational and strategic level by leveraging the same top-down, command-driven culture that undermined their small unit proficiency. Soviet commanders thought big, doing with armies and army groups what other armies did with divisions and corps. Their commanders pushed, they did not lead from the front (as did German commanders). They relied on their ability to compel obedience with absolute ruthlessness, and did not need to rely on the honesty of their subordinates because they only looked at objective results (i.e., whether units were advancing, holding or retreating), and constantly reinforced success with a seemingly endless pool of reserves. This removed the need for initiative from battalion, regimental, and even division commanders. It is no coincidence (as Pravda used to say) that Russian planning and command and control methods relied very heavily on templates and algorithms for everything from how many units to deploy on a given front, to how many rounds of artillery ammunition would be needed to neutralize an enemy unit. As the Soviet army moved into the electronic age, many of these algorithms were automated, further removing initiative from the unit commander. Only men controlling armies, army groups, and fronts had any flexibility, and these men were held to account by Josef Stalin, which ensured either excellence or (at best) a spell in the GULAG. This is an excellent mode of warfare for a totalitarian state waging a major conventional war. It’s not so good for a democracy (or even an authoritarian regime) dealing with guerrilla warfare or insurgency, as the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya showed. But that is the kind of war that Russia will probably have to wage, and one wonders whether they will be able to develop the institutions and traditions needed to build an army capable of doing so. Without this, the best technology and equipment in the world will be of little value to them. P.S.: Someone is bound to ask how the Germans managed to develop such a good army in their day, but that’s a whole other story, one on which books have been written. We can cover that at some later time, if the subject ever comes up.
