Coordination

  • Modern warfare is about combined arms. Tanks, infantry, helicopters, artillery, etc. are all vulnerable if employed by themselves. Using them together is how you mitigate their vulnerabilities.
  • Artillery strikes on fortified positions aren’t that effective unless there is an advancing ground element.

Full regiments

The Russian armed forces likely have few or no full-strength units in reserve to deploy to fight in Ukraine because of a flawed mobilization scheme that cannot be fixed in the course of a short war. The Russians did not deploy full regiments and brigades to invade Ukraine—with few exceptions as we have previously noted. They instead drew individual battalions from many different regiments and brigades across their entire force. We have identified elements of almost every single brigade or regiment in the Russian Army, Airborne Troops, and Naval Infantry involved in fighting in Ukraine already. The decision to form composite organizations drawn from individual battalions thrown together into ad hoc formations degraded the performance of those units, as we have discussed in earlier reports. It has also committed the Russian military to replicating that mistake for the duration of this conflict, because there are likely few or no intact regiments or brigades remaining in the Russian Army, Airborne Forces, or Naval Infantry. The Russians have no choice but to continue throwing individual battalions together into ad hoc formations until they have rebuilt entire regiments and brigades, a process that will likely take years.

Unified command

The lack of a single overall commander clearly hindered the cooperation of Russian forces operating along various invasion axes.