Transforming Russia’s Ground Forces: Lessons Learned in Syria

Welcome, I'm Chris Miller, director, director of the Eurasian Foreign Policy Research Institute, and co-editor of the book we're here to discuss today. As you may well know, this book was published about Russia's war in Syria. It has only been available for download on the fpri website for two weeks. You can download the book in its entirety or specific chapters that interest you and we encourage you to check it out and take a look at the book as well if you are not already interested. currently registered with fpri publications or a member of the fbi, we recommend that you visit our website www.fpri.org for more information on publications and events like these, so for today's discussion on Russia's

ground

war in Syria , i will hand it over to our moderator anna borshevskaya, senior fellow at the washington institute and also author of one of the chapters of the book anna, thank you very much, chris, welcome everyone, it is a pleasure to be here and have this very important discussion, um, I'm going to introduce our two distinguished speakers, who will speak about their chapter and then we'll have what I hope will be a great discussion on this important topic.

Dr. Lester Growl is a senior analyst for the Foreign Military Stem Cell Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. He has served in the US Army for 52 years. He is one of the US Army's leading Russian military experts and the author of 18 books and 250 articles, and Char Charles Chuck Bartles. Sorry, I know you, I know Chuck less, but Charles Bartles is a Russian analyst and linguist at Femso and his specific research areas include Russian and Central Asian Military Force Structure Modernization Tactics Officer and Enlisted Professional Development. and security assistant programs and is also a space operations officer and major in the US Army Reserve and has deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and served as an assistant security officer at the embassies in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan , so without further ado, I'll go first.

Give the floor to them, please, the floor is yours, thank you, good morning and thank you very much, it is a pleasure to be here. What we will talk about today is the Russian

ground

forces

contingent in Syria and I guess I should first say that the Russian ground contingent in Syria is not only the Russian ground

forces

but also airborne troops, which is a special branch of the coastal defense troops which includes naval infantry and coastal artillery, private military companies and special operations. forces uh these are the people that fight on the ground, so we, they, they're all part of the land domain that we're going to talk about, uh, the land that we're going to, so we're going to Basically, we're talking about advisors, fires, mobility and countermobility, the new military police force, coastal defense troops, private military companies and special operations forces.

When Russia entered Syria in 2015, they entered primarily as an air force mission to reinforce the Syrian forces and felt they could do so with purely air support. The United States and Britain had discovered in their history that this total dependence on the air force does not always work well and you have a mission. they crawl in and suddenly everyone is involved and this is certainly what has happened in the Russian contingent there are many missions for the ground forces there they are involved in extensive urban fighting they are involved in fights over key resources such as oil fields lines of communication and water supply they are carrying out conventional combat against irregular units there is a problem with the ethnic and religious cleansing that they are trying to control there are a large number of foreign fighters of different nationalities and motivations involved as well and there are contending military powers fighting against the commitment of Russia, this is a problem, they are not an expeditionary power and the entry into Syria has tested their logistics.

The old standbys, particularly the navy and some of its large amphibious aircraft carriers, which are ideal to bring to Russia. team at all, so basically what there is today in Syria in the Russian forces is not just an air force mission, not just a naval mission, but basically all the ground forces, the navy and the air force, which contribute and they try to colonize the area and serve Russia. The interests in the area also, basically, the Russian ground force is one of the most important things that they do as advisors and their approach to the advisory effort is different than a lot of other people.

Number one is that they normally live very close to the people they advise and it is not trained one-on-one or two-on-two individuals who are doing this in Syria, they are bringing in entire staffs and these can be brigade staffs. , they may be divisional staffs, they may be battalion staffs, but the entire staff is there from Russia working side by side. siding with your Syrian cohort and making things happen uh this provides a lot for the Syrians provides a lot for the Russians one thing it does is give them combat experience in managing and conducting this type of war in their southern region. with much more familiarity with fighting in this type of terrain in this type of region to the south, which is very, very essential for them and these Russian staffs rotate intact, they resume their tasks with their unit and new staffs show up and so far More than 48,000 Russian Defense Ministry personnel have served in Syria and many of the commanders and officers of the ground forces, in addition to the naval infantry and airborne forces, have received invaluable combat experience through this.

One of the other important things they provide is fire, not just air. The planes shoot, but the artillery now, the people who do most of the pulling the ropes, who do the physical firing of these Soviet systems that are brought in, were there when they got there, but the Russians have developed an artillery system very coherent that they are placing there and one of the big differences from what they did in Afghanistan and now is detecting artillery in Afghanistan. They used helicopters a lot to find targets to protect the moving flanks to scout and find the enemy.

Helicopters. they can't keep them up for a long period of time they are loud and they have people in them and they are big and they attract fire they have introduced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles that can do this job and they can loiter for hours and hours at the sites they provide security on the flanks. The Orlan 10 has been one of their main vehicles to do this, so this aerial robot is not putting the lives of the pilots at risk, it is doing a good job and there are many of them. harder to shoot down and one of the things they are not doing, they may do in the future, there are indications, but they have not been putting rockets on their UAVs, what they are doing instead is using them as observers of artillery and letting the artillery do the work, one of the things that they brought with them was that they established a combined command and control system to integrate the Russian and Syrian forces and this has probably been one of the biggest success stories that they have had so far. date because this allows We ask Syrian and Russian forces to respond quickly to emerging situations and threats and to decrease the incidence of fractures and better use precision fires and have incorporated much of their old and new artillery.

They are doing a great job. Lots of testing of their equipment and product improvements. They have also incorporated multiple rocket launcher systems, including the 120-millimeter Grodd, 150-millimeter Grodd, 120-millimeter Oregon, 220-millimeter Oregon, and 300-millimeter Smurch, and these systems when deployed can destroy 10 72 and 166 acres, respectively, have also brought to launch a heavy flamethrower system that belongs to the nuclear chemical troops, but it is basically a large-scale flamethrower quite effective in urban combat and it is uh although it belongs to a different branch than the artillery, it is basically a very short range mr mlrs mounted on a t-72 chassis that is used as thermobaric rounds, they have also used short range ballistic missiles in the country, basically the hide has two different missiles and two different cruise missiles that can fit on observers and can reach up to 500 kilometers for precise targeting and have been used against several ISIS command and control points, weapons and ammunition depots, and communication, mobility and counterattack centers.

Mobility, you need to have engineers, and engineers are widely employed in Syria. They have provided great mobility and countermobility. One of the things they have done is provide water purification for road construction and river crossing in September 2017, they linked the bridge. Euphrates River with a new pmm2m bridge system and built a 210 meter long bridge across the Euphrates River in support of a Syrian Army advance and this bridge withstood the test of the mighty Euphrates until the spring floods of February 2018, when they had to separate it, but when the flood subsided, they put it back in order.

Russia is a member of the United Nations mine action service and they have provided hundreds and hundreds of mine clearance and EOD specialists and trained mine. The Syrian mind-clearing staff also brought in the Euron 6 mine detection robot system, which seems to work quite well and they've also done considerable work on mind-clearing, so they've been around quite a bit. pretty busy and um uh chuck do you want to chime in yeah let's talk a little bit about military police so like Les said you know the ground forces you know they're kind of the equivalent of the US military we say ground forces they're kind of like that like the US military, that's a rough equivalent, but you know, so let's talk about a proper organization, we talk about the military police, the military police have been very active in Syria and the Russian military police are structured a little bit differently to our American military police. or the Western military police um, it's a relatively new institution for the Russians, they had some internal security problems and they brought in this military police to, you know, take care of the unit, you know, the disciplinary problems of the internal unit and you know, monitor theft and errors and such. something like that, but the military police that we see in Syria is a different variety, almost a totally different type of military police than what the Russians have domestically and this type of military police is more like an expeditionary military police.

They've planted a couple of battalions of these guys from the North Caucasus and, you know, like Dagestan, Chechnya, that area in the English edition and they've trapped a couple of battalions there and brought them to Syria to ensure their safety. and these guys are the ones who really do a lot of the boots on the ground, you know, and pull the trigger and go out and do that show of strength and that physical presence and I think we had that dust last month. with the uh, you know, the Russian vehicle that hit the uh usm rap, those were military police and then, you know, a few months before that, in March we had the other dust-up with the other Russian vehicle, those were also military police Russians, so these are the guys who were actually seeing the terrain driving, so, you know, it seems like the Russians have changed their model.

The Russians used to be very important in peacekeeping tasks, that was something exclusive to the Russians. airborne troops, the vdv and then a couple of other units, ground forces units that were designated to do that mission and now it looks like they may have changed the model there for their expeditionary peacekeeping model and decided maybe that instead of having the airborne or ground forces, maybe now they are going to have these military police of this variety that I talked about, maybe that is not the one who is going to do that mission, so you know it is important that we can see these, now You know, military police.

In other parts of the world I think the Russians have

learned

lessons

. If you just have regular ground forces, it looks like an invasion, but if you have people called military police, then it looks like you're there. We're doing a humanitarian support police action, so I think it's a little more acceptable to have these military police out there cavorting unless yeah, no, yeah, you're on a roll, yeah, no, um, we'll talk about defense students. coastal, oh, me. I thought you were going to talk about shutting down testing troops, right? Oh, okay, I'm awake, okay, here we go, nevermind, sorry, yes, coordination is our strong point, coastal defense forces are basically artillery, coastal artillery, yes.

They still have it, we gave it up, we abandoned it after World War II and they didn't have naval infantry, now their coastal artillery, unlike the old days where they were entrenched in fortified positions. These are mobile but they have a purpose. and they don't have to fire only towards the sea, in fact coastal artillery has also been used withquite effective against ground targets, in november 2016 a bastion pum k-300p coastal defense missile system was used against a uh, a ground target, not sure what it was, all I know is that it supposedly hit it, but basically it is one of the capabilities of your coastal artillery, naval infantry is an elite force of naval forces.

These are the guys that that storm on the ground does uh uh does beach airborne assaults and landings have airborne capability and air assault capability, they have been used primarily, however, to maintain the security of the Tartus naval base and the large Russian air base which they have, as i mentioned earlier, the naval infantry is hampered by their lack of a sufficiently large and modern land landing ship capability and the

russia

n airborne forces have also had some problems with sufficient mobility with the il-76 getting there, However they are there, they are doing a decent job and They are also gaining combat experience, so, I go into the private military companies, it has been a big problem lately, if you follow any of the media that talks about where these mercenaries are working and ,uh.

I think they've appeared now in North Africa in Libya, but they definitely had their start, obviously, related to their current mission in Syria and Ukraine. I mean, the Russians have had a long history of having private militaries. companies you know like gas prom and some of the other organizations, you know, but this is the first time they're used as a military force and they're used very differently than to say kind of cut if you're promoting the American system how we use contractors in our system uh when the Russian military when they talk about contractors there they are subcontracting artillery and tanks and things like that like things that you normally know, no, you don't see the US government contract for artillery and uh, these uh, these Wagner PMCs, these different PMCs are actually performing these very military functions and, you know, I don't know anything.

There's a lot about them, I know a couple of organizations have really looked at what these PMCs are doing, but you know it's pretty interesting, but I think overall the military effort there seems to be pretty small, I mean, they're and we're in certain areas that you know, especially in the oil and gas industry, but as a percentage of the total Russian military, you know that ground element that is on the ground a little bit, we know about them, it seems to be a fairly small number of people that you know that do important things, but again, a small number of people in a similar vein, maybe they talk a little bit about special operations, so in general, talk about special operations forces, they know that by nature.

It seems to be pretty quiet or it seems like you don't have much information about what they are doing and it seems pretty limited. We know that there are special operations forces from the Russian media, not just the Ministry. defense, but also the other intelligence structures that are there, like the FSB, we know that there are other organizations that are operating there and it is difficult to say how much impact they are having there, obviously they do certain high-profile things. but uh, but they're usually important missions, really important, but generally, you know, they keep a low profile, we don't hear much about what they're doing, so it's hard to say how much impact these guys have. they're having, but I have to say it's probably a pretty small number of the total military force, especially that ground element that's in Syria right now.

You know, it's very likely a pretty small number of these guys running around the battlefield, so Great, well, thank you both, thank you both very much, so now, if any members of our audience want to think about your questions, please ask them in the chat function in the questions section, but in the meantime, since everyone is thinking about your questions, if I may. I have a question I wanted to ask less and Charles um for less um looking at the bigger picture in all these different aspects of the Russian ground contingent forces uh have there been any important ideas or gains for the Russian terrain - Contingent uh based and to pull uh from all the different elements of the ground base of the Russian ground contingent in Syria, which do you think has been the most important?

We'll start, yes, go ahead, you start, yes, okay, yes, there is there. They have been definite gains and advantages for the number one Russian ground forces. It gives them the opportunity to try new tactics. Combat test equipment. Develop new equipment. One of the things we've seen is a lot of their standard equipment being future tested there. improvements, but we have also seen some new things, one of the areas is robotics, there has been a lot of fierce fighting in Aleppo and urban combat is a very unpleasant business and there is a lot of underground fighting going on, there are a lot of improvised explosive devices ​​and mines, so we've seen a lot of use of new robotic systems to counter minds, to attack strongpoints robotically rather than with human lives, and robbie, the robot, is doing his part, I guess, robert.

I don't know, but there have been a lot of tests with these things, but also in the field of tactics. Chuck and I wrote a book about two years ago called The Russian Way of War and what we were talking about was tactics for uh conventional maneuver warfare under conditions of nuclear threat primarily of fighting Europe, but all the fighting is not in Europe and they're not basically all against a pure competitor so how do you deal with a different type of force on a different type of terrain and um the Russians have been experimenting with a lot of things and you'll read all kinds of articles where they talk about um uh we did this as a lesson

learned

from the experience in Syria and you're I see this all the time and I incorporate into the training anything from tank support and deploying tank firing engineers under a lane of fire or smoke screens, all kinds of different applications and in a different terrain, different population and no, not in your own territory, yes, you rarely do it.

I see that the Russian media is like a high-level leader, they don't talk about bringing the experience of Syria to training, even you know, in the homeland, so they are always talking about how to know what are the

lessons

that they have learned? in Syria and you. you know how they can come, they take that information and, you know, this new war character that they're seeing in spirit, how can they bring him back and, uh, bring him, you know, bring him back to training and they've established it? We have created a couple of new training centers.

I know that urban warfare and tunnel warfare has been a big thing for them in Syria, so they've focused on that and they have a new training center focused on that. I know they're doing a lot of different things to get that information to the troops at home and since they have those full stabs there, a lot of that officer corps you know it's kind of The institutional knowledge resides in some ways with the Russians, not in the soldiers, but in the office report. You know all these guys are cyclists, but they're cycling to Syria and getting that combat experience and then bringing it back. and then trying to implement it there, so you know, it's been kind of a generational thing.

I don't think you can find too many generals who haven't been to Syria in the Russian military, I imagine if you're a general and you haven't been to Syria you're probably trying to get there. Imagine your career is at a dead end if you haven't been to Syria, so move on to your other question about do you know what it is? The most important thing about all of this is you know these ground elements that we talked about today and you know I realized that private military companies and special operations forces, you know, are definitely the most attractive, you know, in the absence of a I work better, everyone wants to do it.

He talks about special ops and PMC, but you know it's just, I think it's just a small number of the general people that are out there fighting, but I think the most important thing would be these advisors, these guys that make the actual day. Today, the work and these personnel that are helping these Syrians, you know, doing the planning and, um, you know, helping these psychics rebuild this army and I think, without these advisors there, without these, this massive group of advisors who are. help the Syrians, I think the Syrian army would have collapsed a long time ago, so maybe you could know if the Russians hadn't sent the private military companies or the special operations forces, you know they might have been fine, but I don't .

I don't see any way that they could have had the success that they have had without having those advisors there to rebuild that army, so you know the big key as far as I'm concerned, so thank you, thank you, well, so now I'm going to move on to our audience questions and scrolling down, what I'm going to do is maybe take two questions and direct them, so in order to answer as many questions as possible, try to group them together. um and looking at the first question um I'm going to read the question but in the interest of taking my moderator's progressive I'm also going to change it a little bit uh the question says uh good morning what is the benefit for Russia?

And maybe I would focus that question a little more, based on your previous points about these benefits that you've described, the innovations and so on, maybe, maybe, if you can extrapolate a little more based on your previous answers about the benefits for Russia as such move beyond the military achievements you've discussed, if possible, and the next question is: can comments about a particular area of ​​operational weakness be diminished in what we've seen from Russian forces in Syria to date? Aren't they the Russians? Are the Russians not very good about the past or Western forces? I think it's also a great question to balance the previous questions.

Thanks, yes, maybe on the first one. Well, I think number one is Russia. power that normally fights in Russia or with its back to Russia, is not an expeditionary force, so why are they out there? If you look at it from a Russian perspective, where is your biggest threat? And we like to think it's in Western NATO, but basically I don't think Russia believes that NATO is going to attack Russia and if you look at where their forces are positioned, the forces are positioned to the south and southwest and the south is its main threat. The history of Russia.

I have always had to consider and maintain basically two different armies, one for a western threat, one for a southern threat in their history, the southern threat came first long before the western threat and they have a long southern border, how do you defend that particularly since You lost your buffer zone in Central Asia and if you look at their southern border you have the Black Sea that provides a buffer and with the change of government in Crimea or Ukraine it looked like they were going to lose. its basic rights in Crimea and I believe that this is one of the levers for the reincorporation of Crimea.

Russia has fought five major wars with Türkiye in the last 200 years and Türkiye is still there. the problem in the caucuses was that they had their problems with chechnya and the breakup and then there was georgia and they had their uh semi-resolved problem with georgia in recent history and now we have central asia and one of the problems is

russia

n, russia is a nation Orthodox but has a large Islamic minority population which has not been a problem, but if it becomes a fundamentalist Islamic problem then that is what was basically the problem during their second Chechen war of the last century, so I think the security issue The south is vital and Russia would love to reintroduce some kind of buffer zone stretching from Syria to Afghanistan.

Now, this won't be the former Soviet Union, but it will probably be done with treaties and organizations and things like that. like that, but I think they feel like they're big threats in the south, yeah, I mean we do more things like, you know, the military aspect or the more tactical, I think there's more of a strategic question about do you know why? Why would they go in there? I don't know if there was a reason to look at these earth elements that we're talking about. I don't think there was a reason to go in there just to have these earth elements practice these. skills, I don't think it was framed that way and I don't think there were opportunists, I think they felt they had to go to Syria, that was the general agreement, simply because they saw that this strategic situation was deteriorating. situation in the south and they were worried about instability spreading from the south to their volatile South Caucasus region, so that's definitely a broader question about the bigger picture, but getting to the problems they've had there, if There is some kind of weakness shown by the Russians, it is a kind of heritage system where they are, let's say, they are used to fighting with their backs to the border, so they are not really prepared for these expeditionary operations, so when they have been doing thisThe confrontation with Syria is obviously very far away and they have had to take advantage of all their logistical assets, so the northern fleet has been real. busy with their uh, you know, transporting supplies back and forth and how to buy a couple of tenders to get these supplies, so if there's anything that's I'm stressed right now that whatever kind of stress we're seeing, I think would be on the logistical side of how you support this, you know, this animal that is, you know, this ongoing war that's going on, you know, far from your borders, so, you know, they're trying to supply that and that's where they are, we'll talk about the watches, yeah, well, yeah, the robucha class carrier amphibious landing ship, uh, it was based and built primarily in Poland during the '60s, during the package days.

Warsaw, these things are on their last legs, they were going to replace them with the mistral system built by France, but after Crimea, France said no, we are not going to deliver the two that we built for you, etc. Russia is now trying to keep the amphibious fleet going and then they've had some problems doing it, they're kind of like the problems the United States is having with this icebreaker fleet, you know this stuff. They're old and I'm just trying to keep them going, the other thing is there's their only aircraft carrier, they put it there, it was necessary, it needed overhaul and while it was there it was proven that it needed overhaul and now they're overhauling it. and it'll be a couple of years before she's back in the water, right? um uh, I'll move on to our next questions and try again.

We have a lot of great questions that I'll try uh. get to as many of them as possible um so looking at the following um how much uh and this is the question for both panelists um how much progress has Russia made in joint operations especially in integration um in ground and air force operations what is the size and the capabilities of Russian fires present in the region have shown some sort of collateral concern and lastly the extent to which Russia has been using cyber weapons in Syria. I can tell you right now that we know nothing about cyber weapons.

Yes, if so. It doesn't explode, we know something, but maybe for the first question about the uh, it's not ours, I think someone else is talking about a camera that did the on-air part of this conflict, but I mean. I think that's definitely been a key part of this and one of the big interesting developments that I've had that's happened recently is that the new chief of staff of the Russian VKS, the aerospace forces likes their air force and their air. defense and space troops of all kinds together, he was not a guy from that community, he was a general of the Russian ground forces, he was a general of the ground forces that they brought there, so if you imagine if the chief of staff of the The US Air Force was an Army general who was promoted to that position.

You know, that would be a big deal and the Soviets had done it a couple of times in the past, but this is the first time the Russians. The federation has done that, you know, since we had a Russian federation, so it's interesting that they brought in this army general for this role in the VKS and one of the reasons maybe is how he is. when he was in Syria when he was leading that ground operation, I can't, I can't think of his name right now, but how do you know when he was in Syria leading that ground force leading that operation there?

As you know, it is how it is. integrated, so maybe that's the direction they want to go, you know, better integration between the ground forces and the VKS, so I can't, what was the second question: I'm sorry, and what was the second one? I wonder what the size capacity of the Russian fires present in the region is. Have they shown any kind of collateral concern? um, yes and no, um, uh, the fracture side is a combat fact, unfortunately, I think they've made some efforts to keep it reasonable. under control um when they're in a fight they're in a fight uh you've seen, I'm going to use more precision fires in this conflict than I would expect to see in a normal conflict these things are expensive, but with the UAV and everything they can, they can reach out and do the same job with conventional artillery as with accuracy it just may not have the range so I think there has been an attempt to not increase civilian casualties but unfortunately where you have a war in a place where people can't get out of the way or you're not sure who is there exactly things are going to happen and lives will be lost, it's not so much about how many fires or artillery you have there, but how you can tell it's the ability to find the targets, so you know, you can have all the artillery pieces that you know you want in a certain area, but if you don't know where to aim those pieces, they won't arrive.

So I think their big effort is how do we get recognition and be able to find those goals. That is what they are. I think the most important thing about this is what can be taken away from this. The question is how they find the targets. You know they're using these unmanned aerial vehicles. They are all not just unmanned aerial vehicles. They have other methods of finding targets. You know, signals intelligence and ground surveillance radars. You know people on the ground, so I think that's the biggest thing for them: they've been pretty good at finding targets on the ground and it's collateral damage.

I just don't think there is a cultural guarantee in the United States. Damage is a big problem, but for Russians I think it's just a cultural aspect of them, but societies seem to be much more in tune, you know, accidents or whatever happens, you know, don't seem to be a big problem. . with the Russian people only for us people right, okay, look, moving on to the next question, someone had asked a similar question, is there any evidence about the use of electronic warfare by Russia in Syria?, feel free to talk about that, but I know you said it before. that you're not really looking at cyber issues, so we think cyber is different from electronic warfare.

I think you know you know. I think cyber is more like breaking through computers and doing things, but electronic warfare, yeah. They have quite a bit of electronic warfare presence on the ground, in particular a few years ago they had a drone attack where people had launched drones and they were very concerned about why they weren't successful, so imagine GPS jamming is a big deal there and communication interference, but yeah, that's a part of it that obviously, since it's not kinetic, it's harder to see, so, you know, we don't see it as much, you know? due to the nature of the technology, but yeah, that's definitely an aspect of the fight and I imagine yes before and I imagine not to find the targets but to or not uh you know, block things all the time, but he He also used them to locate positions, you know, they are also used as a means of signals intelligence to locate things, so those electronic warfare resources that they have on the ground have a dual purpose, you know, direct interference and then finding targets. unless you have covered.

Sorry, yeah, we don't know much about you, yeah, of course not, and I mean, if I can, very quickly, you know, it's a very interesting element of Russia's behavior in Syria. There have certainly been reports of Russian electronic warfare interfering. and so on, but let me move on to the next question, although the Russian ground forces operate on very different principles than the NATO military, have they done or learned anything that can be applied by Western armies working through the host nation and local forces? Now there is a personal question, there is a question for me and I will address it in a second, but for less and throw away the second question is: how candidly does the Russian military discuss tactics, the use of new weapons systems, etc., in your publications?

I'm asking about useful information that you know other powers could read, not stories of glory, and these are excellent questions, if I may, there's one question for me that I also ask is that there is a small statue of Donald Trump on the dresser. behind you um it's not um it's a photo of a woman uh and it's part of a personal family art that's been in the family for generations it's not Donald Trump for the record so what was the first time? Of course, it baffled me too. I apologize. Although Russia, the Russian ground forces operate very differently, with very different principles than the NATO military, they have done or learned something that could be applied by Western armies, obviously, I think that's the way they do it. do.

By doing this, they call it reconnaissance attack complex or reconnaissance fire attack complex. How they're fusing their gunfire, their artillery systems with their unmanned aerial vehicles, it's a very different way than, you know, at least from my knowledge of the us, the way the United States does it, probably the way NATO does it, they're very good at quickly getting that information out of these guys and these unmanned aerial vehicle teams for, uh, the actual firing batteries. I guess you know we have a kind of Byzantine system in the United States, where you know, you have to go through all these windows and, to designate a target, and the Russians, you know, they're very good, you know, they just do things really simple, you know, instead of having this big system, you know.

They put the guy with the uav, you know, they just put him in the same place where the guy with the artillery system is and he just tells them the coordinates where to shoot, so it's like a simple process, they do a lot of things and then they're really working, you know, that's on one end of the spectrum, on the complicated end of the spectrum, they're trying to build a fire network, so we have all these In the US system we have all these different systems and sometimes they talk to each other, sometimes they don't, and they are made by different manufacturers.

The Russians have been very good at standardizing everything, so if you throw in a piece of technology, you know. a sensor or a computer or you know, a weapons system, it has to be able to communicate with its network so that they are better integrated, you know, that's what they say. wondering how well it was done, you know, I have no idea, but it seems like they are having success, they have a new system called win with news, they have a system called strelitz where they can determine whether to direct their fires and it seems to be the benchmark system which you know, not just for ground fires but also for naval fires and air fires, you know, air strikes, so you have everything built into this Strelix command and control system that seems to be quite effective and let's tend to jump on what you're saying : They have developed a combined command and control system to be able to integrate their own air and ground forces and naval forces, but their system has also been extended to integrate the Syrian forces, those of the Syrian government and I think that this combined image, this big picture where you have a much broader view of all the objectives in the area, what is happening, what can be addressed, when it is, it is really a great achievement and I think when you look at basically its ability to combine the understanding of what what's happening from your various sensors and then address them rationally so that they don't all jump out at the same time and you waste ordinances or have a backlogged problem, God, wants to talk. about how open they are with tech magazines oh um chuck and i work for the foreign military studies office which is an open source office and basically what we do is read russian magazines and newspapers and keep in touch through their open source material we don't bother with classified material and because what we write before is primarily a training audience, we try to provide the best information available to our soldiers who are going to train against uh. these kind of systems and I've really been doing this forever, I maintain them from time to time, you'll hear me slip and say Soviet instead of Russian, but that's where I started this back in the '80s and uh, they, you know, there's a lot of information, there is a lot more information, yes, deducing and comparing sources with each other to find out what was going on.

Now they're a lot more open about what's going on and, um, there's a little bit? exaggeration in some of the things they write, yes there is a little exaggeration that some of the things we write could very well be like that, but I think it's a lot more open nowadays and with all the electronic media and everything there is . out there today, how could it not be? and the question about um uh, how um uh, I think you've already answered this, but maybe if there's anything else you want to say about um, more about the discussion in your posts, um and so, in terms of um uh, in terms of information that they know other powers could read, not glorious stories, I think part of it is they want to uh, you know, they would never want to project force, you know, I think you knowafter the kind of stagnation of the 90s when there was a Russian army as a hopeless case.

I think they want people to know. Hey, they're back. They are a world power. They are not. Know. They are not dysfunctional. It's not you. I know, so I think part of it is that they don't care about that information coming out about what they're doing. You know they want people to know that they're on the cutting edge of these different technologies. They are not trying to keep you. knowing if they're making progress, you know, they want people to know that they're making these breakthroughs, they want people to know that even though they're leaders in the world, I think that's part of the message and I think that's part of that.

It's also military sales, yes, they are a major player in the military equipment market and if you come up with an upgrade for the BMP2 or BMP3, you'll want to let it be known. and so hey India look at what we're doing you should you should take a look at this and we've got a deal for you so I think there's um they you know they'll do it. They are not the only government that does that well, so we have nine minutes left of this rich discussion and unfortunately I don't think we can address all the remaining questions.

What I'm going to do is take the remaining three and just summarize them instead of reading them to get to the main points of the question and raise both of them less and throw them out, so first there's a tough question about basically Donald Trump and his Russia dossier and Ukraine and I think the essence of the question is do you think the Russians could have had a free hand to deploy all sorts of eclectic chosen forces into Syria. The second question is whether you can reflect. On comparing the US military's effort to carry out its advise and assist mission in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Russian efforts in Syria now that the US has struggled to evolve, do you think the Russians have a model we can use? uh and uh, lastly, maybe these are more technical questions, but I think it's important, do you know the level of casualties that the Russians have experienced?

Lows on their advisory staff, yeah, hey, honestly, we do mostly tactical stuff here, so don't look at the big picture, you know, we just don't know what the political imaginations are, so this is not something we look at, but in terms of uh, you know, the advice and assistance on how they work. We're doing it, I mean, I think you know we have this thing we've called the fabulous system, our security forces assistance brigade system is a method that we're using here in the US and the Russians, you know, and that's pretty much where we have these brigades that are made up of expert officers and NCOs, they bring these guys in, put them in a brigade and send them to train the Russians, like we said, they've done a different model, they're taking the all the staff, you know, instead of having a group of specialized trainees, they are taking all their staff and putting these guys with the Syrians and I don't think that means it works, it works for them, I don't think it really works. work for us because you know the Syrians had a Soviet army beforehand, I mean, a Soviet based army and these resident regiments and brigades, divisions and brigades that they had, you know, it's a very similar system to what the Russians have, do you know?

You know? It was all based on that Soviet system, so they could bring those personnel and put them in and, you know, those guys could go and sit with their counterpart in this, their Syrian counterpart and they would know that they have a different language, but uh, you know, they know the same system and with the fabulous US model uh you know it's totally different than the way the Syrians would fight and um so I don't know if it would be uh I don't know if it would make sense to take a personal American and put it with a Syrian staff or another army because the way they do things is very different and I think trying to retrain them, you know, it's like a Syrian army trying to retrain them or any army in the middle of ongoing combat operations tested them in a new staff system, you know, moving to a Soviet system, more to a Soviet-style system, more to an American system, would just cause a lot of problems, so I don't I don't know if You know if that methodology would work for us in other places, but you know that just because it works well for the Russians doesn't mean it's going to work well for us and vice versa, you know what's good for the goose isn't always good for the gander like that. that we do something about cash compensation for casualties or anything about that uh no, not really um yeah, we don't know, we don't know much, I mean, there haven't been many casualties, one of the reasons why The reported casualties have been so low it's because the Russians aren't out there fighting, you know, for lack of, you know, for the most part, these guys are on the staff giving advice, you know, the Syrians are out there doing most of it. of the land. and the ground combat, with the exception of the special operations guys, the military police and the pmc, but most of the urgent contact is here, but the ground element is with these personnel who advise the missions, so you know that the

syria

ns They are out there. blood and the Russians are more on the planning side so we don't know, you don't know anyone, I don't think they're not open with the exact cash numbers, but I imagine they're a lot lower than, you know what ? we have in Afghanistan, Iraq just because of the difference in the way this is developing, so okay, great, well, with that, we're basically coming to the end of our discussion, thank you very much, I hope everyone. read this excellent book, there is a lot of rich material, a lot of food for thought about Russia's intervention in Syria, it is an incredibly important event that will continue to matter, not only for the Russian Federation, but also for our relationship with Russia. great power competition um and uh and I hope you can read this book thank you very much for coming thank you for having us