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Russian New Generation Warfare Handbook


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In 2006. The U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group was formed. In 2017, the Group released the "Russian new generation warfare handbook" Based on recent Russian combat involvments. Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria. 

Very good reading. To understand the Russian army of today.  Their abilities, and their inabilities.

Link to the unclassified version of the "Russian new generation warfare handbook" : https://info.publicintelligence.net/AWG-RussianNewWarfareHandbook.pdf

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Not to nitpick but quick look shows obvious mistakes, such as:

SA-10 Grumble (S-300VM)
(page 10)
which make one wonder about the quality of the overall work. I would read it (today b/c local time is 0020) soon, to make a proper personal value judgement.

Did you read the books by Grau? You may find them of interest.

Edited by ikalugin
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15 hours ago, ikalugin said:

Not to nitpick but quick look shows obvious mistakes, such as:

SA-10 Grumble (S-300VM)
(page 10)

Care to elaborate?

I'm about 2/3rd through the document, and I find it to be a fantastic read so far. A lot of interesting information, confirming my train of though since I joined the Army. I "grew up" training to fight the insurgents, and nearly every aspect of our training was based around the COIN strategy. I always felt that we needed to focus on the wars to come, not the wars we are currently fighting. When doing a work-up for a theater/operation specific deployment, obviously you train for the fight you expect. However, when we weren't preparing for a deployment we were still practicing the same thing, and same type of scenarios.

This handbook essentially suggests reverting our way of thinking by 20+ years, a regression to the old school methods of doing things. It is about time. Get these young platoon leaders, eager company commanders, and lazy battalion commanders away from their cursed electronics, and into the mindset of fighting an enemy who will come to kill them, not wait in ambush in the streets or in the mountains.

Mmmmm....Fieldcraft.

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There are many factual mistakes (not to mention questionable narratives like the whole "Gerasimov doctrine") in the document and, to me, it appears poorly writen when compared to some other works on the topic, for example this book, also from 2016:

https://ru.scribd.com/document/361002279/The-Russian-Way-of-War-Grau

If you want I could list other factual mistakes that betray it's quality, other than say the above example (misidentifying S300V series as SA10 series) or listing BTR-90 in the Russian service (instead of say BTR-80 series) or other low hanging fruit.

Edited by ikalugin
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5 hours ago, Firehead said:

This handbook essentially suggests reverting our way of thinking by 20+ years, a regression to the old school methods of doing things. It is about time. Get these young platoon leaders, eager company commanders, and lazy battalion commanders away from their cursed electronics, and into the mindset of fighting an enemy who will come to kill them, not wait in ambush in the streets or in the mountains.

As I understand, the suggestion is even more profound. They're saying that Star Trek: The Next Generation is going to hybridize conventional (old), asymmetric (current) and EW (new/future) elements. The Russians have integrated these elements into their doctrine, becoming much more flexible than the Soviets.

Currently we differentiate between asymmetric and conventional to handle either or. The whole concept behind "Maskerovka" is to keep us guessing. Authors also do well to put attention to EW. The old vacuum tube stereotype needs to change, the Russians really put a lot of eggs into EW.

Militias, working with mercenaries, working with Army, working with spec ops. You'd best expect the unexpected. EW, and drone, applications that we considered sci-fi a decade ago, are now normal day-to-day procedures.

Some old habits die hard though. We usually see the NCO as the backbone of the military, they see the 2nd LT as the backbone.

6 hours ago, ikalugin said:

If you want I could list other factual mistakes that betray it's quality, other than say the above example (misidentifying S300V series as SA10 series) or listing BTR-90 in the Russian service (instead of say BTR-80 series) or other low hanging fruit.

BTR-90 one was kinda funny. Yeah, there's technical discrepancies in this one and some of the info graphics are gamey. Also uses the Spetsnaz term quite a lot, not really specifying /which/ Spetsnaz. Which is like using "vehicle" to differentiate "car" from "truck".

I also found the mention of the BMP-3 based self-propelled Kornet odd. I think they wanted the Khrizantema, much more ubiquitous and scary tank destroyer.

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"Maskirovka" is a bad term in my opinion, as it adds mystique to otherwise mundane military concepts.

About terminology, A2AD and some other concepts used in the paper are no longer as popular, I wonder why.

I wish I could find (again) Kofman's review of this paper to link it here.

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13 hours ago, DerKommissar said:

I also found the mention of the BMP-3 based self-propelled Kornet odd. I think they wanted the Khrizantema, much more ubiquitous and scary tank destroyer.

There is a limited 9P163-2 element in the army at the moment, but I am not sure about its future. 

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