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bright and early. i am the director of congressional relations for the corporation and it is my pleasure to welcome you today to the briefing called the russian way of warfare. before we start i will share a very few quick items of housekeeping. today's briefing is going to be recorded and we will make a presentation available for free online on the website at rand.org. today's briefing is being live streamed on c-span so if you have friends or colleagues that are not able to make it, please let them know. next, we have a hash tag if you would like to join online you may do so using the hash tag #russianwarfare. i want to tell you a little of rand, the nonpartisan research organization and our mission is to help improve policy and

decision-making through objective research and analysis. to benefit the public a good week extended the findings as widely as possible and that is one of the reasons we're doing this briefing today. we have one of 15 publications available online again as the website which is rand.org and i also want to say that folks in this room, the research and expertise is available to you and your bosses so if you have questions please feel free to reach out to me we would be happy to put you in touch with experts and get questions answered as quickly as possible. now i want to tell you a little bit about today's topic.

the national defense authorization act that was recently passed by the house states that if the policy of the united states to sustain deterrence against aggression and long-term strategic competition from russia but when we think about this we can benefit from an understanding of how an adversary would employ the forces. it's important for policymakers have with russia fight in the event of a major conflict against adversaries? today speakers will discuss the main issues, first the military posture and strategic defense, the characteristics of russian warfare. i think there are ten and finally and importantly for this room, what this means for u.s. policy. the speakers today i'm delighted to welcome a.

scott is a defense analyst that focuses on the u.s. army modernization and capabilities and is a former officer that previously worked at the foundation received his masters degree in international relations from yale university and is a graduate of the u.s. military academy at west point. a policy researcher at grand focuses on security issues in russia and previously served as a senior analyst for the russian military capabilities of the department of defense. she received her masters degree in national security strategic studies from the u.s. naval war college. with that in the introductory comments i am pleased to turn over to scott for today's discussion. please join me in welcoming him. [applause] we are here to talk about how

russia would fight with a pier and near peer adversary based on the short report that the released last year. plenty of copies outside so you can grab them. they are spelled -- filled with spoilers and before we get to those remarks i would like to say a few remarks about the origin of the study. this was done on behalf of the united states army. we drew inspiration from an earlier study of u.s. china military balance scorecard that started from a higher level of understanding about how china would fight with an understandinwithin understandind particularly taiwan and the south china sea. we felt like we needed to take a step back and take a stab at how

we thought it would fight before we talk about comparison of like those that were made in that report. so, this was essentially a precursor to a study like that. it's really intended to serve as the best judgment of the russia analysts. shouldn't be too many surprises so the structure of today's talk a little bit differently from how we wrote the paper. in the paper we started the strategic level and work our way down and today we are going to jump off a down to the tactical level and some of the army staff and worked our way back up. i will hand it back over to handle the operational and strategic additional observational strategic considerations and finally i will make a note of the caveats at the bottom. she's going to leave with that t

and then move into her remarks. the military started a series of reforms that continue to this day to improve the military capabilities. one of the things they did right away is such a significant number of ground units, they thy transitioned a lot of the readiness divisions to the higher readiness brigades and they are now forming some of them into the divisions but the focus on higher readiness has been improved and they are improving defenses, electronic warfare capabilities and particularly reconnaissance strike capabilities. in this case we are showing a comparison of the range and the way to fire the artillery system is in the army brigade combat team and the motorized brigade

so for those of you that are aware, a typical brigade will have three or four units reported by a single artillery unit. it's three or four supported by three or four so in practice it felt more like a one-to-one units supported by heavy artillery rocket systems surface missiles so they have more of them and support vehicles that are designed to have mobility with the tactical and operational levels and so this is an army that is designed to move fast and hit hard so it makes considerable improvement they narrowed the gap between themselves and ther and there'st limitations if you compare them to us but it's important to put this in context.

they believe russia is at a severe disadvantage in the long conflict and in such a conflict there are considerable advantages in both quality and quantity but it takes time to bring the advantages to bear. russia isn't the soviet union anymore and the ground forces are about a quarter of the size of where they were midway through the decline in 1991, so 350,000 in the ground forces into the naval infantry. they also still rely on a lot of twelve-month scripts so they are brought into the service and get about four months of training and spend eight months in the service and then they are gone. since 2015, 2016 they have more soldiers tha but they are stilly

reliant on these short-term conscripts. they try to benefit from surprise to into the nature to terminate as quickly as possible in light of that longer-term disadvantage so there's plenty of historical cases where they've done something like that most recently if you give them the time to plan they can do a lot simultaneously and quickly. we believe that the posture is akin to the defensive. they've invested in air defenses, long-range strike to protect the vital homeland, the population industrial centers in particular moscow and

st. petersburg but that also provides them a shield if they can launch offensive operations against states or adversaries near to them on their borders. that said the idea that russia is on the defenses might come as news. the theorists believe they manage at the tactical operational level that goes to the side with the best offense so they worry about maintaining the states like belarus and ukraine in the defensive strong points about which i will say more in a few minutes but the intent is to buy space and time to mobilize and help mitigate some of their longer-term disadvantage is if they came under attack from nato. so this is a graphic and enable

this handing it over that shows the location of the air defenses. the solid circles or roughly where those units are located and the dotted lines show you a how much of the territory they would cover. so there's three things i want to say about this chart. first the air defense bubbles cover parts of nato and that is obviously to offer the ability if they were going to do anything near the borders that doesn't even cover some of those states. this is a conservative version based on systems that are currently fielded. some of the system' systems russ working on what extend the

bubble at most 400 kilometers. second, russia is very large and this is the most dense part of the network and there are still gaps so they are concentrated among moscow and it's also worth noting the small little island of the russian territory that is on the baltic sea between lithuania and poland among other things it is an opportunity for them to push their defensive umbrella out.

the other side gets to decide in blood volume and how often they are going to enter data and the number that russia faces a. it will take us time but they are going to run out the. >> good morning, everyone. i want to reiterate an important

caveat that outlines key features against the adversaries as it is stated in the doctrine. it's a primer and it's not inclusive of everything so we can talk about other topics in the question portion of today. it should be noted that there is a great deal of flexibility for different contingencies and we do not mean to suggest they are going to apply a cookie-cutter approach so i would like to talk about how russia will operate in the nonmilitary capabilities and actions during a conventional conflict these are techniques you may have heard referred to as hybrid warfare and the russians refer to them i as indirect action or asymmetric approaches and "electronic warfare, cyber attacks, disinformation unsocial media and state media the special operation forces and contractors

to operate behind enemy lines and those who do a variety of roles we have seen all of these and ukraine. next i would like to say a few words about the russian protection. there is a view o that we see involved where is the endpoint of this are a posturing themselves to become an expeditionary military like ours and where is that going to stop in terms of the capability enhancement. russia continues to emphasize his capabilities and readiness rates across the general-purpose forces said th the army, navy, e air force they are required to maintain certain levels and a percentage in very good working order so they can respond quickly to the workers to deploy.

russia drills down this capability often you may have heard of things cold snap exercises is about testing the abilittesting the abilityto resd accurately to the orders from the general staff. this isn't a new concept but it's even important now since they've drawn more significantly the last ten years. a number of forces today is smaller so the concept of the strategic mobility is the ability to go from the center to the border region or from one to another quickly and it's incredibly important for moscow. they also enhance what we refer to are they becoming

expeditionary i would argue no perceptible structural reasons. they do not appear to be investing in the key pillars for an expeditionary force so i mean a global network of bases, logistics hubs outside of the region to support global power missions and support the naval realm as they've not invested in a blue water navy. a brief word about the evolutionary capabilities in 2008 and 2009.

the military has improved to the plate it can be considered a reliable tool to defend the national interest. the assessment to prevail against the adversary remains and they do not believe they have the superior combat potential and that is a very specific word in their doctrinal thinking. they are constantly measuring personal no availability, technology r&d, budgets and things like this and they compare themselves to a whole and they say this in their writings and speeches they do not come out ahead in a fight. with that in mind that there are some strategic weapons in the ultimate protector of the national security.

the military is operating closer and closer proximity to one another with the crisis in the sums remaining in place. this is both a critical problem and an opportunity for investment on both sides. with that i will close and i am happy to take any questions or discuss any concepts into further detail. i was wondering if you could speak about the russian forces how well they are integrated and flexible they play in that strike in february if there's any lessons learned from that experience that you can share

with the group. >> it is the first case study when we could com confront the upgrading of god on behalf of the government. they were operating on behalf of the government to protect the infrastructure so i think that is a learning point for the russians and particularly the military we were willing to engage kinetically russian contractors but not uniform personnel so that is something to take on board moving forward. it takes advantage of the russian populations in country on the border and no the large portions are ethnically moving across the border illegally.

do you see anything where they are trying to come up with a strategy to defend those areas against future chinese aggression? >> very large commitments of troops could be played closer to the chest then nato so they don't talk about it very much. >> i think that concern were permeating that would be the responsibility of the national guard and intelligence services said the actual military. >> are we still seeing them

practice the potential for low yield device as a part of the defensive structure? it is complicated right now. they are hoping the threshold is moving a.

you mentioned in the paper they are gaining valuable experience from ukraine and syria. what are some situations that could help them prepare for and any longer lessons that they could learn from these experiences. you saw i will follow the weapon systems and we are actually seeing them implemented in the weapons already so there's a lot more side armor on the new versions so they are working some of the kinks out of it and i think the big thing would be for the common strike complex so the integration of the various reconnaissance structures and different fighter technologies

continue to experiment with that and some of those are happening in a live fire environment against the adversary they are shortening the time it takes them to find a something they are doing it from the air and service-based an based and alsoe maritime system as well. >> particularly to get them combat experience a experienceso learning some advanced publishing management if you will so they have to work to coordinate how they deploy managing operations on the ground. so also from a technical perspective they have learned how some of their newest

equipment works so things like electronic warfare, how does this change in the climate with many industries actually into the combat zone to help them take her around with these problems. so there is a technological component and confidence building aspect of this that they will take on board with them and multiple echelons. in terms of unlearned lessons from this, they are not, they still don't know what it's like to operate in a contested environment so they've ever had to fight their way in.

i will tie into something that was said. they put more than 40,000 officers through rotations including the leadership of all military districts and all of the combined armies and their air force headquarters so they are really pushing as most of the combat pilots as well so they are leveraging that as a combat experience. >> is there a specific focus area but they are more interested in potential actions like latvia, estonia, those areas or is there focused more towards syria? >> if you look at the new editions before ukraine is when the process started.

it's one of six or seven divisions. most of them are located near the ukrainian border, south i pay less attention to what they are saying that what they are doing and putting things, so if you look at the ground forces, one would say that the focus is in the military district and alondistrict andalong the borded belarus. so it is a forecasted area of instability is what i would say that tells me in terms of other forces we haven't seen that kind of revision in terms of the navy or air force's. they are due to get quite a bit larger but that is across russia and not necessarily with one particular region and the baltics of course.

i want to thank you for coming in and speaking into thin you were talking about how the best option in a war with nato would be a surprise attack. what would be the best way to force them into a long war where the advantages could come into play? >> i am trying to think of a different way to answer this, but the problem in part it's like 60 regimens in the forces and naval infantry so they have some ability to shift those around so they can gain an advantage in the short term numerically that they can pose against the baltic states that they have to have a story for

themselves about how this is going to end and it relies on the will to break or the other side will back down and take it and if they don't believe that that is going to happen, then that is a problem for them because they don't have a story for how this is going to run. some of the reports have talked about the conventional correlation of the forces, the balance of the capabilities in the baltic region pointing out some of the capability and foster cats for that unlikely scenario there's a larger therer deterrent structure that's important and i don't want to get into it much unless there is interest.

they don't have a story for how they deal with this without using nuclear weapons which should give us a pause as well if they are going to take the risk of going into an operation that is an incredible risk from their perspective compared to the way that they behaved in the past. i don't know if that is answering your question. >> they have certain sensitivities so it is their belief that it is going to be the center of gravity and they look at our capabilities in that regard and it makes them very deeply uncomfortable in terms of their ability to prevent these strikes into russia. some of the work has highlighted they do have tactical advantage on the ground getting there quickly on the ground that advantage does not convey to the

air war so if there is one conventional determined and ability to degrade their movement that is a start. a less flippant way would be russia seems to be kind of a load on its own, but do you think it may be looking for potential allies such it has been cooperating in terms of military development but not having a military alliance with them yet do you think they may be looking for possible allies? >> there are a few ways i would break apart. if you look at their strategy and how they think about developing this in the future

where there is not a united because the remaining superpower they look to places like china and indi,india and the united sd europe and again this is an idealized strategy where there are regional powers and everybody cooperated and gets along, nobody dominates one another. they are less descriptive about using the word analyze in their strategy documents. they want to have a strategic cooperation that is how they worded it pretty much comprehensively but i don't know that it is extending towards the military alliance this point. >> i wonder if the social issues, ho how how is that affeg the current force and also the recruitment in the future.

they've done pretty well hitting their numbers for contract soldiers comes with a professional volunteer soldiers but they've struggled in the past years finding sufficient to numbers to include health fitness and those things. the demographics have leveled off for the time being. we know roughly how many russians will turn etd cheer and so that's at least. i don't do if you hav care if ye anything else to add to that. >> so they are not as bad as they were maybe 15 years ago in terms of the raids. some of the problems that they are finding with the conscript pool is underweight so they have

a pretty comprehensive policy to build them up and put weight on them. hi calorie food working out and coming home pretty healthy particularly in russian culture. they've had to lower their standards in terms of psychological readiness there is a tension here that they sent him over it to maintain recruiting levels. >> i'm curious when you talk about the capability for crossing the country and rapid reactions. some of the standard they have his defensive capabilities like if the city is under attack they have to have highways where large amounts can be evacuate ee

the military forces go in to the infrastructure and things like that. are there similar things set up to allow for that for these abilities? >> there's been an acceleration so you see them doing traditional things and then they are refurbishing the airlift to go cross country and you can pick it that outward and it gets you to north africa to the same distance between eastern and western. they are also changing the legislation a little bit. there is an emphasis on making sure they can reach into the architecture when they need it. it is problematic so not really the option here but yes we see

them working on these exercises into the territorial defense so it is a work in progress. >> and it's happening at the same time as those exercises in the fall. at one point they actually used banking during a whole variety of capabilities. >> how do you foresee the balance between the obligations such as cyber attacks particularly when putin leaves office if he leaves office at the end of the term.

>> i will have to take a stab at that. so, one word if the writings and doctrine are any roadmaps to the future you would expect these things are going to become more integrated over time, so the military, the ministry of defense and general staff they have a very specific way of thinking about cyber activities, so it is defending their own architecture and also on the battlefield stabilizing thingsconservatives different than the rest of the russian government but it is part of their doctrine they discuss that in the paper that you essentially want to even the playing field so what can you do you can break apart coalitions and alliances.

>> they've increased their presence in the region and its suggested as the temperatures rise the se ceilings could opend of course economic opportunity is there through the natural resources. how do you interpret these and do you see them as a threat to nato? >> i have struggled with how to think about some of this stuff myself. and you point out i understand we have the first winter transit so we are seeing those effects and part of that traditionally was built around the northern

fleet and this is more centered on the natural resources, but they are active in working on this and talking about this at how to think of this from a military perspective because what we are seeing is coordination for the search and rescue because your lifespan is measured in minutes if you go far to the north. >> there's also the assumption that cold war labor if you look up images of their arctic bases they are pretty cool looking to the. so if they need to they can

deploy. there is the economic side of the se cd investing in icebreaks and they want to be a voice that is heard loud and clear. there's alsthere is also an appn that is concerned we are going to resume the strikes on russia and that's why you would need interceptors so it is a mixed bag of economic and military posturing. >> do they usually start at the offense that is the philosophy is geared towards doing something preemptively or does it usually starts with them stag on the defensive?

>> most of them will launch a counterattack for the counter offensive as to do offensively. they think and i am inclined to agree with them on the reconnaissance strike capabilities that they can bring to bear that it is a good offense. >> they often anticipate that they have to be proactive in other words they have to start on the offense. >> if you are looking at a non- nuclear adversary like ukraine and georgia if it looks like it is breaking that they are going to go the consequences are far lower.

the stakes are so high how is this going to play out? >> there have been different versions of the air defense systems. has there been any feedback on whether they are functioning or not in that environment and if they failed to adjust? >> they don't discuss as much the challenges that they are facing. i noticed this trend they would discuss more openly you don't see that much anymore so i can't say whether or not they are having problems but they are certainly not discussing them as much.

they've had an amazing mobility. some of the systems that are still in use by the soviet air systems they literally can swim, they have extremely low ground pressure and they've got the internal combustion they've had the far north to think about so they have stuff that works for them and as i think you were implying, they are equipping them with a different kind of tank because the gas turbine engine and it's more suitable for starting an extreme low temperatures. >> it seems like they are

focusing more on the defensive, but we have seen cases of van offensive action and the new missiles that were unveiled in the state of the union address so what does that mean for america that might not be coming under attack from the more remote offensive action? >> this is wrapped up in the context so this is space warfare, precision strike that comes from their interpretation of how we've chosen to fight the last 15 plus years. a lot of what he unveiled for te systems that were designed to defeat the ballistic missile defense saved goes back to making sure they have the

ability to deliver certain levels of the strikes and a certain percentage will survive. so those are the offensive capabilities. >> with very long cruise missiles it was pretty much all the time for the bomber force is actually relatively recent. i want to say it is made 200 so they are thinking about how to employ more of the capabilities of the extreme ranges. >> [inaudible] from senator gillibrand's office. i was wondering given the history of depression and chinese military-industrial

cooperation would do you expect to see going forward between the two states whether it is more industrial cooperation or maybe more strategic. i know that they have a history of some shared military but we expect that in the next few years? >> there has been a recent uptick in terms of the military cooperation because they have greater aligned interest in terms of the deployment of the ballistic missile defense capabilities. there is a growing tension particularly in the defense industrial relationship china is increasingly exporting for military equipment and they are cutting into very slightly cutting into russia's market so how will the balance is moving forward? they've shown the ability in the initiative in central asia, and other policy for moscow. succumso, if anyone can work th,

i think that those have shown significant difference to one another to work out large issues. >> i was going to ask if you could talk about the military operations. >> it is more fragile than ours when we were doing research for this report we tried to track the status of the various satellite constellations. i didn't realize that off until 2015 they didn't have much which is frightening because they only had the land-based ballistic missile warning that they have since recovered. it is playing an increasing percentage. the importance is growing as a percentage. some of the newest weapons again

it is far less fragile so they have a bit of work to do and there is an opportunity to invest heavily in you ar your tt away from other programs so i think we will learn something if they were to change their plans with going to be the opportunity cost of a. i have a question about how the nonuniform contract forces are integratewereintegrated into thn command structure. we have limited data points on the topithat topic that watchine reaction from moscow after the

strike was very telling. there was high-level coordination in the press between the military side and the pentagon on how to avoid the uniform russian casualties. however, after significant personnel it was pretty much radio silence from the military other than they were not ours. so, to me that distance that was put out in the public domain was very interesting and there was almost the same stuff they didn't coordinate with us their position, so they brought them upon themselves. i am paraphrasing but i thought the tone was interesting. there is a use for them and this is just me hypothesizing i wonder if it is a bit grudging

acceptance i don't know that this would seethat is how it see playing out. >> we were working for a foreign government. >> the kremlin response is a great deal of distance almost as if it were more important to save face and network to be angry about the citizens being killed and it was only after they felt blowback from that decision that they kind of hardened up their language a little bit. so it is something that they are learning and they go quiet for two or three days and they are bettering their response to the.

>> any other final questions? >> thank you for coming this morning. if you have any questions or follow-ups they will be around after today's briefing. [applause]

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