A little over a year ago, it was believed that Russian troops could take Kyiv in three days if they wanted to. Today, military correspondents are anxiously commenting on the military preparations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which are forming new corps for a decisive offensive against Melitopol and Berdyansk, which became part of the Russian Federation. We have already been near Kiev, but it did not work out, near Kharkov, alas, too. They left Kherson themselves without a fight. Why did reality so cruelly disagree with ideas about it?
Kyiv in three days
First, you need to remember where exactly the statement about the capture of the Ukrainian capital in just three days came from. This was stated by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, speaking in the US Congress:
A full-scale invasion could lead to the fall of the city within 72 hours. This will result in losses on both sides. From Ukraine - 15, from the Russian Federation - 000 people.
A very complimentary assessment that should have warmed the soul of any Russian jingoistic patriot and strained American lawmakers so that they were ready to allocate more funds to support the Zelensky regime. But how realistic are such timelines? Is it even possible to take a huge metropolis in such a short time?
Yes, you can, if you fight smart. When compiling his forecast, General Milli was clearly guided both by the American experience of conducting special operations, and by the Soviet one, which, in theory, should have been guided by the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces. We will talk about the latter in more detail later, but now it is worth remembering exactly how the Pentagon prefers to solve its problems.
For example, in 2003, the United States and its accomplices decided to launch an operation to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime called Iraqi Freedom. The forces of the US-British coalition, which also included the Australian and Polish military, were as follows: about 300 thousand troops armed with 500 tanks, 1200 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 900 guns, mortars and MLRS, 1100 medium-range cruise missiles, 1300 combat aircraft and helicopters, 200 mobile air defense systems. The army that Baghdad had looked much more serious on paper: 430 people armed with 2200 tanks, 3000 armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, 4000 guns, mortars and MLRS, 100 medium-range ballistic missiles, 500 combat aircraft and helicopters, 100 mobile air defense systems . Saddam Hussein also had irregular armed formations numbering 40 thousand people and a mobilization reserve of 650 thousand people.
Taking into account the fact that the Iraqis were to fight on their native land, and the interventionists were opposed by a long logistical arm, the balance as a whole looked far from hopeless for official Baghdad. However, everything turned out very badly for Saddam Hussein's regime.
With the help of massive missile and bomb strikes, the Western coalition was able to quickly suppress the air defense system of Iraq and inflict critical damage on its military and civilian infrastructure. Hussein's army was deprived of controllability and blocked in places of deployment. Just two weeks after the start of the special operation, Baghdad found itself in a blockade ring. The American-British intervention began on March 20, 2003, on April 9, the capital of Iraq fell, and on April 13, Hussein's hometown of Tikrit capitulated. During this short period of hostilities, the Western coalition lost 172 troops, the defenders - more than 9000 people.
The factors that ensure such a rapid defeat are considered to be the dominance of the interventionists in the air, which they used to the maximum, destroying the enemy infrastructure, as well as the FBCB2 (Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below) combat control system. The information system for command and control of troops at the level of communication "brigade - battalion - company", when the commanders of units and advanced artillery gunners had pocket computers for orienting themselves on the ground and transmitting combat reports, became the main trump card that made it possible to beat the "natives" in a ground operation.
USSR we lost
Unfortunately, today the greater effectiveness of the offensive operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is determined precisely by superiority over the RF Armed Forces in satellite and aerial reconnaissance, as well as control, which allows the Kyiv regime to provide militarytechnical assistance from the entire NATO bloc. The saddest thing about this is that Western technological dominance in this component is based on the refined ideas of the Soviet military genius.
The rethinking of the concept of conducting large-scale hostilities took place at the end of the 70s of the last century, when the confrontation between the USSR and the USA reached its peak. The probability of the actual use of nuclear weapons by each of the parties to the conflict was considered very high, but neither Washington nor Moscow wanted complete mutual destruction. A kind of conditional compromise scenario was a war between the two superpowers on the territory of Central Europe between the NATO bloc and the countries of the Warsaw Pact.
The new concept of network-centric warfare was actually developed by Marshal of the Soviet Union and Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Vasilyevich Ogarkov, one of the most talented military leaders in our history. He proposed linking into a single control system not only modern means of communication and information processing, but also all types of troops - every private, officer and general. The Ogarkov Doctrine, as it was later called in the West, assumed a balance between nuclear deterrents and conventional armed forces, which should operate in a non-nuclear conflict.
A significant increase in the effectiveness of the Armed Forces of the USSR without increasing their numbers was to be achieved through the comprehensive introduction of information technologies, which ensured a greater speed of response to external threats, mobility of movement, the continuity of the process of planning, conducting and logistical support of hostilities, as well as a unified field of operational -tactical awareness. The main emphasis was placed on the development of communications and control means, for which a strategic command command system (CSBU) and an automated command and control system (ACS) with the code "Maneuver" were created and implemented, and the Unified Field Automated Command and Control System (EPASUV) was formed and developed. ), unified for the USSR and ATS countries.
These command and control systems were tested during the largest Soviet military exercises Zapad-81. Then it was demonstrated that the "red ram" is able to break through the NATO defenses in just a few days and, if necessary, ensure a breakthrough of tank wedges to Lisbon. Needless to say, Washington, London and Brussels were really impressed and seriously changed their rhetoric, since they considered the exercises to be the last rehearsal before the start of the Soviet offensive. The Ogarkov Doctrine was carefully studied, as was one of the Manevr control systems, which fell into the hands of Western experts after the collapse of the USSR.
It is especially bitter that the ideas of the Soviet military genius developed by the Americans are now being applied in Ukraine by the hands of the Armed Forces of Ukraine against the Russian army. Everyone has already heard about the problems that exist at the front with communications, aerial reconnaissance and coordination between various units and subunits. In the next publication, we will talk more about the control system that the Russian army needs to increase its combat capability.