1/ It is true to say “lack of manpower hampers the Russians—but that is only part of the story. Doing intelligence analysis demands we break big problems down. Why Putin’s “Partial mobilisation” and call up of reserves is unlikely to be decisive: a thread🧵
2/ In short: generating combat power is more than just about numbers. We can use the “Components of Fighting Power” and the “Defence Lines of Development” to understand this better.
3/ As a start, lets remind ourselves of one of the problems seen when assessing Russian Federation Armed Forces (Vooruzhonnije Síly Rossíyskoj Federátsii, VSRF) posture and likely moves before 24 Feb. In this, some (definitely not all) Western analysts were doing...
4/ ...“capabilities-based assessment”. Counting troops, kit and other warlike preparations made it clear that Putin was going to attack: they had put in place the capability sufficiently that we could infer from it their intent.
5/ Using the “secret” (their capability)we could infer a solution to the “mystery” (what Putin’s intentions were) The analysis that did not follow, necessarily, was that this attack would quickly and certainly overwhelm Ukrainian defences.
6/ What followed—a stunning Russian misadventure and an equally electrifying Ukrainian comeback—allows us to see inside the problem, and we can use two different frameworks to understand that. The first is “the components of fighting power” used in UK military doctrine.
This posits that “fighting power” is composed of three parts: physical, conceptual, and moral. From UK Land Ops Doctrine: 
8/ While Russia was in possession of overwhelming *physical* power compared to the Ukrainians, they were weak in the other two components. The doctrine by whichthey employed their overwhelming power would be farcical were it not for the thousands of civilians killed in its wake.
9/The synopsis of this has been discussed elsewhere at length, but we can say in short: too many axes of approach, too uncoordinated, poor use of combined arms, poor logistics, poor intelligence, ridiculous planning, abysmal leadership. warontherocks.com/2022/05/intell…
10/ Their moral component was equally as bad, as it was built on lies and deceptions to its own troops. Russia’s soldiers were not told they were invading another country,that they were liberating people from drug-addled Nazis, all lies quickly discovered.
11/ Worse, the general conditions of treatment of Russian soldiers is abysmal. that contribute to soldiers who are morally engaged with the fight. Contrast this... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedovshch…
12/ with the superb performance of the AFU who, though weak in terms of arms, demonstrated dogged resolve and deployed ingenious tactics to grind the “3-day Special Operation” into the mud of northern Ukraine. They’re currently succeeding around Kharkiv.
13/ Back to the topic of the mobilisation: conscription will not increase soldiers' will to fight. None of the weakness in the moral and conceptual components of fighting power has changed for Russia.
14/ They can mobilise thousands of more men, but these weaknesses will continue to dog the Russian Army, preventing them from being the fighting force Putin may have imagined them to be.
15/ A more granular framework is what the British Army calls “Defence Lines for Development”. Developed as a tool for developing new capabilities for UK MoD,it is equally useful as an analysis tool on an adversary’s capabilities. It is captured in the acronym TEPIDOIL.
16/ TEPIDOIL = Training, Equipment, Personnel, Infrastructure, Doctrine, Logistics, Organisation, Intelligence, Logistics.)
17/ What you should consider here is how interdependent these headings are. Consider an army buying a new IFV that seats 7 soldiers instead of 8. Just a new vehicle? Well, no, because now you need more of them to carry that Infantry Company… do you have enough Sgt-level
18/ crew commanders? How do you train to employ these now you aren’t carrying a full section? By what doctrine? Logistically you need more support, fuel, and you need to organise differently, you even need more buildings in the barracks.
19/ Changing *a single seat* in a vehicle changes the whole nature of the Company, the Battalion, the Brigade, and how it can be employed.
Now apply this same logic to Russia’s “mobilisation” and consider what has already gone poorly for the Russians and why.
Now apply this same logic to Russia’s “mobilisation” and consider what has already gone poorly for the Russians and why.
20/ The errors mapped out above become more granular against TEPIDOIL, and we can add things like training, confused organisation and command, and the bad and worsening logistical position of the VSRF. We’ll look here at TEPIDOIL but leave out a few parts for space.
21/ Training, first. If the Russians bring in another 137k new soldiers: how long will they take to train? Who will do that training, considering the losses in the most experienced soldiers, NCOs and Officers, especially in the technical or special trades?
22/ Do they get a full trg cycle? Or a short one? If the latter, how useful are the resulting soldiers? It will be difficult to replace necessary specialists with a compressed trg cycle.
23/ Equipment: it's clear Russia is struggling to make good its already disastrous equip losses. While those 137k new soldiers might get small arms and infantry weapons, the new numbers do not increase the amount of AD, CAS, Arty,armour, EW and C2 kit necessary in a modern war.
24/ All of this kit is crushingly expensive, and Russia’s ability to build them is likely severely hampered by sanctions. China is not showing the willingness to make this good, and any North Korean kit the Russians get is likely to be so much hot garbage.
25/ Skipping the Personnel (discussed) and intelligence (discussed elsewhere, excellently!) warontherocks.com/2022/05/intell…
26/ Onto: Doctrine: Russia’s doctrine for employing its armed forces is respectable—anyone who has studied it knows that, if competently deployed, Russian land doctrine is formidable. But the Russian officer corps and commanding generals have shown no aptitude to
27/ execute their doctrine in any recognisable form (other than to deploy monstrous amounts of artillery). 137k new soldiers doesn’t fix this. Their poor logistic situation aggravates it further. kyivpost.com/russias-war/is…
28/ Organisation, Infrastructure we can take briefly in one: forming new “Army Corps” for Russia does not make sense from a C2 perspective, because of other interdependencies within TEPIDOIL. So these troops will likely need to be fed into existing units.
29/ These orgs are already weak and weakening. There is barely sufficient infra to maintain what is already there.
30/ Considering TEPIDOIL in general: can VSRF generate meaningful combat power for Ukraine? Perhaps? But in what timeframe? I would suggest not before Spring 2023.
31/ There is a hard winter ahead for everyone including Ukraine, but it will certainly not be a period of growth, or even stasis, for the VSRF position. (Map from @TheEconomist )
32/ Meanwhile, Russia’s economy and social conditions are likely to worsen. There will be continued defeats, increased civil resistance in Russia, and likely, more mutinies as soldiers (whose contracts were meant to expire) are forcibly retained.
33/ So, if you cannot feed, supply and equip the current ~170k soldiers currently invading Ukraine, can you do that with tens of thousands more? Unlikely. The new drafts of soldiers, whenever they come and in whatever quantity, are unlikely to add much to Russia’s
34/ combat power. Indeed, they may reduce it. Too much else works against VSRF effectiveness. Meanwhile, should Western material support to AFU continue, their superb morale and highly effective operational concepts are likely to continue to overmatch the Russians.
36/ The time for the extra VSRF infantry was late Feb 2022. By Summer 23 it is too late to pursue an attritional strategy when AFU are now entering a war of manoeuvre. Mobilisation now is likely too late to recoup a losing position. (pic from @VOANews)
Get all of this and more on the MA I help teach! brunel.ac.uk/study/postgrad…
For more of this hopefully useful learning on how to think about analysis, enroll in the MA I teach. On-campus and Distance Learning Available! brunel.ac.uk/study/postgrad…
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