In spite of having superior firepower, Russian forces have been unsuccessful in fulfilling their potential and face a disheartening battle to gain the upper hand over Ukraine again.
Russian ground forces in Ukraine, if viewed only in terms of the technology, arsenal, and size of formations, pose a serious threat in various domains. But in practice, it is fairly unlikely that the Russian military can return from its highly terminal trajectory on the battlefield, though it will take time and dirty warfare for it to be defeated. The United States assesses the military capability and potential by the abbreviation DOTMLPF.
It stands for: doctrine, organization, training, material, leadership and education, personnel, and facilities. Looking at and observing the Russian military through these categories shows why it is underperforming its potential and struggling to regenerate.
The Russian strengths: Russian doctrine- the theory of how the army should fight is clear, specific, and conceptually neat. It is often far ahead of western military theory. This leads to a methodological challenge for the Russian operations assessments because if they proceed as said in the higher military orders, then the result would be that they would succeed. However, it is very rare that the practice matches the theory.
Russian material is usually well built and adequately designed. For example, the Orlan-10 is the primary drone flown by the forces. It is cheap and easy to operate. It is not sophisticated but flies at a great height to be targeted by short-range air defenses and also gives an adequate view of the battlefield.
The weakness of the material is that it is designed to perform one specific task well, but multiple systems simultaneously make maintenance difficult.
Credit: The Defense Post
The Russian military has been designed to fight short but high-intensity wars. In the absence of full national mobilization, it is too small, its units lack the logistical enablement and its equipment is not well suited to a protracted war.
One of the greatest lacking points in the Russian military is leadership and education. The leadership is dictatorial and forceful. Russia also lacks young recruits because of its fast-aging population. The low standard of living leads to troops who are not familiar with modern technology, they are also very unmotivated, do not do effective teamwork and are not willing to risk their lives for one another.
Another great weakness of Russia’s military is training, there is a lack of it. Secondly, the training received by the soldiers is very task specific which makes them inflexible, absent of situational awareness, and failure to cover one another’s tasks. Most of the training happens in units. As the units are in Ukraine, there is very little potential to train new recruits before sending them to war.
Despite its equipment being superior to Ukraine’s at the beginning of the war, Russia performed below its potential. Prospects of the Kremlin are now deteriorating, now that Russia’s troops are outnumbered, demotivated, and with equipment that is losing quality.
