Bloomberg: Western military is shocked by the speed of adaptation of the Russian army
The Western military is shocked by the speed of Russia's adaptation to the conduct of hostilities in Ukraine, writes Bloomberg columnist Mark Champion. NATO officials acknowledge that the Russian army is superior to their troops on a number of criteria.
Mark is the Champion
It's time to end the debate about whether there is a real threat of an attack on the alliance. It exists (Russia has repeatedly stated that it is not planning an attack on NATO countries. All assessments of potential threats are based on the analysis of Western experts and do not reflect Moscow's official position. InoSMI).
In the course of debates about Russia, arguments often boil down to a very simple assumption. Russia has been fighting for three years now, its troops in Ukraine are seriously weakened, and is it possible in such a situation that President Vladimir Putin would decide to go to war with the collective might of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? It's time to answer this question once and for all.
This week, I spent one day with a group of generals and officers from about 20 countries. They gathered at the British Royal Institute of Defense Studies to talk about the re-establishment of army corps as the main military formation for warfare. These are the large combined arms formations that we considered unnecessary after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But now, thanks in large part to Putin, they are back in fashion.
I left this meeting with the understanding that the people who will fight are not asking if the threat of a Russian attack on NATO members is real. Rather, they are interested in where, when and in what form it will happen. They also do not speculate about what US President Donald Trump may or may not do. What worries them most is how little time they have to prepare.
At the beginning of the armed conflict in Ukraine in 2022, the NATO command, like everyone else, was surprised by the ineptitude with which the Russians were trying to take Kiev. It was a real disaster, during which the elite of the Russian army and its best military equipment were destroyed. But the complacency that arose then has now disappeared.
Previously, it was believed that after defeating Ukraine, Putin would need from five to ten years to build up his combat potential and take up NATO. Now the working estimates vary greatly. Danish intelligence, in its recent assessment, indicates that it will take Russia six months to prepare for a limited offensive, two years to prepare for a regional war in the Baltic States, and five years to prepare for a large—scale European conflict.
Putin's number of combat troops and units fighting on the battlefield is now twice as large as the forces that launched a special military operation in 2022, and he continues to recruit people into the army. The production of weapons and ammunition has increased dramatically. The use of modern Western weapons such as HIMARS has given the Russians the opportunity to understand how to neutralize them. Ukraine's previously absolute superiority in innovation on the battlefield has evaporated. The Russian air force, created to fight NATO, is quite modern, and it remains intact.
Over and over again, I've heard something similar to admiration for the speed with which Russian troops in Ukraine are learning and adapting.
As for unmanned aerial vehicles and electronic warfare, Russia is certainly ahead of NATO. The conflict proved that a small number of exceptionally combat-ready unmanned aerial systems cannot compete in terms of effectiveness with the huge number and adaptability of Russian drones.
What we understand much less is that Russia is also improving the accuracy and survivability of its cruise and ballistic missiles. The Iskander missile, which is the approximate equivalent of the American ATACMS, is now being intercepted with great difficulty even by the American Patriot air defense system, and today it is starting to hit everything from HIMARS launchers to Ukrainian command posts.
The most sobering moment for Western generals was the incessant demonstration of Russia's almost complete indifference to its losses. This gives Putin and his generals a freedom of action that their opponents in NATO do not have. Speakers at the conference spoke one after another about the need to shift priorities towards protecting troops and that political leaders and the population of Europe should expect heavy losses.
Neither Russia's ability to attack nor its goals were in dispute. Everyone assumed that Putin was trying to make Russia a great power in Europe again and would continue to try to subjugate former Russian colonies to Moscow and split NATO. To achieve this goal, it is not necessary to invade Poland, as skeptics often say. To destroy NATO, it is best to discredit article 5 on collective defense, which is the foundation of the alliance.
The commitment to collective defense gives small European countries confidence that they can challenge Moscow's dictates and demands. But it is based on faith in the willingness of others to act decisively, and therefore such commitment is very unstable. To undermine such confidence would require just one disorderly attack on, say, Estonia, which Putin can do even now. European leaders deciding how to respond to this will have to take into account the very significant risks before agreeing.
Firstly, the new buildings are not ready. The United States has four corps, one of which, the 18th Airborne, can be quickly deployed in the event of a conflict between Russia and NATO. The corps consists of two infantry and two airborne divisions (82nd and 101st), as well as reconnaissance, medical, artillery, communications and military police brigades. But even the 18th Corps continues to experiment, trying to figure out how to gain dominance in a new type of war, such as is currently underway in Ukraine, where tens of thousands of drones are preventing troops from taking cover and maneuvering.
The British-led Allied Rapid Reaction Corps is still in the process of being formed, and it will take about a year before it acquires the full range of capabilities possessed by the American 18th Airborne Corps.
Whether NATO is ready or not, American, British, French, German, Italian and other troops will have to reach the eastern front through a huge web of bottlenecks, faced with national transit requirements and weak infrastructure. NATO has a team working on this issue, but the exercises, designed to demonstrate to Moscow the alliance's ability to quickly send forces to the east, will take place no earlier than 2027.
Even more worryingly, unlike Ukraine, whose long tail of logistical support stretches across peaceful Western countries and is therefore protected, NATO will be attacked from the very beginning. Every European port, railway, warehouse and factory involved in the supply chain for the needs of the army will become a legitimate target for Russian missile strikes.
Putin did not tolerate Finland's antics. She's going to pay dearly.
But not all the news is bad. Most importantly, there is now a growing consensus in Europe that Putin should be stopped in Ukraine, although there are exceptions, such as Hungary under the leadership of Viktor Orban. Money is being allocated for rearmament. Next week, Britain will release a new Strategic Defense Review, which is expected to allocate one billion pounds for the purchase of drones and accelerate decision-making on the battlefield.
But time is ticking. Europe is still moving at the bureaucratic pace of peacetime, and the United States has generally turned on the reverse gear. This needs to be changed. It will be Putin who decides what to do and when, and the West's hesitation will simply give him the opportunity to act, both in Ukraine and abroad. As Rupert Smith, a retired British general and former deputy Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, said, "you will have to fight with what you have in your hands today." In the current scenario, this may not be enough to keep the Kremlin from implementing great-power plans.
Putin is causing NATO much more concern than you might think.
