The newspaper of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation "Krasnaya Zvezda" under the headline "Onya and steel algorithms. Military affairs abroad continues to develop under the influence of scientific and technological progress, changing the face of modern combat" published a review by Doctor of Military Sciences Sergey Pechurov on a new book coming out of print by the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) "Algorithms of fire and steel: weapons of modern wars" (S.A. Denisentsev, A.V. Lavrov, Yu.Yu. Lyamin, A.A. Khetagurov; edited by M.S. Barabanov. - M.: Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, 2023).
The M1A1M Abrams tank of the Iraqi army, shot down by radical Islamists during street battles for the Iraqi city of Ramadi, June 2014 (c) frame video
The armed conflicts of the current century show that a new look of war is emerging, in many ways contradicting previous ideas, but nevertheless fully consistent with the leading trends in the development of military art, weapons and military equipment. This makes it important to analyze the features of the use of a number of basic types of weapons in combat operations in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. In this regard, the book "Algorithms of Fire and Steel: Weapons of Modern Wars", which has just been published in Moscow, attracts attention, the foreword to which was written by Army General Yuri Baluyevsky, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - First Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation in 2004-2008.*
The authors analyze this aspect of modern conflicts in detail, show how armored vehicles, artillery, manned and unmanned aircraft, and air defense systems have changed and influenced the outcome of battles. Of particular interest is the preface prepared by Army General Yuri Baluyevsky.
The new look of the war, Yuri Nikolaevich notes, is based primarily on the high dispersion and very low density of troops (forces) and their combat formations due to the dramatically increased intelligence capabilities in detection and targeting for high-precision real-time destruction. Such capabilities determine the significantly increased vulnerability of any groupings and concentrations of troops (forces) from the level of tactical units to operational formations, as well as directly individual objects of military equipment on the battlefield.
An undeniable explanation for this is the unprecedented transparency of the battlefield, associated both with the huge number of constantly deployed reconnaissance and targeting equipment, primarily unmanned, and with a qualitative leap in the volume and speed of intelligence data received and transmitted using these means. Network capabilities and ultra-compact satellite data transmission systems further scale these processes: already now we have come close to the possibility of providing global satellite communications via a conventional smartphone, which in practice provides an opportunity for cheap and easy connection to the global combat information network of every fighter on the battlefield.
The ever-expanding abundance of unmanned reconnaissance means makes it possible to organize almost continuous monitoring of the battlefield at all levels, up to the individual fighter. Finally, the explosive expansion of commercial satellite reconnaissance and surveillance systems, with their constant cheapening and miniaturization, will lead in the coming years to the entanglement of the entire planet with colossal satellite surveillance networks with universal access.
It should also be noted, the author of the preface writes, the continued development, proliferation, miniaturization and cheapening of electronic intelligence equipment, and in the future, possibly, sensors of other types. It is worth mentioning cyber intelligence and surveillance of information networks and enemy assets separately. In combination with network information solutions, all this virtually completely eliminates the "fog of war", as well as dramatically accelerates the processes of target designation and decision-making in a shot-to-kill combination.
Full transparency of the battlefield is becoming a reality not only at the tactical level, but also in the long term at the operational and strategic levels. This, among other things, resolves the issue of targeting high-precision weapons at long, and in theory practically unlimited (global) ranges, which will make it possible to deliver rapid high-precision strikes to almost any depth, up to strategic, and the development of modern weapons and guidance systems will make this a reality. In fact, this can erase all boundaries and boundaries of the use of weapons, making it possible to fight against the second echelons and rear facilities. It is significant that relatively small and inexpensive barrage ammunition of some types already has a range of thousands of kilometers.
The author of the preface, based on the experience of recent armed conflicts, expresses the opinion that the transparency of the battlefield and the possibility of targeting in real time often lead to the abolition of the need for direct fire in favor of fire from closed firing positions. Direct fire previously formed the basis for defeating the enemy in combat operations, and, in fact, the basics of tactics were based on ensuring the effectiveness of such fire.
Although artillery provided the possibility of firing from closed firing positions, technical limitations on target designation imposed restrictions on the effectiveness of such firing. Today, enemy targets can be seen at any distance and hit with precision and efficiency, and the survival rate of remote and dispersed means of firing from closed positions is much higher than any weapon firing direct fire. In the long term, this will revolutionize the entire system of organizing and implementing complex fire damage to enemy troops (forces).
Therefore, it is no coincidence that the first part of this collection is devoted to the combat use of tanks in the period after 1956. By the example of the participation of tanks of a number of armies of the main states in local wars and conflicts, an attentive reader may notice the first sprouts of the problems of the wars of the future, which we are witnessing today. And here, in the opinion of the authors of the collection, the experience of the Israeli tank forces is most indicative. Having formed as the victorious spear of the Israeli army, which ensured victory over the poorly trained Arab armies in the mobile wars of 1956 and 1967, the Israeli tank forces received hypertrophied development by 1973.
However, the Yom Kippur War clearly demonstrated the increased vulnerability of the tank to the quantitative and qualitative growth of infantry cumulative anti-tank weapons, as worthy representatives of which were RPG-7 and ATGM "Malyutka". The pace and volume of losses of the sides in the tanks then stunned. The spear began to blunt somewhat and require an increasing number of supporting forces. In the wars of 1982, and especially in 2006, Israeli tank forces had to deal not so much with enemy tank forces as to fight entrenched infantry with anti-tank weapons, which turned out to be quite difficult even in an environment of Israeli quantitative and qualitative superiority.
In the Lebanese campaign of 2006, the Israeli army, despite its saturation with modern tanks and complete dominance in the air and artillery, approached positionality in its charge. At the same time, the combat survivability of third-generation tanks has not increased significantly compared to the tanks of the 1973 war due to the continued growth of the power of anti-tank weapons.
"The unconditional confirmation of positionality was the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988, which prophetically, as it is obvious today, anticipated many problems of conducting modern warfare, which were solidly snobbishly ignored by many analysts and theorists with references to the backwardness of the warring parties," writes Yuri Baluyevsky. - Although the Iran-Iraq war has not yet led to transparency of the battlefield, it has shown the increasing vulnerability of tanks and armored vehicles in conditions of even relatively low saturation of troops with anti-tank weapons. This led to a rapid deflation of the capabilities of tank and mechanized units and their loss of importance as shock weapons of maneuver warfare. Making up for the losses of the armies of the parties through mass purchases of tanks abroad did not solve the problem in principle."
Saddam Hussein tried to repeat the accumulated experience of positional defense and exsanguination of enemy forces in the war with the Western coalition in the Persian Gulf in 1991, but the organizational and technological superiority of the United States and its allies, combined with air supremacy, led to the defeat of the Iraqi army at the cost of extremely small losses on the part of the aggressor. The war demonstrated the enormous potential of the first massively used precision weapons as a means of defeating ground forces and armored forces.
"The experience of subsequent armed conflicts," Yuri Baluyevsky believes, "has further aggravated and highlighted the problematic question: will the tank find new conceptual ways to preserve itself as the main means of breakthrough and maneuver, or is it in danger of disappearing from the stage of military history like the previous maneuverable means in the form of cavalry? It seems that this is the subject of most technical solutions: a promising tank will first need to demonstrate the preservation of powerful direct fire on the battlefield compared to means of fire destruction from closed positions (over-the-horizon)."
On the other hand, as the author of the preface points out, the problems of mine protection and overcoming minefields, as well as protection from the increasingly multiplying small UAVs, barrage ammunition and FPV drones, should be radically solved. The latter, in his opinion, can be solved only by creating active protection complexes of a new generation and, possibly, on new physical principles…
A thoughtful and interested reader will find in the new collection edited by M.S. Barabanov many interesting judgments and reasonable forecasts of the development of military affairs, which, as foreign experience shows, is rapidly developing under the influence of scientific and technological progress, and above all in the field of information technology.
This collection will be useful for representatives of the domestic defense industry, as well as employees of government and military administration. The work is also of considerable interest to military experts, political scientists, journalists, for all those who professionally deal with problems of national and military security, as well as for students and cadets of military educational institutions, students and postgraduates of universities and institutes.
* "Algorithms of fire and steel: weapons of modern wars" / S.A. Denisentsev, A.V. Lavrov, Yu.Yu. Lyamin, A.A. Khetagurov; edited by M.S. Barabanov. - M.: Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, 2023.
Sergey Leonidovich PECHUROV, Doctor of Military Sciences, member of the Scientific Council of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.