@MisterLike et al.
Very interesting read.
In short, the Ukrainians have truly learned the relevant lessons of the last 30 years in warfare.
This piece also shows the value of lower level leadership and initiative....and the crystallised focus that comes from presence of an external existential threat.
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The two armies at war today couldn’t be more different.
www.thebulwark.com
I Commanded U.S. Army Europe. Here’s What I Saw in the Russian and Ukrainian Armies.
The two armies at war today couldn’t be more different.
by MARK HERTLING
APRIL 11, 2022 5:30 AM
In March 2011, I began a new posting as the Commanding General of U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, in command of all U.S. Army forces stationed in various countries throughout Europe. It was a dream job as it was in that command – in a different time and under much different circumstances – that I had begun my career 36 years earlier as a 2nd lieutenant platoon leader, leading tanks on patrols of the then-West German border. Back then, it was our job to defend against the Soviet hordes.
But by 2011, things had changed. The size of the U.S. Army in Europe had shrunk dramatically from the quarter-million soldiers stationed there during the Cold War, and it would shrink even more during my two years in command. The Warsaw Pact countries who had been our foes during the Cold War were now our NATO allies and sovereign partners, and there was no border wall splitting Germany in two. Countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic states, and others had transformed their governments and their militaries since the early 1990s, and a few of them were even fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Over the course of nearly four decades, I spent a lot of time either engaging or working with the two armies now engaged in a bitter struggle in Ukraine. I met their leaders, observed their maneuvers, and watched their development closely either up close or through reading intelligence reports. Strangely, one memory that stands out had more to do with trumpets and rim-shots than tanks and rifles.
“The Ukrainians—they got it going on!”
It was an event I witnessed secondhand—a visit by our U.S. Army Europe band to Moscow. I had been back in the United States when, according to the band’s director, “America’s Musical Ambassadors in Europe” had “rocked Red Square in six performances.” Russia had invited military bands from a half-dozen countries to perform modern music from their respective countries, and soldiers’ from our European Army band had knocked-em-dead with a Michael Jackson medley outside the Kremlin.
A very young sergeant, a trumpet player, confirmed to me that the Red Square concert had been a smashing success. When I pressed her for more details, she offered that the Russian musicians “were good, but they really weren’t very impressive. They weren’t really soldiers; they were musicians dressed like soldiers. And their leadership. . . well, we wouldn’t allow leaders like them in our Army. I wasn’t impressed.” I asked which countries had impressed her. “Germany was really good, and France performed some great music. But the Ukrainians—those soldiers really got it going on!”
What can you learn about a military from its band? Usually, not much. But putting on great performance requires some of the same skills as conducting a military operation. It requires recruiting the right people with the right talents (and many militaries, including the American military, use bands as a recruiting tool). It requires equipping those people with the right technology—often highly specialized—so they can do their job. It requires training those people to work together to perform complicated tasks with impeccable timing. It requires developing young leaders, managing logistics, and maintaining high morale. The sergeant I spoke to observed that what came through in the Ukrainians’ performance is that they wanted to be there, they wanted to be great, and their leaders were inspirational.
An interesting anecdote from an army bandsman. In the military, stories like these are called “war stories”—and as often as not, they aren’t about war or combat. War stories are parables, and like much of military life, they’re sometimes about finding purpose—even profundity—in the mundane.
My war stories about the Russian and Ukrainian militaries are also anecdotes, with no associated metrics or figures, but they give indications of what I’ve seen of the performance of two armies now facing each other on the battlefield. My experiences observing or participating in exercises, personal engagements, and training aren’t meant to explain, much less predict, what’s going on in Ukraine as that nation’s military fights its Russian foe. But I like to think they offer a little depth and color about who the people fighting in Ukraine are.
First Impressions
In 1994, I was a Lieutenant Colonel squadron commander at Fort Knox, Kentucky, leading a unit of about 1000 people helping others learn to be tankers. One day, my regimental commander called and asked if my passport was valid—the Pentagon had done a file search of all lieutenant colonels looking for those who were current commanders of tank units, who had experience in Europe, and who were veterans of Desert Storm. My name popped up, so I’d be going to Russia for two weeks to see the potential for an initiative called Partnership for Peace. President Clinton had suggested NATO find ways to cooperate with Russia and former Warsaw Pact countries, and this visit would help start that program.
I traveled to Russia with a civilian Russian expert from the State Department, a brigadier general from the Army Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, and a few staffers from the Defense Department. Another battalion commander and I were potted plants on this trip because the Russians wanted to talk to American “subject matter experts” on U.S. tanks and U.S. command and control methods. That was fine by us. Our itinerary had us visiting Russian armor and signal units, going into Russian military barracks, observing Russian units on firing ranges and conducting exercises, and climbing on military vehicles displayed in motor pools near Moscow. Our job was to stay quiet, observe, and take lots of mental notes.
The Russian barracks were spartan, with twenty beds lined up in a large room similar to what the U.S. Army had during World War II. The food in their mess halls was terrible. The Russian “training and exercises” we observed were not opportunities to improve capabilities or skills, but rote demonstrations, with little opportunity for maneuver or imagination. The military college classroom where a group of middle- and senior-ranking officers conducted a regimental map exercise was rudimentary, with young soldiers manning radio-telephones relaying orders to imaginary units in some imaginary field location. On the motor pool visit, I was able to crawl into a T-80 tank—it was cramped, dirty, and in poor repair—and even fire a few rounds in a very primitive simulator.
The only truly impressive and surprising part of the tour was when we walked through a “secret” field museum that had tanks from all the armies in the world—including several from the United States. The Russians had somehow managed to obtain an M1 Abrams tank (probably from one of their allies in the Middle East), and we all believed the reason they allowed us into this facility was to show us they had our most modern armor.
We then visited our host unit’s motor pool, stationed just outside Moscow. By that time, the Russian regimental commander and I had become friendly, and as he walked us toward the display of vehicles, he proclaimed that I was lucky to be one of the few Americans to see a Russian T-72 up close. With tongue firmly in cheek, I told the translator to tell the colonel that having fought in Desert Storm, I had seen many T-72s—but none of them still had the turret attached. The interpreter hesitated and asked me if I
really wanted to say that to his colonel. Nodding my head, I watched my new friend’s face turn red, but then transition to a slight grin. “Those were the export versions we gave the Iraqis.”
At the end of the visit, our State Department colleague asked us to record our observations, focusing on what struck us about leadership, equipment, training, facilities, and capabilities. I remember saying the Russian Army was “all show and no go.” While I knew the Russian tankers had experienced battlefield trauma during their final days in Afghanistan and were more recently dealing with the dissolution of the Soviet empire, to include firing a tank round at their own Parliament a year earlier, I came away from my first formal exchange with the Russian Army doubtful they were the ten-foot-tall behemoth we thought them to be.
My first experience with Ukraine’s army a decade later was not much different. In 2004, I was the assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad. Our unit was in the midst of completing a 12-month combat tour when the Shia irredentist Muqtada al-Sadr began a popular uprising in the Iraqi capital. A large percentage of our 30,000-soldier unit had already redeployed to Germany, but Secretary Rumsfeld believed it was appropriate we recall those forces and move south to Wasit Province to counter Sadr in the cities of Najaf, Karbala, and Al-Kut. The Sadr uprising started just as Polish, Spanish, and Ukrainian forces were departing Wasit. Al-Kut was the area of operation for the Ukrainian contingent and one of our tasks was to relieve them.
Al-Kut was a mess, as were the Ukrainian units responsible for it. The Ukrainian soldiers were undisciplined and poorly trained, their combat vehicles were in terrible shape, the officers and appointed sergeants appeared corrupt, and there were even indicators that some of the Ukrainian contingent were selling old Iraqi artillery rounds to the insurgents for their roadside bombs. The Ukrainian-trained Iraqi border forces were in terrible shape and organized crime in the area was rampant. We found Ukraine’s soldiers rarely if ever conducted patrols off base. All of the soldiers in our unit that took over for the Ukrainian force immediately formed a negative opinion about the readiness of Ukraine’s army—me included.
When our unit finally redeployed to Germany after an additional three months in Iraq, I left the job as the assistant division commander and started a new posting as commander of the Army’s training center in Germany. One of my tasks was to ensure a U.S. National Guard unit received the right kind of training as it prepared to deploy with the Kosovo peacekeeping force, aka KFOR, a multinational force under a German commander whom I knew well. I had the opportunity to ask him about the challenges he was facing with his multinational force. He specifically mentioned that the Ukrainian Army unit in KFOR was undisciplined, poorly trained, and had corrupt officers (he claimed a few had established a scheme for siphoning gas out of military vehicles and selling it on the black market in Pristina). His comments only reinforced my bias formed in Iraq, and I remembered thinking that the Ukrainian Army would have a hard time shaking off the ill-effects of their recent connection to the Soviet Union.
Over the next several years, my observations of both Russian and Ukrainian armies would change. One for the worse, one for the better.
Different Directions
The next year, I had another new assignment: Moving from the Training Center at Grafenwoehr in southern Germany to a new job as the G3, or deputy chief of staff for operations at U.S. Army Europe Headquarters in Heidelberg. The G3 is responsible for contingency (read: war) plans, operations, training, resources, deployment of forces, and—a major facet of our European mission—engaging with all 49 countries on the continent.
The engagement element of the portfolio was time-consuming but extremely interesting. The U.S. Army Europe commander relayed to me those American commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were not happy with the state of training of units from European allies and partners that were reinforcing their ranks—especially those from our Eastern European partners. Since the Afghanistan International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was about two-thirds U.S. forces and one-third allied forces, my commander wanted us to find ways to better train allied armies for that mission before they began their deployment.
We offered pre-deployment training opportunities to all the contributing nations, but we focused on the forces coming from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, and Ukraine. The training we offered consisted of classroom schooling, training events, and shared exercises. Our Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) Academy, where young soldiers were trained in leadership and small unit tactics, was expanded, and opened to allies, and soon that leadership course included more young sergeants from allied nations than Americans. The exercise program also expanded, and U.S. Army Europe “co-hosted” multinational training events. Soon, at places like Drawsko-Pomorski in Poland, Cincu in Romania, Krtsanisi in Georgia, Novo Selo in Bulgaria, and Yavoriv in Ukraine, the multinational training and exercises were in full swing.
The Poles and Romanians had energetic support from their governments and their military leadership on these transformational efforts; those two governments realized early on that they could use these opportunities to transform their armies and train their soldiers. Ukraine’s government voiced some initial interest, and Ukrainian generals seemed supportive, but there was less initial energy from Kyiv. Corruption in Ukraine’s bureaucracies prevented more early cooperation with the U.S. military.
While Russia was not a contributing nation to ISAF, we still offered the Russian Army opportunities to participate in many of our outreach programs. Our NCO Academy offered to allow the same number of Russian soldiers into each class as every other country. Russia accepted the invitation, but with conditions. They would send three of their “common soldiers” (their term), but they wanted a “senior officer” to also attend all classes and training events with them. They also wanted separate barracks for their soldiers instead of a “common barracks space with soldiers from other nations.” Finally, they would not adhere to the requirement only to send soldiers who could speak and read English (with so many languages represented, it was impossible to translate everything for everyone). While I was adamantly against acquiescing to these requests, my commander disagreed. The preparation for the Russian arrival was onerous, and their soldiers seemed much more interested in going to the post exchange—the subsidized on-base general store—than in learning leadership and tactical skills. We didn’t invite them back, and the Russian military never made any inquiries about returning.
While U.S. Army Europe was expanding our multinational outreach programs, the U.S. Army’s 10th Special Forces Group in Europe also began ramping up training for allied and partner special operations forces. The training the Green Berets led over more than a decade, working with foreign armies on unconventional warfare tactics, training of host-nation armies and civilians for resistance activities—targeting key enemy elements, gathering information, and protection of facilities and supply chains—was instrumental in the counterinsurgencies we were fighting together. These programs also became a building block for how to counter any enemy conventional offensive. The U.S. Air Force Europe provided analogous opportunities to multinational air forces, and those participating nations, including Ukraine, received training in advanced fighter techniques, the intricacies of close air support for ground troops, and suppression of enemy air defense.
(continued in next post)