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Deep Battle and Deep Operations in Contemporary Warfare

Maintaining Momentum and Sustaining Operations on the Transparent Battlefield

 

Capt. Randy Noorman, Royal Netherlands Army

 

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In order to understand the specific nature of the contemporary operation, one must establish the prerequisites and conditions which have caused its birth and determined its evolution over time.

—Georgii Isserson

At 4:40 a.m. on 21 March 1918, while the Western Front was still shrouded in darkness, the sky suddenly lit up when around ten thousand guns and mortars opened up along a fifty-seven-mile front. With an average density of 175 guns and mortars per mile of front, it was the most heavily concentrated preliminary artillery bombardment to date. It was the beginning of Operation Michael, the first of Germany’s spring offensives and last attempt to win the war before the arrival of American troops in large numbers would tip the numerical balance to Germany’s disadvantage. At 9:40 a.m., exactly five hours later, the infantry began advancing through the early morning fog, and stormtrooper detachments started infiltrating British positions. Bypassing strongpoints and avoiding unnecessary halts, they followed the path of least resistance, quickly penetrating the depth of the enemy’s “battle zone.” Organic heavy support weapons at lower tactical levels enabled them to overcome enemy pockets of resistance, while German artillery continued to engage British defenses in depth, disrupting command and control and hindering the timely arrival of reinforcements.¹

Although the offensive was a stunning tactical success, with German troops advancing up to forty miles into the British defenses, they were unable to translate this into a decisive operational breakthrough. German infantry simply could not advance quickly enough to prevent the arrival of fresh French and British reserves who sealed off German penetrations by establishing new, hastily constructed defensive positions. The time necessary to overcome these through continuous and sequential combat actions resulted in the loss of German momentum. German artillery likewise was unable to keep up, causing the effectiveness of artillery support to decline as the infantry advance progressed.² Logistically, the German troops were not adequately equipped to sustain an offensive of such proportions across harsh terrain. After two weeks of fighting, Operation Michael finally culminated, and Gen. Erich Ludendorff reluctantly called of the offensive on 5 April, depriving Germany of its last hope of ending the war on favorable conditions.

Operation Michael became one of the most studied First World War operations among Soviet military theorists during the interwar period as part of their search for new means and methods to penetrate a modern defense in depth. This condition had arisen with the establishment of the contiguous linear front in September 1914, followed by its subsequent expansion in depth. Additionally, operations conducted during the Russian Civil War (1917–22) and the Polish-Soviet War (1919–21) emphasized the importance of armies being able to sustain operations for extended periods of time and across vast geographical distances.³ Taken together, these case studies provided Red Army theorists with valuable insights that would ultimately lead to the development of Soviet operational art and its underlying concepts of deep battle and deep operations.

Central to the development of these theories were a number of technological advancements in weaponry that enabled the distribution of combat efforts in depth. Foremost among these was the internal combustion engine which, in time, would lead to the near-complete motorization and mechanization of warfare. Tanks and aircraft in particular played a crucial role, which, according to Soviet military theorists, had a revolutionary impact on warfare by enabling armies to strike deep into the enemy’s territory. Soviet military theorists referred to this as a revolution in military affairs (RMA), the first of three that would occur during the twentieth century and provide the impetus for a repeated revision of Soviet military doctrine.⁴ The Great Patriotic War ultimately demonstrated the feasibility of the concepts of deep battle and deep operations, with Joseph Stalin’s so-called “ten blows” serving as the pinnacle of Soviet operational art.⁵

However, the second and primarily third RMAs, the latter stemming from advancements in microelectronics and computer technology during the late 1970s and early 1980s, seems to have nullified the capabilities of the first by greatly increasing the speed, precision, standoff distance, and destructive power of modern weaponry.⁶ Improving targeting and enabling command and control driven by real-time intelligence significantly reducing the survivability of those massed concentrated formations that led the Red Army to victory during World War II. Even then, the Soviets had already concluded that it was not a completed process, but that its developments were ongoing.⁷ In fact, one could argue that it still is, for it is hard not to imagine the similarities between Soviet depictions of future war during the 1980s and the current character of the fighting in Ukraine where, as a result of the transparent battlefield, the continuous front has reemerged, once again forcing attackers into costly breakthrough operations.

One of the main problems currently facing both Russia and Ukraine is how to establish the necessary correlation of forces in order to maintain momentum during offensive actions and to sustain operations that are protracted in time and space. Both require mass and a concentration of forces, whether to project combat power or to support it logistically, all the while being forced to disperse to great depths.⁸ The purpose of this article is therefore to help understand the specific characteristics of the contemporary operation by demonstrating how the increased transparency and depth has negated the capabilities based on mass and mobility enabled by the first RMA, signaling a return to the positional warfare that tanks, aircraft, and motorized transport were originally intended to overcome.⁹ As the above quote emphasizes, military history is indispensable for arriving at a correct theoretical understanding. The article will therefore begin by describing how the first RMA formed the impetus for the development of the deep-battle and deep-operation concepts during the 1920s and 1930s, outlining its core tenets according to some of the Red Army’s leading military theorists of the time. It will then depict how both concepts developed throughout the second and the third RMAs and how those developments determine the character of the current fighting in Ukraine.

The Breakthrough Battle

The primary issue for Soviet military theorists to resolve, following the experience of the First World War, was how to break through a prepared defense in depth. Georgii Isserson was one of the most influential Soviet military theorists of this period, if only because he was one of the few who survived Stalin’s purges and continued teaching operational art until the beginning of the Second World War; he was arrested and sent to a labor camp in 1941. In his seminal work The Evolution of Operational Art, first published in 1932, he stated, “The historical character of operations has evolved along two main lines: lateral extension across a front, and distribution in depth.”¹⁰

As nearly four years of bloody yet mostly unsuccessful offensives had demonstrated, one of the main issues that arose as a consequence of the deepening of the uninterrupted front was how to maintain momentum while conducting a one-dimensional attack against a multilayered defense. The defender forced the attacker into repeated, costly, and time-consuming offensive actions that resulted in a loss of momentum by rapidly strengthening threatened sectors from behind through reinforcements or by hastily establishing new defensive positions. Conducting a one-dimensional attack thus played directly into that strength.

Vladimir Triandafillov, considered by many as the “father” of the concept of deep operations, characterized this as “the consecutive suppression and consecutive attack of separate parts of the enemy’s combat formation,” which led to a “gnawing through” of the enemy’s defenses.¹¹ He further stated that “the speed of an offensive, its pace, depends wholly on the frequency of the combat the attacker must conduct en route to the assigned target.”¹² 

Isserson, on his part, strikingly compared this to “an ancient hero battling a multi-headed hydra, who grows back a new head as soon as it is cut off, and who can be killed only if all of its heads are cut off simultaneously.”¹³

Instead of combat being limited to the forward edge of the battle area while leaving the depth of the enemy’s defense untouched, the new means of combat, particularly tanks and aircraft, led to the development of new forms of combat, enabling the distribution of combat efforts in depth.¹⁴ According to Mikhail Tukhachevsky, another one of the Soviet Union’s earliest and most prominent military theorists, these “modern means of suppression, used on a massive scale, make it possible to achieve a simultaneous attack and destruction of the entire depth of the tactical deployment of the enemy defense.”¹⁵ Consequently, by disrupting the enemy’s command and control and his ability to respond to changing situations in a timely and appropriate manner and instead forcing him to act reactively, they were able to shift the balance between defense and offense back toward the latter.¹⁶ The deepening of the defensive front in turn triggered a similar response from the attacker, who organized the attack into multiple echelons. As Isserson pointed out, however, these were initially tasked with consolidating the advancements made instead of reinforcing and continuing the breakthrough.

Within the Red Army, at the army level and later the front level, the attack became organized into an “attack echelon,” or “shock group,” responsible for breaking through the enemy’s tactical defense, and a mechanized “breakthrough development echelon,” or “mobile group,” tasked with continuing the attack and exploiting the initial breakthrough.¹⁷ As Isserson famously stated, “It makes no sense to knock down the door, if there is no one to go in.”¹⁸ The shock groups, meanwhile, likewise tasked specific battalions within their own second echelon to bypass strongpoints and, like German stormtroopers, infiltrate enemy defenses and attack his rearward positions.¹⁹

The employment of echeloned formations, together with the new long-range strike capabilities, enabled a layering of combat efforts that transformed the modern combined-arms battle into a complex and protracted process consisting of multiple consecutive stages, requiring continuous command and control through superior organization. The breakthrough battle, however, formed only one of the three elements that made up the deep battle; the other two were the defensive battle and the meeting engagement.²⁰ Although the Red Army’s 1929 field regulations and its successor, PU-36, both devoted an entire chapter to the defense, they clearly stated that its prime objective was the preservation of troops on a broad front in order to gather enough forces for an attack in what was considered the main operational or strategic direction, indicating the Red Army’s highly offensive approach to battle.²¹ The meeting engagement, on the other hand, was a phenomenon that received a lot of attention among Soviet military theorists.

The Meeting Engagement

The meeting engagement had emerged as a result of the greater effective range of the weapons in use, eliminating the traditional pause between the approach march and battle that had characterized campaigns until at least the mid-nineteenth century. From then on, the range of fire equaled the range of human vision, meaning that combat was initiated the moment opponents got within sight of one another and fighting commenced straight from the march.²² This breakdown of the traditional boundary between tactics and strategy contributed directly to the emergence of operational art. A meeting engagement arises as both sides pursue offensive aims simultaneously, and their advanced elements collide. Its main purpose is to destroy the enemy vanguard and to establish favorable conditions for continuing operations. Because enemy strength and dispositions are usually unknown, success requires timely reconnaissance and initiative through decisive action.²³

A meeting engagement was most likely to occur during the initial period of war. As a result of the personnel and material base available for war, however, most Soviet theorists during the 1920s and 1930s were convinced that any future conflict between the leading military powers would quickly lead to the establishment of an uninterrupted front without open flanks. As a result, the breakthrough battle against a prepared defense was considered to be the most likely form of deep battle to emerge.²⁴ Isserson also pointed out that, given the vastly expanded capabilities of modern defensive assets, if a meeting engagement remained indecisive, it would likely degenerate into a frontal stalemate. Even while the encounter was still ongoing, one could observe the first indications toward what he called “frontalism,” the transition from maneuver toward prolonged fighting along a positional front arising as a direct consequence of the increased troop density and defensive firepower.²⁵ He further emphasized that the engagement began well before the leading elements actually came into contact. However, as the range and mobility of modern weaponry continued to increase, he also indicated that the “distances between the contending sides entering the battle are close to disappearing,” meaning that, depending on the scope of the theater, troop density, and available maneuver space, the likelihood of an encounter battle was actually decreasing.²⁶ Under these circumstances, a meeting engagement was therefore no longer confined to the tactical realm but quickly spilled over into the operational sphere, transforming the meeting engagement into a meeting battle and increasing the likelihood that the initial maneuver phase would eventually transform into a war of position.²⁷

The Deep Operation

During the Russian Civil War (1917–22) and the Polish-Soviet War (1919–21), the overall troop-to-space ratio dropped significantly, allowing more room for maneuver. In the Red Army, this led to a temporary revival in the use of large cavalry formations during operations. Referred to as “mobile groups,” these were augmented by mobile artillery, machine guns, armored cars, and even a limited number of aircraft, enabling them to operate independently over greater distances for longer periods of time.²⁸ In the summer of 1920, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky commanded the Red Army’s Western front in its counterattack toward Warsaw with a cavalry corps spearheading the advance. After some initial success, however, the operation exceeded its culmination point and was halted before Warsaw, where the advance ended in clear defeat.²⁹ Like Operation Michael, the Vistula campaign was studied extensively during the interwar period. Based on this experience, Tukhachevsky, in his work The Campaign for the Vistula, concluded that “the impossibility in the presence of modern wide fronts to destroy an enemy army by a single blow compels us to achieve this by a series of successive operations.”³⁰

Whereas until the Great War, armies generally strove to decide a war through one decisive battle of annihilation, Soviet military theorists determined that, due to the increased resilience and war-making potential of modern industrial states, strategic success could only be achieved not by a single decisive engagement but through a cumulative effect of multiple successive operations.³¹ The concept of successive operations was thus conceived as a means to prevent operational attrition and maintain momentum during offensive action. Forming multiple echelons that moved closely together ensured the rapid deployment of reserves and reduced the need for long operational pauses. Nonetheless, these operations still consisted of intermittent and distinctly different stages.

From the early 1930s onward, however, as advocated by Tukhachevsky, the Red Army began to mechanize at a rapid pace.³² The increased speed and operating range of mechanized troops reduced the time and space between these separate stages and finally made them disappear altogether. The transition from successive to deep operations was fused into an unbroken chain of combat efforts in depth, leading Isserson to declare that “a series of consecutive operations is the modern operation.”³³

Blending the boundary between tactical engagements and the overall operation severely complicated command and control and increased the importance of proper organization of the offensive echelons in order to achieve the desired layering of combat efforts in depth. By the end of the 1930s, the second-echelon mobile groups had evolved into mechanized corps tasked with exploiting the initial breakthrough brought about by the deep battle. According to Triandafillov, determining the correct composition, organization, and especially front density of both the attack and exploitation echelons was crucial to preventing loss of momentum during the attack, declaring that “the period required to concentrate the units tasked to liquidate the breakthrough determines the magnitude of the rearward bound.”³⁴ He thereby emphasized the importance of a concentration of forces at the decisive point.³⁵

Isserson, however, was convinced that it was not so much the result of diminishing combat power of the attacker, but rather the ability of the defender to maintain or even strengthen its combat power while retreating that drives an attack past its culmination point.³⁶ Preventing reinforcements from strengthening threatened sectors thus became a crucial precondition for the deep operation to succeed, especially since transport capabilities had improved significantly, accelerating the movement of reserves. Triandafillov therefore emphasized the importance of a systematic observation at army and front levels of all roads, railroads, and junctions along which enemy reinforcements might approach.³⁷ He considered aircraft as the most effective means to paralyze the enemy rear, targeting troop concentrations at detraining stations, assembly areas, and columns moving by roads and railroads.³⁸ Altogether, Soviet operational art emphasized synchronization of combined arms and echelons, simultaneity of effects throughout the enemy’s depth, and use of shock to dislocate the enemy before they could recover.

The Deep Strike

Following the Second World War, the Soviets acknowledged that technological developments in nuclear weapons, missiles, and cybernetics constituted a second RMA, significantly increasing range, accuracy, and firepower and necessitating another revision of Soviet military doctrine.³⁹ To reduce the vulnerability of those massed troop concentrations required for the conduct of deep battles and operations, the Zhukov Reforms implemented during the late 1950s focused on decreasing the size while increasing the mobility of the slow and cumbersome World War II formations.⁴⁰ The deployment of nuclear weapons meanwhile was viewed as a way to quickly alter the correlation of forces to one’s own advantage, creating intervals between enemy formations through which maneuver formations could then advance.⁴¹ Only toward the end of the 1970s did the Soviets move away from the use of nuclear weapons and returned toward a fully conventional doctrine. Meanwhile, so-called operational maneuver groups and forward detachments were established to conduct antinuclear maneuver by reducing the emphasis on operational and strategic echelons and pushing ahead of the main forces to seek protection by closing in and intermingling with NATO formations.⁴²

While the Soviets where already moving away from the emphasis on multiple successive echelons, the new US AirLand Battle doctrine was developed following the careful study of Soviet operational art and specifically aimed to target and disrupt second- and even third-echelon formations before they could enter the battle to exploit the initial breakthrough.⁴³ Although not introduced until 1982, the Soviets were well aware of its conceptual development and the weapon systems that would enable it.⁴⁴ Arising in large part from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Assault Breaker program, it revolved around improvements in three different but interrelated technologies: enhanced sensor capabilities, improved and automated command and control, and increased precision of long-range munitions.⁴⁵ Referred to by the Soviets as the reconnaissance strike complex (RSC), this enabled a deep strike capability that would have severe implications for the conduct of future war, prompting the third RMA in Soviet military thought and requiring another overhaul of existing military doctrine.⁴⁶

Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, chief of the Soviet General Staff from 1977 until 1984 and arguably the most influential Soviet military theorists of his time, emphasized the increased destructive potential of such modern conventional weapons, significantly expanding the combat zones to include the full depth of a country.⁴⁷ He paid particular attention to developing methods to counter these emerging threats, two of which remain particularly relevant today. The first and most obvious response was to reduce vulnerability through camouflage and disperse into smaller tactical formations, making them more difficult to locate and less attractive to target. Operating in dispersed formations, however, would make it difficult to maintain momentum because at some point formations would have to reunite and concentrate in order to achieve a favorable correlation of forces, once again increasing their vulnerability. Additionally, the Soviets recognized the threat the RSC posed against tactical and operational logistical support elements, whose mobility therefore also needed to be increased.⁴⁸ The second response was to develop a Soviet version of the RSC, and the reconnaissance-fire-complex as its tactical variant, in order to locate and strike enemy systems before they could be employed.⁴⁹ In other words, Ogarkov sought to increase the combat effectiveness of Soviets forces by disrupting the enemy’s sensor-to-shooter cycle, enabling the continued deployment of concentrated formations. By 1986, Ogarkov already envisioned a future war being “fought with precision-guided munitions and reconnaissance drones.”⁵⁰ Toward the end of the Cold War, the concept of the operational maneuver group was disbanded, and in 1987, the Red Army abandoned its longtime offensive strategy of destruction, aimed at a decisive annihilation of the enemy through large-scale offensive operations during the initial period of war.⁵¹ Instead, it adapted a defensive strategy of attrition, a comprehensive and protracted approach aimed toward exhausting the enemy not only through military but by political and economic means as well.⁵²

The Fragmented Battlefield

A defensive strategic posture, however, did not rule out offensive operations. On the contrary. Inflicting maximum damage upon an aggressor during the initial period of war was seen as a means to establish favorable conditions for a successful counteroffensive.⁵³ With Ogarkov’s third RMA still ongoing, the Soviet General Staff came to envision a future war in which the traditional front would cease to exist, and reconnaissance-strike-complexes would expand the battle zone far and beyond, necessitating further dispersal.⁵⁴ However, as Isserson had pointed out, “Mass concentration before battle also stemmed from the material means available for war.”⁵⁵ This is why, before the adoption of rifled weapons, armies needed to concentrate on a limited and manageable battlefield in order to be effective. However, with weapon systems changing over time, increasing mobility, effective range, precision, and rate of fire, the necessary concentration of forces likewise declined, and the battlefield itself expanded.

Consequently, the Soviet General Staff rebuffed Isserson’s conception of “frontalism” and instead envisioned what they referred to as “fragmented” or “nonlinear” warfare, with neither side able establish an uninterrupted front line consisting of fixed positions and protected flanks. According to a 1990 Soviet Army Studies Office report, “The Soviets see non-linear battle as one in which separate ‘tactically independent’ battalions and regiments/brigades fight meeting battles and secure their flanks by means of obstacles, long-range fires and tempo.”⁵⁶ It also concluded, however, that under these conditions, attacks against prepared positions would become an anomaly.⁵⁷

The 1991 Gulf War confirmed much of Ogarkov’s earlier predictions, indicating a shift from land forces to airpower as the main form of combat, negating the primacy of massed concentrated land formations that underly Soviet operational art.⁵⁸ This was endorsed by Gen. Vladimir Slipchenko, who has significantly influenced Russian military thought over the past decades. He even spoke of a generational shift in warfare while emphasizing that Russia was a generation behind.⁵⁹ While Slipchenko expected the role of what he called “remote” and “non-contact” warfare to increase, his contemporary, Gen. Makhmut Gareev, emphasized the blurring of the traditional boundaries between offense and defense as a consequence.⁶⁰ Even Gen. Valery Gerasimov, current chief of the Russian General Staff, has expressed similar views on the future character of large-scale conventional warfare, stating that while the spatial scope of operations is expanding, their temporal parameters are decreasing, meaning that even a low density of modernly equipped troops can generate effects quicker and at much greater range as opposed to much larger troop concentrations during earlier conflicts.⁶¹ Gerasimov therefore concluded,

There has been a shift from sequential and concentrated operations to continuous and dispersed operations conducted simultaneously in all spheres of confrontation and in remote theaters of military operations.⁶²

Frontal engagements of large formations of forces at the strategic and operational level are gradually becoming a thing of the past. Long-distance, contactless actions against the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving combat and operational goals.⁶³

As Isserson had already recognized back in the 1930s, the expanding spatial scope of tactical engagements was blending the boundary with the overall operations, placing higher demands on command and control.⁶⁴ As Gerasimov rightly points out, nowadays, conducting complex dispersed operations in real time means that command and control again grows in both complexity and significance.⁶⁵

The Transparent Battlefield

The widespread deployment and varied application of drones in the Russo-Ukrainian War has led to the emergence of a new subdomain called the “air littoral.” Below the altitudes at which manned aircraft and helicopters typically operate, the battle for its control has now become an integral part of land operations.⁶⁶ The sheer density of drones operating in the air littoral has created a transparent battlefield marked by almost constant surveillance. The level of transparency is near absolute along the front and slowly diminishes further toward the rear, creating a zone wherein it is almost impossible to conduct operations at any significant scale. Consequently, drones now enable military units at all levels to generate effects at much greater distances, with the time required between target identification and destruction often reduced to just a few minutes. The role and impact of indirect over direct fire has therefore increased, and units become engaged, worn down, or even destroyed long before they arrive withing visual line of sight.⁶⁷

Additionally, it enables a defender to determine the strength and direction of an enemy attack at an early stage, making surprise virtually impossible and allowing the defender to anticipate much more quickly. Most importantly, however, it forces units to disperse in order to make themselves more difficult to detect and less attractive targets to engage.⁶⁸ The frontages of defending formations have therefore increased significantly, diminishing the overall troop density.⁶⁹ Furthermore, long-range observation poses a major threat against the logistical sustainment necessary to conduct large-scale operations, which remain dependent on centralized distribution from fixed infrastructure and thus become vulnerable to precision strikes. From thereon, ground lines of communication become predictable as they move closer to the front and therefore susceptible to continuous observation and targeting, significantly reducing overall logistical sustainability.⁷⁰

In August 2024, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) published a paper on “the problem of restoring maneuver in contemporary war.”⁷¹ In it, the authors draw a number of important conclusions, including that modern states cannot be defeated in a single operation, which corresponds with Tukhachevsky’s earlier findings. Also, large modern states are usually able to establish a defense depth along a continuous front, forcing an attacker into costly breakthrough operations. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of modern weapons has increased significantly, especially against armored vehicles, making a modern breakthrough operation a far more difficult and risky undertaking to achieve. Additionally, even when successful, the subsequent exploitation has become equally difficult due to the ability to quickly deploy reserves and establish new defensive positions further toward the rear.⁷²

The authors attribute these problems to the integration of new technologies, enabling real-time adjustment of massed fires and precisions strikes far beyond the traditional line of contact.⁷³ The fundamental problem that then arises is essentially the same as the Soviets already identified during the 1980s. While dispersion increases survivability, at some point during offensive actions, formations need to mass in order to generate fighting power and maintain momentum. The greater standoff distance, speed, and destructive power of modern weapons, however, ensures that once this is achieved, the defender is able to inflict unacceptable losses upon the attacker. Winning the counterbattery battle and the fight for the air littoral has thus become a necessary precondition for every offensive action to succeed.

The Russo-Ukrainian War

The Russo-Ukrainian War has provided some valuable insights regarding the conduct of deep battles and operations under modern conditions. Following the failure of the initial coup de main and subsequent regrouping of Russian forces, the front quickly solidified along more or less fixed lines and transitioned into an attritional and positional form of warfare. Historically speaking, however, the armies involved are comparatively limited in size, and the average troop-to-space ratio is relatively low accordingly. During earlier wars, this allowed for greater room for maneuver. Nonetheless, the enormous quantities of drones hovering above the battlefield and the increased responsiveness of indirect fires have substantiated this low troop density and have confirmed Isserson’s notion of frontalism—the tendency of the front to take on a continuous form that can only be overcome by means of a breakthrough operation.

An illustrative example of frontalism at work was the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region. There, small maneuverable mechanized units integrated with drones and electronic warfare initially managed to advance a considerable distance, which was cited as evidence by the ISW that “surprise is still possible even on a partially transparent battlefield and that rapid maneuver is possible under the right conditions.”⁷⁴

Nevertheless, once Russian troops and equipment began entering the area en masse (including Rubicon employing fiber optic FPV drones), the maneuver phase quickly transitioned into positional fighting, again confirming Isserson’s conception of frontalism.⁷⁵ It also confirms the ability of small numbers of ground troops, augmented by drones and artillery, to tie up and wear down large numbers of attacking enemy forces.

In fact, several sources indicate that Russian intelligence had indeed noticed the Ukrainian troop build-up beforehand and had even anticipated it but proved unable to adequately respond.⁷⁶ One of the main reasons for the initial Ukrainian success, as stated by ISW, was that the Russian units guarding the still inactive part of the front were severely undermanned and undertrained, resulting in lower troop density, lower sensor coverage, and less responsive fires. The right conclusion therefore is that, although deception can be effective, massing large troop concentrations has become very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve under current conditions, hampering the conduct of large-scale deep operations and giving rise to the tendency for maneuver to crystallize into positional warfare. In fact, the Russian incursion from Belgorod toward the area around Kharkov in May 2024 roughly followed the same pattern, with higher sensor density preventing infiltrations and flanking maneuvers and transforming a meeting engagement into a frontal engagement.⁷⁷

Almost two years earlier, though, in that same area, the Ukrainians launched what is undoubtedly the most successful offensive to date, in line with the contours of deep battle. This time there was no credible indication that Russian intelligence identified the troop build-up beforehand. By purposely telegraphing their intentions to attack Kherson, the Ukrainians deluded the Russians into relocating some of their best units away from the front around Kharkov. Meanwhile, using interior lines of operations, they secretly massed some of their best-trained brigades for a surprise attack in the direction of Izyum and the Oskil River.⁷⁸ The advance was preceded by light reconnaissance units, bypassing strongpoints and infiltrating deep into Russian positions, followed by heavier mechanized troops.⁷⁹ Meanwhile, Western-supplied artillery, long-range precision weapons, and extensive US intelligence enabled simultaneous destruction and suppression throughout the tactical and even operational depths, disrupting Russian ground lines of communication.⁸⁰

Notwithstanding, as in Kursk, the Russian troops defending the area around Kharkov were not properly geared for war, nor were they sufficient in numbers, confirming the view that the only successful Ukrainian offensives thus far have been achieved through a combination of operational surprise against second-rate Russian formations.⁸¹ In contrast, the Russian troops at Kherson were of much better quality and available in much larger numbers. Consequently, Ukrainian troops had much more difficulty to advance, resulting in substantial losses in personnel and equipment. However, with just two bridges and a dam crossing the Dnjepr, the Russian positions in Kherson were logistically simply untenable. The eventual Ukrainian success was therefore largely the result of the use of Western-supplied artillery and long-range precision weapons, which were effectively used to disrupt Russian logistics, forcing them to abandon the city.⁸² From thereon, with Russian troop levels steadily increasing over time and enabling the establishment of an uninterrupted front, any offensive at this scale would necessitate a deliberate breakthrough in advance.

In the summer of 2023, the Ukrainian army attempted such a classic breakthrough operation in the region of Zaporizhzhia, following the concepts of deep battle and operations. Russian troops along the Orikhiv-Tokmak axis had constructed a multilayered defense of up to twenty miles deep, while the Ukrainians assembled at least nine brigades divided into three different echelons across a twenty-mile-wide front to conduct and exploit the initial breach.⁸³ Although it failed for several reasons, one of the main causes was their inability to achieve the necessary correlation of forces to conduct a successful breakthrough and maintain tempo. Ukrainian fires were likewise inadequate in volume and insufficiently synchronized with the ground offensive and unable to conduct battlefield interdiction to disrupt Russian defenses in depth and prevent reserves from strengthening threatened sectors.⁸⁴

As the Soviets had already recognized during the eighties, disrupting the enemy’s sensor-to-shooter cycle is the only way to reenable the deployment of a concentrated force, whether by winning the fight for the air littoral and blocking enemy observation, by effectively targeting the enemy’s long-range precision strike capabilities, or by disrupting the communication between enemy sensors and shooters. In this, again for various reasons, the Ukrainians did not succeed. The inability of both Russian and Ukrainian air forces to effectively and decisively influence ground operations is the major wildcard in this regard. With the essence of air superiority changing, however, it remains questionable whether Western airpower will be able to decisively impact the fight for the air littoral in any potential future conflict.⁸⁵

Consequently, following the failure of the initial mechanized assault, the Ukrainians switched to small-scale dismounted infantry attacks.⁸⁶ However, insufficient troops capable of offensive action ensured these units were burned out rapidly, leading to a loss of overall tempo and culmination of the offensive.⁸⁷ Moreover, as Triandafillov already pointed out but which nowadays rarely receives any attention, “The rate of advance not only must not be less than, must exceed, the possible rate of enemy withdrawal in order to achieve encirclement of the enemy, to deprive him of the chance to slip out from under the blow.”⁸⁸

Over the years, however, overall battlefield mobility has increased significantly. When the concepts of deep battle and operations were developed and first applied, the mechanized exploitation forces could generally operate at much higher speed compared to the defending (German) infantry, which mostly operated on foot. Today, however, all units are generally motorized and can operate at a similar speed, leveling the difference between offense and defense back toward First World War standards, ensuring that dismounted attacks can only lead to tactical results.

The Russians, for their part, have likewise attributed the emergence of positional warfare and the inability of both sides to conduct large-scale combined arms maneuver to the emergence of the transparent battlefield and increased destructiveness of fires. In addition, they regard these developments, not as circumstances specific to the war in Ukraine, but as fundamental changes in the character of modern warfare, limiting the feasibility of offensive operations and thereby altering the offence-defense balance in favor of the latter.⁸⁹ Following the failed Ukrainian offensive in Zaporizhzhia, the Russians attempted a large-scale mechanized breakthrough around Avdiivka, employing a number of massed battalion-size formations. Not surprisingly, the assault ended in failure, with Russian forces suffering heavy casualties.⁹⁰ Thenceforth, like the Ukrainians, the Russians have reverted to smaller scale assaults.⁹¹

Conclusion

One of the core traits of a visionary is seeing beyond current trends and problems to envision a future reality that is usually far ahead of its time. The Soviet concepts of deep battle and deep operations, developed during the interbellum by its leading architects such as Tukhachevsky, Triandafilov, and Isserson (see figure), have, in retrospect, proven to be quite visionary. The same applies to the conceptions of Nikolai Ogarkov on the impact of reconnaissance-strike-complexes on large-scale conventional warfare and whose intellectual heritage in the Russian military is still visibly present. In fact, one can argue that what the Soviets referred to as the third RMA has only now fully matured. Although Soviet conceptions of dynamic, high tempo operations on a fragmented battlefield have proven illusory, the traditional front line has indeed disappeared, and the battle zone expanded far and beyond, with noncontact warfare trickling down to the lowest tactical level. What they did not foresee is that the proliferation of drones coupled with increased responsiveness of indirect fires has offset low troop density and dispersion on the battlefield, thereby reducing the open spaces—which in previous wars would have provided room for maneuver—and thus reinforcing the tendency toward frontalism.

As Triandafillov already acknowledged during the interbellum, the expansion of the defense in depth and increases in the range, precision, and destructive effects of firepower enables defending units to disperse and adapt to local terrain circumstances, requiring individual registration of each component for their suppression as a prerequisite for a successful attack and emphasizing that the “development of suppressive assets clearly lags behind the rate of development of defensive resources.”⁹² This applies even more so today, with modern strike systems at all tactical and operational levels able to operate individually and concentrate effects from dispersed locations across larger distances and with higher precision than ever before, thereby strengthening the defense; whereas offensive action, to a certain extent, remains dependent on fighting power originating from a concentration and favorable correlation of forces. The development of suppressive assets therefore needs to catch up to mitigate the advantages currently obtained by the defense, including determining the correct composition and organization of attacking formations this entails.

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Notes

• Epigraph. Georgii Isserson, The Evolution of Operational Art, trans. Bruce W. Menning (Combat Studies Institute Press, 2013), 14.

1. Patrick T. Stackpole, “German Tactics in the ‘Michael’ Offensive, March 1918” (master’s thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 1981), 62, 86–88, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA273082.pdf.
2. Stackpole, “German Tactics in the ‘Michael’ Offensive,” 91–92, 95–96.
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