The Russian bear in Ukraine is suffering from a people problem, attempting to fight a costly, prolonged conflict with a pickup team of replacements while suffering from severe battlefield leadership attrition. These reconstituted forces’ poor performance reflects a failure to properly integrate and regenerate cohesive, effective combat forces in a timely manner. The result has been tactical failures and operational setbacks, with strategic implications for Russia’s military future. And it stands as an object lesson for the US Army in the importance of force reconstitution in large-scale combat operations.
Russia was unprepared for many aspects of this war; however, its lack of preparation for integrating extensive numbers of replacements into degraded units with severe leadership losses has had a growing cumulative battlefield effect. Russia has been unable to prove it can effectively integrate new forces into damaged formations or build cohesive teams from ad hoc groupings of scattered unit remnants while maintaining operational tempo and significant forces along the line of contact. In short, Russia’s military manpower bench has been unable to cope with the operational demands and costs of the scale of war it started in Ukraine.
While extensive casualties are not surprising given this scale of warfare, the numbers are stark—especially when viewed from the perspective of a military force, like the US Army, that has mostly contended with prolonged insurgency since the end of the twentieth century. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley has indicated that both sides have suffered one hundred thousand casualties or more since the war began eleven months ago. And this is from only the best information gathered, not from exhaustive, analytical work conducted in a safe, postwar environment with access to open archives and detailed accounting. The numbers may be higher, and the war is not even over yet.
While an examination of the problems with force (re)generation at the theater and national level is important—Russia’s bungled mass mobilization, conscription, and recruit training issues is a case in point—there are particular lessons to be learned about integrating replacements and reconstituting forces with the creation of ad hoc formations to continue the fight while suffering heavy casualties. The US Army should be actively learning lessons and adapting its preparation of units, leaders, and staffs. By doing so, and with proper focus on the science and art of reconstitution, the Army can best equip itself to avoid the pitfalls, setbacks, and failures created by Russia’s reconstitution problems.
Russia’s Reconstitution Problems
Russia’s difficulty with reconstitution and force regeneration—especially given the comparison between Ukraine’s total mobilization and Russia’s seemingly ad hoc mixture of professional forces and conscript mobilization—is instructive. While there are reports Russia embarked on its invasion with insufficient manpower to draw on, particularly in mechanized infantry, this only emphasizes a vulnerability of small, professional armies—which Russia has sought to build—in sustained contact. The Russian army began modernization efforts following the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, yet as it sought to become a professional contract force of volunteers, it has responded to battlefield struggles in Ukraine by turning to its past model of fielding a large conscript force. In some ways this mirrors the tension between Russia’s pursuit of a technologically sophisticated way of war and its longstanding bias for simple, rugged mass. The “New Look” reform effort has not produced the expected results in Ukraine at the scale Russia desired, in part because some reforms were not completed prior to the invasion, while others were only half measures.
In response to its extensive losses, Russia has continued breaking up and mixing of cohesive units into ad hoc battalion tactical groups, creating mixed combat formations. Operational demands have forced Russia to keep these ad hoc formations on the contact line in Ukraine. These reformed units built from the surviving remnants of previous combined teams have demonstrated inferior results compared to the capabilities of the initial forces that had a background of preconflict exercises. This is expected, both as a function of the quality of the replacements’ training and because of the cohesion that only comes from repetitive and habitual training together. The reduced and reconstituted units’ condition and performance contributed to the successful Ukrainian Kharkiv counteroffensive—the remaining, understrength Russian formations collapsed after Russia shifted its more cohesive and stronger units south to Kherson in response to Ukrainian military deception efforts.
While the integration of new, unfamiliar, and likely less trained replacements into bloodied units is challenging enough, there is also a leadership element of this problem. Much has been made of the Russian leadership style and the striking number of general officers that have been killed. The loss of these senior officers affects the operational and tactical performance of Russian units, but the heavy losses suffered among colonels and lieutenant colonels has an even more immediate and deleterious effect. As of late November, Ukrainian armed forces accounting listed among Russian officer deaths at least ten generals and 152 colonels and lieutenant colonels—in addition to more than a thousand officers at the rank of major or below. While the exact numbers and ranks may be exaggerated, the fact remains that Russia has taken extensive leadership losses across the ranks in a relatively short amount of time.
The losses among colonels and lieutenant colonels are especially impactful for several reasons. First, leaders at this level are integral in the effective integration, training, and cohesion of reconstituted and ad hoc formations. This was made clear in the performance drop among Russian reconstituted and reformed units during the Kharkiv counteroffensive. Second, officer casualties are more likely among leaders who adopt an aggressive and personally engaged style, typically the best, most capable, and most influential on the battlefield. Lastly, while the losses of generals in the twilight of their careers or junior officers who are comparatively quicker and easier to replace has a battlefield impact, the substantial numbers of deaths of lieutenant colonels and colonels will have a more significant long-term effect on the Russian military’s professional effectiveness. These are not only the commanders of battalion tactical groups, but the future senior leadership of the Russian army. It takes years of education and training and cumulative life experiences to form effective field-grade officers, an unavoidable, time-intensive aspect of creating senior leaders.
Reconstitution in US Army Practice
The Russian army is not a peer to the US Army, but that should not preclude an examination of the lessons from the ongoing war. First and foremost, the US military cannot avoid the fact that in sustained large-scale combat operations it will absorb significant casualties. As such, the Army should take steps to improve its reconstitution, regeneration, and ad hoc unit and personnel integration capabilities during field training exercises, culminating in combat training center rotations. While exercising the replacement process is already practiced by the rotational unit personnel staff, changes should be made to the scenario management to make reconstitution harder. Adapting scenarios to force units to practice creating and employing ad hoc formations up to battalions, composed of the remains of other units, would pay dividends in training leaders and staffs in preparation for expected large-scale losses. Both tactical field training exercises and higher-echelon simulations should intensify the manner in which they test reconstitution and integration.
A way to mirror the difficulties of integrating new replacements is to deliberately send “replacements” from one battalion to a completely different one, forcing leadership and staff at all levels to integrate and plan operations with unfamiliar personnel. The gaining unit would know nothing of these replacements and the replacements would know nothing of the gaining unit’s standard operating procedures or have existing relationships in the new unit, imitating some of the major issues associated with large-scale replacements in warfare with large casualty figures. To an extent this could even include mixing military occupational specialties (accounting for safety requirements and necessary qualifications) to further imitate the stress of receiving less trained and less proficient individuals. For example, some soldiers from the brigade support battalion or the brigade engineer battalion could replace combat arms soldiers, with combat arms soldiers moving to support jobs. An additional benefit to this is that it would also create a deeper appreciation of different occupational demands and increase opportunities for cross-training in austere environments while under pressure.
This would stringently test the replacement and integration systems for brigade combat teams and the command and control of these regenerated or ad hoc, combined units. Scenarios could also introduce a penalty for planners and leaders when they lose troops to the opposing forces: the formations must not only go without forces during the personnel replacement cycle, but even when replacements do arrive, they now have less prepared soldiers for the next missions and continued operations. This forces leaders to make decisions: Should they create ad hoc formations to keep well-trained forces together in the main effort? Should replacements be limited to supporting efforts? Or should replacements be sent to the unit in greatest need when they arrive? These same rules should also be applied to the opposing force, as well, as a system to reward the rotational unit for inflicting casualties on the opposing force, replicating real-world conditions in which the unit subsequently faces a more disorganized enemy struggling to regenerate and integrate unfamiliar and new soldiers.
At higher-echelon training events for division and higher headquarters like simulations, command post exercises, and the capstone Warfighter Exercise, this is equally important but requires different methods to test replacement and force regeneration systems. The challenge is to come up with a way to apply an algorithm-based reduction of combat power of reconstituted forces within the simulation. This should challenge leaders and planners to manage the fight tempo by considering the limitations of regenerated and reconstituted units’ performance. This takes the problem beyond the personnel staff and spreads it across the simulation by affecting personnel, logistics, operations, and plans. This is a people problem, but it needs to be transitioned from solely a headache for the personnel directorate to something that impacts the whole system.
Fighting with a Pickup Team Matters
Initial stumbles at the onset of hostilities are costly but should not become decisive. Adaptability, flexibility, and resiliency in systems is critical to winning. The ability to recover from unanticipated and early setbacks to reform and reengage quickly is critical. Armies in sustained, high-intensity conflict must be able to fight effectively with what amounts to a pickup team—to possess the adaptability and resiliency necessary to win in a complex and dynamic operational environment. While Russia stumbled in its initial invasion, its inability to properly reconstitute, regenerate, and integrate mass replacements and build cohesive warfighting teams has turned a stumble into a fall that it is struggling to pull itself up from as the conflict goes on. The US Army must not take the same risks in its next large-scale combat. It must prepare its battlefield leadership and staffs for the stresses and demands associated with forming ad hoc units. And it must be able to maintain operational momentum and rapidly integrate new personnel into bloodied formations. Anything less invites disaster.
Michael G. Anderson is an US Army infantry officer with four overseas deployments, a 2022 graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies, and currently assigned to Forces Command G-35 Plans. He has published over a dozen articles, including in the Journal of Strategic Security, Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, and Military Review, and is the author of Mustering for War (Army University Press, 2020).
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Council of ministers of Crimea, via Wikimedia Commons
While I greatly appreciate that the author at least raising this often-overlooked subject of reconstitution in a LSCO environment, I see ominous signs of long-term Russian strategic depth where he only sees weakness. It is unwise for us to not objectively evaluate both the pros and cons of the Russian and U.S. mobilization systems. The U.S. Army has many impressive capabilities; however, strategic personnel depth for LSCO operations is not currently one of them.
The main issue that must be considered is *where* pre-mobilization fillers and individual replacements will come from in a LSCO scenario. During two decades of limited wars using a "patch chart", unit rotational system, the U.S. was never confronted with this dilemma at scale. Since we never had to fully mobilize, the Army was able to use measures such as stop-loss, cross-levelling, and a very limited Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) recall to bring deploying units to strength or replace losses. In a LSCO scenario of the scope currently unfolding in Eastern Europe, these measures employed through GWOT will be mere palliatives.
Today's Army is severely understrength across all three components and the recruiting crisis compounds this problem daily. This accessions drought is disproportionately impacting the combat arms career management fields (CMFs). I was recently informed that the Regular Army missed its FY2022 enlisted Infantry accessions mission (CMF 11) by more than 50% and barely achieved 50% of its Armor/Cavalry (CMF 19) mission. The consequences of this unpleasant reality are being seen all across the force as enlisted Soldiers depart service or get promoted with a reduced number of new personnel behind them. These growing vacancies will need to be filled in a full mobilization scenario before we can even think about reconstitution or replacements. This is where the problem thickens.
The Army National Guard (ARNG) and Army Reserve face similar accessions challenges to the Regular Army. Of the 54 state/territorial ARNG organizations, only one (New York) made its FY 2022 accessions mission. Thirty one states missed their FY 2022 ARNG recruiting missions by more than 40%. The Guard and Reserve will also require a substantial infusion of fillers to achieve deployment readiness. In a full mobilization or LSCO scenario, this cannot effectively be accomplished by cross-levelling because that will only cannibalize follow-on units that must also be ready for follow-on deployment.
This leads to a discussion of the IRR, which is intended to serve as the Army's primary source of pre-trained military manpower and a bridge to the draft (if necessary). Today's dwindling IRR is down to barely 76,000 Soldiers and this strategic reserve would not even fill Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs. In a mobilization scenario, TRADOC optimistically projects a 65% yield rate of IRR personnel that can be located, re-trained, and deployed on varying timelines based on recency of service. This amounts to about 49,600 Soldiers.
In a LSCO conflict, this 49,600 Soldier IRR pool is the Army's "thin green line" of non-retired enlisted personnel and Company Grade Officers to bring existing units to strength, replace casualties, and serve as expansion cadre for new units. If things get really bad, this small force is all we will have to gap the approximately 270 day "Valley of Death" between the statutory re-activation of the Selective Service System (SSS) and the delivery of the very first trained draftees to initial units of assignment. While this timeline could be modestly curtailed in exigent circumstances, approximately 270 days is the current planning factor.
Prior to 1994, the SSS operated on guidance from DOD to provide the first inductees for examination and evaluation by M+13 – 13 days after the statutory resumption of the draft. In 1994, DOD changed this guidance from M+13 to M+193 and this guidance has not changed in 29 years. Of particular note, the Army's IRR stood at about 450,000 in 1994 compared to 76,000 today in a fundamentally changed strategic environment. Current estimates suggest that SSS will need to provide 500,000 inductees for DOD examination and screening just to yield 100,000 personnel deemed suitable for service. Then there is the atrophied initial entry training and mobilization integration pipeline beyond that.
Simply put, the Army's strategic manpower depth is a lot less than many presume – even within the walls of the organization itself. At the Start of FY2022, the IRR barely had 15,000 CMF 11 (Infantry); 3,000 CMF 19 (Armor/Cavalry) and 4,000 CMF 13 (Artillery). For those examining this issue for the first time, these relatively small numbers are often startling. Things are not much better in the support/sustainment branches. The Transportation (CMF 88) and Engineer (CMF 12) vacancies in the Army Reserve alone would consume almost the entire IRR population in those specialties just to bring existing USAR units to full strength. That is before we even look at Regular Army or ARNG filler requirements, let alone casualty replacement or force structure expansion.
While this situation may come across as unwelcome or dark, it is essential to consider before critically examining the shortcomings in the Russian mobilization system. Despite many missteps and mistakes, Russia was able to successfully mobilize 300,000 personnel from its version of the IRR, the "Mobilization Human Resource." Edward Luttwak suggests that the actual number may be as high as 492,000. On top of this, Russia has seen 80,000 new volunteers enlist since the September partial mobilization and an unknown number of foreign volunteers. The opaque workings of the Wagner Organization also add an unknown number of personnel to Russia's overall defense effort.
These mobilization numbers are concrete and should not be discounted as they signal significant personnel depth among an adversary. In addition, Russia is in the process of increasing its active duty force to 1.5 million. Yes, it remains a hybrid force composed of volunteer "contract Soldiers" and draftees, but then again, that's the model the U.S. Army used between 1940 and 1973 (with very short breaks). There are many shortcomings with a hybrid system, but strategic depth and personnel resiliency is not one of them. Most of Russia's new personnel are still being integrated into the force structure to be committed in the future. The more Soldiers you cycle through military service, the more you have to recall later on in an emergency. In a war of attrition with massed ISR Strike capabilities, this matters. When the All-Volunteer Force started in 1973, the Army had 700,000 Soldiers in the IRR. In 1994 when DOD changed its guidance to SSS from M+13 to M+193, it had 450,000. One wonders how policy would have been shaped in 1973 and 1994 had leaders at the time known that the Army's IRR in 2023 would be down to 17% of its 1994 size and 11% of its 1973 size.
Your reply was excellent and well thought out. I would add that the decline in recallable soldiers in the IRR did not happen overnight nor in a vacuum. The problem's root from my viewpoint is that current and past senior leadership are at fault as I observed on active duty that most senior officers moved up in rank by NOT FIXING things and essentially papering over problems to the extent possible. There still seems to be a common 'Old Wives Tale' amongst the uninformed that one can turn out Infantry troops in 8 weeks by giving them a rifle, some training and some orders. Such an approach would actually be tantamount to murder. In reality, to turn out a proficient Infantry soldiers now takes 22 weeks of intense training who will still need additional training with their units in order to be part of an integral fighting team. In the short run the Army will probably need to pull out its checkbook in order for soldiers to commit to extending their periods of service in the IRR as well as granting them additional incentives to make a 'career' as IRR members. In addition, the Army may need to consider a much broader and immediate recall of retirees in a national emergency to include the reintroduction of 'Hip Pocket Orders'. However, in the longer run the real need is for young people, a lot more, to consider joining the Army. However, recent reports of mold and unhealthy conditions in barracks as well as numerous other negative reports directly reflecting on senior leadership's attitudes and priorities leads me to once again look at the people in charge and how their focus on careerism and papering over of problems has now led us to a national recruiting crisis. One can not expect Army recruiters to overcome a litany of bad press reports as well as the former soldiers who honorably finished their term of service but then tell others to NOT JOIN the Army based on their own negative personal experiences while having served.
Very good article. A good follow-up would be the Russian or UKR challenges with equipping the reconstituted units and lessons learned from those operations.