ANDREI MARTYANOV is an expert on Russian military and naval issues. He was born in Baku, USSR in 1963. He graduated from the Kirov Naval Red Banner Academy and served as an officer on the ships and staff positions in the Soviet Coast Guard through 1990. He took part in the events in the Caucasus which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the mid-1990s he moved to the United States, where he currently works as Laboratory Director in a commercial aerospace group.
He is a frequent blogger on the US Naval Institute Blog. He is author of Losing Military Supremacy, The (Real) Revolution in Military Affairs, and Disintegration: Indicators of the Coming American Collapse.
“Russian Navy: Mission Found?” June 2017
“Aircraft Carriers’ Dilemma,” August 2017
[N O T E: My friend Austin writes:
I had expected this to be a four-way conversation, but instead it was mostly an un-scripted presentation by Martyanov, with occasional questions and propositions being posed, mostly by Lira and Mercouris, with the latter serving as moderator, occasionally re-focusing the presentation. Martyanov’s English is superb, but he has a strong enough accent that I could not speed the video up much beyond 1.25x for most of the more than two hours.
Viewing the whole thing was worth it, but I warn you that it was also tedious, and I simply missed some things because spoken too fast to be intelligible to me. Moreover, Martyanov’s qualifications enabled him to make these two + hours into a crash course on Russian doctrine and current events which would have been worthwhile to have a stenographer transcribe verbatim, and then an editor lightly smooth a few things out.
Martyanov expressed bafflement that American military colleges do not grant military degrees, as do Russia’s military schools. Unfortunately, one of the things that I missed was what Martyanov’s BS degree was in. But his Masters Degree was in Naval Warfare, i.e., “destroying the U.S. Navy.” This session was Like eating breakfast, lunch, and supper all in one go—worse than Thanksgiving dinner! My own emphases indicated throughout.
INTERVIEW NOTES
The U.S. military suffers from malincentives for political promotion based on empty accreditations. America’s military revels in the lightning-quick and complete devastation of Saddam Hussein’s tank army in the Iraq war. But American veteran soldiers and commanders have never fought under conditions in which their rear supply dumps and command centers are not safe. Mercenaries whose most recent combat experience came from Afghanistan faced goat-herder opponents who lacked any kind of heavy artillery. They could not believe the terrifying effect of utterly relentless Russian artillery fire on all positions. The smartest ones realized that they were not up to the contest and departed the theater.
The rail tunnel through the Carpathian Mountains is one of the last routes open for Western military gear to enter the Ukraine, and it is slated for “decapitation.” [N O T E: From whatever causes, I had understood from somebody that this rail tunnel had already been closed down by Russian rocket fire.]The Ukrainian Army’s armor had been virtually destroyed within the first two weeks, with its aircraft following suit within about another week, including arms and munitions factories. Thus, in this Special Military Operation that Russia determined to make one of maneuver warfare, the Ukraine had lost within the first two weeks of the conflict because it had been denied mobility.
Russia had intended to partition the Ukraine from the very beginning. Although Russian military doctrine specifies continually re-introducing negotiations even while fighting is going on, it had so little expectation of any meaningful discussion in the negotiation held in Turkey that the negotiator it sent was in no wise experienced or skilled in foreign policy or military affairs, but rather domestic cultural areas. And sure enough, the Ukraine’s demands were preposterous and adamant.
Russia went in with inferior forces, and seldom faced areas of the front where the Ukraine did not have a 3:1 numerical advantage, the classic ratio for successful attacks. Neither the Ukrainian Army or its NATO trainers for eight years understood in the least the centrality of artillery in Russian military doctrine. Thus, the Ukrainians were completely unprepared for the onslaught of fire aimed to completely destroy their warfighting capability.
Notwithstanding Russian capabilities, it will be seeking to surround and starve out Odessa rather than attacking this beautiful city that is culturally important to Russians (and also peopled with many Russian-speaking ethnic Russians).
Martyanov believes that it is likely that, should the Poles bide their time and tread carefully, they shall probably wind up with Lviv. This hinges upon Russia feeling confident that such a move will not represent a threat to Russia, and especially that Poland will not progress beyond the historic borders of Galicia. Doing so would stimulate a swift and determined repulse. [It was not clear what he thought of Hungary’s and Romania’s parallel territorial aspirations.] President Putin is a “sharp lawyer,” and is intensely legalistic. When he says that Russia will never occupy Ukraine, one may be pretty sure he means any part of the Ukraine that is not folded into the Russian Federation.
The large Turkish drones, so recently lauded in use against Armenia, proved completely ineffective in the face of Russian anti-aircraft defense systems. Martyanov was not clear on whether he thought that the very small drones that offer detailed local situation imaging were proving of any use, much less being effective. Rather, he pointed to the success that Russia’s Pantsir systems had against a swarm of small drones attacking the airbase in Syria as an example of the futility of relying on drones in the modern warfare with Russia.
The Ukraine lost ~40,000 men in the first month of the conflict. [I was glad to get this figure from a qualified observer, as the number “80,000 to 100,000” had been bandied about by various and sundry who never seemed to be able to say where they got those numbers. Meanwhile, clearly qualified observers contradicted those numbers, but without saying how many casualties the Ukraine actually suffered.] Martyanov mused that NATO would be highly unlikely to be able to endure the loss of 40,000 men in the first month of a conflict, say, erupting over Poland. Russia, Martyanov observes, could do so. Sobering. And then what about a U.S. carrier battle group becoming hors de combat? War, he says, is a democratic affair; the enemy has a say.
This proxy war is only one step away from [global?] hot war, but it is that one step away.
In the West, only those select few inside the Pentagon really know the score, but their views and warnings do not seem to be getting through to the politicians, say, in the U.S. Congress and Administration.
Martyanov: Netcentric Warfare
Netcentric Warfare has been practiced by Russia since the 1960s. This is a mode of operation in which sophisticated interconnected units share real-time data. The more individual actors–nodes–within the unit or operation, the more sophisticated the observations and reactive capability. Thus, the Russians have used the SU-57 from the very beginning of the Special Military Operation, and they usually sortie in a flight of four. But the Russian T-90M tanks are also wired to serve as nodes, and not only in communication with other T-90M tanks, but also with aircraft.
With 200 being killed in action and perhaps 500 being wounded seriously enough to be out of commission every day, such losses amount to two battalions every month, an unsustainable rate of loss.
Technophilic Ukrainian leadership continues to wangle for more and more wonder weapons, but such aid will make no difference.
This Special Military Operation in the Ukraine is the first application of Netcentric Warfare in a large combined-arms combat.
Gonzalo Lira
How to capture Odessa
(NOTE: No link, so if you want to wade through any of the vids I am summarizing, go to the author’s site. You’ll see that in nearly every case the titles are easy to pin down.)
Nearly every SitRep map of the Ukraine shows a “crescent” of red-shaded territory arcing from between Kyiv and the border, growing a bit thicker as it gets down between Kharkiv and the border, then turning east and south down toward Luhansk and Donetsk, although with a thickened area beginning to encircle Ukrainian forces at the twinned cities of Severodonetsk-Lisichansk. From Mariupol the arc begins to turn westward again and goes through Kershon.
Since a land bridge all the way into the Donbas and Kershon has been firmly and securely locked-in–to include heavy rail capacity–Russia can now move enormous volumes of men and arms all the way to the western extreme of Kershon and beyond. If it were to hit Nikolaiev–north of Kershon–very hard and then swing west, it would be on a path to intersect Transnistria somewhat north of Odessa. Once connected to the Russian peacekeeping force in Transnistria, the Russian Army would have encircled Odessa by land. Odessa’s naval capability appears spent, and its indiscriminate mining of its own harbor waters means that it is totally cut off, except for the corridor that Russia has been clearing of mines so that the Ukraine could send its stranded cereal grains out onto international markets by sea. (The Ukrainian government has pitched a fit over this, as it is not acceptable, for whatever reason. Likewise Russia’s guarantee of safe-passage for overland transport through the Belarusian rail corridors.)
Then, consistent with Russian doctrine and clear current practice, all the Russian Army must do is sit tight and wait until privation induces Odessa to surrender.
Kremlinology must become Washingtonology
Those of us who are not military and who are watching things from the sidelines must join Lira and become students of what Washington is doing as much as what it is saying.
Case in point, John R. Allen, retired Marine Corps General, had been a fellow at the Brookings Institute, becoming its head in 2017. This organization is Neocon Central.
Federal prosecutors recently seized his laptop computer–a strange move–more than hinting at the movement of the mysterious faction in Washington that wants to shut down the whole Ukraine thing. Is this Obama? A trivial incident, perhaps, but surely indicative.