Russian Military Strategy and Pre-emptive Attacks
Written in May 2020 as part of an article on Russian A2AD (or what the west perceives as being Russia’s A2AD doctrine).
Should a war be imminent or unavoidable between Russia and a peer adversary, one can be sure Moscow would pre-empt any attack on its territory by attacks of its own. Missiles (ground to ground and air to ground) would be used to degrade or destroy the opponent’s command, control and communication nodes, as well as infrastructure (civilian and military) and troops and hardware concentrations. The Russians know the best way to destroy enemy aviation is to engage them on the ground. Opposition fighter planes would probably be engaged as they deploy to their forward bases.
The Russian General Staff does not see warfare as being predominantly defense-based. It is a proponent of an active defense strategy which involves preventive and pre-emptive attacks aimed at disorganizing and inflicting attrition on the enemy.
Russian Aerospace and Air Defense Integration
As far as air defenses are concerned, the Russians have regrouped into their Aerospace Forces integrated capabilities to deal with everything from low altitude to space-borne threats. For them, this is all one and the same theater. Capabilities involved therefore count (Tactical and strategic) Air Force assets (planes), Electronic Warfare platforms, Cyberwarfare units/capabilities, Land-Based missile units, Air Defense Units (radars, sensors, Early Warning platforms and SAMs) and Anti-Satellite weapon systems. All these systems and units are integrated and layered in depth.
Combination of Defense and Offense
Russia would defend its airspace using a combination of defense and offense. Russian integrated, layered and overlapped Air Defense Systems would act as a sponge, absorbing attacks, keeping the enemy busy, and imposing maximum attrition on its own air force while Russian offensive tools (EW platforms, fighter planes and tactical and strategic bombers, Cyber attack units, and missile units) would get to work on degrading an enemy’s infrastructure, organization, ability to communicate, control, command, and its political will to fight through costs incurred.
-RBM.
