There is an old saying that Russia is never as strong as it appears to be, and Russia is never as weak as it appears to be. According to the lead story in the October 15 New York Times, “Russian Military Uses Syria as Proving Ground, and West Takes Notice,” the pendulum is swinging from focusing on Russia’s weakness to seeing her again as strong and threatening. Much of the latter is threat inflation, an old Pentagon practice during the Cold War. (After lecturing on military reform many years ago at the Air Force’s Squadron Officers’ School, an Air Force intel captain came up to me and asked, “Does military reform mean we can stop inflating the threat?”)
But it does seem the Russians have learned. The Times story notes that Russian jets in Syria are now conducting as many airstrikes in a day as the U.S. and its allies have been carrying out in a month. Sortie rate is an important measure of an air force’s effectiveness, and ours has long been abysmal, except for the A-10. The newer our equipment, the worse the picture, because each new aircraft we buy requires more maintenance hours per flight hour than the one it replaced.
But the real importance of President Putin’s military reform program lies not in equipment but in ideas. As American military reformers used to say, quoting Col. John Boyd, “For winning wars, people are most important, ideas come second, and hardware is only third.” The Times noted that Russian reforms have included tactics and strategy, not just equipment. And they included the all-important “people” category:
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