Russian Strategic Decision Making: Objectives for Reconstitution and Military Modernization

TOPIC SPONSOR: EUCOM - Russia Strategic Initiative
This area focuses on understanding Russian political and military leadership thought on future force structure and how it informs the defense economy’s role in military modernization. How is Russia approaching modernization, and what investments and capabilities are prioritized? Where is Russia making tradeoffs? What are potential gaps between Russian intentions and the actual infrastructure capacity to realize established goals? How will the Russian military reconstitute itself in the future? What future threats does it pose?

• Child, Justin, "Rebuilding Russia's Military: Trying to Spin Straw into Gold," ACSC paper (Russia Research Task Force), 2024, 21 pgs.
  • Child assesses that Russia’s approach to reconstituting its military involves abandoning the "New Look" reforms, specifically shifting away from tactically fragile Battalion Tactical Groups (BTGs) back to larger, robust, and traditional division-based structures. To fill this newly expanded force structure of 1.5 million personnel, Russian leadership is prioritizing the recruitment of a heavily contracted force and Private Military Companies (PMCs) by offering massive salaries and bonuses. However, Child highlights a massive gap between Russia's force intentions and its actual economic capacity; military spending has surged to over 37% of the federal budget, a trajectory that projected budgets for 2025 and 2026 indicate is fiscally unsustainable. The tradeoffs of this rapid, expensive personnel expansion are already manifesting in widespread payment delays to soldiers, exacerbating trust issues within the ranks. Ultimately, Child concludes that Russia's attempt to build a modern force mid-conflict will inflict long-term institutional damage, resulting in an undermanned, undermotivated, and ineffective future military rather than the robust threat its leadership envisions.
• Nesselhuf, Maj. F. Jon, "Up to Kalibr: Why Failure in Ukraine Will Not Change the Russian Aerospace Defense Force," ACSC paper (Russia Research Task Force), 2024, 20 pgs. 
  • ​​​​​​​Nesselhuf examines the future of the Russian Aerospace Defense Force (RADF), arguing that failures in Ukraine will not prompt a shift toward a Western-style offensive air force, but rather cause Russian military leadership to double down on prewar defensive strategies and assumptions. In terms of modernization and investments, Russia is prioritizing standoff weapons—such as Khinzal and Zircon hypersonic missiles—and ground-based air defenses to protect its strategic nuclear retaliatory capabilities, while drastically increasing its reliance on Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Nesselhuf notes that the RADF is making a deliberate tradeoff, using cheap, attritable UAVs and standoff munitions as a technological band-aid to mask profound, systemic gaps in joint command and control (C2) and intelligence, which Russian leadership appears unwilling or unable to fix. To reconstitute, Russia will increasingly merge its production lines with foreign partners, relying on China for electronics to bypass sanctions and Iran for drones. Consequently, the future threat the RADF poses to NATO is not a sophisticated force capable of seizing air superiority, but rather an adversary that relies on its surface-to-air missile umbrella while launching overwhelming barrages of slow cruise missiles and inaccurate standoff munitions at static targets.