Russia's National Defense Strategy issues

More than 50 thousand military personnel will take part in the Vostok-2022 exercise


More than 50 thousand military personnel will be involved in the strategic command and staff exercises Vostok-2022, which will be held from September 1 to September 7. This was reported in the press service of the Russian Defense Ministry on Monday, August 29.

"In total, more than 50 thousand military personnel, more than 5 thousand units of weapons and military equipment, including 140 aircraft, 60 warships, boats and support vessels will be involved in the Vostok-2022 SKSHU," the statement said.

Among the objectives of the exercise is to improve the skills of commanders and staffs in "managing interspecific and coalition groups of troops (forces) when repelling aggression in the Eastern direction and in the Far Eastern Sea Zone."

In addition, during the exercises, it is planned to increase the level of interaction when solving joint tasks by coalition forces to preserve peace, protect interests and ensure military security in the Eastern region, the ministry added.

On behalf of the Russian Armed Forces, the exercise will involve military command and control bodies and troops of the Eastern Military District, part of the Airborne Forces, long-range and military transport aviation.

The exercise will also involve operational control groups, military contingents and observers from the CSTO, SCO and other partner countries, such as China, Azerbaijan, Algeria, Armenia, Belarus, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Syria and Tajikistan.

Practical training of defensive and offensive actions will take place at seven ranges of the Eastern Military District — "Burduni", "Goryachye Klyuchi", "Knyaz-Volkonsky", "Lagunnoye", "Sergeyevsky", "Telemba", "Uspenovsky", as well as in the waters and coastal zones of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan.

On August 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia invites its allies and partners to participate in command-staff and other military exercises. He pointed out that Russia sees great prospects in the training of foreign military personnel.

Putin also noted that Russia stands for the comprehensive development of military-technical cooperation. This, according to him, is important in the context of the formation of a multipolar world that has developed today.

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The combat regulations of the Russian Armed Forces will be changed. A special commission will work on them, which will soon be created in the Ministry of Defense, sources told Izvestia. The basic documents on the conduct of military operations will be updated taking into account the experience gained during modern wars and military conflicts, including during the special operation in Ukraine. The current version of the documents was adopted in 2017 and included the Syrian experience. According to experts, the new guidelines will define the role of unmanned aircraft, revise the approach to the use of motorized rifle units, the organization of air defense and electronic warfare.
More relevant than ever

The Ministry of Defense plans to create a special commission to amend the combat regulations and instructions for combat work of the branches of the Armed Forces and branches of the Armed Forces, sources in the military department told Izvestia. The amendments will take into account the experience of modern wars and military conflicts.

For the first time, the issue of making changes to the combat regulations was raised at a military conference held in March this year under the leadership of the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Alexander Lapin. It discussed the development of the theory and practice of operational art and tactics, improving the methods of action of formations, military units and Land Forces units.

The conference participants suggested reworking the structure and content of the main combat regulations, taking into account the experience of the special military operation in Ukraine. General Lapin gave instructions to the leadership of military universities on the preparation and design of methodological materials.

"This is a very relevant topic, because these charters have never been revised since the conflict in Syria," military expert Viktor Murakhovsky told Izvestia. — There have been many changes: regarding drones, and regarding the use of artillery, tanks, and other weapons systems. They led to the fact that the role of infantry in combat is changing. And thus the tactics of combined-arms combat are also changing. The very art of combat is changing. New documents should reflect this. As well as the role of not only infantry, but also tanks, artillery, and types of support. UAVs today participate directly in combat, and this must be taken into account.

During the special military operation in Ukraine, combat operations are fundamentally different from those conducted by the Soviet and Russian armies in recent decades. Russian troops are confronted by a large regular army with all kinds of conventional weapons, and the line of contact stretches for about a thousand kilometers.

The new charters will take into account how to organize the coherence of units, their interaction, suggested military expert Alexey Leonkov.

— It can also include tactics that have been forgotten, but now look in a new way. You can recall the tactics of conducting urban battles, but already in modern times, for example, using quadrocopters. Most likely, they will mention the reconnaissance and fire contour, innovations in communication nodes, automated control systems, methods of combating drones, organization of air defense, electronic warfare, " the expert believes.

On February 21 of this year, President Vladimir Putin, addressing the Federal Assembly, said that steps to strengthen the Russian army and navy should be based on real combat experience gained during a special military operation in Ukraine. "This experience is extremely important for us, one can say more, it is absolutely priceless," the head of state stressed at the time.

Long history

The combat charter is a fundamental document that should guide commanders at all levels in the organization of combat operations and in the management of troops in the zone of military conflicts. They contain regulations for all occasions.

It describes in detail how the firing positions are equipped, what is the distance between them, what area of defense the battalion occupies, the order of actions of the first and second echelon units in the offensive, the duties of the shooter, machine gunner, tank commander. In short, every soldier, from the division commander to the private, must act in accordance with this document. Separate sections also tell you how to operate in non-standard conditions — in the mountains, in the woods, in the city.

The battle charter is divided into three parts. The first one describes the actions of the regiment, brigade, and division. The organization, staffing structure and tactics of these formations are classified information, so this part is closed. The second part contains instructions for company and battalion commanders. The third section describes the actions of a platoon, squad, or tank.

Until the mid-2000s, the Russian army was guided by combat regulations developed in Soviet times. They were written during the Cold War, so they contain information about how troops should act when multi-million armies collide in the European theater of operations.

Even in the course of the Afghan war, where partisan actions were conducted against the Soviet Army, many provisions of the main combat document were not applicable. The troops on the ground worked out new tactics through trial and error. This concerned the movement of columns to avoid ambushes, the organization of permanent deployment points, and the planning of combat operations. Later, the situation was repeated during the Chechen campaigns. Only after that, new combat regulations were developed, which took into account the experience of local military conflicts.

The next version of the document was prepared during the military reforms of the beginning of the last decade, it was approved in 2014. In those years, the troops were transferred from the divisional structure to the brigade structure, which was reflected in the documents, but this practice did not justify itself.

The current version of the combat charter was approved in 2017. It includes the experience gained during the fighting in Syria. In particular, a lot of attention is paid to fighting in the city, storming premises, the work of sniper pairs and sniper groups.

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Tsar bombs were huge and would be impractical now days a pattern of four or five 1MT bombs around an area target like a large city would probably have more effect than one very very powerful bomb in the middle.

The extra energy of the Tsar bomb is concentrated in the middle so the vapourised area in the middle just gets heated to a higher temperature for a longer period... when you double the power of the bomb you do not double the area of damage, so even three one MT bombs will do more damage and kill more people if properly spread out than one 10MT bomb despite the difference in power generated being quite massive.

Think of it like an FAB-9000 bomb... 9 tons of explosive is a very powerful bomb, but actually if you drop it on a city it wont destroy the whole city... just level a few city blocks. If instead you took that 9 tons of explosives and broke it down into 100 gramme hand grenade sized bomblets, you could cover an enormous area with each bomblet covering a square metre you could kill people over an enormous area using it that way.

Increasing its size improves its performance against hardened nuclear shelters, but smaller more numerous bombs are more efficient for actually killing the enemy.

A cruise missile dropping 152mm artillery shell sized 2KT nukes weighing about 50kgs each, with a normal HE payload of about 400kgs means a cruise missile could carry about 8 warheads each... scattering them across large cities would be vastly more effective at kill counts than even a Tsar bomb in the middle.

Cities are relatively fixed so you could plot out the location of residential areas and hospitals etc etc and target the city to kill.

You could even get to the level of sophistication where the first cruise missile destroys the buildings built over subway entrances and follow up cruise missiles fly down into the subway to get anyone taking shelter down there.