Think of modern warfare and images of soldiers, tanks and missiles are likely to come to mind. But arguably more important than any of them is something they all trust: the humble truck. Armies need trucks to transport their soldiers to the front lines, to supply these tanks with projectiles and deliver these missiles. In short, any army that neglects its trucks does so at its own risk.
However, this appears to be exactly the problem the Russian military is facing during its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, according to experts analyzing battlefield footage as its forces withdraw from areas near Kiev to focus on the Donbass.
Photographs of damaged Russian trucks, they say, show telltale signs of Moscow’s logistical difficulties and suggest its efforts are being hampered by its reliance on conscripts, widespread corruption and use of civilian vehicles — not to mention the enormous distances involved in resupplying its forces. , or Ukraine’s own highly motivated and tactically adept resistance.
“Everything an army needs to do its thing comes from a truck,” says Trent Telenko, a former quality assurance auditor for the U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency, who is among those reviewing the footage for of clues about how the war is going. going.
“The weapon is not the tank, it is the projectile that the tank fires. This projectile is transported by a truck”, emphasizes Telenko. Food, fuel, medical supplies, and even the soldiers themselves—their presence is all based on logistical supply lines heavily reliant on trucks, he says. And he has reason to believe there is a problem with those supply lines.
Canary in the coal mine
Telenko describes a recent photo of tire damage on a multi-million mobile missile truck, a Pantsir S1, as the canary in the coal mine for Russia’s logistical efforts.
With such an expensive piece of equipment, he expected its maintenance to be top notch. However, his tires were falling apart just weeks after the war — what Telenko calls “failure mode”.
If trucks are not moved frequently, the rubber in the tires becomes brittle and the tire walls are vulnerable to cracking and tearing. Telenko says the problem is common when tires are used with low inflation to cope with the kind of muddy conditions Russian forces are facing in the Ukrainian spring.
For Telenko, who for more than a decade has specialized in maintenance issues on the US military truck fleet, the Pantsir S1’s condition is a telltale mistake.
“If you’re not doing preventative maintenance for something this important, it’s very clear that the entire truck fleet has been treated similarly,” he says.
Telenko’s theory echoes American General Omar Bradley’s famous quote from World War II that “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” And he is not the first to detect a lack of professionalism in Russia’s military, which includes hundreds of thousands of recruits.
In a notorious incident early in the war, a 64km convoy of Russian tanks, armored vehicles and towed artillery came to a halt 30km outside Kiev, bogged down according to Britain’s Defense Ministry not only by Ukrainian resistance but also for “mechanical breakdowns”.
Last month, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told CNN’s Don Lemon that Russia had made “mistakes” and “struggled with logistics”, while on Saturday a top US defense official said that the Russians had not yet resolved “their logistical and support problems” and were unable to reinforce their forces in eastern Ukraine “with great speed”.
Another ‘bad sign’
Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, sees another “bad sign” for Russian truck logistics: the use of civilian trucks to replace military personnel lost in battle.
“Civilian trucks are not made for the military grade. They’re not made to carry the loads, they’re not made to carry the specific equipment,” and in many cases they can’t even operate off-road, says O’Brien.
The rigors of war are already trying enough for the toughest military-grade truck, let alone a civilian.
“A single mile in peacetime, if you drive in wartime is like 10 to 20 miles because you’re pushing the truck so hard with huge loads,” says O’Brien.
Switching between the two presents a maintenance issue as replacement parts may not be compatible. And, as O’Brien points out, “You don’t want to have to buy a new truck every time an old one breaks down.”
Compounding the problem, according to Alex Vershinin, a former US Army officer who served four times in Iraq and Afghanistan, when vehicles break down, Russia has limited resources to recover them.
Russian army battalion tactical groups — those at the forefront of its advances in Ukraine — typically have only one light and one heavy recovery vehicle, even in units with dozens of vehicles, Vershinin wrote last month for the Institute of War. Modern of the US Military Academy.
This means that combat vehicles sometimes need to be diverted for towing tasks and sometimes broken down “vehicles need to be towed over a hundred miles,” Vershinin wrote.
O’Brien suggests that Russia has neglected its trucks largely because they aren’t flashy enough for a military man interested in showing off its cutting-edge weapons systems.
In recent years, Putin has bragged about Russia’s hypersonic missiles like the Zircon and Kinzhal, stealth fighters like the Su-57 and its modern fleet of 11 ballistic missile submarines.
“Often, military dictators are good at flashy weapons, they buy fancy aircraft and tanks, but they don’t really buy the less flashy stuff,” says O’Brien.
Recruitment and corruption
At the root of Russia’s logistical problems, experts say, are two things that plague its military: recruitment and corruption.
About 25% of Russia’s millions of soldiers are conscripts, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies—although many experts believe that figure could be misleading, suspecting that some of the non-conscript troops are coerced or tricked into enlisting.
Russian recruits tend to serve one-year terms, occupy the lower echelons and fill many of the positions in the logistics chain, including vehicle maintenance.
“You can’t learn anything in a year about maintaining military systems,” says Telenko.
Recruits also have little motivation, as they know their time on the job is very limited, he says.
A top US defense official said Wednesday that Washington is seeing morale problems among Russia’s recruits, who make up “nearly half” of its forces in Ukraine.
“We have evidence, even recent evidence, that they were disillusioned with this war, they weren’t properly informed, they weren’t properly trained, they weren’t ready, not just physically, but they weren’t mentally prepared for what they were about to do. do,” said the US official.
In contrast, in the United States, maintenance of military vehicles is handled by a corps of volunteer non-commissioned officers, professional sergeants, and corporals who remain for long enlistments and are motivated by salary increases and promotions.
“You want to have people who are as good at handling the logistics as you are at all the other branches,” says O’Brien of the University of St Andrews. He adds, in reference to Russia’s apparent struggles: “Were they in a condition for a logistical war or did they just not take it seriously?”
Then there is the corruption that experts say has dogged the Russian military for years.
Matthew Stephenson, a professor at Harvard Law School and editor-in-chief of the Global Anti-corruption Blog, wrote in March that corruption has had a particularly corrosive effect on the maintenance and supply logistics of the Russian military.
“All these issues that anti-corruption experts and national security experts have been stressing for years seem to be manifesting in the current Russian invasion,” he wrote.
“Corruption — in the form of embezzlement or bribery — can also lead to substandard equipment purchases, for example, handing over the equipment or maintenance contract to a less qualified supplier who is more willing to pay kickbacks. in charge of allocating the maintenance or procurement budget may simply report the total spent of the budgeted amount on high-quality products or services, but then buy low-quality replacements and pocket the difference.
Telenko’s view is that some of the effects are now being seen on the battlefield. He says the money that should have been used for maintenance is “probably lining the pockets of the officers in charge of the recruits who would be servicing the trucks.”
A truck too far away?
There are other more subtle signs of Russian struggles that can easily go unnoticed by anyone who doesn’t have a logistical mind, experts say.
For example, says Alex Lord, Europe and Eurasia analyst at strategic analysis firm Sibylline in London, the Russian military has historically relied on its large manpower reserves to handle logistics rather than mechanized systems using wooden decking and forklifts.
Telenko gives the example of loading artillery shells onto a truck. A forklift can lift a pallet of two dozen cartridges at once, while manually lifting individual cartridges on a truck would be much more time and labor consuming.
That makes Russian logistics about 30% less efficient than major Western militaries, says Jason Crump, CEO of Sibylline and a 20-year veteran of the British military.
“That means more trucks are needed to do a given task at the same time, hence more fuel use and wear and tear,” says Crump.
It also means that Russian trucks spend more time idle while loading and unloading, according to Lord.
“This provides opportunities for Ukrainian forces to attack them — as we’ve seen Ukrainian commanders exploit several times during the current campaign,” he says.
All these problems only compound the problems facing Moscow in what is already an uphill struggle for its forces given the distances involved.
The trucks can usually operate up to 145 kilometers from their supply depot, Telenko points out.
But Ukraine is roughly the size of Texas, nearly 1,287 kilometers wide and 563 kilometers long.
This means that Russia would need to open several supply depots inside Ukraine for its troops to advance further into Ukraine.
With Moscow already retreating under fierce Ukrainian resistance, that seems like a tall order. Russia is believed to have already lost a significant number of trucks.
Building more to replace them could take at least six months, Teleenko estimates, when more losses would be likely.
“I don’t see how the Russians can maintain their current positions, let alone make any offensive moves with their current fleet of trucks,” he says.
“Trucks are the backbone of any modern mechanized military force, and if you don’t have them, you walk.”
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
