Russian Conflict AAJ Dec 03

Australian Army Journal orn Volume I, Number orn page

Insights

The Russian Experience of Urban CombatSome Lessons from Central Asia

Flight Sergeant Martin Andrew, RAAF *

Recent confl icts in the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia have demon-strated the diffi culty of dealing with insurgent forces that are well equipped with small arms, especially the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) in urban operations. Th is article seeks to show how the Russian military has dealt with the challenge of urban combat in Chechnya and Dagestan by the use of combined arms tactics, thermobaric weapons and heavier-calibre small arms. Lessons from the Russian experience are useful since, as current operations in Iraq now reveal, Western forces need to devise new tactics and techniques to meet the threat of cheap, portable stand-off weapons in urban areas that can be used to destroy helicopters and vehicles that are unprotected by infantry.

* Th e author wishes to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Mr Les Graw of the Foreign Military Studies Offi ce, Center for Army Lessons Learnt, US Army, in devel-oping the ideas in this article.

page orn Volume I, Number orn Australian Army Journal

Insights orn Flight Sergeant Martin Andrew, RAAF

Urban Warfare in Central Asia: The Role of Weapons Systems

In recent urban confl ict in Central Asia, insurgents have made extensive use of the RPG. Long regarded as the poor mans howitzer and the guerrillas artillery, the RPG is particularly eff ective when used in complex terrain. With a bursting radius of four metres, the RPG kills by blast and shrapnel. 1 In skilled hands, especially in the confi nes of urban terrain, this relatively unsophisticated device excels as a destruc-tive weapons system. In 1992, rebels fi ghting the Russian Army in Tajikistan found that, while they lacked the modern PG-7VR tandem warhead that was necessary to destroy Russian T-72 tanks equipped with reactive armour, they could still destroy Russian armour. Because the Russians were reluctant to deploy suffi cient screening infantry, RPG gunners employed double teaming against Russian T-72 tanks. Th e fi rst gunner would fi re at the tank in order to create a breach in its reactive armour. Th e second and third gunners would then fi re multiple kill shots at the exposed area. Th ese rounds would oft en destroy the tank crews line of vision, ensuring that the crew would be unable to counter the enemy even if the vehicle survived multiple rocket hits. Infl icting such blindness on a tank then allowed the RPG gunners time to reposition and resume their attack until the vehicle was disabled. Another technique employed by Tajik rebels was to fi re a fragmentation round, or a white phosphorus grenade, at the T-72s front deck in order to disable the drivers vision before massed groups of fi ghters employing RPGs fi red on the tank, aiming to disable the rear section of the turret.

Th e assault on Grozny in Chechnya by the Russian 131st Maykop Brigade on New Years Eve 1995 is an instruc-tive example of what can occur if a modern army engages in urban warfare against well-armed insurgents without using proper combined-arms tactics and weapons systems. In Grozny, Russian tanks and armoured vehicles, unsupported by dismounted infantry, became easy prey for Chechen forces employing three- or four-man fi re teams composed of an RPG gunner, a machine-gunner and a sniper.

Th e Chechen hunterkiller teams, like wolf packs searching out an isolated member of a family of deers, frequently attacked a single armoured vehicle simul-taneously from several diff erent directions, peppering it with rockets, grenades and Molotov cocktails. Areas that might be targeted included the crew hatches, the engine transmission compartment, decking and the area behind the turret. 2 Because of the absence of signifi cant numbers of dismounted Russian infantry,

In Grozny, Russian tanks and armoured vehicles, unsupported by dismounted infantry, became easy prey for Chechen forces


The Russian Experience of Urban Combat

the Chechen fi ghters turned the streets of Grozny into death traps for Russian armoured vehicles. 3 By early January 1995, the Maykop Brigade had suff ered extraordinary casualties of 800 dead and wounded. Th e brigade had also lost twenty out of twenty-six tanks, 102 out of 120 BMP infantry fi ghting vehicles and all six of their ZSU-23 self-propelled antitank guns. 4

Russian Combined Arms and Weapons in Chechnya

In late 1999 and early 2000, when the Russians again attacked Grozny, they adopted diff erent tactics and weapons. Th e Russian Army deployed combined arms teams composed of tanks, infantry, engineers and artillery. In particular, the Russians employed specialised troika fi re teams comprising a sniper, a machine-gunner and a soldier equipped with a grenade launcher. 5 Two other soldiers, acting as ammunition carriers or assistant gunners, supplemented these teams. 6 Th e use of Russian fi re teams forced Chechen fi re teams to abandon fi xed positions on upper fl oors of buildings, on balconies and in attics. Th e clearing and screening action of Russian all-arms teams led to greater protection for the armoured forces. Using manoeuvre by fi re against buildings, apartment blocks and strong points, Russian troops were able to counter the supremacy of Chechen urban tactics. Th e Russians also discovered that, in conditions of short-range urban operations, anti-armour rounds lacked impact. As a result they adopted the OG-7V fragmentation round and the TBG-7V thermobaric for use in urban combat.

Ignoring the issue of collateral damage, the Russians employed direct-fi re weapons with incendiary and thermobaric warheads against Chechen positions in Grozny. A thermobaric warhead, more accurately described as a volumetric weapon, uses expanding gases or aerosols. Th ermobarics are essentially slow-burning explosive slurries that compound the damage they cause in three ways. First, they burn very slowly for an explosive, causing much greater dwelling times of their explosive impulses on a target. Second, the burning plasma cloud that is generated by the warhead can penetrate even the smallest cracks of a building or a vehicle, killing the occupants in a blast wave. 7 Th ird, when the slurry is totally consumed, a vacuum bomb is created in the form of a massive back-blast that destroys human beings in the area.

Th e clearing and screening action of Russian all-arms

teams led to greater protection for the armoured forces.



In Chechyna the Russians deployed RPO-A Shmel rocket-powered fl amethrowers with a capsule warhead containing 4 L of liquid that produced a fl ame 4 m wide by 40 m long. Th e RPO-A Shmel was fi rst employed during the SovietAfghan War against Mujaheddin cave complexes, where it earned the ominous nickname, the Devils Tube. 8

Th e 2.1 kg thermobaric warhead of the rocket-powered fl ame has the equivalent power of a 122 mm shell. A new version of the weapon was employed in Tajikistan and Chechnya to knock out rebel bunkers and strong points in buildings. So important was the Shmel to the Russians in their Central Asian urban warfare operations that their current military doctrine states, light structures which interfere with observation and the conduct of fl amethrower or other fi res should be destroyed.

In its operations in Chechnya and Dagestan in 1999 and 2000, the Russian mili-tary also expressed a preference for organic heavy-calibre weapons in combined arms sub-units. As a result of the poor penetrating power of lower-calibre muni-tions, Russian soldiers in Chechnya called for the replacement of the 5.45 mm RPK light machine-gun with the full-power 7.62 mm PK series general-purpose machine-guns.

Th us, the global trend towards equipping forces with smaller and lighter munitions has been found wanting in the urban battles in Chechnya and Dagestan. Russian soldiers have preferred small arms that use larger-calibre ammunition, such as the 7.62 mm AKM assault rifl e, the 7.62 mm SVD sniping rifl e, the GP-25 40 mm under-barrel grenade launcher, the Pecheng machine-gun (a modernised PKM machine-gun), and the Vzlomshchik 12.7 mm heavy-calibre sniper rifl e.

Conclusion

Recent Russian operations in Central Asia demonstrate the danger that cheap and mass-produced technologies such as the RPG pose in urban confl ict. When the Russian military sought to fi ght in a one-dimensional manner with mainly armoured vehicles, they suff ered large casualties at the hands of the Tadzhiks and Chechens. Ultimately, it was the use of combined arms teams in Chechnya, along with superior fi repower, that restored the Russian militarys fortunes. However, the Russian use of indiscriminate fi repower that reduced Grozny to a shattered hulk of a city is not a technique that Western armies should emulate. In this respect,

the global trend towards equipping forces with smaller and lighter munitions has been found

wanting in the urban battles in Chechnya and Dagestan.


The Russian Experience of Urban Combat

Russian methods represented a variant on the American adage used in Vietnam that it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it. Studying the recent campaigns in Central Asia shows how both positive and negative aspects can fl ow from a close analysis of the Russian approach to urban warfare. Th e positive aspect lies in the Russian reintroduction of combined arms teams; the negative aspect lies in the Russian tolerance for a level of collateral damage and civilian casualties that could not be accepted by any Western democracy operating under the law of armed confl ict.

Th e eff ect of stealthy attacks using low-cost weapons is being painfully relearnt by Coalition forces in Iraq and refl ects the need for contemporary forces to possess levels of protected mobility that can ensure dominance in an urban battlespace. Western forces also need to consider the application of combined arms tactics and procedures that will enable them to counter lethal small arms and light anti-armour weapons now used by insurgents. Russias Central Asian confl icts also suggest that there remains a requirement for larger-calibre small arms on the modern battlefi eld. For all of these reasons, Russias recent experience of urban combat remains relevant to future military operations and is worthy of close study by Western armies.

ENDNOTES

1 D. H. R. Archer, Janes Infantry Weapons 1976, Macdonald and Janes, London, 1976, p. 590.

2 O. Vladykin, Russian Tanks Did Not Let Us Down in Chechnya. But Fewer of Th em Could Have Been Lost , Krasnaya Zvezda, 22 February 1995, pp. 1, 3.

3 L. A. Grau, Russian-Manufactured Armored Vehicle Vulnerability in Urban Combat: Th e Chechnya Experience, Red-Star, January 1997, p. 2.

4 L. W. Grau and T. L. Th omas, Russian Lessons Learned From the Battles for Grozny, Foreign Military Studies Offi ce, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2000, p. 3.

5 T. L. Th omas, Grozny 2000: Urban Combat Lessons Learned, Foreign Military Studies Offi ce, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 2000, p. 4.

6 L. A. Grau, Technology and the Second Chechen Campaign: Not All New and Not Th at Much, in A. C. Eldis (ed.), Th e Second Chechen War, Confl ict Studies Research Centre, Camberley, 2000, p. 108.

Ultimately, it was the use of combined arms teams in

Chechnya, along with superior fi repower, that restored the Russian militarys fortunes.



7 L. W. Grau and T. Smith, A Crushing Victory: FuelAir Explosives and Grozny 2000, Foreign Military Studies Offi ce, Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1998, p. 1.

8 L. W. Grau and M.A. Gress (eds), Th e SovietAfghan War: How a Superpower fought and lost: Th e Russian General Staff , University of Kansas Press, Lawrence, KS, 2002, p. 257.

THE AUTHOR

Flight Sergeant Martin Andrew, Royal Australian Air Force, is an external studies student at the Australian Defence Force Academy, where he is writing a dissertation on the opera-tional art of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. His postings include the Australian Joint Warfare Centre and the International Military Liaison Offi ce in Darwin during Operations Warden and Tanager. Flight Sergeant Andrew was a 2002 Affi liate in Research at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University, where he researched the Peoples Liberation Army, terrorism and Central Asia.

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Russian Conflict AAJ Dec 03