Historical experience convincingly testifies that for the successful activity of command personnel in training, educating subordinates and controlling troops in a combat situation, it is necessary to merge military science and military art. But is it always possible to connect them in practice?
After the war, the political leadership of the country and, above all, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Armed Forces, Joseph Stalin, recognized: “The best, the most important thing that we have achieved in the Great Patriotic War is our army, our cadres. In this war we got a modern army and this is more important than many other acquisitions."
Pre-war complacency
Indeed, our state defeated the strongest opponents in the west and east, liberated the occupied territories and many states of Europe and Asia, returned Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, and the country's international prestige increased sharply. This has not happened in the history of the Fatherland. However, Stalin emphasized the most important thing: the most important thing is the modern army that has passed through the crucible of battles and the military cadres hardened in them. Victory was achieved by the fusion of the efforts of the entire Soviet people, front and rear. But to be or not to be for the Fatherland was decided on the battlefields, where the main role was played by soldiers and, above all, officers.
By the end of World War II, our army was such a harmonious organism that no one in Europe could resist it. In this regard, one of the deepest questions arises: how did the 1941 army, which suffered severe setbacks and retreated to Moscow, differ from the 1945 army, which confidently and brilliantly ended the war?
Soldiers and officers in 1941 were formally even better (in terms of age, physical characteristics, general military literacy and education), the quality of weapons changed, but insignificantly, there was no particular breakdown of the organizational structure, the military command system, except in the Air Force and during the organization of the Headquarters VGK. The potential of the Red Army, its combat effectiveness at the beginning of the war was higher than the combat readiness to repel enemy aggression. The miscalculations of the political leadership and the high military command led to the fact that by the time of the German attack, the troops were not in full combat readiness, their operational deployment was not completed, the divisions of the first echelon for the most part did not occupy the intended defense lines. Therefore, they found themselves in a difficult situation, they could not fully realize their potential. Already at the beginning of the campaign, the bulk of the cadre army was lost, and it had to be rebuilt in a hurry. All the more significant is the qualitative leap in combat effectiveness during the course of the war.
How was the army of victors born? Fundamental, qualitative changes have occurred primarily in society itself and the Armed Forces. The war shook up all sections of the population, military and civilians, forced to look at the fate of the country and the defense of the Fatherland with different eyes.
The tests forced everyone - from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to the soldier - to get rid of peacetime complacency, to mobilize to the limit, to hone managerial and combat skills. In battle, formalism and mistakes were not forgiven, the situation severely punished for any omissions in reconnaissance, fire defeat, and supplying troops. The war pushed aside the contrived, non-vital, all the articles of partocrats and officials like Mehlis. In particular, it was clearly revealed that to a certain extent both control and oversight from above are needed, but there can be no effective management without trust in people.
Continuous and intense hostilities enriched combat experience, tempered military cadres, made them more persistent, wise and confident in their strength, forced them to master the secrets of the art of war, still incomprehensible in 1941. At the beginning of the war, there was no commander who, in theory, did not know about the need to concentrate the main efforts on decisive directions, the importance of conducting continuous reconnaissance, and organizing a reliable fire defeat of the enemy.
But it took a lot of sacrifice, effort and time until most of the commanders mastered these canons. With all its mercilessness, the war showed that there is a huge distance between knowledge of theory and practical mastery of the art of war. Suffice it to recall that the deep essence of the organization of strategic defense was not understood at the very top of the staff, not only in 1941, but also in 1942. And only in 1943, in preparation for the Battle of Kursk, they managed to master it to the end. There were plenty of other similar problems that had to be comprehended during the war. It is so difficult to reveal in practice the mysteries of the art of war.
Courage and selfless labor of the people under the slogan “Everything for the front! Everything for the victory! reinforced the army not only with more and more advanced weapons, material resources, but also with special spiritual strength. And help under Lend-Lease was beneficial, especially the appearance of hundreds of thousands of cross-country vehicles, which made our artillery and troops more maneuverable.
In peacetime, a three-four-day exercise is considered a great event and, as a rule, gives a lot for training and combat coordination of formations and units. And here - four years of continuous training in combat conditions. Commanders, staffs and troops did more than just practice. Before each operation, they trained many times, recreating the appropriate enemy defenses on terrain similar to the one where they were to act.
During the war, everything was debugged and perfected. For example, those who were at the exercises could not help but notice how much fuss there is in order to move the command or forward command post to a new place. In the second half of the war, the divisional commander, sometimes without saying a word, showed the chief of the operational squad the place where the command post should be. And without any special instructions, the operator, scout, signalman, and sapper who had been appointed for this in advance knew which car and where to go, what to take with them and how to prepare everything. Such coordination was in all matters and in all links - from the Supreme Command Headquarters to the subdivision. All actions, functional duties of each warrior were worked out to automatism. This ensured a high level of organization, mutual understanding and coherence of management.
Of course, in peacetime it is impossible to constantly conduct combat training with such tension. But internal mobilization, responsibility for the fulfillment of military duty should permeate a military man in any position.
Admiral Makarov constantly repeated to his subordinates: "Remember the war," but once he got there, in the very first real clash with the Japanese, he destroyed himself and part of the fleet. What is needed, it turns out, is knowledge (military science) and the ability to put this knowledge into practice (military art).
Without receiving combat practice for a long time, any army gradually "sours", its mechanisms begin to rust. Germany in the second half of the 30s constantly "rolled" its army in various military actions and campaigns. Before the attack on the USSR, the Wehrmacht participated in hostilities for two years. One of the latent motives of the Soviet-Finnish war was also the desire to test the army in action. Many armed conflicts unleashed by the United States were intended to provide command and control bodies and troops with combat practice, to test new models of weapons and military equipment.
Weak link
In order for the army to be in readiness even in peacetime, it is necessary to conduct exercises and trainings not only with formations and units, but also with command and control bodies of the strategic and operational level. Before the war, it was believed that the commander of a company or battalion should systematically train in command and control with subunits, but at the strategic level this is not necessary, as a result, it was he who turned out to be the least prepared for solving the assigned tasks.
This conclusion is supported by the latest scientific research. For example, target-oriented planning, like the systemic approach in general, proceeds from the fact that the whole is greater than the sum of its constituent parts. An integral system has properties that do not follow directly from the properties of its parts, but can be identified by analyzing their totality, internal connections and the results of the interaction of parts with each other. This, in fact, is the difference between a complex approach, which allows considering only a simple sum of elements, and a systemic one. Thus, with the target-oriented method of planning military organizational development, we operate with the combat potential of formations and units. But depending on the rationality of the organizational structure and control system, and above all at the highest echelon, the total combat potential of the Armed Forces may be less (as in 1941), and much more than the simple sum of the combat potentials of formations and units that make up the formations and the Armed Forces as a whole. (as in 1945).
In light of this, it is all the more important, and in peacetime, to treat each occupation and exercise with extreme responsibility, to bring them as close as possible to combat conditions. In the postwar years, especially under the Minister of Defense, Marshal Zhukov, there was a very strict attitude towards the preparation and conduct of exercises. After each, according to its results, an order of the minister was issued. Officers who did not cope with their tasks were often removed from office or penalized. Then they still remembered how hard it was to pay in battle for the slightest omissions, and it was considered a great sin not to stop them. This is the main meaning of the systematic alarms and exercises that have been carried out recently by order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu.
Two episodes narrated by Ivan Konev are characteristic. Before the war, commanding the troops of the North Caucasian Military District, he conducted a command post exercise with the 19th Army. At this time he was called to the government telephone, and for his late arrival he received a serious suggestion. A similar incident happened after the war, but Moscow's reaction was quite different. The Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces Konev then led the command post with the Transcaucasian Military District. At that moment, the head of the Ministry of Defense called. The duty officer reported that Marshal Konev was in training. The Minister of Defense said: "Well, do not take Comrade Konev away from this important matter, let him call me when he has the opportunity."
This is how severe trials taught and changed people, including their attitude to combat training. In this regard, one has to think: is another war really needed so that leaders at all levels again understand the role and importance of officer cadres in the life of the state and that the main purpose of the army, military people in general, is continuous preparation for the performance of combat missions. If this is not the case, the army loses its meaning. It is no coincidence that it is generally accepted that a war for a career officer is an exam that will not know when it will take place, but one has to prepare for it all his life.
Of course, deadly battles with the enemy improved the combat training not only of our troops, but also of the enemy, whose combat effectiveness had significantly decreased by the end of the war. The opposing sides adopted the experience of others. And in this process, such factors as the just goals of the war, the conquest of strategic initiative and air supremacy, and the overall advantage of Soviet military science and military art played a decisive role. For example, our army has developed a more perfect system of fire destruction in the form of an artillery and air offensive. The German divisions had about one and a half times as many guns. But the presence of a powerful reserve of artillery of the Supreme Command and its maneuver to the decisive sectors of the front led to the fact that in our country up to 55-60 percent of the artillery constantly participated in active hostilities, while in the German troops only about 40 percent.
The anti-tank and air defense system, which was born in the battle near Moscow, has already been brought to perfection near Kursk. The divisions that had suffered heavy losses, the German command usually disbanded and created new ones, which made it difficult to put them together. We often retained and fought divisions of three to five thousand men. Therefore, there were more corresponding formations and associations than the Germans. But while maintaining the backbone of the experienced officer corps in the divisional (regimental), and in the second half of the war and in the battalion level, it was easier to replenish these divisions, to include replenishment in the ranks.
Such organizational and operational-tactical techniques, which augmented the army's combat power, made our military art more effective.
The Soviet command in the Great Patriotic War attached great importance to the timely generalization and transmission of combat experience to the troops. The headquarters of the Supreme Command, the General Staff, the Main Political Directorate, the People's Commissariat of the Navy, the command and staffs of the services of the Armed Forces and combat arms, formations and formations were not only bodies of practical leadership, but also the main centers of military-theoretical thought. Operations management is unthinkable without creative work in the preparation of informed decisions, the development of charters, instructions and orders that summarize everything that is advanced. During the war, the General Staff created a Directorate for the Use of War Experience, and in the headquarters of the fronts and armies - departments and divisions, respectively. The rich combat experience of the Soviet army was reflected in the developed and constantly updated regulations, manuals and instructions. For example, in 1944, the Field and Combat Regulations of the Infantry, "Guidelines for Forcing Rivers", "Guidelines for Troop Operations in the Mountains", "Guidelines for Breaking Positional Defense", etc. were developed and revised. In total, for 1943-1944, revised and developed again 30 charters, manuals and instructions related to the conduct of the database and the training of troops.
Attention is drawn to the concreteness and objectivity of military scientific research, strict subordination to their interests in the successful conduct of armed struggle on the fronts. At the same time, the German army, despite the significant discrepancy between the pre-war manuals and combat experience, especially after the attack on the USSR, did not rework any of them, although it fought for six years. According to the captured trophy documents, the testimony of captured officers, it was established that the analysis and generalization of combat experience ended with the publication of separate memos and directives. Many fascist generals in their memoirs call one of the reasons for the defeat that they fought in the east according to the same patterns as in the west.
Thus, the war once again confirmed that a well-developed theory in itself does little if it is not mastered by cadres. In addition, a developed operational-strategic thinking, organizational and volitional qualities are required, without which it is impossible to demonstrate a high level of military art.
Simonov check
But all that has been said does not fully answer the question: how did the phenomenon of an all-crushing victorious army appear by the end of the war? It is worth thinking about this thoroughly, especially when all sorts of reorganizations and reforms are being undertaken. The main lesson is that outwardly effective transformations, if they touch only the surface of military life and do not affect the internal springs of the functioning of the army organism, do not change the essence of the existing system, and do little to improve the quality of combat capability and combat readiness of the Armed Forces.
During the war, great importance was attached to the training of a combined-arms commander capable of combining the efforts of all branches of the armed forces in his own hands. Of course, nowadays, it is no longer an infantry soldier that is trained in combined-arms schools - cadets master tanks, artillery, and sapper business, but the problem, for example, of smooth interaction with aviation in a combined-arms battle, remains not fully resolved even today. And the development of firm practical skills in command and control of troops (forces) by officers lags behind what is required by the current situation.
There are other problems as well. The issues of mastering the military heritage of outstanding commanders, generalization and study of combat experience by officers do not lose their significance. Including there is still an endless amount of work in the study of the experience of the Afghan and Chechen wars, hostilities in Syria, and other local conflicts of the post-war period. How to study, describe the experience? Do not get carried away with praises, critically analyze operations. Deeds will speak for themselves. Keep the sycophants away from this work. The last wish was most difficult to take root in military history work and not only in Soviet times. Lying and falsifying the history of the war, discrediting the Great Victory have become commonplace in the liberal press and on television. This is not surprising: the task has been set - to humiliate the dignity of Russia, including its history, and these people regularly work out their grants. But the press, which considers itself to be a patriotic cohort, does not always take a principled position.
In recent years, many books have appeared about the war. Formally, pluralism is seemingly unlimited. But anti-Russian writings are published and distributed in huge print runs, and for truthful, honest books, the possibilities are extremely limited.
Any historical events or personalities must be studied in all their contradictory complexity by the standards of 1941 and 1945. As Konstantin Simonov wrote in Winter of the forty-first year:
Not to denigrate someone
And in order to taste to the bottom, Winter forty-first year
It is given to us by the right measure.
Perhaps, and now it is useful, Without letting go of the memory, By that measure, straight and iron, Check someone out all of a sudden.
The experience of the Great Patriotic War, local wars, in which the older generation of soldiers participated, must be studied and mastered purely critically, creatively, taking into account modern conditions, objectively revealing the mistakes of the past. Without this, it is impossible to learn the proper lessons necessary for the army today and tomorrow.
In general, the demand for new ideas, achievements of military science and their implementation in practical activities is one of the main lessons from the past and the most acute problem of our time. Our military press is called upon to play an important role in this matter even today. After the Great Patriotic War, many military leaders and historians lamented that we had incorrectly foreseen its initial period. But in 1940, based on the experience of the outbreak of the Second World War, G. Isserson wrote the book "New Forms of Struggle", where he convincingly showed that this period would not be the same as in 1914. There have been other similar studies. However, these ideas were not noticed or accepted.
How to prevent this from happening again? In our time, it is especially important for leaders not only to be closer to science, but also to be at the head of scientific research, to be more accessible to communication with people, military scientists, and not to rush to reject new ideas. At one time, the program of military reform of Mikhail Frunze was discussed by the entire Red Army. And in our time, a broader intellectual front is needed. Only on such a solid, vital basis can a future-oriented military ideology and doctrine be created, which should not only be developed and implemented from above, but also be perceived by all personnel and consciously implemented as their vital cause.
In peacetime, in order to develop the necessary qualities in officers, it is necessary in all classes, exercises, in the process of combat and operational training to create conditions when it is necessary to make decisions in a complex, contradictory situation.
After the war, a front-line command-staff exercise was held in the Far East. After General Vasily Margelov reported on the decision to land an airborne assault on one of the islands, he was asked the question: how long will it take to re-land in another area? General Margelov was silent for a long time and then answered with a sigh: “In 1941, we already landed one airborne commander in the Vyazma area, it is still going …” There were no more questions. The complexity of the task ahead should be fully understood by both the subordinate and the senior boss.
Chernyakhovsky school
Speaking about the methods of work of the command and staff, I would like to draw your attention to such unnecessary formalism as lengthy reports on assessing the situation and proposals, hearing decisions and instructions on interaction and support of operations. As a rule, they contain a lot of general theory, but little that is relevant to a specific case.
So, in the methodological development of one of the academies for the moral and psychological support of the battle with a castle for working with personnel, two hours before the battle, he reports the following proposals to the regiment commander:, the desire to defend the interests of the Russian people and defeat the aggressor … creating conditions for maintaining positive emotional states … for the regimental artillery group - updating the readiness of personnel to effectively support the advancing troops … "etc. Now imagine that you are a regiment commander and you are facing by putting it into battle, it is proposed to "optimize" and "update" the readiness of personnel. How should you accept and implement all this? Or, say, what's the point when the chief of communications sits and writes a draft of instructions that the chief of staff should give him. They say: "This is how it should be."
Unfortunately, in some of our statutory documents, the main attention is not given to recommendations as to how the commander and staff should work rationally in organizing the battle, but to the presentation of the structure and approximate content of the relevant documents. Thus, we are not preparing a commander or chief of a branch of the armed forces - the organizer of the battle, but, at best, a staff officer who knows how to stamp documents. Not only during the Great Patriotic War, but also in Afghanistan or Chechnya, there was no such thing that a group of generals, officers would go to the front line and give orders for hours in front of the enemy - this is simply impossible.
With such formal-bureaucratic methods of work of the command and staff, when the command and control activity and the actions of the troops are separated, the command process is emasculated, deadened, and ultimately the goal is not achieved.
Therefore, modern officers should take a closer look at how Georgy Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Ivan Chernyakhovsky, Pavel Batov, Nikolai Krylov acted in a combat situation. That is, you should not give up the experience of the Great Patriotic War, in a number of issues you need to understand it deeper, and then move on.
For example, one of the strongest sides of the commander Chernyakhovsky was his efficiency, concreteness and ability to carefully prepare the operation, organize interaction, all types of operational, logistic, technical support, to achieve assimilation and sequence of tasks by commanders and personnel. After the decision was made, the tasks were brought to subordinates, he completely concentrated on this work.
The entire activity of the officers was so subordinated to the implementation of the concept of operations, organically merged with the subtlest features of the situation, and the methods of organizing combat operations were so specific and substantive that there was no place for formalism, abstract conversations and empty theorizing in this entire creative process. Only what was needed for the upcoming battle and operation was done.
Commanders with front-line experience especially clearly understood that the main conditions that were decisive for a successful breakthrough of defense were thorough reconnaissance of the enemy's defense system and firepower, precise guidance of artillery and aviation to identified targets. From the analysis of combat practice, it is obvious that if these two tasks - reconnaissance and fire defeat - were carried out accurately and reliably, then even with a not very organized attack, successful advance of troops was achieved. This, of course, is not about any underestimation of the need for effective action by infantry, tanks and other types of troops. Without this, it is impossible to make full use of the results of the enemy's fire engagement. But it is also true that no slender and beautiful attack will make it possible to overcome the enemy's resistance if his fire resources are not suppressed. This is important in any war, and especially in local conflicts and anti-terrorist operations.
Approach for the ages
This is not about imposing the experience of the last war on the army. Everyone understands that the content of military training should be oriented towards the future achievements of military art. But the approach to the solution of operational and tactical tasks, the wide creativity and methods of organization that were manifested at the same time, the thoroughness and laboriousness of working out with subordinates of all preparatory measures, the ability to train the troops exactly what may be required of them in a combat situation, and much another, defining the whole spirit of military art, in which there are, if not eternal, then very long-lived principles and provisions.
The experience of any war cannot become completely obsolete, if, of course, one considers it not as an object of copying and blind imitation, but as a clot of military wisdom, where everything positive and negative that was, and the laws of development that follow from this, are integrated. In history, more than once, after a large or even local conflict, they tried to present the matter in such a way that nothing remained of the old military art. But the next army, giving rise to new methods of warfare, retained many of the old ones. At least so far there has not yet been such a strife that would have crossed out everything that had been developed earlier in the art of war.
To be used in the future, one needs not just an accomplished experience, not something that lies on the surface, but those deep, sometimes hidden, stable processes and phenomena that have tendencies for further development, sometimes manifesting themselves in new, completely different forms than it was in the previous one. war. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that each subsequent one keeps less and less the elements of the old and more and more gives rise to new methods and schemes. Therefore, a critical, at the same time, creative approach is required to the lessons of any war, including the Afghan, Chechen or operations in Syria, where to a certain extent the experience of the Great Patriotic War was used (especially in the substantive preparation of units for each battle, taking into account the upcoming task), was many new methods of warfare have been developed.
The art of war begins where, on the one hand, deep theoretical knowledge and their creative application help the commander to better see the general connection of the events taking place and to orient himself more confidently in the situation. And where, on the other hand, the commander, without being constrained by a general theoretical scheme, seeks to delve deeper into the essence of the real situation, evaluate its advantageous and disadvantageous features and, based on this, find original solutions and moves that most lead to the solution of the assigned combat mission.
The computer is not a commander
The maximum degree of conformity of decisions and actions of commanders, commanders and troops to specific conditions of the situation makes itself felt throughout history with such a stable pattern, since this is precisely the main essence of military art, which determines the most significant and stable ties, the ratio of objective and subjective factors, internal driving forces and main reasons for victories and defeats. This is the basic law of the art of war. His biggest enemies are stereotypes and schematics. We began to forget this truth after the war. But this understanding must be restored.
In the magazine "Military Thought" (No. 9, 2017) V. Makhonin, one of the authors, writes that the terms "military art" and "operational art" are scientifically incorrect. By keeping them in circulation, we supposedly demonstrate scientific backwardness. He suggests speaking "theory of warfare."
The author believes: if it were possible to teach the art of war, then all graduates of higher educational institutions, where there is a corresponding department, would become outstanding commanders. However, we have a few of them, in the world - dozens, although millions are trained in military science. But this is the case in any business. Many people also study mathematics and music, and only a few become Einstein or Tchaikovsky. This means that we must not abandon the term "art of war", but together think about how best to master this most complicated matter.
The Great Patriotic War and other wars are the richest treasury of combat experience. Turning to it, each time we find valuable grains of the new, which give rise to deep thoughts and lead to conclusions of great theoretical and practical significance.
In the future, when operations and hostilities will be distinguished by an increased scale, the participation in them of various types of armed forces and combat arms, equipped with sophisticated equipment, high dynamism and maneuverability in the absence of continuous fronts, remote defeat, in conditions of sharp and rapid changes in the situation, fierce struggle for capturing and holding the initiative and strong electronic countermeasures, command and control of troops and fleet forces will become much more complicated. At high speeds of missiles, aviation, increased mobility of troops, especially in the system of strategic nuclear forces, air defense, air force, combat management activities will increasingly be directed towards the implementation of pre-developed options for decisions, programming and modeling of upcoming battles. A high level of planning of operations will be the main prerequisite for successful command and control of troops.
As already mentioned, automation and computerization of management require the improvement of not only the organizational structure of management, but the forms and methods of work of the command and staff. In particular, the latest advances in science indicate that the system as a whole can be effective only if it develops not only vertically, but also horizontally. This means, in particular, while observing the principle of one-man command as a whole, the comprehensive expansion of the front of work, the granting of great rights to headquarters, chiefs of combat arms and services. They must resolve many issues independently, coordinating them with the combined arms headquarters and among themselves, since with extremely limited time and the rapid development of events, the commander is no longer able to personally consider and resolve everything, even the most important issues of preparing and conducting an operation, as was the case in the past. … It requires a lot of initiative and independence at all levels. But these qualities need to be developed even in peacetime, they should be included in the general military regulations.
Therefore, it is so important to foresee in advance the changes in the nature of the armed struggle, new requirements and, taking into account precisely these objective factors, and not latent considerations, to determine the organizational structure, rights and tasks of command and control bodies, decisively getting rid of the negative manifestations of the past and making the most of the modern experience accumulated in Russia. USA, China and the armed forces of other countries. Based on the practice of anti-terrorist operations, local conflicts, emerging common threats, it cannot be ruled out that our armies will have to cooperate and jointly solve military tasks in the future. In Syria, for example, it is already making itself felt. This means that a certain compatibility of the countries' military command and control systems is required. That is why it is very important not to oppose and not to absolutize control systems, but to improve them, taking into account mutual experience and prospects for the development of the nature of armed struggle.
Recently, with American technological superiority over obviously weak opponents, the brilliance of military art is dimming, a disinformation campaign has been launched, claiming that traditional Russian, German, French military schools are based on the richest experience of large wars and the ideas of advanced military thinkers for their time (Suvorova, Milyutina, Dragomirov, Brusilov, Frunze, Tukhachevsky, Svechin, Zhukov, Vasilevsky or Scharnhorst, Moltke, Ludendorff, Foch, Keitel, Rundstedt, Manstein, Guderian) have outlived their usefulness. Now, according to the apologists of virtual and asymmetric wars, all this must be buried. Some media claim that the personal qualities of a commander who can demonstrate military skill, courage, fearlessness and courage have now faded into the background, headquarters and computers develop a strategy, technology provides mobility and onslaught … The same USA, dispensing with genius commanders, won a geopolitical battle in Europe, established a de facto protectorate over the Balkans.
However, it will be impossible to do without generals, military specialists, without their thinking activity and skills for a long time to come. In the headquarters, after all, not only computers and their attendants. But overly addicted people want to quickly part with everything that happened in the past. In this regard, there are calls to be guided by the ever-rising American school as the only possible one in the future. Indeed, a lot can be learned from the United States, especially in creating favorable political conditions for waging war, in the field of high technologies. But disregard for the national experience of other armies, the adjustment of all countries to NATO standards, over time, can lead to the degradation of military affairs. Cooperation, including with NATO members, can be beneficial if it goes through the exchange and mutual enrichment of experience, rather than imposing or blindly copying the standards of only one army without taking into account national traditions and peculiarities.
Modern wars are now closely intertwined with non-military means and forms of confrontation. They also exert their influence on the methods of conducting armed struggle. This side of the matter also needs to be taken into account and mastered more deeply.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in one of his speeches stressed that we must secure our country from any form of military-political pressure and potential external aggression. In Syria, for example, it so happened that different states are simultaneously participating in hostilities, pursuing their own goals. All this greatly aggravates the political and military situation. In order to remain at the height of our mission, it is our duty to be ready to fulfill these tasks to ensure the defense security of the Fatherland in a broader sense.
