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[Previous entry: "Oil for Food; who's in charge?"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "SFX"] 24 April 2003: "Weekly World GRUs redux (reduxed to tears, maybe)"
Last week, Colby Cosh linked to an article by Daniel Forbes in the Progressive Review, titled "Did Russians use blog to aid Iraqis?" This refers, of course, to the putative GRU reports posted on Iraqwar.ru, by an author or group of authors operating under the pseudonym "Ramzaj." It offered detailed predictions about coalition troop movements many hours or even days in advance. It also quoted "intercepted" U.S. radio traffic, toted casualties on both sides and—with what perhaps its raison d'être, the rest conceivably nothing but necessary ballast—provided strategic advice to the Iraqi military.In my estimation, the assessment "nothing but necessary ballast" is, if anything, too kind. A reading of the first four instalments or so leads to me conclude that the predictions were made based on the assumption that the Coalition armed forces would adhere to the classic US "fire and maneuver" doctrine; this assumption, in retrospect, proved incorrect as it emerged in short order, to the informed observer, that Coalition forces were operating on a doctrine of "maneuver warfare." A word of clarification: there are a great many distinct means of using the term "maneuver" in military science. The Soviet Colonel F.D. Sverdlov, in his study "Tactical Maneuver," put forth the conventional definition of the term "maneuver" as follows: Maneuver [...] is organised movement of troops (forces) during combat operations to a new axis (line) and region for the purpose of taking an advantageous position relative to the enemy in order to deliver a decisive strike.On the basis of this definition, infantry and cavalry/armour are frequently referred to as "maneuver" units; they are capable of manoeuvring and closing with the enemy. It is also this definition which is fundamental to the American doctrine of "fire and maneuver": in this doctrine, the "fire" element engages and suppresses the enemy from a distance, with the primary objective of pinning the enemy in place and suppressing his ability to fire in turn; meanwhile, the "maneuver" element closes with the enemy with object of destroying him in close combat. This can take many forms. At the level of a 1980s-era US infantry platoon, the platoon commander might assign one of his three rifle squads and his two (general purpose) machineguns as a the "fire" element; these conduct suppressive (covering) fire on the enemy position, while the other two squads, designated the "maneuver" element, close with the enemy (ideally by a route which will bring them on the enemy's flank) in order to engage him with small arms, grenades and even bayonets at short range. In the 1991 Gulf War, Operation Desert Saber conducted a similar action on a much larger scale: US Marine units engaged the Iraqi forces in southern Kuwait (preventing their withdrawal and redeployment) while strike aircraft pinned down the Republican Guard divisions further north (thus, the Marines and air forces collectively formed the "fire" element); meanwhile, US Army VII Corps drove north across the Saudi-Iraqi border to the west of Kuwait, swung east and fell upon the pinned-down Republican Guard, chewing up and spitting out three RGFC divisions in as many days. The ultimate objective of any "fire and maneuver" operation, however, is the destruction of the opposing force by combat action, in the standard interpretation of Clausewitz. "Maneuver warfare" is a different matter almost entirely, as I discussed in this earlier entry a week into the war. The putative GRU reports, however, displayed a fundamental lack of understanding of this doctrine, continuing to evaluate news by the standards of "fire and maneuver" doctrine at best, and Russian armed forces (the folks who brought you overwhelming victory in Chechnya) doctrine at worst, as evinced by the following line from the report of 26-Mar-2003: The coalition has finally stopped pointlessly moving around in convoys, as was characteristic of the first three days of the ground war.Well, that was the same lack of understanding displayed by the Red Army in the summer of 1941, so evidently plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose. Since "Ramzaj" was the alias of Richard Sorge, the Soviet agent in Japan who relayed information of the impending German invasion to Stalin, the nom de plume appears particularly badly chosen. From Forbes' article: Matthew Baker, chief analyst for the Austin-based, commercial intelligence firm, Stratfor.com, said his contacts in Moscow believe Iraqwar.ru received input from probably three retired "ex-GRU-types" who retain contacts within the agency. He added, "The language, phrasing and sentence structure indicate it's GRU material written by ex-GRU people."Since I've never read any document that I knew to be of GRU origin, I can't comment on the accuracy of the style; however, this would make little difference either way. In previous jobs, I've had occasion to read military intelligence reports from various NATO sources, and though I have never been in military intelligence myself, I could do a fair job of impersonating the style used. It would be more convincing if the reports resembled actual intelligence reports on matters of substance rather than procedure (™ Hans Blix), and in this they are sorely lacking. A common element included in any western intelligence report is some indication of how reliable the source of the reported information is judged to be; to the best of my recollection, NATO indicators of reliability are along the lines of "A" (information conclusively verified by a member of the unit or service disseminating the report) to "F" (equivalent to "a bloke in the pub told me"), with "X" indicating reliability completely unknown. This kind of indicator is conspicuously absent from the putative GRU material. Another factor which does not aid the credibility of the reports are frequent factual errors; for example, from the report dated 24-Mar-2003: Around 2300hrs (MSK, GMT +3) March 23 a British platoon was ambushed by Iraqi Special Forces unit near Basra. Following a powerful initial artillery barrage the Iraqis engaged the British in close combat and destroyed several armored vehicles. After the Iraqis withdrew the British commander reported up to 8 killed, two missing and more than 30 wounded British soldiers. Thus over the 30% of the unit's troops have been disabled in the attack.Most platoons—British ones included—number around 40 men, so if the unit involved were a platoon, it would have something like 100% casualties, not 30%; evidently, what Ramzaj means is a company. It is possible that this discrepancy is due to a translation error on Venik's part; not knowing your рота from your взвод is kind of embarrassing when you're running a military interest site, приятелъ. But that Venik made a translation error is not a given, in light of this excerpt from the report of 22-Mar-2003: Update:The Royal Navy does not operate a single Sea Knight, it operates Sea Kings (I caught a ride on an RN Sea King once, back in 1994). I acknowledge I'm being an anorak, but this is not a trivial mistake; it's the mark of a rank amateur who isn't paying attention to helicopter types. Moreover, it should be noted that Venik's translations of Ramzaj's reports were later posted by Iraqwar.ru without any modifications; you'd think Ramzaj would bother to check on that stuff and correct errors, no? Actually, you'd think Mr "Aeronautics.ru" Venik would have caught that one. Evidently not. In the report of 25-Mar-2003, Ramzaj claims the downed AH-64D the Iraqis captured was from the 11th Avn Regt; I've already pointed out why it wasn't. (And I might point out that that second Apache was from the 1-227th Avn—i.e. not the 11th—as well.) From Forbes' article: Overall, though, according to a March 28 analysis by the on-line Russian newspaper, Gazeta.ru, on most days Ramzaj provided concrete information that was verified up to two or three days later by the Pentagon or mainstream media.If you throw enough darts at a dartboard, you'll probably hit the bull's eye once in a while; it's being able to hit the bull's eye consistently that counts, and as far as I can make out, that consistency is absent from Ramzaj's material. By 28-Mar-2003, Ramzaj had made mor than his share of mistakes, some of them, as I have illustrated, quite amateurish. (I might add that I put little stock in one Russian site giving a handjob to another Russian site; to compare, Out of Bounds Magazine calls CounterPunch "America's Best Political Newsletter" but I get the impression the two are owned and/or operated by the same people, which tells you how objective that assessment is.) If one looks over Ramzaj's reports before 31-Mar-2003 and adds up the claimed numbers of Coalition personnel KIA from enemy action alone, the death toll is something in the order of 160-170. This exceeds the offical death toll as of 23-Apr-2003 (157), of which about half were a result of enemy action (the balance being made up of accidents and blue-on-blue). Evidently, Ramzaj realised he was overdoing it, because on 31-Mar-2003, he (quietly) revised the death toll downward to "at least" 100 US personnel KIA, and 35 British. The British death toll as of 23-Apr-2003 was 31 (the most recent death in that number occurring on 22-Apr). In the report of 28-Mar-2003, Ramzaj draws up three "strategic lessons," of which Venik remarks: Lessons of the war in Iraq are discussed here with a focus on a possible similar war between Russia and the USWith this, Ramzaj provides the spade with which to dig his own grave as a credible intel type. If his purpose is to establish "lessons learnt" for the purpose of dealing with an opposing US force, his flaw is that he is consistently too optimistic. The Coalition is constantly failing at this, suffering setbacks in that, nothing is going according to plan, CentCom is on the verge of panic, the equipment doesn't work as advertised and sand brings everything to a halt (a particularly incredible claim, since US forces have had over 12 years of experience messing about in the Arabian desert by now, and it's not like there's no sand in Texas or Nevada; meanwhile, the British have been in the Middle East for decades), hell, it's a miracle they made it to Kuwait without half the transport ships sinking en route! Clearly, Desert Saber (three "élite" Republican Guard divisions chewed up and spat out) was just a fluke. Military intelligence is supposed to err on the side of caution in making predictions, and this Ramzaj singularly fails to do. Instead, his reports should be taken for what they are: propaganda (and bad propaganda at that, because much of it is demonstrably false) intended to undermine the morale of the war's supporters, and boost the morale of anyone who wanted to see the Americans get a black eye. Most of the time, his assessment of Coalition performance were made as if he expected them to behave like Russian forces (god forbid any NATO general were ever that incompetent), but the strength of the reports was that they were—at the time—unverifiable. Ramzaj got one thing right and that was his timing in calling it quits and disappearing; he did so the day before the fall of Baghdad, presumably in the hope that the notoriously short attention span of the media would allow him to sink into oblivion before it became evident that (unlike Sorge) he'd mostly been peddling bullshit for three weeks. |
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