The strikes have involved aircraft never before tested in combat, including the Sukhoi Su-34 strike fighter, which NATO calls the Fullback, and a ship-based cruise missile
fired more than 900 miles from the Caspian Sea, which, according to
some analysts, surpasses the American equivalent in technological
capability.
Russia’s jets have struck in support of Syrian ground troops advancing
from areas under the control of the Syrian government, and might soon
back an Iranian-led offensive that appeared to be forming in the
northern province of Aleppo on Wednesday. That coordination reflects
what American officials described as months of meticulous planning
behind Russia’s first military campaign outside former Soviet borders
since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Watch video
Taken
together, the operations reflect what officials and analysts described
as a little-noticed — and still incomplete — modernization that has been
underway in Russia for several years, despite strains on the country’s
budget. And that, as with Russia’s intervention in neighboring Ukraine,
has raised alarms in the West.
In a report
this month for the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gustav
Gressel argued that Mr. Putin had overseen the most rapid transformation
of the country’s armed forces since the 1930s. “Russia is now a
military power that could overwhelm any of its neighbors, if they were
isolated from Western support,” wrote Mr. Gressel, a former officer of
the Austrian military.
Russia’s
fighter jets are, for now at least, conducting nearly as many strikes
in a typical day against rebel troops opposing the government of
President Bashar al-Assad as the American-led coalition targeting the
Islamic State has been carrying out each month this year.
The operation in Syria
— still relatively limited — has become, in effect, a testing ground
for an increasingly confrontational and defiant Russia under Mr. Putin.
In fact, as Mr. Putin himself suggested on Sunday, the operation could
be intended to send a message to the United States and the West about
the restoration of the country’s military prowess and global reach after
decades of post-Soviet decay.
“It
is one thing for the experts to be aware that Russia supposedly has
these weapons, and another thing for them to see for the first time that
they do really exist, that our defense industry is making them, that
they are of high quality and that we have well-trained people who can
put them to effective use,” Mr. Putin said in an interview broadcast on
state television. “They have seen, too, now that Russia is ready to use
them if this is in the interests of our country and our people.”
Russia’s
swift and largely bloodless takeover of Crimea in 2014 was effectively a
stealth operation, while its involvement in eastern Ukraine, though
substantial, was conducted in secrecy and obfuscated by official denials
of direct Russian involvement. The bombings in Syria, by contrast, are
being conducted openly and are being documented with great fanfare by
the Ministry of Defense in Moscow, which distributes targeting video in
the way the Pentagon did during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.
Map
Frozen Zones: How Russia Maintains Influence in the Post-Cold War Era
Modern Russia has inflamed conflict in former Soviet
republics to create “frozen zones,” allowing it to influence events and
confound its opponents.
That
has also given officials and analysts far greater insight into a
military that for nearly a quarter-century after the collapse of the
Soviet Union was seen as a decaying, insignificant force, one so hobbled
by aging systems and so consumed by corruption that it posed little
real threat beyond its borders.
“We’re
learning more than we have in the last 10 years,” said Micah Zenko, a
senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, noting the use of the
new strike fighters and the new cruise missile, known as the Kalibr.
“As it was described to me, we are going to school on what the Russian
military is capable of today.”
The capabilities on display in Syria — and before that in Ukraine — are the fruits of Russia’s short, victorious war in Georgia in 2008.
Although Russia crushed the American-trained forces of Georgia’s
government, driving them from areas surrounding the breakaway region of
South Ossetia, Russia’s ground and air forces performed poorly.
The Russians lost three fighter jets and a bomber on the first day of the war that August, and seven over all, according to an analysis
conducted after the conflict. Russian ground forces suffered from poor
coordination and communication, as well as episodes of so-called
friendly fire.
In
the war’s aftermath, Mr. Putin, then serving as prime minister, began a
military modernization program that focused not only on high-profile
procurement of new weapons — new aircraft, warships and missiles — but
also on a less-noticed overhaul of training and organization that
included a reduction in the bloated officer corps and the development of
a professional corps of noncommissioned officers.
Russian
military spending bottomed out in the mid-1990s but has risen steadily
under Mr. Putin and, despite the falling price of oil and international
sanctions imposed after the annexation of Crimea, it has surged to its
highest level in a quarter-century, reaching $81 billion, or 4.2 percent
of the country’s gross domestic product, a common measure of military
expenditure.
Graphic: Where Russian and American Weapons Have Been Fired in Syria
The
Russian advancements go beyond new weaponry, reflecting an increase in
professionalism and readiness. Russia set up its main operations at an
air base near Latakia in northwestern Syria in a matter of three weeks,
dispatching more than four dozen combat planes and helicopters, scores
of tanks and armored vehicles, rocket and artillery systems, air
defenses and portable housing for as many as 2,000 troops. It was
Moscow’s largest deployment to the Middle East since the Soviet Union
deployed in Egypt in the 1970s.
“What
continues to impress me is their ability to move a lot of stuff real
far, real fast,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of United States
Army forces in Europe, said in an interview.
Since its air campaign started
on Sept. 30, Russia has quickly ramped up its airstrikes from a handful
each day to nearly 90 on some days, using more than a half-dozen types
of guided and unguided munitions, including fragmentary bombs and bunker
busters for hardened targets, American analysts said.
Russia
is not only bringing some of its most advanced hardware to the fight,
it has also deployed large field kitchens and even dancers and singers
to entertain the troops — all signs that Moscow is settling in for the
long haul, American analysts said.
“They
brought the whole package,” said Jeffrey White, a former Middle East
analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency now at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy. “It showed me they could deploy a
decent-sized expeditionary force.”
For now, Russia’s focus in Syria is mainly an air campaign with some 600
marines on the ground to protect the air base in Latakia. Mr. Putin has
excluded the idea of sending in a larger ground force to assist the
Syrians.
Watch video:
Michael
Kofman, an analyst with the CNA Corporation, a nonprofit research
institute, and a fellow at the Kennan Institute in Washington who
studies the Russian military, said that the operations over Syria showed
that Russia has caught up to the capabilities the United States has
used in combat since the 1990s. That nonetheless represented significant
progress given how far behind the Russians had fallen.
“Conducting
night strikes, with damage assessments by drones, is a tangible leap
for Russia into a mix of 1990s and even current Western combat ability,”
he said.
The
Russian Air Force suffered a series of training accidents over the
spring and summer — losing at least five aircraft in a matter of months —
which Mr. Kofman described as “teething pains” as pilots increased
operating tempo under Mr. Putin’s orders. Even so, Russia’s aviation is
“often painted in the West as some sort of Potemkin village, which is
not the case.”
He
and others said that the biggest surprise so far has been the missile
technology on display. The cruise missiles fired from Russian frigates
and destroyers in the Caspian Sea were first tested only in 2012. With a
range said to reach 900 miles, they had not been used in combat before,
and despite the loss of four cruise missiles that crashed in Iran in
one salvo, they represent a technological leap that could prove
worrisome for military commanders in NATO. He noted that the advances in
missile technologies improved the precision and firepower even of aging
Soviet-era ships or aircraft.
“This is an amazingly capable new weapon,” he added.
Russia’s
state television network boasted on Monday that from the Caspian, they
could reach the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula and the “entire
Mediterranean Sea.” It went on to note that trials of the missiles were
underway aboard two ships in the Black Sea, which is bordered by three
NATO allies: Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania.
The
Moskva, a guided-missile cruiser that is the flagship of Russia’s Black
Sea Fleet, based in the newly annexed Crimea, has also deployed with
other ships off the coast of Syria, providing air defenses for the
aircraft and troops Russia has deployed. Those missiles effectively
protect the skies over Syrian territory under control of the government
from aerial incursions, and all but block the establishment of a no-fly
zone in Syria, as many have called for.
American
officials say Russia has closely coordinated with its allies to plan
its current fight. Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s
paramilitary Quds Force, went to Moscow in late July in an apparent
effort to coordinate on the Russian offensive in Syria, and he is also
spearheading the Iranian effort to assist Iraqi militias. “The broad
outlines were decided months ago,” said Lt. Gen. Richard P. Zahner,
formerly the Army’s top intelligence officer in Europe and in Iraq.
American
officials, while impressed with how quickly Russia dispatched its
combat planes and helicopters to Syria, said air power had been used to
only a fraction of its potential, with indiscriminate fire common and
precision-guided munitions used sparingly. It is clear the Russians are
already harvesting lessons from the campaign to apply to their other
military operations, said David A. Deptula, a retired three-star Air
Force general who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in
Afghanistan and in the gulf war.
“Essentially,” he said, “Russia is using their incursion into Syria as an operational proving ground.”
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