Blitzkrieg reconsidered? Assessing the importance of morale and unit cohesion in the 2008 Russia–Georgia war

Abstract

The formal model of modern-system force employment developed in Stephen Biddle (2004) book, Military Power, is a standard text in the defense analysis field but has rarely been applied to analyze battlefield outcomes. The 2008 Five-Day War between Russia and the Republic of Georgia provides a compelling case study for empirical testing. The outcome of the conflict reveals an inconsistency between the theoretical model and the actual results, suggesting that technical and tactical force employment variables alone may not be sufficient to explain battlefield dynamics, and that the effects of psychological shock on unit morale and cohesion may constrain how well a military force can perform even while adhering to modern-system doctrine.

Keywords:

• Russia
• Five-Day War
• morale
• unit cohesion
• modern system
• military strategy
• force employment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For an exception to this, also by the same author, see Biddle (2007). Although it was written prior to the publication of Military Power, Biddle (1996) uses similar analytical arguments.

2. The Scorpion upgrade was unique to the Georgian military, enhancing the fighter’s avionics and navigation system as well as NATO compatibility. For more details, see Gordon and Alan Dawes (2004).

3. From the article: “Listen, has the armor arrived or what?” a supervisor at the South Ossetian border guard headquarters asked a guard at the tunnel with the surname Gassiev, according to a call that Georgia and the cellphone provider said was intercepted at 3:52 am on August 7. “The armor and people,” the guard replied. Asked if they had gone through, he said, “Yes, 20 min ago; when I called you, they had already arrived.”

4. The fratricide case occurred during the evening of 8 August as a volley of Russian man-portable missile fire struck a Russian fighter near the town of Java having mistaken it for a Georgian aircraft. At the time, none of the Russian or South Ossetian forces had been informed that Russian planes were now involved in the conflict, and further confusion came as the Georgians had sent a sortie of four fighters to the same area only a few hours earlier.

5. Unofficial analyses of Russian casualties in the war attribute 48 of 67 killed in action as a result of hostile fire.

6. In this case, preponderance and technology are working against each other at the theater level given the Russians’ numerical advantage and the Georgians’ technological advantage. The case of two non-modern system forces confronting each other, particularly when neither has an overwhelming numerical or technological edge, is the most difficult for the model to predict.

7. See the appendix in Biddle’s Military Power for a detailed explanation of the model and its derivation. For consistency with the original analyses, I have used the equations without modification and kept all parameter values from Table A1, p. 218, save the constants k5 = k6 = 0 since we are focused only on a single offensive sector rather than theaterwide. See also Biddle (2004, p. 289, note 94).

8. Formally, the values for the technology variables are determined by calculating the mean introduction date for each side’s major aircraft and armored vehicles, weighted by the number of each used during the operation. Using the quantities of tanks and aircraft on both sides given in The Tanks of August, I calculated the transformed technology variables via the method in Military Power as 9.59 for the Georgians and 8.18 for the Russians. For preponderance, I am using the same force-to-force ratios as calculated earlier. The model’s predictions remain unchanged regardless of which estimates are used in the equations.

9. Another relevant variable is the theater width, estimated to be 250 km by tracing the border between Georgian and Russia beginning at the Roki Tunnel and ending at the port of Ochamchira on the Black Sea. Although not all of this distance presents a plausible point of attack, it is a reasonable estimate since the Georgians would need to disperse their forces on both fronts to defend against a general Russian invasion.

10. There are a few different ways to estimate this value. The definition of assault velocity in the formal model is the “distance between the jumpoff and objective divided by the elapsed time from the initiation of preparatory actions to planned arrival of the initial troops at the destination” (Biddle 2004, p. 319, note 3). Using this and estimating a single day as the unit of time, the Russians moved from the Roki Tunnel to the northern edge of Tskhinvali on 8 August, a distance of around 60 km. Since one could theoretically argue that this represents unimpeded administrative movement rather than an assault on a defensive position, we can instead use the second Russian counterattack on 11 August as a measure, which covered about 20 km from the assembly area in Tskhinvali to the town of Variani. While the exactly assault velocity cannot be known definitively, even the range of plausible estimates put it far above the maximum values for a predicted breakthrough.

11. Although this value is an assumption and not derived from any information about the defender’s actual positions, it is reasonable in this case since the Georgian forces had no prepared defenses when they encountered the Russians. Since lower values of exposure are associated with a decrease in the likelihood of an offensive breakthrough, the assumption only increases the validity of the test case that the Russians should not have broken through if one assumes that the Georgians’ exposure was less than 50%. Conversely, the model does not predict a Russian breakthrough until the value for Georgian exposure reaches 95%, holding all other values constant.

12. The formal model compares offensive territorial gain with defensive depth to determine whether or not the attacker has achieved a breakthrough. Conceptually, these definitions are equivalent.

13. The higher estimate comes from taking the time that the 2nd Brigade in Senaki was ordered to move to South Ossetia just prior to the outbreak of hostilities and dividing by the distance traveled. The initial order was given at 0000 (midnight), and the brigade arrived and was ready to operate at 1800 the same day. The linear distance between the assembly area and the final position is approximately 150 km, which gives an upper reserve velocity of 200 km per day. Under combat conditions, we can credibly assume that this value would be reduced by as much as a factor of two for a lower bound. However, in the formal model, lower values of reserve velocity are associated with more difficult conditions for an offensive force to achieve a breakthrough, so I have used the higher value of 200 in all calculations to allow for the maximum likelihood of a Russian breakthrough.

14. For example, a non-modern system defense assumes that 50% of the defender’s forward garrison is exposed (Biddle 2004, p. 270, note 89). Reducing this value by only 10% contains the offensive with a ground-gain maximizing Russian assault velocity, all else equal. Similarly, reducing the Georgians’ reserve velocity from the estimated 200 km per day to the non-modern system assumption of 80 also contains the offensive (Biddle 2004, p. 270, note 89).

15. The assumption of uniformity comes from the fact that the defender must spread his forces along all available attack points while the attacker can choose the point of attack in advance. The formal modern-system model then examines the resulting battlefield dynamics once the defender observes the primary assault point and attempts to counter-concentrate his forces to contain the offensive.