Vantage Point North

" Unidentified troops have taken over several government buildings, an harbor and airports across Finland. Finnish army has alerted it’s available conscripts, mobilized the reserve local battalions and sent them to support police and border guard units engaging the hostile forces. The local authorities have began transitioning into a crisis mode. " That's how my March 11, 2017 article "Countering the Hybrid War - The Finnish Way" begun. Police and Army during a local defense exercise It has now been two years since that article. So has the Finnish approach of comprehensive security, combined with conscript based military, evolved during the past two years? From the military perspective the framework laid before has remained the same. The proposed changes in the legislation have mostly been passed and they include: - Comprehensive intelligence laws that cover both military and civilian intelligence - Laws regarding the use of forc...

The Russian media has published several articles about the latest round of live fire drills by the Russian tank forces. The first brief mentions caught my attention as they described a new tank tactic based on the experiences of the Russian expeditionary force in Syria.  T-72B1 at Pogonovo (Photo: © RIA Novosti / Andrey Stanavov) The details about the new tactic were scarce but there were mentions of continuous movement and a steady barrage of main gun fire. On 4th of July, the RIA published an in depth article about the 20th combined Arms Army’s field training of the new tactics (Translated to English by Sputnik ) The “Tank Carousel” is simply a drill in which a tanks of a formation, be it a platoon or a company, move around a set perimeter firing the from vantage points or openings in a berm and then move off to safety while another one moves in to the same spot to fire.  This does allow the unit to maintain sustained 125 mm tank gun fire at a target ...

Latest news is that Russia will expand both of the remaining motorized rifle brigades of the 58 th Combined Arms Army into full strength divisions. This would mean that the army would have three full divisions of mechanized forces with heavy artillery and missile support. At the same time when the brigades are being upgraded, “Other units of the 58 th Army” will be moved from their traditional posts in the Northern Caucasus further into west. T-90S tanks (Photo: Some Russian propaganda outlet) There is no schedule for the transition, but as Chechnya is relatively calm under the iron grip of Kremlins pet attack dog Kadyrov, the already full strength 42 nd Motorized Rifle Division, that was expanded in 2016, could begin its relocation at a moments notice. Not that long ago the Russian armed forces transited largely to a brigade structure, very similar to that of the western armies. Next iteration of this concept were the Battalion Tactical Groups that are agile inde...

Russian military reform: Command and Communications R-149MA1 Anyone who has followed the military and security affairs during the last decade knows that Russia is investing heavily on the modernization of its armed forces. While the flagship equipment projects such as the T-14 Armata main battle tank and the PAK-FA 5th generation fighter have grabbed the headlines, the true revolution has been in the structure of Russian fighting force and the professionalism allowed by the replacement of the conscripts by contract soldiers. Gone are the brigades, the Russian army is now built up from agile battalion tactical groups, aka BTGs. “ A BTG is a motorized rifle or tank battalion of 2–4 companies with attached ATGM, artillery, reconnaissance, engineer, and rear support platoons making a fairly self-sufficient ground combat unit. ” These self-sustaining formations may be grouped together or used to reinforce the heavy mechanized divisions that act as the spearhead of any future of...