Measuring Russian Success in 2024
And How Do We Induce Failure?
Assessment during war is critical. The challenge has grown far beyond the simple metrics of combat. As current conflicts expand to military operations other than war…the tasks of operational and strategic assessment may change and expand in kind. From Assessing War (2015)
This is the first of two parts that explores how we might measure Russian success in Ukraine this year, and how we might use those measures to induce Russian failure.
That Russian forces are on the march again in Ukraine is hard to dispute. Ever since the culmination of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in late 2023, and the slow downs in western military aid, the Russians appear to have sensed both tactical and strategic opportunity.
Thus, since late 2023, the Russians have been undertaking a series of small-scale ground offensives across eastern Ukraine as well as in southern Ukraine. At the same time, they have – since New Year’s Day – stepped up their strategic strike campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure and doubled down on their diplomatic and strategic influence activities (including blaming Ukraine for the recent terrorist attack against a concert in Moscow).
The Russian offensive on the ground, in the air and in the infosphere all have strategic and political importance. Just as the Ukrainian counteroffensive was tactically, strategically and politically crucial, so too is the 2024 Russian campaign in Ukraine.
Putin’s words demonstrate that Russia is committed to the destruction of Ukraine, as does the actions of his government in mobilising both industry and people. But what might Russian success in 2024 look like?
One of the weaknesses in the speculation about the Ukrainian offensives last year was that there was no definition of victory. As Shashank Joshi wrote at the time: “I see everyone is already arguing over whether we are too pessimistic or optimistic about the Ukrainian counter-offensive, without anyone spelling out what precisely would constitute success or failure.”
A similar situation pertains now with Russia. While there is much discussion and commentary on military assistance to Ukraine, and the US assistance package before Congress, we must also be able to explicitly spell out exactly what a successful Russian Ukraine campaign could look like to inform Ukrainian and NATO strategy that is designed and continuously adapted to induce Russian failure.
I have written here previously about how in military operations, measuring success is most often associated with achieving missions. Missions are vital components of military operations. Missions is how senior leaders provide aiming marks to inform subordinate planning. They also explicitly describe tasks and purpose, which provide direction to commanders and provide a foundation for mission command. Missions also underpin integrated planning, with the nesting of objectives at different levels to achieve unity of purpose and inform prioritisation.
But assessing mission achievement in Russian’s 2024 campaigns is insufficient to assess the success or otherwise of Russia’s current, and likely future, offensives this year. As was the case with the 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensives, the achievement of Russian tactical and operational missions will also have important strategic and political impacts. Therefore, more strategic measures of success (and their associated measures of failure) are required.
Measuring Success: The Method
Defining strategic success is heavily influenced by the scale and timeframes at which military and other operations are conducted. Because of this, measures of success must be designed around the different levels of military activities that are applicable (tactical, operational, strategic, political) as well as varying timeframes.
It should also be noted that there remains a close relationship between measures of success and failure, and the concept of military effectiveness. In the late 1980s Allan Millett and Williamson Murray conducted perhaps the most detailed study of military effectiveness undertaken. The outcome of their study was a three-volume series of books exploring military effectiveness. The three books employed an analytical framework of political, strategic, operational and tactical effectiveness to explore effectiveness.
As Alan Millet has written, “military effectiveness is the process by which armed forces convert resources into fighting power.” A country will not achieve its political objectives if it can’t win battles or it can’t develop and employ the most modern warfighting concepts, absorb new technologies, train military personnel or employ logistic and industrial support. For Russia in the months ahead, their level of military effectiveness will be significantly determined by its conversion of resources such as in recruiting, training and support, and it’s ability to merge old and new technologies, into relevant, modern fighting power.
Therefore, setting measures of success for the current, and forthcoming, Russian offensives will be an important way in which Ukraine and its partners might assess the potential and actual impacts of Russia’s 2024 campaigns. Importantly, by divining Russia’s likely measures of success, defeat mechanisms can be developed.
The concept of defeat mechanisms is defined in US Army doctrine as “a method through which friendly forces accomplish their missions against enemy opposition…[using] combinations of four defeat mechanisms: destroy, dislocate, disintegrate, and isolate.” Defeat mechanisms was also the topic of an excellent 2021 article by Frank Hoffman. Hoffman notes that:
There is little evidence in history of success that depends solely on one method, especially among major states. Disintegration or systems disruption become feasible when sought as the culminating product of an operational approach that employs and sequences multiple defeat mechanisms, orchestrated over time and space and directed at critical vulnerabilities.
This is an important point. Just as the Russians will need to undertake multiple operations in different domains at different locations and times, so too must any friendly campaign develop multiple sets of integrated defeat mechanisms to induce failure in Russia’s plans for 2024 in Ukraine.
Measuring Failure
A wide array of failure mechanisms for military organisations and military operations are explored in the literature that covers the history of this topic. There is a lot of military failure, from antiquity right up to the current day, that we can learn from and apply in inducing Russian failure.
Cohen and Gooch (Military Misfortunes), Norman Dixon (On the Psychology of Military Incompetence), Shimon Naveh (In Pursuit of Military Excellence), John Hughes-Wilson (Military Intelligence Blunders), Andrew Krepinevich (The Army and Vietnam), Meir Finkel (On Flexibility), Knox and Murray (The Dynamics of Military Revolution 1300–2050), and Alastair Horne (To Lose a Battle: 1940) have all documented military failures and the factors behind such disastrous outcomes.
These all offer useful insights on failure. One of the most interesting is Cohen and Gooch’s Military Misfortunes. They explore the most significant military failures from over a century of modern military conflicts, producing failure matrices which identify the critical pathways to disaster. Cohen and Gooch adopt a systemic approach to their analysis of failure and classify it as either simple or complex. A simple failure results from a single error or shortcoming. Complex failure incorporates more than one form of mistake. Three types of errors can result from simple or complex failures: failure to learn, failure to anticipate, and failure to adapt.
It can thus be fruitful to study the potentially large and (mostly) small failures that could be induced during the execution of Russia’s military activities in 2024. In reviewing the potential elements of the Russian campaign in Ukraine this year, an articulation of what failure looks like could be very useful.
Principles for Measuring Success and Failure
The preceding sections describe why measures for success and failure are important to our assessment of, and interference with, Russia’s 2024 Ukraine operations. Before describing exactly what these might look like, there is a final foundational component that is necessary. This important component is a set of principles for how the measures of success and failure might be developed.
In my April 2023 article exploring measures of success and failure for the (then) coming Ukrainian counteroffensive, I proposed five principles to guide constructing strategic measures of success and failure for military affairs. These are just as relevant to developing measures for success and failure for Russia’s 2024 activities as they were for building measures for last year’s Ukrainian offensives:
Principle 1 – Linkage. The measures must be ‘linked’. Any measures of success and failure must then be linked to goals. The study of complex adaptive systems indicates that no action occurs in total isolation; thus, clear linkages between the different goals and measures are essential. Additionally, the measures must be linked to the measures of other organisations.
Principle 2 – Simplicity. The need for, and use of, measures of success and failure must be widely understood. It would be a mistake to assume that every individual automatically appreciates the rationale for measuring success and failure. Therefore, there must be clear guidance on the rationale for the measurement of success and failure, and a simple explanation of the implementation of these measures.
Principle 3 – Feasibility. The measures must be pragmatic and feasible. If the measures are complicated and not clearly linked to the desired strategic outcomes, they will be used sporadically at best. The measures must be set against quantifiable outcomes and should support clear assessments of whether goals have been met or whether they will be met in the future.
Principle 4 – Scalability. There must be different measures at different scales. For these measures to be widely applicable there must be different measures for the different levels of command. As an examination of historic military failure indicates, maintaining a narrow focus is likely to result in an inability to recognise failure in the levels of war that are not measured, leading to system failure.
Principle 5 – Temporal applicability. There must be different measures for different timeframes. As the examination of failure indicates, an over-focus on short-term gains often leads to systems failure. Thus, the measures must balance short-term results with measurement of long-term outcomes.
The Success and Failure of Russia in 2024
The analysis and commentary on Russia’s actions in Ukraine should be informed by a clear view of what the success and failure of their operations might look like. This article has offered an insight into why measuring the success and failure of Russia’s Ukraine campaign this year is vital.
Now that we have explored the rationale for measures of success and failure, and how to construct them, the second and final part of this article will propose detailed measures of success and failure for Russia in 2024. Hopefully these might be useful in assisting Ukraine, and NATO, to ensure the failure of Russia to achieve its tactical, strategic and political goals in Ukraine this year.