Research on Russia's Future Warfare Concepts Based on Lessons from the Ukraine War

Key Chapter Title List

1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Strategic Military Concepts
4. Combined Arms Operations
5. Naval Surface Warfare
6. Air Superiority Operations
7. Impact

Document Introduction

This report was commissioned by the U.S. European Command's Russia Strategic Initiative (RSI) and authored by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) in July 2025. It aims to assess the evolution of strategic thinking and conventional warfare concepts among the Russian military elite following three years of high-intensity conflict in the Russia-Ukraine war. The study focuses on how the Russian military understands the changing nature of modern warfare and explores whether its military strategy and operational concepts will undergo fundamental adjustments as a result. The report's conclusions are significant for anticipating Russia's future methods of warfare and their impact on potential adversaries, particularly NATO.

The report's research methodology is primarily based on a systematic analysis of publicly available Russian military literature from 2022 to early 2025. The research team focused on reviewing authoritative military-academic journals such as "Voennaia Mysl" (Military Thought), "Armelskii Sbornik" (Army Collection), and "Morskoi Sbornik" (Naval Collection), as well as expert commentary from major Russian think tanks and central media outlets, referencing official Russian doctrinal documents. The study prioritized influential writings published by senior Russian military commanders and top military scholars, which are recognized within elite circles and familiar to Western experts, to capture mainstream and cutting-edge trends in Russian military thought.

The core finding of the research is that, despite continuous technological innovations and tactical evolution on the battlefield, Russia's strategic and operational-level conceptual framework demonstrates remarkable continuity and has not undergone fundamental change due to significant setbacks in the war. The Russian military elite tends to attribute failures in the war to poor execution of existing correct concepts (such as flawed planning and inadequate implementation) and to large-scale, unexpected Western support for Ukraine, rather than to inherent flaws in the concepts themselves. Their proposed solutions generally point towards reliance on advanced technologies (such as artificial intelligence, next-generation unmanned systems) and increasing force size, rather than fundamentally re-evaluating strategic or operational doctrine. This reflects a mixed mindset of confirmation bias and technological fascination.

This continuity is particularly evident in specific operational domains. Regarding combined arms operations, the Russian military acknowledges that ground forces failed to conduct effective maneuver warfare, attributing this to challenges posed by the transparent battlefield and mass precision fires. However, their proposed solution is not to abandon maneuver warfare but to seek to restore the conditions for conducting it by increasing troop numbers and suppressing enemy ISR and firepower. In the domain of naval surface warfare, despite heavy losses suffered by the Black Sea Fleet and the loss of sea control, Russian naval theorists remain fixated on the core missions of the surface fleet: securing local sea control in littoral areas, defending the homeland from maritime attack, and conducting distant ocean operations. Proposed solutions primarily focus on enhancing ship survivability and developing tactics and technologies to counter unmanned systems. In air superiority operations, Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) theory similarly shows no fundamental shift. Their failures are attributed to execution-level problems, with future visions emphasizing force expansion and technological upgrades, particularly strengthening ground-based air defense and long-range precision strike capabilities. However, there is minimal progress on key concepts such as Suppression/Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD/DEAD), conducting deep operational strikes, and engaging dynamic targets.

The report's final conclusion emphasizes that Russia continues to engage in strategic competition with NATO using a conceptual framework similar to that before 2022. Its theory of victory still relies on shaping favorable conditions during a threat period, deploying rapid, overwhelming force in the initial phase of a war, imposing costs through strategic defense and long-range strikes, and ultimately breaking the adversary's will. This implies that, despite the Russian military's poor battlefield performance and evolving tactics, its force reconstitution over the next decade will likely still revolve around these pre-modern war concepts. Therefore, for any potential adversary, it is of significant practical importance to prepare for the short, decisive initial campaign Russia would attempt to execute, to defend against its long-range precision strikes, and to consider how to counter its emphasis on dense littoral defense and distant ocean operations with stealth platforms.