History of Military Units

More than ten years after the demise of the Soviet Union, and in the wake of two wars in Chechnia, the Russian Army is searching for a force structure whose nature and form satisfies the requirements of waging modern warfare against potential strategic foes armed with high technology weaponry and insurgent forces employing traditional unconventional warfare tactics in an era of reduced military budgets. Against the backdrop of needed military reform, this article assesses how and why the modern Russian Army's force structure is likely to evolve, and ponders the likely consequences of that evolution.

The Eastern Africa Standby Force is one of the five planned regional forces of the African Standby Force (ASF). Since February 2004 work has been underway to raise an Eastern Africa brigade to operational status. However, Eastern African states may prefer to solve their security problems in a unilateral military fashion, rather than through the integrated model of the ASF. Resources, as always in Sub-Saharan Africa, are scarce, operational capability appears to be growing only slowly, and significant training and airlift problems are unsolved. As these problems are common to all five brigades, some thoughts are presented in the conclusion to provide a simplified ASF way forward.

In 1982 the Soviet defector ‘Viktor Suvorov’ tantalizingly added an additional type of reserve formation to the Soviet Ground Forces’ three known categories of divisions. These ‘invisible’ divisions were to be established from the Ground Forces’ millions of reservists stiffened by a thin cadre of personnel joining from higher-category parent divisions. But beyond vague estimates in the IISS ‘Military Balance’ during the 1980s, there were very little more data. Now, with the publication of new works in Russian, and associated Russian forum discussions, a preliminary list of such divisions can now be translated into English. Many details are still unclear, but these data give us another window into the Ground Forces’ Cold War order of battle.

Pirmajame viršelyje: Kareivinių kompleksas iš 300 m aukščio. 1928 m. rugpjūčio 5 d. 4-osios oro eskadrilės oro žvalgo Antano Vytauto Plaušinaičio nuotrauka. BRIAI kolekcija Paskutiniajame viršelyje: Artilerijos pabūklas kareivinių kieme. XX a. 4-asis dešimtmetis. Vytauto Gavėno nuotrauka. LCVA Pirmajame ir paskutiniajame priešlapiuose: 1938 m. kareivinių planas. LCVA Kareivinės 1942 m. Klaipėdos plane. BRIAI

Since the publication of ‘The Russian Ground Forces: A Structural Status Examination’, a number of key changes in the Russian Ground Troops’ order of battle have become obvious. They include the identification of a number of units  to be manned by contracted soldiers, data on the combined Russo-Belarus Regional Group of Troops, the withdrawal of the Ground Troops from Georgia, the formation of a peacekeeping brigade in the Volga-Urals Military District, and more data on troops in the Siberian and Far Eastern Military Districts.

Since the peace agreements of 2002–2003 which ended the second war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reconstruction of the army has been an inherently political process, in common with other attempts to carry out security sector reform (SSR). This article briefly sketches out the Congolese army's history, then attempts to fill a gap in the literature on Congolese SSR by detailing what can be found of the actual structure and shape of the present army. The efforts that have been made to reform the army are then examined, followed by a conclusion which examines the major issues and possible ways forward.

"The Reflections of Historical Memory in the Modern Lithuanian Armed Forces: the Names of Military Units" ------
Summary: In the military, patriotism and civil awareness is an integral part of military training and education provided not only through training programs but also through non-formal education, such as celebrations, important events, lectures, meetings with freedom fighters, educational trips and anniversaries of the state and armed forces. The sense of identity with a military unit, community and traditions is very important for strengthening patriotic feelings. Servicemen are united by a common service, uniform, unit name, flag, emblem, slogan, etc. Naming military units after significant figures or historic events contributes to
the historical memory. The extent to which a past epoch is actualized today helps to perform researches and analyses of historical memory. Naturally, its identification and classification is very different due to the subjective attitude of a researcher and the chosen direction. The object of the research is the historical memory in the modern Lithuanian Armed Forces. The aim of the research is to determine the significance of the names of military units in the modern Lithuanian Armed Forces. The objectives of the research are to find out the reasons for giving the names and compare the situation in the period of 1918–1940 and now; to determine the particularities of the traditions’ continuation and formation of the new ones by comparing the specifics of naming military units in Lithuania and other countries. The study uses descriptive, analytical, historical comparative and generalizing methods. Battalions, occasionally companies, and larger units of the Lithuanian Armed Forces are named in honour of the Lithuanian historical figures, whereas the units in the past, including partisan squads, dragoon, hussar and uhlan units were given the names of epic battles. The tradition to respect the history manifested through historically accentuated names of military units and compounds was inherited from the Lithuanian Armed Forces and anti-Soviet resistance fighters of the period of 1918–1940. The names of the heroes who lived in the 13th–15th centuries were most frequently given to the regiments. The heritage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL) of the 16th–18th centuries was represented only by Jonušas Radvila and the names of historical cavalry types (hussars, uhlans and dragoons). Such disproportion was determined by the political circumstances of that time, underestimated significance of the early history of the GDL, not always objective predicament of the late period of the GLD and the period of the Republic of the Two Nations. The names of current military units mostly come from the 13th–15th centuries and the anti-Soviet partisan movement in the period of 1944–1953. Also, considerable attention is paid to the period of 1918–1940 when Lithuania struggled for Independence. The late period of the GDL is reflected rather poorly, whereas the period from the 18th century till the end of the 19th century is barely mentioned in the names of military units. An exclusive decision was made to give the names of the Lithuanian historical regions and tribes to the Lithuanian Navy. Naming after historical figures, great battles and military operations is neither characteristic only of Central and Eastern Europe, nor is it a Soviet tradition. Similar models are used in Poland, Romania and Spain. The tradition preserves the memory of great warriors and fosters patriotism by cherishing the military history of Lithuania. It is an important and most respected tradition of the Lithuanian Armed Forces.

In any consideration of the Georgian Armed Forces, two major considerations should be kept in mind. Firstly, Georgia is practically a ‘failed state’, with many regions only loosely under control of the capital. With a weak central authority, informal militias such as the Mkhedrioni (Horsemen) played a pivotal role in the civil war of the early 1990s, when several regions broke away from the centre.  Second is the role of the former imperial overlord, the Russian Federation, immediately to the north.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, a number of Soviet forces, whose command was assumed by the Russian Federation, remained on Georgian territory. In the early 21st century the remnants of these forces effectively help protect the autonomy of two regions of the country, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, while hindering the central control of another border region, Samtskhe-Javakheti. Russian forces interposed on the Abkhazian and South Ossetian borders are officially described as ‘peacekeeping’ troops, but effectively their role has been to protect the independent aspirations of these breakaway regions. It is unclear yet whether increased U.S. attention to the country, beginning to be manifested through the Georgia Train and Equip Program, will change this situation; what is apparent is that a ‘mini-Cold War’ between Russia and the United States over the country is brewing.

The New National Defense Act of 2008 specifically
tasks the Armed Forces of Liberia to defend the territorial integrity of Liberia against encroachment. Therefore one of the principal apparent tasks for the AFL is some sort of border patrol or surveillance duty. This kind of task would place an
emphasis on operations in small sub-units such as sections
and platoons. Such operations might rely upon and
enhance skills that have already been implanted, rather
than require large-unit manoeuvre skills that may not be fully mastered yet.

This paper examines the U.S. Liberian Security Sector Reform (LSSR) program to rebuild the Armed Forces of Liberia from 2004, and shows how, despite large-scale effort, its failure could have been expected.

This paper will first trace the history of U.S. assistance to the then-Liberian Frontier Force from 1909 and the reasons why U.S. efforts to professionalise the army were often defeated or eroded by the nature of the Liberian state. Leon Trotsky said an army is “a copy of society, and suffers from all its diseases, usually at a higher temperature.” Therefore, it is extremely difficult to build a strong institution, such as an army, in a weak state.

Second, we will examine the reasons why the United States decided again to provide military assistance to Liberia from 2003 – not really in an effort to build an effective and accountable army, as security sector reform orthodoxy might assume, but part of the more limited aim of curbing Liberia’s potential for regional instability. Adherence to any SSR principles was very mixed. Third, a searching investigation of the results of the contractor-provided training in 2010-11 showed that the results were indifferent to negative. In summary, this negative result is apiece with the historical ineffectiveness of the Liberian army and the weaknesses of SSR as a concept.

Improving defence accountability and effectiveness is even more difficult when wars are actively underway. Southern Somalia bears considerable resemblance to previous counterinsurgency theatres in Afghanistan and Iraq, and thus considerations of defence assistance should be actively informed by those campaigns. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) intervention force has been critical to seizing much of the towns and terrain now freed from the Islamist Al-Shabaab insurgents. But after 13 years AMISOM’s power is waning. There are vanishingly few instant and game-changing initiatives donors could take quickly to aid the build-up of Somali military forces either at the federal or regional levels. Yet decentralised Federal Member State governments represent important political forces in southern Somalia, and since 2012 efforts have been made to reinforce them.

We develop a logistics and transportation simulation that can be used to provide insights into potential outcomes of proposed military deployment plans. More specifically, we model the large-scale real-world military Deployment Planning Problem. It involves planning the movement of military units from their home bases to their final destinations using different transportation assets on a multimodal transportation network. We use an intelligent design of experiments approach to evaluate logistics factors with the greatest impact on the overall achievement of a typical real-world military deployment plan.

To what extent can the experience gained since 1945 be pulled together in a unified framework to guide army reconstruction efforts? Surely the mixed record since 1945 might be aided by a coherent set of guidelines? Since 2007 there have been at least two attempts by the British and United States armies to write doctrine for their efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the French Army is also understood to be examining this question. But how effective are these national frameworks, and how universally useful might they be beyond their specific nationally-tailored circumstances?