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Introduction
Russia's GRU (military intelligence) Spetsnaz, a once ill-favored intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance force that for a generation suffered from weak morale and questionable operations, re-established much of their perceived preeminence thanks to successes in the Ukraine. Among the known capabilities of Spetsnaz are sabotage or disruption of key military facilities, assassination of key leaders, collecting intelligence, attacking strategic military targets, and any other special tasks required to support Russia's conventional forces.1 Much of what we know about Spetsnaz comes from open sources and analysis of past operations since modern doctrine regarding their combat application is largely classified.2 However, it is apparent the Spetsnaz mission has evolved considerably since Russia's 2008 war with Georgia. The world's first glimpse of Russia's new army in action occurred when Russian forces covertly invaded Crimea, Ukraine, in February 2014. In Crimea, the world saw Russian Special Forces Operators (SSO) working side by side with GRU Spetsnaz for the first time, almost indistinguishable from each other operationally. However, while some hail the Crimean campaign as an operation of precision by a renewed Russian military, there were several conditions on the ground that greatly facilitated the success of Spetsnaz, SSO, and conventional follow-on forces. The Russian General Staff now faces the question of how to deploy Spetsnaz and SSO more independently while retaining their intelligence-collection capabilities in a technologydriven combat environment.
Covert Employment
With persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capable of blanketing the world virtually non-stop, there is a greater likelihood that spearheading warfare involving Russian forces will be the simultaneous covert employment of Spetsnaz, SSO, cyber operations, and information operations. The resulting plausible deniability from covert warfare was a useful tool in exerting Russian foreign policy in Ukraine. However, with license plates visible on tactical vehicles, soldiers telling news reporters where in Russia they were stationed, and the use of unique weapons systems, Russia's use of covert warfare in Crimea was poorly executed. Eventually, when Russia realized strong words would be the world's response, they gave up their covert ploy altogether. A 2013 article by General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of Russia's General Staff, alluded to the covert use of force when he noted how most modern warfare has already been fought outside the (conventional) military realm and is facilitated...