>Royal United Services Institute
>for Defence and Security StudiesPreliminary Lessons in Conventional
>Warfighting from Russia’s Invasion
>of Ukraine: February–July 2022
Deception has succeeded against Russian forces at all echelons and across all three service
branches. At the tactical level, the UAF have systematically employed false signals traffic and
decoys of prestige systems to misdirect Russian fires. This has almost always succeeded, leading
to a vast expenditure of munitions against non-existent targets and a corresponding vulnerability
for Russian fires in revealing their positions. Tracking how the Russians were conducting battle
damage assessment and thereby assuring the Russian military that all strikes were successful
repeatedly led to the loss of Russian aircraft and other capabilities because they proceeded
on the assumption that the threat had been eliminated. At the operational level, too, Russian
forces have been predictable in allocating resources against telegraphed movements and failing
to detect or prepare for concealed movements.