After being beaten up by Chechen rebels for various reasons in the first Chechen War, the Russian army promptly summed up the experience and lessons: seizing urban high-rise buildings and establishing tactical support points are very important for the liberation of Grozny – the Russian army did not rashly attack, but used intelligence agencies, pro Russian militias and other institutions to conduct detailed reconnaissance of Grozny; Chechen illegal armed forces make full use of numerous high-rise buildings and crisscross blocks to form a deep, three-dimensional and support point position defense system, build solid fortifications in corridors, rooms, basements, attics, roofs, etc., and concealed multi-layer comprehensive firepower.
Their task is to release smoke when the assault group approaches the enemy, cover the attack or use direct or indirect fire to suppress and deter the enemy, making it difficult for the enemy to breathe, supplement and counterattack; In addition, artillery fire should be used to clear away obstacles, open up channels and destroy the enemy’s exposed fire points for the offensive forces; The main tasks of the reserve team: strengthen / replace the assault group when the enemy strongly counterattacks, or seize the victory to expand the results, so as to create conditions for the next action; The command organ of the Russian army requires that the offensive forces must act continuously, coordinately and quickly, seize the initiative and dominate the battlefield at a speed faster than the enemy’s reaction speed.
The assault group was equipped with submachine guns, automatic rifles, grenades, daggers, engineer shovels, flamethrowers, rocket launchers and other weapons.
In view of the complex battlefield environment and strict defense against the enemy, the Russian army invested a lot of resources before the attack, combining personnel reconnaissance and technical reconnaissance: determine the distribution of important buildings and their status and role in urban defense deployment (so as to determine the attack scale and support forces); Find out the location of the enemy’s open and dark fire points in the buildings on both sides of the street in the main attack direction and the fire distribution in the adjacent buildings (this is the key to determine the attack formation and specific tactics); The Russian military intelligence agency also tried its best to obtain the plan or design drawing of important buildings to understand the internal structure, the material and thickness of walls and floors, and the location of access channels, underground facilities and obstacles; According to the information obtained, Russian military institutions and intelligence departments have carefully studied the information in Grozny and other large Chechen cities and made full pre war preparations: determine the attack time, direction, mode and formation; Reasonably organize the offensive forces and clarify the specific tasks of their subordinate, allocated and supporting forces in different operational stages; Strengthen command, control, communication, intelligence and logistics support; Combat mobilization and development of measures to protect non military targets.
In view of this, the Russian Army decided to organize highly integrated small assault detachments mainly based on battalions and companies, and separately use artillery, armor, army aviation and intelligence and information support detachments to strengthen their allocation to the front line, carry out firepower assault in time and provide rapid and direct support to ground assault forces.
In the area where the Russian combat unit is easy to maneuver, Chechen rebels set up a large number of explosive / engineering obstacles against tanks and infantry.
The support group and cover group are equipped with tanks, infantry vehicles, rocket launchers, anti tank missiles, flamethrowers and sniper rifles.
Carry out destructive strikes in unexpected ways at unexpected times and places.
In order to strengthen wartime defense, they also demolished some low buildings around them and opened up an open area that can be blocked and suppressed by fire.
The main tasks of the assault detachment are: clearing the key targets on the way forward, destroying the enemy in the building layer by layer and controlling the whole building, indicating the targets for supporting fire and guiding the attack of follow-up forces in the process of attack; In the assault detachment, the Russian army divided into multiple assault groups, support groups, cover groups and reserves in the unit of “squad and platoon”.
Its main task was to attack the buildings quickly and decisively, and strive to eliminate the enemy in the corridor, so that it was too late to enter the high-rise floor to establish a defense line Tissue resistance; At the same time, we will thoroughly search the whole building and eliminate the enemy as soon as possible.
This requires the concentration of artillery, infantry, armored forces, engineers, special forces, aviation and other forces as well as other communication, intelligence, command, control, logistics and other combat support and service support forces in the attack, so as to form the absolute advantage of lion fighting rabbit..
The number of troops and weapons required for attack depends on the size of the target, the strength of the enemy’s defensive combat effectiveness, and the setting of enemy firepower and obstacles; The Russian army believes that: pull out an isolated fire point; 3-4 people can destroy a permanent fire point or comprehensive fire point, and 8-12 people (a standard infantry squad) are enough; It takes 40-60 people to attack a platoon level stronghold in high-rise buildings: because there are few available gaps in the densely populated blocks with high-rise buildings, the mobility and deployment of offensive forces and weapons will be limited to a certain extent, and the rapid assault role of armored forces and motorized infantry is difficult to play.