The Russian military’s multi-domain operations: How far down the line towards effective integration?

This proposed article, based on qualitative analysis and utilising original Russian sources, will examine Russian military developments across the domains of warfare. It will have a particular focus on the degree to which activities in these domains may be said to be ‘integrated’. Multi-domain warfare has become a vitally important aspect of military thinking both within NATO and in Russia. And, as can be seen in the war in Ukraine, both Ukrainian and Russian forces have demonstrated significant operational and tactical adaptability across multiple domains and shown a desire to create synergies of effect across these domains. This article examines both the evolution and the potential future development of Russia’s military strategic and operational approaches to what is seen in Russia to be the ‘domains’ (сферы) of warfare and to the whole idea of multi-domain operations (многосферные операции). Under discussion here will be the ‘traditional’ domains as seen from the NATO perspective – land, air, maritime, cyber and space – along with, in Russian thinking, the electromagnetic spectrum and the ‘cognitive domain’ (kогнитивна сфера).