Western observers tend to assume that, for the foreseeable future, only the United States will have the capability to revolutionize military technology and doctrine. And why not, given the evidence of the Gulf war and the collapse of the Soviet Union? But the Soviet military declared, back in the early 1980s that a “military-technical revolution” (MTR) was afoot. Today, the Russians argue that precision-guided, non-nuclear, deep-strike weapons, and the systems used to integrate them, are revolutionizing all aspects of military art and force structure-and elevating combat capabilities by a million-fold. Russia’s first official military doctrine, approved by President Boris Yeltsin and the Security Council in November 1993, clearly reflects the ongoing civil-military consensus on the nature and requirements of the MIR. The document directs that research and development (R&D) efforts focus above all on the development of the new deep-strike weapons, information weapons (advanced C31 systems), and electronic warfare (EW) assets.

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