Town hall meetings across the Army in recent weeks have been filled with similar rhetoric from leaders: “we will be safe where possible, but we still have to train in order to maintain our readiness.”  Stories from social media and the Army Times have detailed the specifics of this guidance.  Large accountability formations, morning physical training in groups, physical fitness tests, Expert Infantryman Badge testing, barracks cleaning parties, units headed to the field to train, the stories of leaders flaunting CDC guidance are almost unending.  All of this is being done in the name of readiness.  Medical readiness is not simply about ensuring a unit is “green” on MEDPROS slides.  Leaders who blindly strive to meet requirements, without understanding or complying with the intent behind them, are missing the point.  Leaders seem to forget that health, perhaps more so than training, is an essential part of readiness.  While disease is an invisible threat, history shows us that ignoring it or treating it as a tangential factor in decision-making is a costly mistake.

There are countless examples of military commanders making the costly mistake of underestimating the impact of disease on operations throughout history. One of the most recent is Russia’s experience in the First Chechen War in the mid-1990s.  Unlike some earlier cases in history, in which nations lacked the knowledge to identify the source of disease, the Russian military had the medical expertise and capability to address the spread of hepatitis; all that was required was better field sanitation.  Many senior officers who had served in Afghanistan were familiar with the devastating impacts of disease in the ranks, yet they chose to do nothing.  Furthermore, operating in the city of Grozny, an urban environment with large populations in close quarters, exacerbated the spread of disease.  Hepatitis, while the most common disease, was not the only one facing the Russian Army.   Russian soldiers also faced outbreaks of diphtheria, cholera, malignant anthrax, and plague.  The two largest, viral hepatitis and cholera, are commonly found in poor living conditions and amongst populations in confined living spaces.  The result was disastrous, “The Russian Ministry of Defense struggled to maintain field units in Chechnya at 60% strength, and Russian brigades were lucky to muster 1,500 personnel.  The loss of over 200 personnel to disease would practically render a brigade combat ineffective.  Apparently there were several times during 1995 when the Khankala brigade was not combat effective due to disease alone.”  Given the disastrous effect disease had on the Russian Army’s ability to accomplish its mission, we would be remiss not to learn from their experience.  Here are three lessons we can use to assist us in dealing with COVID-19 today:

1. Testing matters.  

Medical personnel in Chechnya were initially unprepared to diagnose soldiers to determine the version of hepatitis.  This prevented the army from determining the proper preventative measures to implement.  Similarly, testing for COVID-19 amongst our ranks is key to identifying where our exposed formations exist.  The treatment may be similar, but understanding what is circulating in our formations matters as far as prevention efforts are concerned.  If a simple cold is making people sick, we can take normal precautions.  If it is COVID-19, we should take steps to ensure vulnerable populations (i.e. smokers, those with damage from burn pits, etc.) are protected from risk.  

2. Understand how the disease works, how your unit works, and plan accordingly.  

Like COVID-19, the Russians found that when hepatitis affects a unit it would likely concentrate in pockets.  Instead of a brigade losing an even number of soldiers from across the formation, it might lose its fire direction center, a maintenance unit, a battalion’s command team, or a logistics support area.  How might the loss of one of these critical capabilities affect the unit’s ability to accomplish its mission?  Often those we deem “mission essential” today while everyone else is sheltering at home are the ones that are even more mission essential once the unit leaves the training environment.  Do the analysis now to inform your prevention efforts.  If your unit was deployed tomorrow, what would your mission be (building hospitals, providing humanitarian assistance overseas, an actual combat mission)?  Who are the “mission essential” personnel for that mission?  Can you take extra steps now to protect them to ensure they are available if you are called upon?  This is how you truly ensure mission readiness.  

3. Lead by example.  

If leaders don’t treat the threat of disease seriously, soldiers won’t either.  Proportionally, hepatitis affected officers and enlisted personnel similarly.  In the aforementioned Khankala Brigade, forty-four percent of the unit’s water trucks, trailers, and bags were contaminated with the virus.  The unit rarely chlorinated its water, and when it did, it was often done insufficiently.  This indiscipline trickled down to the individual soldier.  Twenty five percent of soldiers with hepatitis stated that they never used their issued halazone tablets to purify their drinking water because of the taste.  Eighty-seven percent of patients never cleaned their canteens.  If leaders do not take appropriate individual and unit-level precautions, soldiers will not either.  If a leader does the wrong thing, whether it is choosing to not take his tablets and allowing the use of dirty water trucks or, in the case of COVID-19, going to the gym and telling units to take physical fitness tests, subordinates will follow suit.  When soldiers get sick, do not blame the soldier for not cleaning his canteen, blame the leader for setting the wrong climate.

While the current environment is scary, it certainly is not unprecedented.  As the Army struggles to understand the spread of COVID-19 and tries to respond, leaders can look to history to find some answers.  By examining the experience of the Russian Army in Chechnya, one can easily see the impact of disease on mission readiness and, given context, learn from their mistakes.

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Source:

Grau, Lester and William Jorgensen. Viral Hepatitis and the Russian War in Chechnya. Fort Leavenworth, KS: U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office, September 1998.

MAJ Starr is currently an Art of War Scholar in the Command and General Staff College.  A Military Police officer, she most recently served as an assistant professor in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point.  She completed her company command at Fort Riley as the commander of the 73rd Military Police Detachment and has operational experience in Afghanistan.