How prepared is Romania if the Russian Federation decides to attack us?

In this case, Romania would be directly threatened by at least two Russian armies: the 25th Russian Army, which would probably be located on Romania's northern border, and the 18th Russian Army, which would directly threaten the Dobrogea area.

The Russian 25th Army consists of a division and a brigade - both maneuver, with attached support regiments, a tank brigade, two artillery brigades, etc. The 25th Army is part of the "Centre" District of the Army of the Russian Federation.

The Russian 18th Army is also part of the "Southern" Military District of the Russian Federation and comprises the 40th Army Corps and the 22nd Army Corps, with headquarters in Simferopol/Crimea. It also includes at least one artillery brigade. 

The exact number of servicemen in a Russian "army" is an enigma. In the spring, Ukrainians estimated that the 25th Army, for example, would have included around 17,000 men at the time, after heavy losses in the Luhansk region.

Open military sources also indicate that on paper a Russian army, composed of at least two divisions, could have an estimated total strength of somewhere between 24,000-50,000 troops (while a single Russian motorized infantry division itself has around 12,000-24,000 soldiers).

Important: We don't know how many battalions made up of ex-prisoners, soldiers accused of insubordination, or deserters might be attached to these units. It is well known that Russian tactics against the Ukrainian army include using sacrificial troops as a sort of "airbag" for their regular units. PressOne wrote about this HERE. 

Presently, it is estimated that 70 percent of the Russian army's casualties in Ukraine come from the ranks of these disciplinary units.

What the Romanian army looks like on paper

Romania's military strategy shows us that, in the event of war, the brunt of the burden falls on the Land Forces: they have only 8 maneuver brigades (one brigade has about 5,000 soldiers, so we are talking about 40,000 soldiers in total). The maneuver brigades are basically combat units that can be sent directly into combat and can "maneuver" in defense or attack.

The structure of the Romanian military forces is as follows:

Land forces: 8 maneuver brigades, 2 combat support brigades, 1 research, surveillance and reconnaissance brigade and 3 "logistic support" bases.

Air Force: 5 air bases, an air defense brigade, a search, surveillance and reconnaissance brigade, a special operations air group and a logistics support brigade.

Naval forces: a research, maritime surveillance and electronic warfare brigade, a logistics support base. Plus, of course, the maritime and river fleets.

Special Operations Forces (SOF): 2 special operations battalions, a commando battalion, a naval special operations forces division and a support battalion.

These are complemented by medical structures, a military intelligence brigade under the General Staff, communications, logistics and cyber defense units.

When you draw the line, we're talking about 16 brigades (10 land forces, two air, one naval, one military intelligence, plus 3-4 special operations battalions - roughly equivalent to a brigade).

Thus, we can foresee that the front-line units will include the 8 maneuver units from the land forces, plus the 4 special operations brigades (one naval, one air force, one General Staff, plus the FOS).

12 brigades of 5,000 men each means about 60,000 troops.

In addition, according to the Defence White Charter, during wartime, the Romanian army must, "in the event of prolonged combat actions, be able to generate and prepare at least one more division of ground forces". A division has around 10,000 soldiers.

Theoretically, Romania will thus be able to oppose the Russians, on its own, with no more than 70,000 combat-ready troops. That's who we're marching with. What do we equip them with?

What fighting technique we would use against the Russians

Romania's military strategy, adopted in 2021, has already been overtaken by the realities of the war in Ukraine, where we can see how much the use of drones on the battlefield has evolved.

In this respect, the Ministry of Defence (MApN) informs us that the first "training flights" with the first Bayraktar drones would take place during the summer, out of a total of 18 that will be deployed by the army.

At the end of 2022, the army announced that it would also purchase 21 Israeli Watchkeeper drones.

As for pocket drones, the head of the Armaments Directorate of the Ministry of National Defence, Teodor Incica?, said in 2023 that Romania had realized "a first product and we are going to develop the second one." 

On the kamikaze drone side we had a "notice of intent" published by MapN in 2022 and a canceled tender the same year. Since then, nothing.

A report by the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI) in London notes that the Ukrainians are losing as many as 10,000 drones a month (300/day) in the war with the Russian Federation.

In addition, the Russian army currently has at least one drone sub-unit at company level (a Russian motorized regiment can have as many as 15 companies).

As for the rest of the purchases, we will buy 54 American Abrams tanks - although the first models are not expected until 2026. Until then, we're still parading a few Brezhnev-era tanks, a few dozen tanks from the Ceausescu era modernized in the 1990s.

Romania will also receive 54 more modern South Korean self-propelled guns - the first delivery is expected in 2027.

The Romanian army still has 94 Piranha wheeled armored vehicles, with another 47 soon to be delivered to the ground forces. In total: 141 of these carriers, enough to equip one brigade and one and a half battalions (given that, as we have seen, the Land Forces have 8 maneuver brigades).

Other programmes still pending include the acquisition of light armored vehicles, new assault weapons, upgrading communications systems or the new "infantry fighting machine" (we are currently parading the "Jderul", a Soviet armored vehicle from the 1960s with an Israeli turret fitted with a Swiss Oerlikon 25mm cannon and state-of-the-art (also Israeli) anti-tank missiles.

Romania still has a squadron and a half (26 aircraft at the moment) of decent F-16s, two modern operational Patriot batteries, a few dozen HIMARS launchers, several thousand high-performance anti-tank missiles (Spike), too few (if any) short- and medium-range anti-aircraft systems, microscopic quantities of drones and a naval force that is extremely impotent, compared to the military challenges and technologies of the 21st century.

On the naval side, we are waiting for the new American-Norwegian NSM anti-ship missiles, after the Pentagon last year awarded Raytheon a contract to manufacture them. As for naval drones, there is no sign.

What a textbook air defense against an adversary like Russia should look like

Coming back to the Patriot, the same experience of the war in Ukraine showed us how crucial it is to have an air defense. A layered, layered ring defense, where systems protect and complement each other.

Broadly speaking, you need very long, long, medium and close-range air/missile defense.

Romania has the famous Deveselu shield. We all know it's made in the USA and is integrated into NATO anti-ballistic missile defense. But for the sake of demonstration, let's put it in our own backyard. This shield is dedicated to the interception of medium- and intermediate-range nuclear ballistic missiles. The Americans are working on interceptors capable of hitting even long-range missiles (although, if we are talking about "targeting" Europe, the Russians can only use medium- and intermediate-range missiles, no need to launch warheads from Murmansk).

One "floor down" in anti-air/anti-missile defense comes Patriot which is effectively a long-range system. We currently have two such batteries operational, which can intercept both ordinary airplanes and cruise missiles, and even Kinjal hypersonic missiles, as the Ukrainians claim they have managed to shoot down with their own Patriots.

Romania wanted 7 Patriot systems. Two are operational, two more are due to be deployed soon and three others are pending. Romania has announced that it will donate one such battery to Ukraine, but it is not yet known which one (one of the ones to be operationalised and already in the country or one of the three to be delivered?).

It is also worth noting that NATO has already installed in Mihail Kogalniceanu a "Mamba" anti-aircraft system, practically the French equivalent of the American Patriot.

But the Patriot system remains vulnerable to drone swarms. It needs its own bodyguards. That's where medium- and short-range anti-aircraft systems come in.

In this area, things have been dragging on since 2017, when Romania set out to buy 16 medium-range systems for the air force and another 16 short-range systems/batteries for the ground forces. So far, only a few crumbs have materialized: this year, only 54 shoulder-fired launchers have been purchased from South Korea.

In addition, as seen in Iran's hundreds of missiles and drone attacks on Israel in the spring, anti-missile/anti-aircraft defenses can be complemented by its own fighter jets, which can intercept enemy drones or even cruise missiles with their own missiles. 

So you can do missile defense with F-16s.

We have a full squadron of F-16s (17 aircraft), plus another 9 recently supplied by Norway (out of a total of 32). However, we do not know how many Romanian pilots are currently qualified for such missions - the NATO standard is 140 flight hours/year, and MapN refuses to say how many Romanian F-16 pilots fulfill this minimum benchmark, which must be maintained year after year, so that pilots do not lose their "operational reflexes".

Another important element in the formation of an anti-air defense "bubble" is the anti-aircraft systems of warships - a chapter we can quickly skip over, as none of the ships in the Romanian naval forces are currently capable of such a thing. The famous British frigates acquired 20 years ago still do not have a modern anti-aircraft/anti-missile system and have only guns and machine guns as "armament".

As far as short-range anti-aircraft defense is concerned, there are also dozens of "Cheetahs" (from "Gepard", fast-firing anti-aircraft guns mounted on tank chassis and fitted with their own radar), used by the Ukrainians, who claim to have shot down a cruise missile.

According to public sources, we have about 70 fixed Oerlikon guns (the same model as the one installed on the Gepard), which can also be used as point defense for short-range anti-aircraft defense.

Modern anti-aircraft warfare involves equipping these guns with high-performance radars (the Romanian "Cheetahs" have technology dating back to the 1970s) and AHEAD projectiles (directed directly by radar, the soldier no longer needs to aim at the target coming towards him at hundreds - if not thousands - of kilometers per hour).

In an ideal world, we would be talking about an integrated anti-aircraft system with six layers of defense. At the moment, we are indulgently ticking off only two (if we count Deveselu and the 2/7 Patriot systems).