An article by analyst Marco Coutinho (Colonel of Brazil’s Army, UN Missions, Vice President of the Institute for Research in Geopolitics, Security, and Conflicts) titled “The Budanov Doctrine: Strategy of Attrition and Transition to Drone Warfare” was published on Substack.
Western (and not only) experts, as always, like to wrap our daily bloody routine into beautiful academic concepts.
But if you cut through the fluff, the author presents a very sober foundation without sugar-coating. He describes how we are restructuring the architecture of warfare from hopeless mass-on-mass confrontation to the mathematics of asymmetric destruction.
Here’s an analysis of what they’ve observed in Brazil regarding our rear and LOC.
Regarding the deep rear: The “Spider Web” Concept.
The author plainly states that Ukraine has bet on industrialized attrition of Russia. Instead of pitting tank against tank, we have shifted the weight of war onto the economic backbone of the Russian Federation.
Strikes on the macroeconomy. Coutinho describes this as a network architecture of drones, EW, missiles, and palliative autonomous systems hitting at depths of more than 4,000 km. This is exactly what we always talk about—burning out refineries (Ryazan, Kapotnya, Tuapse), oil terminals, fat production workshops, nitrate production, and air bases.
We are destroying their assets worth billions of dollars with cheap plastic, forcing the Kremlin to burn budgets on redeploying air defense, forming mobile groups, developing interceptor drones, and repairing infrastructure.
An ideal example is the diesel-electric submarine “Rostov-on-Don” (carrier of ‘Kalibrs’ worth about $300 million). A country that effectively does not have its own navy first penetrates Sevastopol’s layered air defense and exposes the submarine directly in a dry dock with Storm Shadow missiles. To ensure they have no illusions about repairs, it later finishes it off and disables a second one in the most protected harbor of Novorossiysk with two lines of booms and mines. This is not just minus two submarines. This is a demonstration that no “impenetrable” base can any longer guarantee the safety of their most expensive strategic toys.
Decentralization of the defense industry. The article notes that our rear has shifted from a classical raw material economy to distributed production. Drone assembly is spread across the private sector and garages. This makes our defense industry resilient to missile strikes—you can’t kill a “Kalibr” factory if that factory is spread across hundreds of basements, parcel lockers, and dormitories.
What about the LBS? Here, the author speaks the unvarnished truth that many are still hesitant to accept. The demographic resource is depleted, there is no political consensus for total mobilization — all these “children” of 24 years, women, and strategically shielded circuses will continue living their lives, concerts will keep touring. Trying to outlast a dead empire in a frontal depletion is a prolonged suicide stretched over a decade.
Machine-centric war. The “Budanov Doctrine” on the LBS is not a rejection of the classic combined arms battle concept. Heavy equipment is still moving in Stepnogorsk or beyond Oskol — there are no continuous kill zones anywhere.
But the focus shifts to machine warfare. This means the total dispersal of our infantry to minimize losses from Russian iron (KABs and FABs) and the transfer of fire and logistical tasks to automation (the NRC and autonomous drones that replace humans in the red zone).
Turrets, cameras, acoustic sensors, remote pilots outside the red zone, NRC operators, supply SP with skids, and increasingly broader UAV interceptors — this is already happening.
Adaptation instead of mass. On the ground, we compensate for their numerical advantage with decision-making speed, AI targeting, adapting industrial lines to innovations, and swarms of disposable drones. The essence is simple: we replace people with hardware. We have fewer people, but Chinese and Western components can be purchased endlessly, especially as we stand on the brink of scaling mid-strikes in the EU.
What the analyst calls a “shift to machine warfare” at sea resulted in the demonstrative humiliation of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The armada that in 2022 blocked ports and was preparing for an amphibious landing in Odesa now cowers near piers in Novorossiysk, shielded by sunken barges. “Ivanovets,” “Caesar Kunikov,” “Sergey Kotov,” and the destroyed BDK were sunk by swarms of unmanned boats (Magura V5 and Sea Baby).
We took jet skis with explosives and Starlink costing a couple of hundred thousand dollars and smashed military ships worth tens of millions.
The global naval paradigm is broken: the industrial-age fleet is driven from Crimea by essentially civilian dual-use technologies.
Diplomacy through coercion. The strongest narrative of the article, which should become a mantra for all “witnesses of quick negotiations.” The author quotes Budanov himself:
“No one in the world negotiates with the weak, and international law does not work without power.”
Coutinho makes a logical conclusion: our national resilience is not just sitting in stubborn defense. It is a tool of diplomatic coercion. A strong position at the negotiation table is forged not by diplomats in suits, but by the number of burned supply columns and blazing tanks of aviation kerosene near Solnechnogorsk.
Our task is for the last person to understand that no advancements at Konstakhi will secure their airbases and refineries in the zone unreachable by the Luftwaffe.
Summary
The article is an excellent indicator that external observers have begun to adequately assess reality. No one expects deep tank breakthroughs in the style of World War II anymore. The author notes our new strategy: we are playing the long game of asymmetric attrition against the adversary. Victory in the drone war will not go to those who bring more men and machines to the slaughter but to those who can efficiently and cost-effectively cripple the enemy’s economy and logistics by striking at chokepoints.
Why the Budanov Doctrine? I think because Budanov understands the situation, as he integrated unmanned capabilities that the Island lacked with asymmetric operations in the GUR, and now we are trying to scale this strategy to a higher level, relying not only on the state machinery but also on the flexibility of the private sector and asymmetric technologies.
Photo: GUR MO Ukraine
