RUSSIA’S recent Zapad military exercise caused flutters of alarm in nearby Eastern European states. Zapad was in part a response to June’s NATO BALTOPS (Baltic Operations) exercise. Both were scheduled events and displays of military muscle. But neither the Russians nor NATO invited each other to send fully-fledged observer teams, signifying the heightened wariness on both sides.

However, given satellite surveillance and advanced signals monitoring, the presence of foreign military observers is probably now unnecessary. All armed forces need such maneuvers to test how their different arms can function together, to see how their equipment can work in battlefield conditions and of no less importance, to examine how effectively their command and control systems work. For the homogenous Russian military, this is a far simpler task than for NATO whose commanders are working with up to 29 different national armed forces. Indeed NATO’s greatest challenge throughout its existence has been to ensure its member states are all singing off the same military song sheet.

There is a risk to such big exercises, which is not always appreciated except by the commanders themselves. This risk is not, as might be supposed, that a massing of forces could be a prelude to a real attack. It is rather that the technology and equipment armies display for these training events, present a golden opportunity for the other side to gauge their opponent’s effectiveness. Thus NATO will have been studying carefully the performance of the new Armata T-14 Russian battle tank. It is all very well for Moscow to put out carefully-edited films of the Armata surging through difficult ground and using its automated firing systems to destroy targets as it travels at speed. What NATO analysts will be watching for are the little pieces of evidence — how easily it could be moved on and off transporters, what mechanical problems were encountered, how efficiently it was replenished with fuel and ammunition.

This close observation of rival capabilities will inform how commanders seek to counter and exploit rivals’ strengths and failings. But there is an element of bluff here. While Zapad and BALTOPS were demonstrations of military prowess, neither side wanted to show all their technical cards. On the battlefield, surprise has a big role in success. It is unthinkable that such surprise would be squandered in a peacetime display.

Thus much has been written about the interdiction of battlefield systems by massive computer hacking. Then there are the hugely destructive High Energy Radio Frequency” (HERF) and Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons which can fry computers and communications systems. In the event of a major shooting war, this frightening technology is likely to play a significant role. Both Moscow and Washington have devoted considerable investment to researching these potentially awesome weapons. But neither side is about to use them on a mere exercise. Nor are they going to try out any counter measures which would allow commanders to keep control of the battlefield when their main communications have been knocked out. It would have been too obvious for NATO or the Russians to have had thousands of motorcyclists roaring around the exercise battlefield delivering messages in the good old-fashioned way. But perhaps the most valuable lesson of these maneuvers is not actually for the generals. Rather, they demonstrate to political leaders that a new war is very likely to be a zero-sum game.