Ukraine’s tactical drones “inflict about two -thirds of Russian losses”, which makes them “twice as effective as all other weapons in the Ukrainian arsenal”, explains a recent study by the Royal United Services Institute. This is a remarkable development for weapons considered to be relatively unimportant only three years ago, but it illustrates the way in which Ukraine changes how the West fought its wars.
At the risk of excessive simplification, wars have always targeted information, people and equipment. Stone Age Warriors, Napoleon, Patton and Schwarzkopf all faced these tasks, although certainly on a very different scale. Napoleon has introduced new ways to control unprecedented quantities of soldiers and equipment, allowing him to operate through distances and against opponents much more effectively than anyone before him. Decades later, Helmuth von Moltke refined the management of the battlefield by loosening the Napoleonic handle. “War is an art, not a science,” he wrote, recognizing human judgment in order and controlling and introducing in-depth planning, decentralization and flexibility. Since then, the ideas of the Prussian leader have constituted the basis of the Western war strategy – until the Russian -Ukraine conflict has changed everything.
The technological field has experienced similar revolutions. The order and control were transformed by radio, computers and satellites. The precision ammunition gave commanders in the field the capacity to direct the “surgical” strikes at much lower costs than their less advanced opponents. During the Cold War, the American soldiers developed executives to exploit this progress and counter-neglect of the superior Soviet forces. Located in Iraq, the concept of airlands allowed American forces to dismantle Saddam’s substantial soldiers in a few weeks.
However, the new executives have brought their own problems. The US high -tech American army, dependent on massive data transmission volumes, has released electronic traces that opponents could detect and target. Enemies in low technology have continued to find cheap ways to inflict serious damage, such as improvised explosive devices of September 11 conflicts.
And now these developments and others have transformed modern war on its head. After decades of increasingly rapid offensive maneuver, the Russo-Ukraine War is characterized by the attrition of the First World War style. The enemy can now detect the slightest movements and attack without notice, causing a battle front enclosed in defensive bastions with “soldiers buried in trenches, where even staff rotations and medical evacuations have become perilous”.
This is the result of three main developments. The first is small tactical drones, which are used to target military forces and equipment through air, land and sea – and even fight other drones.
The second is the electronic war, which now includes tracing, scrambling and even the management of drone signals. It allowed an enemy to target and eliminate specialized teams and difficult to replace.
And the third is remote -controlled sensors of variable complexity. Generously deployed in disputed “white spaces” but not defended, they create protective pads preventing the enemy from sneaking. As Rusi’s report says, “Russian (and Ukrainian) commanders evaluate where they believe that the best lines of approach are, and in particular, where the boundaries between the defensive units are located.”
Under the existential threat, Ukraine has developed several ways to fight this new type of war.
His soldiers have thrown methods, tactics, equipment and management of information and information signals and signals. Drones are used in many roles; For example, low -cost sea drones have expelled the Russian Black Sea fleet from its apparently impenetrable Crimean port. Non -armed drones are constantly working in logistical and medical evacuation roles.
Drones in Ukraine are rarely expensive products for traditional military companies. Instead, they are massively made from commercial components available in commercial and open source software, which makes the war of attrition effective and affordable on a large scale.
The drone revolution has created a hardened and inflexible environment. Any visual observation or electronic diffusion often leads to an attack in a few seconds, preventing the two sides from making a decisive breakthrough, even when it is willing to undergo heavy losses. Mobility is sacrificed for protection and dead end.
The deception, the visual camouflage and the concealment of electronic emissions have become essential to counter the jamming, interception and continuous targeting of airborne signal sources. Fixed communication methods forgotten for a long time, such as underground, underwater networks, air networks, and in particular optical fiber, are again fashionable because they are more difficult to disturb and offer a bandwidth, higher reliability and safety. Drones are increasingly autonomous, capable of operating without constant attention from an operator or even constant connection to GPS signals.
However, the effective management of drones remains crucial, as well as for any other component on the battlefield. Here, the Ukrainian system for managing the battlefield known as Delta deserves recognition. Ukraine began to develop Delta, an ecosystem of military products, several years before the Russian invasion of 2022.
“We call it” Google for the military “because, after a single connection, you have access to various modules in the system. Google helps organize your workspace; Delta helps organize your” war “space,” said a Ukrainian army colonel during a recent NATO exercise.
Simpler than the American Battle Management System of Palant, Delta provided Ukrainian defenders with awareness of the situation and decision -making assistance in critical moments, offering an advantage against a larger opponent but deficient in information.
Effective command and control systems must face information of various types and sources: human relationships, open source intelligence, satellite imaging, drone video flow, mobile phone clips, cyber-data, etc. Delta uses AI to quickly sort the data and give managers a complete image of the battlefield and beyond.
This includes a standard of identified and proposed targets ready to be deployed on the appropriate friendly strike or cyber platforms.
Subsequently, the capacities for sharing rapid and resilient data and the unmanned command and control centers have evolved towards the new battlefield conditions. Data, AI, drones and their management have become the standard, forcing new tactics, equipment and systems that can adapt quickly to an evolving enemy.
Lulled by decades of multi-domain domination, Western soldiers have owed too long. Meet opponents armed with autonomous weapons deployed by attrition and attrition, they could end as proverbial victims of the German Blitzkrieg of the Second World War. Fortunately, they have an immeasurable gift: the hard expertise of Ukraine, forged in an exhausting struggle for survival. If the West wants to survive, it must quickly and fully kiss these lessons and use them well.
General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine ambassador to the United Kingdom, is a former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
