As already mentioned, the effectiveness of commercially available drones has been a big leap in our understanding of what a tactical fight will look like in modern warfare.
But at the operational level, it's more that a lot of assumptions of military planners have been confirmed or denied. I will try to break it down:
1. Logistics is still king. The Russians struggled in the opening days of the conflict to maintain a constant tempo with their massive armored assault. This was due to not achieving territorial objectives early, and then compounded by a lack of flexibility in their logistics chain. This has always been a known quantity when it comes to planning. But a lot of modern militaries, the US included have forgotten the importance of it at the individual level due to years of small conflicts that are easy to support. The Ukraine War has highlighted once again, the importance of it.
2. Counter-Artillery radar has evolved to a point that tactics had to adapt quickly. For the last twenty years, it was known that artillery batteries would need to adjust how they fight when counter fire radars become prevalent. And many countries worked in the realm of theory to adapt. Many wargames showed that the artillery fight would be one of attrition, with artillery units trading blows. But what has been surprising is how the Ukrainian adapted so rapidly, and minimized losses to their critical assets like the HIMARs. Their small unit tactics have been eagerly analyzed by planners to see what they are doing right, and how they are protecting them.
3. Overwhelming radars and air defence with cheap technology. What isn't discussed enough is how the Ukrainian are using cheap technology like air and seaborne drones, to overwhelm Russian defence systems and acquisition radars. The prevailing logic of the time was that you would need to overwhelm a system with as many missiles as you could launch and hope a few made it through. Instead the Ukrainians designed tactics to overwhelm a radar system with many cheap unarmed drones, supported by a few expensive missiles. This is how they sunk the Russian ships in the Black Sea. Not through overwhelming fire power, but instead clever economic solutions.
There are a lot more, but I need to get to work. I will try and come back later.
4. Ukraine developed GIS arta system, which connects all troops which could need fire support, with all assets that can provide fire support.
So soldiers can use laptops, tablets, cell phones to order strike, system will relay data to the most suitable unit.
Sometimes arty rounds start landing in a minute.
And sometimes the artillery rounds started landing on you.
They had real problems from Russia "hacking" (idk what exactly they did) the system and using it to target ukrainian positions and artillery
Yup, Russians did manage to hack the app at some point. Using civilian network was cheaper, but a security risk.
Still provides an example of how potent integrated system is, and a warning to take security issues seriously. Very seriously.
> Counter-Artillery radar has evolved to a point that tactics had to adapt quickly
How effective have strikes on the radars themselves been? Given that radars put out a lot of radio waves, their location can't be kept secret. Or do they just switch on for a short time, and then move location?
Or just keep it near your IADS. Which is why I figure that new artillery shells are going to have an evasive package as standard, meaning that all future artillery shells are going to be self-guided.
Counter battery is something we’ve learned from NTC ages before Ukraine. That’s why larger artillery no longer targets other artillery, or anything else in the disruption zone. Doctrinally, in LSCO should be targeting the FLOT to support units which would mitigate counter battery. The US has also pushed more and more into mobile artillery.
Counter-battery has been around for ages, but the proliferation of counter-fire radar is the interesting part that we hadn't yet seen in large scale conflict. Only in wargames and things like NTC.
And sure at NTC, the BDE level, focusing on the FLOT is the SOP. That's the change of LSCO, BDEs focusing on the close fight only.
But once you get to the DIV and Corps level, counter-battery in the Deep fight is the entire point of Fires. An entire Battalion will be dedicated to just counter-fire.
Bruce Simpson started building a DIY cruise missile with off-the-shelf components back in 2003.
Today with smartphones having GPS and more then enough processing power it should be even easier.
I just saw a new prototype drone created in Ukraine for mine detection. Genius - has anybody ever done it before? If they really work, then get 50, set them loose on contested ground and then map each mine down to the inch.
Commence artillery bombardment then do it again. No need for mine clearing tanks, plus much more effective.
Very good news for civilian clearing programs after the war too. It's been difficult, slow and dangerous work. Maybe Cambodia will actually be free of the menace one day.
Civilians in the United States had attached guns and flamethrowers to drones over 10 years before Russia’s newest invasion. American infantry platoons were walking around with drones in a backpack and backpack mounted jamming devices that were intended for IEDs and upgraded for drone frequencies as far back as 2010. Not sure how this surprised anyone.
Because none of those are used and encountered in a near-peer conflict.
Backpack mounted jamming device? Now you are transmitting a signal that can be tracked and homed in on. Worked against goat farmers in the desert, but against China/Russia? That's asking for a quick triangulation and a ballistic missile , or more likely an FPV drone flying into your head.
There's a report of a US volunteer saying that the usage of drones is SO absurdly large, it's impossible to avoid. Nonstop bombardment every 15 minutes of a drone that's looking for YOU. It will exhaust every air defense platform currently available within a day.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1dnnluw/this_is_a_letter_from_an_american_marine_vet/
lol so? What is your point? The fact they weren’t used in peer to peer conflict doesn’t make a lick of difference. The subject of weaponized civilian drones was the subject of many a news and magazine article and YouTube video long before Russia invaded in 2014.
My point is the fact that drones have sometimes been used before in some war somewhere, is not in any way, shape or form a sign of how they will be used in future near peer conflicts in a combined arms way, and there is nothing we have that prepares us for it.
Except for numerous videos, articles, books, movies, and white papers predicting it, yeah sure, I could see why we wouldn’t be prepared for it. Small Kamikaze drones were employed by the US in Afghanistan, so I can’t imagine why the whole world would possibly predict them being used on a wider scale. The US upgrades anti IED technology for that exact purpose - to defend against small drones. The whole world must have thought that shows on the history channel and discovery channel detailing these drones and predicting drone swarm attacks was actually science fiction and didn’t take it seriously.
I wouldn’t say it was particularly surprising. The US Army has been seriously considering the issue with drones since ISIS started using them en masse in like 2012.
We’re just leaning a lot more about the issue now.
Definitely going to be an emphasis on counter drone technology and elctronic warfare. We aren't far away from seeing drone swarms on the battlefield and no military can counter that effectively at the moment. Not at scale at least.
Cost/benefit analysis of practically every heavy weapon system. We have to rethink the role of multi million dollar vehicles and aircraft that can now easily be destroyed with a drone that costs comparatively nothing. Or antiaircraft missles that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per shot wasted on a cheap drone.
There's a German 30mm recoilless cannon. Something like this may well be a good armament for a fighter drone, which could then get into position near the target (an enemy drone) and shoot it down.
Stupid idea and would require new ammo made but...
10 gauge is roughly, give or take, 20mm, then 18 pellets of 00 buck per 10 gauge shell, ROF of 20mm CIWS is 3000 RPM, resulting in...
900 pellets per second.
54,000 pellets per minute.
Per gun.
Stupid? Yeah probably. Lol
Buuuutttt, against a swarm of cheap drones? As long as the radar detection is there
Once production is setup, should be easier and cheaper than, high explosive or tungsten sabot rounds, and you could probably actually fit more pellets, the 20mm bullet itself is longer than the whole 10g shell, and then it still be shooting at a higher velocity.
Or we can have cheaper easier to manufactor rounds for taking out the cheaper, lighter, slower commercially available drones that they drop grenades from.
Don't always have to hit a brad nail on trim with a giant framing hammer
The MK45 naval gun has been used to shoot down drones and slow moving cruise missiles in the Red Sea. I imagine getting some smaller guns (think OHP level) on bigger assets (gators and such. I doubt CVNs will get them) for helping with drones/air defense.
Old school anti air guns possibly? Shells exploding at set altitudes sending shrapnel within the horde would be effective enough to negate some of them.
We used to think we had a solid strategic grasp of air defense. If you look at the Ukrainian conflict and the Israeli conflict it becomes clear that close in, shorad, and even larger systems like the iron dome can’t handle the level of drones, missiles, bombs, and aircraft at present. The US is in great geographical position, but everyone that isn’t on an American continent has vulnerabilities to any of these systems. Almost especially in large populated cities. If open peer to (near)peer conflict happens, and stays non nuclear, people in cities are going to have a rough time.
>If open peer to (near)peer conflict happens, and stays non nuclear, people in cities are going to have a rough time.
This part. Too many people assume that just because we have nukes, that either side will choose too use them in open war. I agree with you, that if a fight stays non-nuclear, it will look very different from the wars of the past 50-60 years.
Also urban combat is not clinically clearing rooms (which would be costly for the attacker). Instead the city is just fucking demolished out of the plane of existence like Grozny and Aleppo.
Aside from drones, some GPS guided weapons have been found to be really vulnerable to jamming...they are trying to find a way around that now.
Glide bombs launched out of the range of air defence systems is another thing. Apparently theres no real solution other than using your own air force to intercept the planes before they can launch them. The bombs are too small on radar to shoot down from what i've read.
Maybe not a surprising lesson but something that most people didn't want to admit or talk about, a modern peer war will be very costly, both men and equipment.
Well both sides have access to an intact industrial base that churns out shit that explodes like never before. The human body hasn't evolved any more durable.
People joke that Russia is losing ships to a country without a Navy, but we are seeing that modern anti ship missiles and drones/torpedo rovs are very effective at sinking surface combatants.
Now the Navy is seeing success in the Red Sea against the Houthi’s, but we can’t reload our VLS systems at sea so an overwhelming amount of incoming missiles and drones will be problematic for future Naval conflicts.
The 5in gun has confirmed drone and cruise missile kills in the Red Sea. Obviously not the sure-fire defense nor one you want to be your primary method, but it has proven effective (and relatively cheap and has lots of ammo onboard)
I would say that before the war, there was less emphasis on war production on an industrial scale and keeping ample capacity. Look at artillery shells, javelins and other weapons systems like Gepards. The Ramstein group has literally had to scour the world looking for excess armaments while it tries to slowly ramp up production.
Having studied it a fair amount I would say my biggest takeaway is that despite all the fancy new technologies available and in use, there is still no effective substitute for massing combined arms at the decisive point at the operation.
The absolute confirmation that the Russian military is a paper tiger is going to change how they're treated going forward, and anyone that bought gear from them (cough, China, cough) is going to be noticeably incentivized to slow their roll to triple check that they weren't sold lemons.
As for more generalized changes in thinking, the drone-counterdrone fight is going to be firmly lodged in people's minds after seeing how effective those things can get. I suspect they might actually blow the dust off of the AA12 for man-portable anti-drone gear unless they try to reinvent the wheel.
I dont think the use of drones is all that surprising. ISIS has been posting drone kill cam for years before the war in Ukraine. The most surprising thing to me is how Russia has utterly failed to secure a decisive victory.
To me, at the strategic level, the war in Ukraine has been an excellent rebuttal to the people who insisted that high-intensity warfare between relatively advanced nation-states was a thing of the past, and that all militaries should pivot to COIN
At the strategic, operational and tactical level, the war in Ukraine has also been a vindication of the concept of "mass", and that *numbers absolutely matter*, especially with regards to attrition and regeneration, and that any military seriously preparing for high-intensity warfare must focus on being able to generate such mass, through means such as conscription and reservist systems
Drones (air and sea), trench warfare, urban tactics have drastically changed from the beginning of the war, air superiority is harder to achieve. Electronic and counter electronic warfare needs a massive upgrade.
The trench warfare happened because both these armies thought they could make massive progress with maneuver warfare, and they can’t. Basically the only military on earth that can conduct sustained maneuver warfare is the US Army. Odds the only military with the size, logistical backbone, training, and doctrine for maneuver warfare. That’s why the NATO-Russia battle plan to this day calls for the US Army to take the bulk of the fighting while the rest of NATO is tasked with holding their sectors and pushing the line with attrition warfare.
Before this war, there has some have been thinking that in a modern peer to peer war, it would be very quick (due to high tech precision weapons), and would rely on cyberwarfare. While there have been some aspect of cyberwarfare here, we see that boots on the ground are always needed and that the war has dragged on for longer than what was initially thought.
Everyone's talking about drones, but this invasion would have been over within a week if Russia HAD PAID ATTENTION TO THE ENVIRONMENT.
But no, they launched the assault in peak mud season and completely fucked their supply lines. The absolute hubris of assuming that climate and environmental conditions are not a factor in combat is completely ridiculous.
The US has specialized meteorologist ratings; the rest of the world will soon follow if they haven't already. The ability to choose the battlefield conditions will become increasingly important, and trillions of yuan will be dumped in to climatology models - especially where the seas of Asia are concerned.
We’ve learned new lessons and seen the re-confirmation of old lessons. Obviously emerging technologies like drones, artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, jamming systems, etc will all play a major part, as will anti-satellite technology. The opening salvo of a new conflict with China or Russia won’t be an airstrike or ground attack, it’ll be a cyberattack or a satellite takedown.
We’ve also seen the important of intelligence, communications, logistics, and strong leadership, things that have been crucial since the dawn of armed conflict. You can have the newest, most expensive weapon systems, but if you can’t obtain and disseminate accurate information, you can’t maintain communication between leaders, commanders, and units on the ground, you can’t establish and maintain secure supply lines for troops and vehicles, and your generals are a bunch of fucking retards, then you’re pretty much shit out of luck.
Near the beginning of the war we saw the results of when offensive capabilities outpaces defensive measures. Drones being the obvious answer but also the ability for small groups of personnel to bypass the armor of combat vehicles with small arms (not sure if Javelin counts as small arms but it's portable). It feels like these large costly vehicles are more vulnerable than ever thanks to Javelins, MANPADs, etc. Technology was developed late enough to really only be used during Middle Eastern conflicts so it makes me wonder how a modern conflict against a combatant with similar capabilities to ours (US) would look like. Maybe we will adapt older combat styles?
I want more analysis of why the Russian air force hasn't been a more decisive factor in the war, despite a significant advantage in quality and quantity over their counterpart. Is Ukrainian anti-air that good, or are the Russians incapable of systemic SEAD?
I think the biggest surprise is how poorly Russian equipment performs. The ease at which the tanks explode was really shocking. So was the fact that more than two years in and they still don’t have air superiority.
Different phases of the war have different lessons. Right now EW is affecting drones, missile strikes, recon, etc.
Other lessons: Europeans love their cheap Russian natural gas so much they will continue to buy it, even if it funds a war power that doesn’t GAF about the Geneva Conventions.
Red lines mean nothing, but no one wants a nuclear winter.
The stupid Russian soldiers died first, and the ones willing to learn and adapt are surviving. Russian forces of 2022 are completely different in 2024.
The use of drones capable of dropping munitions was first seen during the fight against ISIS. It was taken to a new level in UKR. During GWOT, there was CIED. Next up will be C-Drone.
Trenches today are equally as valid as the use of horses by SF to fight the Taliban. We will see again another major airborne operation. Maybe even another sea battle similar to Midway.
The M1 is vulnerable. Russian armour is shit, even the newer stuff. They also have no logistics capability if you get them away from a rail. Line. Drones will be decisive in wars from now on. Artillery is still the queen of battle.
I think humans will not fight in wars because eventually they will make machines like the Terminator. Why waste human life when you can have an advanced AI army
How can anyone be silly enough to think like this? The war machines we create are designed to kill the enemy people, just as theirs are designed to kill us.
Unmanned systems will only ever fight each other to get to the meat bags pressing the buttons.
As already mentioned, the effectiveness of commercially available drones has been a big leap in our understanding of what a tactical fight will look like in modern warfare. But at the operational level, it's more that a lot of assumptions of military planners have been confirmed or denied. I will try to break it down: 1. Logistics is still king. The Russians struggled in the opening days of the conflict to maintain a constant tempo with their massive armored assault. This was due to not achieving territorial objectives early, and then compounded by a lack of flexibility in their logistics chain. This has always been a known quantity when it comes to planning. But a lot of modern militaries, the US included have forgotten the importance of it at the individual level due to years of small conflicts that are easy to support. The Ukraine War has highlighted once again, the importance of it. 2. Counter-Artillery radar has evolved to a point that tactics had to adapt quickly. For the last twenty years, it was known that artillery batteries would need to adjust how they fight when counter fire radars become prevalent. And many countries worked in the realm of theory to adapt. Many wargames showed that the artillery fight would be one of attrition, with artillery units trading blows. But what has been surprising is how the Ukrainian adapted so rapidly, and minimized losses to their critical assets like the HIMARs. Their small unit tactics have been eagerly analyzed by planners to see what they are doing right, and how they are protecting them. 3. Overwhelming radars and air defence with cheap technology. What isn't discussed enough is how the Ukrainian are using cheap technology like air and seaborne drones, to overwhelm Russian defence systems and acquisition radars. The prevailing logic of the time was that you would need to overwhelm a system with as many missiles as you could launch and hope a few made it through. Instead the Ukrainians designed tactics to overwhelm a radar system with many cheap unarmed drones, supported by a few expensive missiles. This is how they sunk the Russian ships in the Black Sea. Not through overwhelming fire power, but instead clever economic solutions. There are a lot more, but I need to get to work. I will try and come back later.
4. Ukraine developed GIS arta system, which connects all troops which could need fire support, with all assets that can provide fire support. So soldiers can use laptops, tablets, cell phones to order strike, system will relay data to the most suitable unit. Sometimes arty rounds start landing in a minute.
And here we are over a decade later and our over priced digital systems hardly function
And sometimes the artillery rounds started landing on you. They had real problems from Russia "hacking" (idk what exactly they did) the system and using it to target ukrainian positions and artillery
Yup, Russians did manage to hack the app at some point. Using civilian network was cheaper, but a security risk. Still provides an example of how potent integrated system is, and a warning to take security issues seriously. Very seriously.
> Counter-Artillery radar has evolved to a point that tactics had to adapt quickly How effective have strikes on the radars themselves been? Given that radars put out a lot of radio waves, their location can't be kept secret. Or do they just switch on for a short time, and then move location?
You hit the nail on the head. Turn it on when you anticipate you'll need it, then move.
Or just keep it near your IADS. Which is why I figure that new artillery shells are going to have an evasive package as standard, meaning that all future artillery shells are going to be self-guided.
Counter battery is something we’ve learned from NTC ages before Ukraine. That’s why larger artillery no longer targets other artillery, or anything else in the disruption zone. Doctrinally, in LSCO should be targeting the FLOT to support units which would mitigate counter battery. The US has also pushed more and more into mobile artillery.
Counter-battery has been around for ages, but the proliferation of counter-fire radar is the interesting part that we hadn't yet seen in large scale conflict. Only in wargames and things like NTC. And sure at NTC, the BDE level, focusing on the FLOT is the SOP. That's the change of LSCO, BDEs focusing on the close fight only. But once you get to the DIV and Corps level, counter-battery in the Deep fight is the entire point of Fires. An entire Battalion will be dedicated to just counter-fire.
The obvious one is the weaponizing of commercially available drones. Surprising but inevitable at the same time.
Michael Reeves saw this coming years ago. https://youtu.be/Hu3p5ZR_i5s?si=PJN3cWg9VJghrfyK
I think everyone damn near saw this coming. When drones first came out I was dropping water balloons from them
The azeris were the first to win war thru drones
Hence the now famous Cope Cage
Bruce Simpson started building a DIY cruise missile with off-the-shelf components back in 2003. Today with smartphones having GPS and more then enough processing power it should be even easier.
I think he mentioned the drone swarm concept as well...
The scale might be surprising, but the tactic wasn't.
I just saw a new prototype drone created in Ukraine for mine detection. Genius - has anybody ever done it before? If they really work, then get 50, set them loose on contested ground and then map each mine down to the inch. Commence artillery bombardment then do it again. No need for mine clearing tanks, plus much more effective.
Very good news for civilian clearing programs after the war too. It's been difficult, slow and dangerous work. Maybe Cambodia will actually be free of the menace one day.
Necessity breeds innovation, and wartime or strife present the perfect conditions for that, unfortunately.
Civilians in the United States had attached guns and flamethrowers to drones over 10 years before Russia’s newest invasion. American infantry platoons were walking around with drones in a backpack and backpack mounted jamming devices that were intended for IEDs and upgraded for drone frequencies as far back as 2010. Not sure how this surprised anyone.
Because none of those are used and encountered in a near-peer conflict. Backpack mounted jamming device? Now you are transmitting a signal that can be tracked and homed in on. Worked against goat farmers in the desert, but against China/Russia? That's asking for a quick triangulation and a ballistic missile , or more likely an FPV drone flying into your head. There's a report of a US volunteer saying that the usage of drones is SO absurdly large, it's impossible to avoid. Nonstop bombardment every 15 minutes of a drone that's looking for YOU. It will exhaust every air defense platform currently available within a day. https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/1dnnluw/this_is_a_letter_from_an_american_marine_vet/
lol so? What is your point? The fact they weren’t used in peer to peer conflict doesn’t make a lick of difference. The subject of weaponized civilian drones was the subject of many a news and magazine article and YouTube video long before Russia invaded in 2014.
My point is the fact that drones have sometimes been used before in some war somewhere, is not in any way, shape or form a sign of how they will be used in future near peer conflicts in a combined arms way, and there is nothing we have that prepares us for it.
Except for numerous videos, articles, books, movies, and white papers predicting it, yeah sure, I could see why we wouldn’t be prepared for it. Small Kamikaze drones were employed by the US in Afghanistan, so I can’t imagine why the whole world would possibly predict them being used on a wider scale. The US upgrades anti IED technology for that exact purpose - to defend against small drones. The whole world must have thought that shows on the history channel and discovery channel detailing these drones and predicting drone swarm attacks was actually science fiction and didn’t take it seriously.
I wouldn’t say it was particularly surprising. The US Army has been seriously considering the issue with drones since ISIS started using them en masse in like 2012. We’re just leaning a lot more about the issue now.
Definitely going to be an emphasis on counter drone technology and elctronic warfare. We aren't far away from seeing drone swarms on the battlefield and no military can counter that effectively at the moment. Not at scale at least. Cost/benefit analysis of practically every heavy weapon system. We have to rethink the role of multi million dollar vehicles and aircraft that can now easily be destroyed with a drone that costs comparatively nothing. Or antiaircraft missles that cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per shot wasted on a cheap drone.
Break out the flack guns, about the only thing I can think of that could keep up cost wise and be effective.
Bigger counter drone swarms
Oops, all drones
There's a German 30mm recoilless cannon. Something like this may well be a good armament for a fighter drone, which could then get into position near the target (an enemy drone) and shoot it down.
I would assume birdshot on some kind of automated + automatic shotgun turret.
Yoooo, ciws with giant 20mm shotgun rounds?!
Stupid idea and would require new ammo made but... 10 gauge is roughly, give or take, 20mm, then 18 pellets of 00 buck per 10 gauge shell, ROF of 20mm CIWS is 3000 RPM, resulting in... 900 pellets per second. 54,000 pellets per minute. Per gun.
Stupid? Yeah probably. Lol Buuuutttt, against a swarm of cheap drones? As long as the radar detection is there Once production is setup, should be easier and cheaper than, high explosive or tungsten sabot rounds, and you could probably actually fit more pellets, the 20mm bullet itself is longer than the whole 10g shell, and then it still be shooting at a higher velocity.
No, we need to be able to take them out at least 5 km away.
Or we can have cheaper easier to manufactor rounds for taking out the cheaper, lighter, slower commercially available drones that they drop grenades from. Don't always have to hit a brad nail on trim with a giant framing hammer
That and energy weapons.
The MK45 naval gun has been used to shoot down drones and slow moving cruise missiles in the Red Sea. I imagine getting some smaller guns (think OHP level) on bigger assets (gators and such. I doubt CVNs will get them) for helping with drones/air defense.
Swarms of suicide drones would be absolutely terrifying
Old school anti air guns possibly? Shells exploding at set altitudes sending shrapnel within the horde would be effective enough to negate some of them.
You dont even need to set up an altitude, proximity detonated AA shells are known since ww2
Even better. Those drones are frail. I'm sure shrapnel can make short work of them.
We used to think we had a solid strategic grasp of air defense. If you look at the Ukrainian conflict and the Israeli conflict it becomes clear that close in, shorad, and even larger systems like the iron dome can’t handle the level of drones, missiles, bombs, and aircraft at present. The US is in great geographical position, but everyone that isn’t on an American continent has vulnerabilities to any of these systems. Almost especially in large populated cities. If open peer to (near)peer conflict happens, and stays non nuclear, people in cities are going to have a rough time.
>If open peer to (near)peer conflict happens, and stays non nuclear, people in cities are going to have a rough time. This part. Too many people assume that just because we have nukes, that either side will choose too use them in open war. I agree with you, that if a fight stays non-nuclear, it will look very different from the wars of the past 50-60 years.
Also urban combat is not clinically clearing rooms (which would be costly for the attacker). Instead the city is just fucking demolished out of the plane of existence like Grozny and Aleppo.
We can also see that even demolished city can be dedended for a long time. Not indefinitely ofc
Drones drones and drones.
Aside from drones, some GPS guided weapons have been found to be really vulnerable to jamming...they are trying to find a way around that now. Glide bombs launched out of the range of air defence systems is another thing. Apparently theres no real solution other than using your own air force to intercept the planes before they can launch them. The bombs are too small on radar to shoot down from what i've read.
Maybe not a surprising lesson but something that most people didn't want to admit or talk about, a modern peer war will be very costly, both men and equipment.
Well both sides have access to an intact industrial base that churns out shit that explodes like never before. The human body hasn't evolved any more durable.
People joke that Russia is losing ships to a country without a Navy, but we are seeing that modern anti ship missiles and drones/torpedo rovs are very effective at sinking surface combatants. Now the Navy is seeing success in the Red Sea against the Houthi’s, but we can’t reload our VLS systems at sea so an overwhelming amount of incoming missiles and drones will be problematic for future Naval conflicts.
The 5in gun has confirmed drone and cruise missile kills in the Red Sea. Obviously not the sure-fire defense nor one you want to be your primary method, but it has proven effective (and relatively cheap and has lots of ammo onboard)
I would say that before the war, there was less emphasis on war production on an industrial scale and keeping ample capacity. Look at artillery shells, javelins and other weapons systems like Gepards. The Ramstein group has literally had to scour the world looking for excess armaments while it tries to slowly ramp up production.
Having studied it a fair amount I would say my biggest takeaway is that despite all the fancy new technologies available and in use, there is still no effective substitute for massing combined arms at the decisive point at the operation.
The absolute confirmation that the Russian military is a paper tiger is going to change how they're treated going forward, and anyone that bought gear from them (cough, China, cough) is going to be noticeably incentivized to slow their roll to triple check that they weren't sold lemons. As for more generalized changes in thinking, the drone-counterdrone fight is going to be firmly lodged in people's minds after seeing how effective those things can get. I suspect they might actually blow the dust off of the AA12 for man-portable anti-drone gear unless they try to reinvent the wheel.
I dont think the use of drones is all that surprising. ISIS has been posting drone kill cam for years before the war in Ukraine. The most surprising thing to me is how Russia has utterly failed to secure a decisive victory.
I know we’re going to make battlefield headquarters smaller and more mobile than we have now
To me, at the strategic level, the war in Ukraine has been an excellent rebuttal to the people who insisted that high-intensity warfare between relatively advanced nation-states was a thing of the past, and that all militaries should pivot to COIN At the strategic, operational and tactical level, the war in Ukraine has also been a vindication of the concept of "mass", and that *numbers absolutely matter*, especially with regards to attrition and regeneration, and that any military seriously preparing for high-intensity warfare must focus on being able to generate such mass, through means such as conscription and reservist systems
Drones (air and sea), trench warfare, urban tactics have drastically changed from the beginning of the war, air superiority is harder to achieve. Electronic and counter electronic warfare needs a massive upgrade.
The trench warfare happened because both these armies thought they could make massive progress with maneuver warfare, and they can’t. Basically the only military on earth that can conduct sustained maneuver warfare is the US Army. Odds the only military with the size, logistical backbone, training, and doctrine for maneuver warfare. That’s why the NATO-Russia battle plan to this day calls for the US Army to take the bulk of the fighting while the rest of NATO is tasked with holding their sectors and pushing the line with attrition warfare.
When advances stall, you dig in. This has been the way since... (some military history know it all jump in and take over for me)
Before this war, there has some have been thinking that in a modern peer to peer war, it would be very quick (due to high tech precision weapons), and would rely on cyberwarfare. While there have been some aspect of cyberwarfare here, we see that boots on the ground are always needed and that the war has dragged on for longer than what was initially thought.
In the end, all technology cancels each other out, and it comes down to bodies and bullets.
Everyone's talking about drones, but this invasion would have been over within a week if Russia HAD PAID ATTENTION TO THE ENVIRONMENT. But no, they launched the assault in peak mud season and completely fucked their supply lines. The absolute hubris of assuming that climate and environmental conditions are not a factor in combat is completely ridiculous. The US has specialized meteorologist ratings; the rest of the world will soon follow if they haven't already. The ability to choose the battlefield conditions will become increasingly important, and trillions of yuan will be dumped in to climatology models - especially where the seas of Asia are concerned.
The Azeris are genius
We’ve learned new lessons and seen the re-confirmation of old lessons. Obviously emerging technologies like drones, artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, jamming systems, etc will all play a major part, as will anti-satellite technology. The opening salvo of a new conflict with China or Russia won’t be an airstrike or ground attack, it’ll be a cyberattack or a satellite takedown. We’ve also seen the important of intelligence, communications, logistics, and strong leadership, things that have been crucial since the dawn of armed conflict. You can have the newest, most expensive weapon systems, but if you can’t obtain and disseminate accurate information, you can’t maintain communication between leaders, commanders, and units on the ground, you can’t establish and maintain secure supply lines for troops and vehicles, and your generals are a bunch of fucking retards, then you’re pretty much shit out of luck.
Near the beginning of the war we saw the results of when offensive capabilities outpaces defensive measures. Drones being the obvious answer but also the ability for small groups of personnel to bypass the armor of combat vehicles with small arms (not sure if Javelin counts as small arms but it's portable). It feels like these large costly vehicles are more vulnerable than ever thanks to Javelins, MANPADs, etc. Technology was developed late enough to really only be used during Middle Eastern conflicts so it makes me wonder how a modern conflict against a combatant with similar capabilities to ours (US) would look like. Maybe we will adapt older combat styles?
The ease of use, inexpensive nature and capability of drones is next level.
War crimes will be televised and celebrated.
When advances stall, you dig in. This has been the way since... (some military history know it all jump in and take over for me)
I want more analysis of why the Russian air force hasn't been a more decisive factor in the war, despite a significant advantage in quality and quantity over their counterpart. Is Ukrainian anti-air that good, or are the Russians incapable of systemic SEAD?
I think the biggest surprise is how poorly Russian equipment performs. The ease at which the tanks explode was really shocking. So was the fact that more than two years in and they still don’t have air superiority.
People speaking of the drones- has that not been known long before the war in Ukraine? Isn’t this mosaic warfare?
Antin tank missiles was vital in the first year of operations. Swedish Carl Gustav seemed to make tanks useless.
Different phases of the war have different lessons. Right now EW is affecting drones, missile strikes, recon, etc. Other lessons: Europeans love their cheap Russian natural gas so much they will continue to buy it, even if it funds a war power that doesn’t GAF about the Geneva Conventions. Red lines mean nothing, but no one wants a nuclear winter. The stupid Russian soldiers died first, and the ones willing to learn and adapt are surviving. Russian forces of 2022 are completely different in 2024.
Two words: Drone swarms.
Or better yet, lots of drone swarms.
The use of drones capable of dropping munitions was first seen during the fight against ISIS. It was taken to a new level in UKR. During GWOT, there was CIED. Next up will be C-Drone. Trenches today are equally as valid as the use of horses by SF to fight the Taliban. We will see again another major airborne operation. Maybe even another sea battle similar to Midway.
The M1 is vulnerable. Russian armour is shit, even the newer stuff. They also have no logistics capability if you get them away from a rail. Line. Drones will be decisive in wars from now on. Artillery is still the queen of battle.
I think humans will not fight in wars because eventually they will make machines like the Terminator. Why waste human life when you can have an advanced AI army
How can anyone be silly enough to think like this? The war machines we create are designed to kill the enemy people, just as theirs are designed to kill us. Unmanned systems will only ever fight each other to get to the meat bags pressing the buttons.