What the Pentagon has learned from Ukraine
As the general paced the briefing room, he displayed a piece of lethal technology and detailed the death and chaos it has caused in Ukraine. Almost 90 Russian soldiers were slain in a single attack in 2022, explained United States Army Major General Curtis Taylor, when Ukrainian forces dropped US-provided rockets on buildings pulsing with electronic signals.
Here in the Mojave Desert, where Taylor oversees simulated war designed to prepare US troops for the real thing, the same behaviour abounded, he warned.
Taylor held up his cellphone. “This device,” he said, “is going to get our soldiers killed.”
The US military is undertaking an expansive revision of its approach to war fighting, having largely abandoned the counterinsurgency playbook that was a hallmark of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan to focus instead on preparing for an even larger conflict with more sophisticated adversaries such as Russia or China.
What has transpired in Ukraine, where this week the war enters its third year with hundreds of thousands dead or wounded on both sides, and still no end in sight, has made clear to the Pentagon that battlefield calculations have fundamentally changed in the years since it last deployed forces in large numbers.
Precision weapons, fleets of drones and digital surveillance can reach far beyond the front lines, posing a grave risk to personnel wherever they are.
The war remains an active and bountiful research opportunity for American military planners as they look to the future, officials say. A classified year-long study on the lessons learned from both sides in the bloody campaign will help to inform the next National Defence Strategy, a sweeping document that aligns the Pentagon’s myriad priorities.
The “character of war” was changing, said a senior defence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and the lessons taken from Ukraine stood to be “an enduring resource”.
The Ukraine conflict has challenged core assumptions.
The war had become an attritional slugfest, with each side attempting to wear down the other, a model thought to be anachronistic, said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defence program at the Centre for a New American Security, a think tank.
It had also complicated a long-held belief in the Pentagon that expensive precision weapons were central to winning America’s conflicts, Pettyjohn said.
GPS-guided munitions provided to Ukraine have proved vulnerable to electronic jamming. Its military has adapted by pairing older, unguided artillery with sensors and drones, which can be used to spot targets and refine their shots.
US military commanders had certainly taken notice, she said. almost
‘The new cigarette in the foxhole’
Ukraine has demonstrated that everything US troops do in the field – from planning missions and patrolling to the technology that enables virtually every military task – needs to be rethought, officials say.
Fort Irwin is home to the National Training Centre (NTC), one of two army ranges in the US where troops refine tactics and prepare for deployments. In years past, the facility replicated what US forces could expect to face in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now trench lines zigzag across positions intended to replicate the battlespace in Ukraine.
Over the winter, the facility was occupied by the 1st Armoured Division. As soldiers fought simulated battles, Taylor explained Ukraine’s transformational imprint on how the US Army thinks and trains for combat.
Vitally, commanders warn over and over that most electronic gear is a potential target. Soldiers are instructed to not use their phones in the training area, and observers, known as OCs, carry handheld detectors trying to sniff out any contraband.
Taylor told the story of an Apache attack helicopter pilot who successfully avoided air defence systems during a simulated attack. Personnel portraying the enemy forces were unable to determine the path the helicopter took, but after examining commercially available cellphone data, they were able to map the journey of a device travelling across the desert at high speed. It revealed where the Apache flew to evade the defences.
The general is adamant about stamping out such behaviours. He likens the threat to that posed by cigarette smoking on the front lines during World War II, when enemy forces looked for bright orange flickers to help identify their targets.
“I think our addiction to cellphones is equally as threatening,” Taylor said. “This is the new cigarette in the foxhole.”
Troops also have to consider the cellphone use occurring around them. Personnel tasked with portraying non-combatants take photos and videos of troop locations and equipment, and upload the imagery to a mock social network called Fakebook. There, it populates in a feed used by service members playing the part of enemy forces, who then use that data to attack.
Radios, drone controllers and vehicles all produce substantial amounts of electromagnetic activity and thermal energy that can be detected.
Threats from above
The Russian and Ukrainian militaries flood the sky with one-way attack drones that are inexpensive and able to skirt detection. Their prolific use has forced American military leaders to consider where there are gaps in their capabilities.
Whereas recent US conflicts featured big, expensive drones employed for missions orchestrated at very senior levels of command, in Ukraine, leaders have put powerful surveillance and attack capabilities in the hands of individual soldiers – a degree of autonomy for small units that the US military is trying to emulate.
The technology’s proliferation has also created a new urgency at the Pentagon to develop and field better counter-drone systems.
The US Army, taking cues from the Ukraine war, has begun experimenting with dropping small munitions from drones, a tactic used by Islamic State that has since become a mainstay in Ukraine. It also has made a decision to do away with two surveillance drone platforms, the Shadow and Raven, describing them as unable to survive in modern conflict.
“We are learning from the battlefield – especially in Ukraine – that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed,” Army Chief of Staff General Randy George said.
The Ukrainians had discovered some innovative solutions to detect drones,
General James B Hecker, the chief of US Air Force operations in Europe and Africa, said during a recent symposium.
He told the story of two Ukrainians who collected thousands of smartphones, fitted them with microphones, and connected them to a network capable of detecting the unique buzzing sound of approaching unmanned systems. The information is relayed to air defence soldiers who can take action. The effort was briefed to the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency, and referred to Nato and US commands to potentially duplicate, Hecker said.
Hecker also described recent drone and missile attacks by Houthi militants in Yemen targeting merchant and military ships in the Red Sea. Gesturing to his counterpart responsible for defending against potential threats from China, he said: “What the Houthis did, what Russia is doing, is nothing compared to what we’re going to see in your theatre.”
The pace of change
In the woods at Fort Johnson, a US Army post in western Louisiana, American troops inspired by the lessons of Ukraine have a motto: Dig or die.
Soldiers who rotate through the Joint Readiness Training Centre there are learning to create trenches and dugouts, relics of past conflicts brought back to provide protection from bombs and drones.
Personnel playing the role of opposing forces used AI software and cheap drones to throw their compatriots off balance, then showed them what they uncovered, to help them improve.
Although troops are getting better at physical camouflage, their digital trail is still a vulnerability. One drone used by opposing forces at Fort Johnson was capable of detecting WiFi signals and Bluetooth-enabled devices. In another case, a command post was identified through its network name: “command post.”
While the Ukraine war has pushed battlefield innovation, some observers surmise that the Pentagon will move only so quickly without forces in extremis.
Pettyjohn acknowledged that the US and Ukrainian militaries operated differently, meaning some takeaways from the war with Russia might not be applicable.
But she noted that some American military leaders she had spoken with seemed circumspect that there was much for them to learn. She said they underestimated how the nature of fighting had changed, holding tight to the risky assumption that the US would simply do better in similar circumstances.