Instead, I am going to focus more on the lessons being learned because of that war, specifically when it comes to military matters.
For full disclosure, I worked in the defense industry for almost 20 years, my experience covering everything from radar systems, missile guidance systems, aerospace electronics, as well as some ‘off the books’ projects for unnamed Three Letter Agencies. This does give me a little more insight about what’s going on than those who have never been exposed to military equipment and their capabilities, but nowhere near as much as those who used that equipment for the purposes for which they were designed. With that caveat out of the way I’ll continue.
One of the first things I noticed during hostilities which started three-and-a-half years ago was the differences in capabilities between Russian military equipment versus Ukraine’s. While a lot of the equipment Ukraine used in the beginning was of Russian origin, that changed as the war dragged on, with a lot of equipment from NATO nations being sent to Ukraine. Artillery pieces and the ammo that goes with them, rifles, shoulder-launched anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, antiaircraft defense systems like Patriot, armored vehicles including M1A1 Abrams tanks, M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, M113 APCs, MRAPs, MLRS systems including HIMARS and ATACMS, air-to-ground missiles, cruise missiles, precision guided bombs, then later, fighter aircraft.
What must also be noted is that a lot of that equipment that was sent to Ukraine wasn’t new, top-of-the-line materiel, but stuff that was older equipment on the verge of being scrapped. One example is the M1A1 Abrams tanks, a model that hasn’t been part of the US Armed Forces arsenal for years. It was replaced years ago by the M1A2, the most recent version being the M1A2-Sep3. Much of the other equipment sent were older versions that were being stored prior to disposal or replaced by newer versions.
Even that ‘old’ equipment showed just how over-matched the Russian equipment was. How well would up-to-date equipment fare against Russian equipment?
One of the biggest and most important lessons to be learned?
Drone warfare.
The Ukrainians took drone warfare to an entirely new level. That they were able to repurpose commercial off-the-shelf drones into precision weapons shows just how necessity fuels innovation. They have been effective against Russian armored vehicles and supply trucks, supply depots and other logistics systems caught a lot off people off guard. Even Ukraine’s marine drones, basically remotely operated boats and jet-skis, shut down Russia’s ability to operate freely in the Black Sea. It appears someone in the Pentagon has been paying attention seeing as a deal was recently stuck for Ukraine to sell some of their drones to the US military for evaluation and deployment. It shows that such equipment doesn’t need to be MilSpec and very expensive in order to be effective. That the drones are cheap, can be made in huge numbers, and easily deployed has proved to be one of their strengths. That Ukraine was also able to strike targets deep inside Russia using shipping containers to get them close to four Russian air bases and then launching them to attack Russian strategic and tactical bombers to great effect shows how they can be used when other more tradition means may be difficult to pull off. It also warns us that such tactics can be used against us too, and that we need to create the means of defending against such attacks. We’ve seen variations of some of these commercial drones modified to use fiber optic links that are immune to electronic warfare jamming. We’ve seen drones modified to plant anti-tank mines in fields and on roads. It appears there are applications for these war drones that are still being developed.
It’s going to be interesting to see what might be coming next.