Interesting article in the WSJ today about military lessons learned from the war in Ukraine. It includes the views of General Patrick Sanders, the BA Chief of Staff. I hope they don't cancel my subscription for posting these.
www.wsj.com/articles/lessons-of-russias-war-in-ukraine-you-cant-hide-and-weapons-stockpiles-are-essential-11656927182?mod=hp_lead_pos6
Lessons of Russia’s War in Ukraine: You Can’t Hide and Weapons Stockpiles Are Essential - U.S., its allies study Europe’s biggest conflict in decades; ‘You can’t cyber your way across a river’
BRUSSELS—Western governments are bracing for a protracted conflict with Russia over Ukraine, and military leaders are racing to distill lessons from the opening months of Europe’s largest land war in almost eight decades.
President Biden and North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last week pledged to support Ukrainian forces for as long as it takes for Kyiv to prevail. How long that means will depend in large part on how fighting plays out, and both sides are trying to adapt.
Defense planners are studying weapons, tactics, logistics and other factors for insights that can give them an edge on the current battlefield—and in future conflicts.
“We’ve been watching the war in Ukraine closely, and we are already learning and adapting,” Gen. Patrick Sanders, the new chief of Britain’s general staff, said in a recent speech. “We will rethink how we fight.”
The conflict is drawing close attention—and has become something of a laboratory for professional soldiers—not just because it is proving so deadly to fighters and civilians, or because it is the first big war to play out in near-real-time on social media.
The war in Ukraine is the first in decades involving large, fairly modern and roughly evenly matched forces. Others over recent decades have either pitted cutting-edge forces against less modern foes, as in the two Gulf wars and Afghanistan, or were on a smaller scale.
Some lessons aren’t all that new, such as the value of strong leadership and resilient supply lines. Others are: The modern battlefield has no hiding places and no boundaries. Drones, electronic surveillance and space-based observation make concealment harder than even a few years ago.
Gen. Sanders said Russia’s invasion shows that “if you want to avert conflict, you better be prepared to fight.” Military thinkers say it is also a wake-up call for citizens of the West who have come to see war as something distant and high-tech, executed with surgical precision.
Instead, the fighting in Ukraine has been a devastating war of attrition, waged with heavy artillery, evoking memories of fighting in the two world wars.
“Maybe modern war isn’t as modern as people thought,” said Billy Fabian, a former U.S. Defense Department analyst and Army infantry officer, now a senior manager at Govini, a company that harnesses high technology for decision-making at clients including the Pentagon.
“Mass offensive warfare is difficult and awful, with tremendous losses,” he said.
At NATO’s annual summit last week, officials touted the value of trans-Atlantic cooperation in waging war. Alliance officials say it became evident in 2011, when NATO intervened in Libya’s civil war and European forces had to depend on U.S. munitions due to low stocks.
In the current conflict, cooperation ranges from weapons supplies to sanctions on Russia. The unity hasn’t defeated the Russians, but it has multiplied the
Some NATO members are upgrading their military capabilities and increasing defense budgets as Russia’s war in Ukraine continues. Analysts say fighter jets and air defense systems are in demand, but some weapons could take years to be delivered.
Relentless bombardments from both sides have made clear the importance of ready stocks of weapons and munitions. Russia’s enormous quantities have given it a battlefield advantage lately, but some open-source intelligence analysts suggest that Moscow might now be running low on certain ammunition.
Ukraine’s Western allies, meanwhile, are having to rethink military-industrial plans after shipping to Kyiv large numbers of weapons and munitions that planners had assumed their own forces would use some day.
“A lesson of Ukraine is we need more insights and transparency in stockpiles,” said a senior NATO official. “What you can expend in days or hours takes weeks to resupply and years to build.”
Both sides are using drones to locate and attack targets, and Ukrainians have exploited light, mobile weapons supplied by Western allies to hit bigger, better-armed Russian targets. But most of the damage being inflicted on both armies—and on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure—is from missiles, rockets and bombs that have been used for years.
“What we’re seeing is conventional mechanized war with modern characteristics,” said Mr. Fabian.
Ukrainians protected their capital, Kyiv, and other cities from Russian tanks and armored vehicles in the war’s opening weeks by deftly employing portable rocket launchers provided by Western allies.
While some observers said the rout foretold the death of the tank, others said what it really showed was the need for well-coordinated maneuvers involving a variety of troops and weapons, known as combined-arms tactics.
“We will double-down on combined arms maneuver, especially in the deep battle,” said Britain’s Gen. Sanders. “Success will be determined by combined arms and multi-domain competence. And mass.”
‘‘Success will be determined by combined arms and multi-domain competence. And mass.
— Gen. Patrick Sanders, chief of Britain’s general staff
He said that while the digital transformation of warfare is vital, “to put it bluntly, you can’t cyber your way across a river. No single platform, capability, or tactic will unlock the problem.”
Tacticians say new approaches could include greater use of small, inexpensive systems, such as Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2, the U.S.’s Switchblade drones and NLAW mobile rockets from Britain.
With electronic surveillance now pervasive, planners are seeking ways to operate without emitting radio signals. Some reconnaissance drones are sent on preset missions and return to base carrying intelligence, rather than transmitting it.
Others are sent on preset attack missions. Low-tech solutions from earlier eras—like using runners during urban warfare—are also getting a fresh look.
Likely detection means that systems such as the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, which the U.S. is supplying Ukraine, are increasingly valuable. They can launch attacks and relocate before detection, or shoot-and-scoot in military parlance.
The next step is better integrating these emerging approaches, and doing it across traditional divisions of military services because old distinctions between land, naval and air war are disappearing. In a paper for the U.S. National Defense University publication Joint Forces Quarterly in 2018, two senior officers proposed an integrated approach dubbed multidomain battle.
In it, Army Gen. David G. Perkins and Air Force Gen. James M. Holmes, both since retired, proposed their multidomain approach to overcome divisions between the Army, Navy and other services and “build the future force as a converged and integrated solution.”
Other lessons build on long experience. Ukrainian forces have been outgunned and outnumbered, but they have fought fiercely to protect their homeland and so have held out far longer and more successfully than many Western military officials predicted they could in February.
“The will to fight is decisive,” said NATO’s Mr. Stoltenberg. He cited not just “the commitment of Ukrainian troops, but also of the Ukrainian people to defend their own country.”
Eight years of training by NATO and its members and new command structures that empowered lower-rank troops have also made a big difference, Ukrainian soldiers and defense officials have said.
On the other hand, a line from the Cold War used in reference to the Soviet Union’s vast number of unsophisticated weapons still rings true: Quantity is a quality in itself.
Russia’s supplies of artillery pieces and shells have allowed Moscow to gain ground in eastern Ukraine over recent weeks, even as troops have shown signs of poor morale and discipline.
“Even an incompetent army can still destroy your country,” said Jamie Shea, a retired senior NATO official. “An army may not be very motivated, but the artillery certainly is.”