Preliminary Lessons from the War in Ukraine
by David Archibald
25 December 2024
The following is a translation of an article written by Dutch officers attached to the European Union Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine and published in the Dutch military journal Militaire Spectator.
It is difficult to conduct maneuver warfare, in the manner of Guderian, Patton and Schwarzkopf, in Ukraine. The terrain is often swampy, millions of mines have been laid by both sides, and every movement is observed and reacted to. As a result, movement has become dangerous and the front has come to a standstill. Both sides have dug in and are trying to wear down the other party. It is a trench war, which therefore requires different training to prepare units.
Ukraine is now sending fewer people to military training due to the scarcity of men of military age. The average age of personnel being trained is increasing, now that more reservists and older volunteers are being called up. The older men amongst these have more medical ailments and thus lower physical deployability. Quality is also decreasing. For example, it is not unusual for a grocer to be given the S-4 role in a brigade staff. This is the logistics management position. Someone with an IT background would be given the role of signal operations.
The Ukrainian soldiers who have been well trained since 2014, especially by the Americans, were familiar with NATO planning concepts. That generation have been gradually worn away at the front. Their replacements are often reservists who were trained in the old Soviet style.
In the Soviet military culture there is a noticeable reluctance — sometimes bordering on unwillingness — to delegate tasks, because the commander wants to be visibly involved in everything and to do everything himself. After all, he is the boss — and has to demonstrate that fact. Being the ‘boss’ has formal and informal advantages, but then he has to prove it. The delegation of logistical tasks, for example, is seen as a loss of status or power or as ‘laziness.’ It is accepted that a commander will become overburdened by being involved in so much detail. But many commanders do not become overburdened at all, because in the Soviet culture a lot of bad news is simply not passed on to the top, to prevent the commander from interfering. Whether or not important matters are left undone is something examined after the event.
For example, if artillery support cannot be delivered at the designated time, the artillery officer does not alert the commander ahead of this. Because to do so in advance of the failure to deliver on time is embarrassing, because it means the artillery officer has not arranged something in time. If the fire support is then delivered far too late, you have at least shown that you have done your best and that you cannot be blamed. If your own troops are hit as a result, it is their fault because according to plan they should not have been there at all. If the end result fails as a consequence, it is also less bad, because the commander can simply redefine the criteria for success and failure. Subordinates become somewhat hesitant because ‘punishment’ can come from unexpected angles and for unexpected reasons.
A battalion or brigade commander directs his staff in person. One reason is that battalion commanders have a lot of experience and have been promoted through the ranks, while their staff are still partly inexperienced. It is also a way to show that they are the boss. But it leads to somewhat dogmatic plans and enforced actions. As a result, if a platoon commander is confronted with something unexpected at a low level, a form of rigidity often occurs — and his first instinct is to request new orders.
Another reason for the lack of maneuver warfare is the Soviet culture. Pointing out mistakes in training is a sensitive issue. The German term for this translates to ‘resistance to advice.’ Coaching is therefore an art form. For this reason, training for a battalion staff — with their brigade as a higher level and their companies as a lower level — is difficult. People then see too much of each other’s mistakes, which undermines the fragile mutual trust. In this culture, it is difficult to seize opportunities, show initiative, and act quickly. This means that important conditions for making maneuver warfare a success are lacking.
Social fraternity and cohesion is an important part of the mental component of unit training. It is cultivated by slowly increasing the external pressure. This causes the soldiers to seek support from each other, and a unit literally becomes a unit. Each new unit, which has been trained in basics, is sent to the area near the front fairly quickly, where it starts practicing defensive combat because this is the easiest to learn. From there they go to the second line at the front for a week to get used to the ambient noise and the constant artillery fire and drone buzzing. This is seen as ‘battlefield inoculation.’ Although many soldiers are individually quite motivated, getting them used to the uncomfortable and threatening circumstances is much more important to survival.
After the unit has become used to life behind the frontline, they train for the attack. Each unit is given three possible attack plans that must be prepared in their sector. Depending on the situation, a counterattack can be undertaken at very short notice, because the plans are there.
The non-commissioned officers are the backbone of the army. They alone, often for long periods and in isolated positions, keep groups of men together, care for them, instruct them on how weapons work and give tips on how to stay healthy and alive. In addition, they maintain social cohesion, discipline, and obedience to officers. Officers are judged primarily on the extent to which they understand their profession and the proven feasibility of their tactical plans.
However, motivation gradually diminishes when the prospect of a quick victory is diminished. Losses increase and personnel additions are slow in coming. Companies are sometimes reduced to 15 men within a day! Furthermore, the replacement of General Zaluzhny has not done any good. He was succeeded by ‘General 200,’ a cynical nickname given to the new commander Syrsky because of his ruthless reputation.
Ukrainians though, especially the younger ones, are much more flexible and inventive than Russians. Many new applications of existing weapons are being invented, as well as new weapons, with software development and artificial intelligence making great strides. Soldiers who come up with something clever on the front line are allowed to go back to work out their ideas in a larger context. This is why Ukraine is innovating quickly.
With respect to gathering intelligence, reconnaissance with vehicles is suicide. Reconnaissance is done with drones, or by small groups dressed in thick thermal jackets with hoods against thermal imaging cameras. On the Russian side in particular, combat reconnaissance is also done, with the aim of drawing fire and thus recognizing enemy positions, again often with drones. The Russians often use deception, such as by making noise with a mechanized company and attracting attention, while the actual combat reconnaissance is carried out with a dismounted platoon from another direction. Because reconnaissance is recognized more quickly in daylight, as night comes there is about a 30% increase in reconnaissance and attacks. Night vision equipment is therefore essential.
Counter Unmanned Aerial System based on a Stryker vehicle has a remote weapons system with a 30 mm cannon, four laser-guided 70 mm missiles and a 26kW laser with a range of 5.5 kilometres, all cued by onboard radars.
The Russians make extensive use of a bizarre type of combat reconnaissance. ‘Sacrificable’ (Storm-Z) soldiers must carry out a kind of suicide attack along a designated route, while the regular army units watch to identify the Ukrainian positions firing back. This is often followed by an attack aimed at these identified Ukrainian positions, which have to be abandoned due to the superiority of fire. The Russians have increasingly used glide bombs for this. Sometimes there as many as 30 of this type of attack in a sector. The Ukrainian defenders use indirect fire and FPV drones, which don’t betray their position, to prevent a forced gradual retreat.
Reading maps is a problem in many reconnaissance patrols, especially at night. The current generation of Ukrainians did not grow up learning how to do this. Only by using tablets with the Ukrainian command and control system can young Ukrainians determine locations and coordinates. Without tablets, patrols in training get lost in the forest and staffs cannot establish a relationship between the map and the terrain relief.
The drones sometimes give a battalion commander more insight into the terrain and enemy positions than an advancing platoon itself. It therefore happens quite often that a platoon is led directly to the assigned target by the battalion commander by radio, which in itself fits in with the old Soviet culture.
The smartphones of Russian soldiers are another major source of intelligence. They can be tracked. When Russians are taken prisoners of war, the contents of their phones are analyzed.
The main operational changes in the Ukraine War are at the tactical level. These are mainly the use of tactical drones, the reduced use of large vehicle, and deep defense lines with mines and traps.
Since the start of the war, many civilian volunteers who already had drones as a hobby signed up for the army. They form drone teams. Depending on the front sector, there are up to 40 drone teams per brigade in action, with usually around 50 drones in the air at the same time. With drone teams, operational focal points can be established. The drone operators have now been designated as a fully-fledged part of the armed forces. The success of drones is enormous, and many types of drones have become available. The importance of drones has also been recognized at the strategic level, which has led to the construction of factories that are now producing over two million drones per year.
Drones are distributed down to the lowest level, which makes them quickly available. Drones launched at platoon level are in the air within three minutes, while at brigade level it often takes 20 minutes before they arrive on site. Even infantry groups have their own drones and use them to clear trenches, or they walk about 300 meters behind a drone in an attack. The battlefield is divided into sectors and each sector is guarded by observation drones. Fire support or armed drones (FPVs) engage identified targets. Both sides in the conflict have also learned to use drones to take down the enemy’s drones. Ukraine has also used FPV drones to take down Russian fixed wing reconnaissance drones, which find targets for artillery and Lancet drones.
The control and management of these many drones is arranged by a ‘drone officer’ at brigade level. Deconfliction for frequency use and jamming is arranged mutually with an electronic warfare officer who sits next to the drone officer. The distinction between friendly and enemy drones cannot be made. By setting up ‘mini-airspace-management’, corridors are made known where friendly drones fly. Drones in other places are therefore enemy. The use of time slots is also a solution: ‘Ground everything from then to then, anything still flying then must be enemy’. Nevertheless, it is estimated that a quarter of the drones are shot down by friendly troops.
Drones have made what we call the ‘deep battle’ the most important battle within the brigade. The brigade commander, together with the fire support, electronic warfare, the drone officer and the intelligence officer, is personally involved in taking out targets up to 20 kilometres behind the enemy front line. He also has a personal drone, and often the battalion commanders do too, with which he can inspect areas of interest to him.
The biggest threat to the Ukrainians at the moment are FPV drones, Lancet drones, and glide bombs. Due to the drone threat, many Russian and Ukrainian vehicles now have electronic jammers. Their range is small, however, which means that the Ukrainians can still take out vehicles by flying ‘blind’ for the last 100 meters. The latest drones even have target recognition using AI, or thin fibre optic cables that cannot be jammed. The Russians use a lot of cage constructions on their vehicles to ward off attacks from above, but this does not help enough. Vehicles remain vulnerable, resulting in reduced deployment of large vehicles.
Due to the great threat of drones, possibly in combination with artillery fire, large weapon systems are hardly used near the front line. As soon as they are seen, the enemy sends FPV drones towards them. Long-range anti-tank missiles also pose a great danger and can unexpectedly appear between openings in tree screens. As a result, tanks can hardly be used regularly and a collection of tanks or other vehicles certainly attracts a large number of drones — because drone teams can be moved faster than a concentration of tanks.
The Ukrainians are careful with their tanks. They are often deployed individually or dug in at a great distance and used for indirect fire, with drones providing target guidance. The crew is often not in the tank, but under separate cover, and only climbs into the tank for a fire mission.
Due to the large numbers of drones and camera sensors, a kind of ‘no man’s land’ has been created that has become very deep, five to ten kilometres) and in which every moving target is seen and attacked. When artillery is used in this, it is tracked down with counter-battery radars or by drones. This also results in many artillery duels. Towed artillery is not armoured and is quickly destroyed. The PzH2000 self-propelled howitzer has a higher chance of survival due to its armour. But mechanized artillery is also vulnerable, with Russian Lancet drones the greatest threat. Russian drones then keep an eye on a possible AMA (Artillery Maneuver Area), which means that ‘shoot and scoot’ does not work, because movement is noticed. What does work is a fixed, buried position that is covered with nets, chicken wire and/or a cage construction on the roof and where the traces on the ground have been thoroughly erased. Artillery pieces are also no longer positioned together, but sometimes as much as a kilometer apart. This means that target calculations become more complicated and simultaneous battery fire is not often performed. When electronic warfare is available, counter-battery radars are also quickly located and disabled.
Combined action, in which dismounted infantry with their own vehicle and the weapons on it work together, hardly ever occurs anymore. It is simply too dangerous for large vehicles. Infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) only serve as a ‘battlefield taxi’. Infantrymen are taken to an enemy trench as fast as possible, after which the IFV returns and, if possible, brings another group of infantry. IFVs are not used in the front line at all. A mechanized company in defence uses the infantry to occupy the trenches in the front line. About three kilometres behind the forward line of own troops three IFVs are in dug-in positions. One kilometre behind that another IFV is used as the platoon reserve. The other IFVs of the company are about 15 kilometres behind the forward line of own troops.
From positions in depth, there is a lot of indirect shooting by means of ‘plunging-fire’, with 25mm and 40mm indirect shots being fired at Russian positions and guided by drones. It then ‘rains’ exploding shells on the Russian positions.
The expected Ukrainian breakthrough at Robotyne in 2023 failed not so much because the minefields were much deeper than expected, but because of poor synchronization of fire support and ground operations. This was partly due to the fact that the Leopards, Bradleys, and breakthrough tanks had been trained individually in different places in far too short a time and had hardly practiced together. But above all it was the Russian Ka-52 antitank helicopters that had already been warned by the long advance time and that were hanging behind treelines eight kilometres away, out of range of anti-aircraft cannon and missiles, after which they fired on the column from the flanks. Here too it became clear that combined arms combat is difficult to carry out.
The Russian answer to the ‘concentration’ problem on this transparent and deadly battlefield is to attack much more dispersed and on a smaller scale. They move around a lot in smaller vehicles, for example in golf carts, and attack with quad bikes, motorcycles and electric scooters. Operations are fragmented, with a company of 90 men being divided into 30 groups of three, each of which is actually too small to be recognized or attacked by drones. With dozens of successive waves of attacks, small bridgeheads are established. Ukrainians returning to their abandoned positions are seen and eliminated. Eventually, a small number of men do reach the next forest edge. This tactic would of course be completely hopeless under traditional circumstances, but in the evolution of warfare it has proven successful.
The inability to concentrate vehicles has changed the battlefield considerably. The military principles of surprise and concentration of resources are being undermined. It is really starting to look like the battlefields of the First World War. Many tactics will also be the same. One difference is that many positions and trenches are overgrown, because there is no more farming. They are no longer visible from the ground, and minefields are invisible even from the air.
The Russian defense lines are very extensive and deep. The regular front unit builds and mans the first ‘security line’ itself, which can be up to 15 kilometres deep. Then follows a second line of about 10 kilometres deep, built by engineering units. Civil contractors build the third ‘stop line’, also 10 kilometres deep. In the event of a threatened breakthrough, the higher command fills the second and third lines with additional supplied units and not with fallen back friendly units. Deep minefields, barbed wire, and dragon’s teeth precede each line, and these are under observation and fire, often from flanking positions.
The trenches themselves are often booby-trapped, including with motion detectors. Dummy trenches are also present, often on a large scale, and these are intended to attract attention. In addition, Russian artillery is fired into the trenches so that when the Russians let go, the Ukrainians come under direct artillery fire and cannot pursue.
Because the front has come to a standstill and the Russians have laid deep minefields everywhere, there is more emphasis on breaking through minefields and obstacles. The use of breakthrough tanks is often not possible because of the drone threat. That is why men have to crawl forward, especially at night, to clear mines. Specially trained infantrymen are needed for this, who can do engineering and mine-clearing work. These assault sappers are specially trained and know what dangerous work awaits them. The losses are great. To give them a chance, their deployment must take place under the cover of larger units.
Also clearing trenches is done in smaller and smaller numbers. At the moment an infantry group is divided into four lots of two men each, where one pair (a corporal and a soldier) are separated from the next pair by a corner in a trench (two corners distance). Sometimes there is a half hour of fighting over one corner! The platoon commander is too important to take risks. He is often three kilometres to the rear and leads the fight with drones. He sometimes has his own small drone that flies a few corners ahead. The group often includes a shotgun as a last defence against enemy drones.
To clear trenches, the Russians occasionally use phosphorus/thermite grenades that burn away any cover. They also use tear gas hidden in a regular smoke screen. This can cause Ukrainian soldiers to panic and abandon their positions, especially if they do not have a gas mask.
Ukrainian logistics is often undertaken by civilian entrepreneurs with trucks, who set up small transhipment points about 60 kilometres behind the front. From there, small off-road vehicles drive forward as covered as possible, often at night. Sometimes only four artillery shells are loaded into a passenger car and taken forward. Soldiers going to the front line carry their own supplies with them. Transport drones are used to supply frontline positions that are under Russian fire. The consumption of ammunition, especially by artillery, is higher than expected. The guns are wearing out quickly and there is need for a stock of replacement barrels, especially for the 152 mm.
Smaller vehicles are also used for medical evacuation. On the front line, after initial triage, priority is given to those who still have a chance of survival in order to be able to endure the sometimes very uncomfortable journey back to the rear. The standard treatment at the front is the use of tourniquets and often also amputation. Blood is also drawn from soldiers on the spot and made available for transfusion to wounded comrades. This is termed ‘warm blood donation’. It is advisable therefore to have buddy pairs based on blood type. Care of the wounded must take place under cover. The Russians keep an eye on wounded people in the hope that more victims can be made. That is why aid stations and hospitals must be camouflaged. A red cross offers no protection. Worse still; it attracts fire. Hospitals are attacked up to 50 kilometres behind the front line.
Vehicle maintenance is done at the front on location, because damaged large vehicles cannot be brought to the rear unnoticed to repair shops. The emphasis is therefore on ‘battle damage repair’, which is often carried out by the crew themselves. This sometimes does not improve the vehicle.
The Ukrainians are struggling with too much diversity of NATO equipment. Apart from the many types of equipment, it also appears that NATO standardization has not always been applied correctly. There are multiple versions of 155mm shells with associated firing tables, which means that they cannot be fired from every type of gun. The same applies to 7.62mm or other ammunition. These are logistical nightmares. The good news is that the Ukrainian equipment (especially artillery) is gradually becoming more modern and the Russian equipment is getting older, because they have never sold anything and are clearing out old storage facilities and sending them to the front.
Electricity is often not available at the front. Heating and lighting in underground ‘dug-outs’ is provided by trench candles. These thick candles were already developed in the First World War and are mass-produced by the Ukrainian population and sent to the front. Further back, in small bunkers and cellars, small generators provide power, but the hot exhaust gases have to be camouflaged against Russian drones with thermal imaging.
With respect to Ukrainian operational planning, combined arms operations by a battalion or brigade staff are difficult due to inexperience. Often the staff have never seen it in real life and do not know the properties of the various weapon systems. Coherence and synchronization leave much to be desired. The solution to coordination problems is to work with smaller, less conspicuous, and therefore less powerful units. In that sense, the phenomenon of ‘position warfare’ is also part of the solution, because it is easier to coordinate. Due to the coordination problem, regular airspace control is also not carried out. That is all much too difficult and takes too long. The chance that your own drone or helicopter is hit by your own artillery shell is minimal and is then just bad luck.
The Russian way of planning is completely different from that of NATO. Almost everything is planned centrally at a high level, in detail. Perhaps this can be understood from a culture in which the (communist) state takes care of everything. Perhaps also from the old Russian view that only higher staffs (army corps and higher) were allowed to apply operational art and everything below that (due to the assumed lower level of education) had no latitude for initiative. Russian planning can therefore be compared to a clock. Everything is planned with templates, phase lines, assigned times and schedules. When making the plan, a lot of use is made of staff data and, if possible, also of simulations. Incidentally, do not underestimate the tactical insight, the doctrine and the deception tricks that are baked in. The detailed plan is then passed on and the subordinate commanders no longer have to think about it too much. They have to execute it systematically. And they do not have to keep each other informed for mutual ‘situational awareness’, something that also makes a difference in the necessary radio traffic. The plan is sacred and if it doesn’t work it is simply tried again with a new unit or more people. Losses play no role in this. Precisely because they work with time schedules, opportunities that arise are not seized and new threats are reacted to slowly, which works to the Ukrainian advantage.
Due to the large number of trenches, field fortifications, minefields, barbed wire, ruins and drones, attacks must be carried out with a 5:1 superiority. And because the front has become static, other principles become important, such as supply, replacement, maintenance/repair, lifespan/wear and tear, etc. This means that you can win the war with logistics. In part, it has become a ‘war of the factories.’
The spread of staff units is much larger than what we are used to. Behind the forward line of own troops, a company command post is usually located 10 kilometres away, a battalion command post 40 kilometres away and a brigade command post about 60 kilometres. A brigade sector is deep, but narrow. The principal of leading by example does not apply in Ukraine — much too dangerous. The commanders usually stay in the back and watch via drones and a good communication system. Connections are via Starlink, of which there are about 20 per battalion. Within a company and within staffs, Motorola radios and line connections are used. Above important front lines, the Ukrainians fly special drones with WiFi routers with a power cable from the ground.
Ukrainian soldiers work with the command app ‘Kropyva’ which means nettle in English. Kropyva is an Android-based software suite with approximately 10,000 users simultaneously. Everyone has access to numerous functions: drone images, own or enemy locations, ‘rain radar’, ‘air raid’/’early warning’ warning, the area of operation of own electronic warfare and own operation plans of multiple levels. There is also an app to recognize Ukrainian Mavic drones. With Kropyva, the platoon commander (with a small screen on his forearm) is in contact with the brigade commander and everyone in between. Everyone can designate targets and have them attacked by artillery. Kropyva communicates with other units via Starlink.
A brigade command post is very small and consists of 50 men. The commander often sits centrally in the brigade command post. He watches on ten 80 inch screens that each oversee a section of the front. When a target is spotted, he often immediately controls a drone. Sometimes he also directly controls his own armoured vehicles that have to combat the threat. The command post is often spread over several cellars and preferably underground or in bunkers. The day and night shifts each run for 12 hours in a row, with sleeping accommodations set up at some distance.
For visits to the front, the commander uses two small vans, which are also full of screens on the walls with a table in the middle and five men around it. These are the brigade commander, the operational officer, the intelligence office, the drone coordinator, the air attack controller, and an electronic warfare coordinator. Each battalion has at least two electronic warfare stations to jam Russian radios or drones. There are also tracking stations to track enemy jammers. Due to the heavy use of the electromagnetic spectrum, frequency managers at brigade level are already important, especially to deconflict the frequencies for drones and electronic warfare.
Training is a force multiplier. Only with training can you get the most out of the possibilities of the weapon systems or newly formed units. Without training, a donated tank platoon or other weapon system is of little value. So despite the pressure to deploy mobilized soldiers quickly, investment in longer training courses is necessary. Historical experience indicates a training of at least 5 months, of 24 hours per day for seven days a week, up to and including company level. That is considerably more than the time currently available. The fact that the front has now become static is an advantage, because that is the only feasible method of fighting with relatively untrained troops.
For training of companies and battalion staffs, extensive synchronization matrices are made, at the request of the Ukrainians themselves, to be able to see and learn the mutual interaction of different players and weapon systems. If you can make the sequential and synchronized deployment of units visible, then combined-arms warfare can be better understood. This also stems somewhat from the desire for thorough planning in advance.
NATO training units also teach the law of war. But what can you say about that? At least that one should have no illusions about the Russian falseness, ruthlessness and violence; they are unprecedented. The Ukrainians are trying to set up teams that can do forensic investigations and collect evidence. But at the same time they know that the perpetrators will probably not be found and/or punished anyway. That is why the lessons in the law of war are not really popular and are greeted with derision. Nevertheless, the instructors emphasize that one must obey the law because otherwise there is a risk that European support could be lost as a result of the information warfare on both sides.
This static war has mainly become a war of attrition or wear and tear. It has become a ‘war of the factories’, in which numbers count and production capacity and financial strength are important. The operating principle of the Ukrainians at the moment is to make the war very expensive for the Russians by means of the defensive battle. The Russians lose many times more people and equipment than the Ukrainians, which means that they will hopefully have to give up the fight in the long term or destroy even more of their economy in order to be able to support the fight. The question here is how long the belligerents can sustain the fight economically and demographically. The Western political fear of escalation does not help and is a self-invented and self-limiting thought. For the Russians it does not matter, because they already consider themselves at war with the West; an enemy that limits itself is, in their eyes, only stupid.
The Ukrainians have set up a specific lessons-learned organization, partly staffed by a civilian nongovernmental organization called Kestrel. This circumvents political/bureaucratic obstacles. This organization has offshoots throughout the organization, with a contact person at each level who observes and disseminates developments and lessons. Because the Russians are able to adapt quickly, it is necessary for the Ukrainians to adapt quickly to the adaptation. The basics are taught at national and international training institutes, but behind the front there must be smaller units that teach the latest tips and tricks of the front to the newly deployed soldiers. Training institutes sometimes react slowly. Ukraine solves this by sending non-commissioned officers and officers from the front with a battalion to be trained. But this sometimes causes friction between NATO instructors who want to teach NATO methods and the Ukrainian instructors who indicate that these methods do not work.
The Meaning of the Preliminary Lessons
What has happened in Ukraine is quite heartening for Australia. On the modern battlefield, attack has become far more expensive than defence. We will be doing defence and so, all other things being equal, the advantage lies with us. Normally an attacker needs a three to one force advantage to prevail; in Ukraine the necessary ratio is now considered to be five to one.
The drone threat is big and still evolving. Take the example of the response to antitank guided missiles. Israel lost a number of tanks to Kornet tandem, shaped-charge warhead antitank guided missiles in its 2006 invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel, developed two active protection systems in response, Trophy and Iron Fist. The US failed to develop its own active protection system and so is now installing Israeli systems on some of its armoured vehicles. It took about 15 years for the US to respond to this change in battlefield threats.
To reduce the drone threat, Thales in the UK developed a mobile microwave system that destroys the electronics of drones in a cone up to a kilometre from the vehicle.
The drone threat will be countered to a large extent and this will come at its own cost. The active protection systems to counter antitank guided missiles are dealing with a missile approaching at about 400 metres per second. It won’t take much to tweak the software to enable them to cope with things approaching at a fraction of that speed. No armoured vehicles in the Ukraine War have active protection systems so we have yet to have it confirmed by battlefield experience. Israeli tanks have coped very well in their recent battles with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Specialised vehicles have now been developed for dealing with drones, about a year after the drone threat became serious in Ukraine in September, 2023. One of these includes a laser with a range of five kilometres. Another system just developed uses a wide microwave beam to fry the electronics of drones. It has an effective range of one kilometre.
The downside is that targeting drones requires a radar. The radar of the Trophy system can be detected by electronic countermeasure aircraft from 400 km away. Tanks equipped with Trophy have learnt to turn the system off when they are not under direct threat.
Vehicles equipped with a 20-kilowatt laser are a valuable target and will attract radar-homing missiles. Eventually measures and countermeasures will evolve to minimum entropy. We have dealt with this sort of thing before. Australian troops have a standing order that they are not allowed to go beyond the coverage of artillery so that artillery can always be used to break up enemy forces that have engaged them. A similar protocol is likely to be developed for the drone threat.
The other big aerial threat for Ukrainian troops is Russian glide bombs. Released by Su-34 aircraft some 40 km from the front line and reaching 30 km beyond it, these are what have actually caused the Ukrainians to lose territory. They can be countered by surface-to-air missile systems. For example, the Patriot system has a range of 160 kilometres. The longest-range shoot down in the Ukraine War to date is a 1960s-era SA-5 Gammon shooting down a Tu-22 at a range of 305 kilometres. The trick is to be able to protect the surface-to-air missile system from being destroyed by ballistic missiles. The Patriot system protecting Kiev has protected itself from destruction by Iskander and Kinzhal missiles. A system, such as Patriot, with a range of 160 km might protect a front 100 kilometres across. Each combined arms brigade would have a front of 20 kilometres so one Patriot system could protect five brigades. Beyond the Patriot system, there are similar systems on offer by MBDA in Europe, Hanwha in South Korea, and Rafael in Israel. Australia had better choose a system to adopt, and pay up, soon. Because our front-line troops are unprotected and will be chewed up without one.
What has happened in Ukraine shows the benefit of longer-range artillery. We don’t want Australian artillery to be having artillery duels with anyone. We want to cost-effectively outrange them, which will be by a combination of rocket-boosted glide munitions and sub-calibre shells with staves to convert kinetic energy into glide distance. Australia likely doesn’t have a single cluster munition in its possession. We need plenty of those. Clearing trenches would be best done with thermobaric warheads, which are 80% heptane and 20% ethylene oxide.
Ukraine has also shown the need for dedicated mine-clearing vehicles, instead of adding a mine-trawl to an existing type of armoured vehicle. The big, deep minefields of Ukraine are chewing up a lot of armoured vehicles. If they were unmanned, they could have a low profile and be hard to hit.
This article is a chapter from Building Australia’s Defence, a book now at 77,626 words which will be out in early 2025.
Anyone who would like to support the initial print run is invited to contact me by email: davidarchibaldperth@gmail.com