U.S. must learn from Ukraine about drone warfare, weapons systems

What our enemies are seeing in real time

By Shea Bradley-Farrell - Thursday, August 1, 2024

OPINION:The United States must learn some critical lessons from Russia’s war in Ukraine. Our current weapons systems and tactics are being radically challenged by a new generation of warfare, with a massive shift in warfare techniques, logistics and weapons systems.We have lessons to learn, and we need to learn them fast.U.S. ground combat systems, including tanks and air defense rockets, are less effective and efficient against the enemy’s much cheaper drones. This has become remarkably clear through U.S. participation in the Russia-Ukraine war. First, relatively simple and inexpensive drones, sold by Turkey and Iran to Russia, are destroying much more complex and expensive weapons systems (missiles and tanks) given to Ukraine by the U.S. and other NATO countries. Second, Ukraine is using (wasting) vastly more expensive U.S. missiles to knock these drones down.

The bottom line is that Americans are paying top dollar for military equipment that provides much lower value on the battlefield as willful and negligent politicians and defense contractors maintain the status quo to keep lining their pockets. Yet drone technology has quickly become central to warfare. In late 2022, Russia used cheap Iranian Shahed drones and ballistic cruise missiles to systematically attack Ukraine, devastating almost one-third of that country’s energy infrastructure and causing widespread blackouts. In turn, drones altered the dynamics of the war: Ukraine “used high- and low-end imported and domestically produced drones to devastating effect against Russian forces. "A 3D printer can make the components needed to use aerial photography technology to create a killer drone. Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater professional military services company, explains: “Now everyone has precision weapons. To the point that a 12-year-old kid with a First Person View [FPV] Drone can put a beer-can-sized charge on the bottom of the drone and fly it into a tank many miles away. This is a step change in warfare, going from long bows and spears not just to … muskets, but to bolt action rifles. It is massive: the proliferation, the democratization, of precision strike down to ‘two guys with a backpack.’”

In June 2023, Ukraine sent drones and long-range missiles to destroy Russian command and control sites as well as ammunition depots, fuel storage infrastructure and bridges from Crimea to the Donbas and Russian mainland. The coupling of cheap drones with artillery and infantry has radically changed ground combat, offering important “battlefield transparency and responsiveness.” In other words, cameras on flying drones can reveal what the enemy is doing and allow a quicker response.Ukraine’s airpower has largely taken the form of drones — “a first for a large nation.” In some instances, Javelin missiles given to the Ukrainians by the U.S. at a cost of about “$200,000 per shot with a $300,000 command launch unit” have been switched out for missiles built by “Ukrainians themselves” (for around $29,000) and delivered to the enemy on a drone or an anti-tank missile.For 20 years, U.S. weapons systems fought a war on terror in mainly primitive locations against a relatively unsophisticated enemy. In the Russia-Ukraine war, however, the operating environment and fighting techniques are radically different. It is a sophisticated electronic warfare environment where the entire electromagnetic spectrum (all signals and electronics) is effectively targeted and “jammed”

Source : U.S. must learn from Ukraine about drone warfare, weapons systems - Washington Times