"The best weapons today, agree the Russian and Ukrainian generals, might be small, cheap systems such as “'first-person view,' or FPV drones that fly into targets like tiny suicide bombers and can be almost impossible to stop. The chilling fact is that these silent killers can be bought and used by almost any combatant, anywhere on Earth. It is, as the generals agree, a new day in warfare.”
“One possible (longshot) alternative: “There is a way for Joe Biden to rush aid to Ukraine without Congressional approval,” Simon Shuster of Time explained on social media Tuesday. “He can grant emergency licenses and share blueprints for Ukraine to produce NATO weapons for itself. Zelenskyy has been asking him for that at least since September.” Read more from Shuster’s recent report, “Inside Ukraine’s Plan to Arm Itself,”
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U.S. Defense News
Ukrainian Drones are Ready to Destroy 500 Russian tanks and 600 Combat Vehicles in Kupyansk
“The commentaries were flagged to me by Kevin Ryan, a retired Army brigadier general who served as U.S. defense attaché in Moscow and then taught at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. He translated the articles and circulated them this week among Russia specialists. Zaluzhny made similar comments about the importance of drones in an interview published in November in the Economist, but the Russian analysis is new and startling.
“These two adversaries see many of the same lessons,” Ryan writes in an email summarizing the commentaries. The generals recognize that in the Ukraine battlespace, “no concentration of troops, large or small, can escape the ever-present reconnaissance by unmanned aerial systems and satellites,” he notes.
The tactical revolution underway in Ukraine underlines why a congressional failure to approve continued U.S. military support for Kyiv would be so devastating. As Russia gains increasing mastery of digital warfare, Zaluzhny worries that Ukraine is hobbled by “exhaustion of our partners’ stocks of missiles and ammunition” and “the difficulty of our allies in determining the priorities of support.”
Baluyevsky’s comments read like a wake-up call to his fellow Russian officers. He argues that the so-called special military operation in Ukraine has been “an unprecedented test of literally all components of military affairs and military construction.” His analysis came in the foreword for an anthology of essays about the war, which was then summarized in Army Standard by Russian journalist Sergey Valchenko.
Baluyevsky echoes many Western commentators who have argued that defense has trumped offense in Ukraine. “Air defense has won an unexpected triumph over military aviation,” which has “lost the ability to operate en masse over enemy territory” and even must fly “with caution over its own territory.”
The tank “has become one of the main casualties of the combat experience of the last two years,” he explains, since it was “an easily detected and easily hit target” and “turned out to be very vulnerable to mines.” Similarly, “the impossibility of concentrating troops … forces us to conduct combat operations with small units and separate combat vehicles.”
Baluyevsky has some scathing comments about the performance of Russian weapons. “The qualitative superiority of NATO artillery is evident,” he contends. Ukraine “has revealed a significant lag in Russian artillery and missile systems and requires their priority radical rearmament in the next few years.”
The winners in this war are drones. “Unmanned aircraft have rapidly and unconditionally conquered the airspace,” Baluyevsky argues. Zaluzhny agrees that “unmanned systems, along with other new types of weapons, are almost the only tool for getting out of” the stalemate of trench warfare.
Zaluzhny bemoans Russia’s manpower advantage and Ukraine’s “inability … to improve the state of staffing of the Defense Forces without the use of unpopular measures,” such as a nationwide draft. His disagreement with President Volodymyr Zelensky about the need for such an all-out mobilization is one reason for recent tension between the two men — and Zelensky’s reported readiness to sack his commander.
Ukraine, as I wrote after visiting Kyiv in October, is exhausted by war and slowly bleeding out. Zaluzhny implicitly recognizes this war fatigue in arguing for increased use of unmanned systems to “reduce the level of losses … reduce the degree of participation of traditional means of destruction … [and] limited involvement of heavy equipment.”
The lesson for the United States, beyond the simple but urgent need to continue military assistance for Ukraine, is to focus that support on the high-tech weapons that matter. The weapons that have generated endless debate, such as tanks and F-16 fighters, are less important than drones, antiaircraft systems and electronic-warfare jammers.
The best weapons today, agree the Russian and Ukrainian generals, might be small, cheap systems such as “first-person view,” or FPV drones that fly into targets like tiny suicide bombers and can be almost impossible to stop. The chilling fact is that these silent killers can be bought and used by almost any combatant, anywhere on Earth. It is, as the generals agree, a new day in warfare.
FROM:
The Washington Post
Opinion What a Russian and Ukrainian general agree on: This battlespace is different
Columnist
CNN
See the small sea drone Ukraine says packs 500 pounds of explosives
“After attending a Pentagon briefing for lawmakers on Monday, Michigan Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin explained that a lack of continued U.S. support would leave Russia “able to strike Ukraine’s cities with ballistic missiles, destroying its economy, damaging critical infrastructure like energy plants, and raising worldwide food prices as Ukraine is unable to export grain that feeds millions around the globe.”
“Russia could break through the current front lines and capture more territory, subjecting more of Ukraine’s people to the same horrific crimes that took place at the start of the war,” she said. “Ukrainian refugees, fleeing bombardment and the cruelty of Russian forces, would leave in massive numbers, creating new strains for our European allies,” she continued.
“The irony is that there is a bipartisan agreement, negotiated in the Senate, that would send help to Ukraine, as well as Taiwan & Israel, & secure our own border,” Slotkin wrote on social media. “I hope the Senate considers it & I hope Speaker Johnson changes course & brings it to the House floor for a vote. If not, historians may remember this as the moment when America gave up on defending democracy. When our political polarization got so bad that we abandoned the principles our grandparents fought for..
“One possible (longshot) alternative: “There is a way for Joe Biden to rush aid to Ukraine without Congressional approval,” Simon Shuster of Time explained on social media Tuesday. “He can grant emergency licenses and share blueprints for Ukraine to produce NATO weapons for itself. Zelenskyy has been asking him for that at least since September.” Read more from Shuster’s recent report, “Inside Ukraine’s Plan to Arm Itself,” here.
New this week: Other allies like Germany and South Korea are stepping up to support its defense against Russia. “German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall stated on February 5 that it plans to send tens of thousands of 155mm artillery shells, dozens of Marder infantry fighting vehicles, 25 Leopard 1A5 tanks, and an unspecified number of Skynex air defense systems to Ukraine in 2024,” the Institute for the Study of War wrote Tuesday evening. And “South Korea’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) stated on February 6 that it plans to sign a contract with ammunition producer Poongsan in 2024 to mass produce 155mm shells that have an extended range of 60 kilometers,” according to ISW.”
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