Dr Robert Seely MBE is author of ‘The New Total War’, ConservativeHome foreign affairs columnist and a former Conservative MP.
Whilst Sir Keir Starmer slowly sinks in the UK, on the other side of Europe, the rules of war are being rewritten.
Despite some pretty laughable claims that Russia continues to make progress, the Kremlin’s forces are failing; this will become clearer as the summer continues. Ukraine is holding back Russia’s armies, and inflicting deaths and injuries running into some 30,000 a month. It is slowly gaining the upper hand.
May 9 Victory Day parade in Moscow to mark the end of World War II is normally accompanied by a substantial display of military equipment. Last week, there was virtually none. For whatever reason, shortage of supply, lack of manpower, psychological shame as the Ukrainian invasion continues, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin did not want to bring attention to one of the most important days in the Russian state calendar.
Ukraine’s slow victory is being gained because it is understanding and adjusting to the changing nature of warfare – and this war is changing both the theory of conflict and the art of war. That’s a double problem for the UK. Not only do we not have enough kit as it is, but our military needs to get its head around how war is being fought according to new tactics and new rules.
If this war is known for anything, it’s drones. That’s either the many images online of them slamming into Russian tanks, or increasingly flying into individuals; grainy videos of men squirming with fear and anger as the suicide drone records their last seconds of life.
But there’s more to modern war than just drones; the battlefield is being reshaped by thinking munitions, guided by humans or AI.
In this war, we have seen two big trends.
First, the linking of military and non-military tools and tactics, especially by our enemies, into a seamless whole. So, for example, whilst the full-scale invasion took place in 2022, and a partial invasion took place in 2014, the conflict started in 2005 when the Kremlin began a systemic plan to draw Ukraine back into its sphere of influence. Those earlier stages in the conflict used primarily non-military methods; economic coercion, information operations, and political machinations.
Even now, Russia is using a mix of tools.
It is trying to make grinding progress on the battlefield using traditional military tactics, it is attacking energy supplies and damaging cities to destroy morale, and it is using espionage and other tactics to break the link between Ukraine and its Western supporters.
Second, and critical for ‘traditional’ ideas of war, there have been a series of significant evolutions. These are as follows.
First, as said, drones on land, air and sea. The ones ConHome readers may have seen are basic quadcopters with an explosive underneath, but there are so many more, short and medium range, suicide, bomber and reconnaissance. On land, now there are driverless small trucks delivering logistics and evacuating the wounded. Moreover, the first battles are now being fought with heavy machine guns mounted on wheeled or tracked platforms, controlled by pilots/drivers hundreds of metres away, so we are witnessing small-scale assaults with humans removed from the tactical battle. This is a significant event in warfare.
At sea, Ukraine’s missiles and sea drones have scared away a major, if ageing, surface fleet to the other side of the Black Sea.
With the mass use of reconnaissance drones, the battlefield is more transparent than ever. The hyper-expensive Predator and Reaper drones used by the US and its allies have their place, but you will never have enough of them to create the transparency that Ukraine (and Russia) has produced with much simpler machines.
This is changing the basic rule of ground war; the idea of fire and manoeuvre, efficiently moving across terrain to attack the enemy. Well, right now that idea is dead. Movement is rapidly detected and targeted. It’s difficult to launch offensives because you are repeatedly struck in your own territory before you can get close to the front.
The frontline itself has become a front zone, currently stretching 25km on either side of the line of contact that separates the forces. Movement within this zone is highly dangerous.
This information saturation is most visible in operations rooms (Ops Rooms) from where military operations are run. I remember once visiting a very cutting-edge unit in Kharkiv, an eastern Ukrainian city a little over 15 miles from the frontline. In UK Ops Rooms I’d been in a decade and more ago, there’d be perhaps six video feeds. In US ones, perhaps 12. In this one Ukrainian unit – admittedly an example of best practice – I counted 73 – 73! – live video feeds.
Big data and machine learning are also driving speed of action – and the faster your ‘kill chain’, the more likely you are to destroy the enemy rather than them, you. Linked to Ukraine’s DELTA software programme on your phone, you can watch a drone feed from pretty much any area of combat, pretty much anywhere in Ukraine. The ARTA software system links targets to artillery and uses AI to suggest the best systems to use and their location. The targeting cycle – the time it takes from finding a target to launching against it, has been reduced from 30 minutes to 30 seconds. Artillery no longer needs to be massed; instead, it is spread out. Intelligent learning is using secure communications to link reconnaissance with weapons systems.
These systems have, needless to say, been developed in a timescale and cost that no European or US defence prime could equal.
NATO states are studying these changes, but I fear they are moving too slowly. The two nations rushing to develop doctrine for this new warfare are Russia and Ukraine; one wants to destroy NATO, the other to be part of it.
What’s the effect of all this on humans?
There are fewer soldiers within the 50km kill zone/drone zone. They are beginning to take a back seat and instead control the robots and the systems that do the fighting. In the Ukraine war, we are witnessing the rise of the machines – and machine learning.
Ground warfare will not be the same.