The war in Ukraine has provided an invaluable opportunity to assess the implications on a range of issues for modern warfare. The media is full of many publicly made judgments on these matters, but assumptions have mainly lacked supporting data or insight into operational planning and decision making. It is therefore imperative to ensure that those drawing lessons from the conflict do so from a solid foundation.
Debates about the relative merits of armour, anti-armour weapons, electronic warfare (EW) and air power have been raging and have touched upon the ‘utility’ and ‘obsolescence’ of various military systems. However most have lacked real data. A great many definitive statements have been made based on the misinformation and disinformation.
The war in Ukraine is far from over and definitive lessons will emerge and debates will reign which will be settled differently by different nations based on their threat perceptions and comprehensive national power. What is material in the Indian context is the answers that emerge need to dictate our decisions to decide where to invest to ‘deter’ and ‘defeat.’
Now, nearly ten months into the war as the winter sets in, considered reflections are emerging. There is much that Armed Forces across the globe can learn. That does not mean, that historical concepts of employment for these systems remain advisable. The need is to understand how new capabilities not only offer opportunity in themselves, but also enable and magnify the effects deliverable by legacy systems.
RUSI the world’s oldest defence and security think tank has come out with a report up to the period prior to the Ukrainian counter offensive which highlights five issues that have implications for all Armies.
The foremost of these is that there is no sanctuary in modern warfare. The enemy can strike throughout operational depth with long-range precision fires. Moreover, both countries had networks of agents in place to observe key targets and to update their command on the movement of troops and stores. The integration of human intelligence (HUMINT) with long-range precision-fires kill chains is critical.
War fighting demands large initial stockpiles and significant capacity
. The difference in numbers between Russian and Ukrainian artillery was not as significant at the beginning of the conflict. Ukraine maintained artillery parity for the first month and a half and then began to run low on munitions so that, by June, the AFRF had a 10:1 advantage in volume of fire. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that consumption rates in high-intensity war fighting remain extraordinarily high and that resilience demands a capacity to build new units, produce spare parts and ammunition, and have sufficient stockpiles to remain competitive in all phases of fighting.
Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) and counter -UAS (CUAS) are essential across all arms and at all echelons
. Although critical by providing situational awareness, a majority of UAS employed are lost. For the most part, UAS must therefore be cheap and dispensable. For land forces, they must be organic to units for the purposes of both situational awareness and target acquisition. The primary means of CUAS is EW.
The force must fight for the right to precision
Precision is not only vastly more efficient in the effects it delivers but also allows the force to reduce its logistics tail. Precision weapons, however, can be defeated by EW. EW for attack, protection and direction finding is therefore a critical element of modern combined arms operations. In modern warfare, the electromagnetic spectrum is unlikely to be denied, but it is continually disrupted, and forces must endeavour to gain advantage within it.
As General Raj Shukla wrote in ‘Russia – Ukraine War: The Conflict and its Global Impact’; “Precision fire systems are the future and the critical role of long – range fires is instructive”. He also said, “the Indian military needs to evaluate the entire challenge of precision weaponry and upgrade its capacities”.
For Land Forces, the pervasive ISTAR (Information, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance) on the modern battlefield and the layering of multiple sensors at the tactical level make concealment exceedingly difficult to sustain. Survivability is often afforded by being sufficiently dispersed to become an uneconomical target, by moving quickly enough to disrupt the enemy’s kill chain and thereby evade engagement, or by entering hardened structures.
Lessons from Ukraine
But what remains paramount is what General Hasnain mentioned that” while technology may have taken over, the human element has not been eliminated.” The delivery of results lies in human resource and the war has been marked by the usual miscalculations, uncertainties and human failings.
The war in Ukraine is far from over and definitive lessons will emerge and debates will reign which will be settled differently by different nations based on their threat perceptions and comprehensive national power. What is material in the Indian context is the answers that emerge need to dictate our decisions to decide where to invest to ‘deter’ and ‘defeat.’
