Army leaders look to Ukraine conflict to gain battlefield advantage over Russia

The Army faces a challenge boosting its electronic warfare and anti-drone capabilities in light of what U.S. military officials are seeing of Russian weaponry on the battlefields of Ukraine, Army Secretary Mark Esper said Wednesday.

Service officials have been on the front lines in eastern Ukraine to observe the combat tactics being used by Russian-backed separatists forces and their military advisers from Moscow against Ukrainian troops fighting to drive them out of the country, Mr. Esper told a breakfast roundtable with reporters in Washington.

“Probably one of the most remarkable lessons [we learned] is the Russian’s use of drones to find enemy forces, and then use them to direct, indirect fires onto Ukrainian formations,” Mr. Esper said.

“We also learned about Russian use of electronic warfare,” he said, adding Army observers “take those lessons and we think about it from … how do we adapt our [combat] doctrine to deal with those types of capabilities.”

Russian forces have begun using combat zones in Ukraine, Syria and other locations where Russian forces are deployed as a real-world testing ground for next-generation weapons technologies — particularly electronic weaponry.

In Syria, Russian forces were able to successfully clog U.S. electronic communications channels, navigation systems and “blue-force” trackers — the system used by U.S. units to identify friendly personnel from enemy fighters on a patchwork battlefield.

“All of a sudden your communications won’t work, or you can’t call for fire, or you can’t warn of incoming fires because your radars have been jammed and they can’t detect anything,” Laurie Moe Buckhout, a retired Army colonel who specializes in electronic warfare, told Foreign Policy in July.

Russian commanders will look to refine those electronic warfare technologies next month, during the largest war games staged by the Kremlin in over four decades.

“I think [electronic warfare] is outlined as a capability we need and I think we learned from the conflicts in Ukraine and others around the world … that [electronic warfare] is something that we need to rebuild,” Mr. Esper said.

“The Russians clearly have a capability and we need to be prepared for that,” he added.

Mr. Esper said the Army’s new Futures Command would take a leading role in developing those kinds of technologies, which he said had severely atrophied in the focus on counterinsurgency wars that dominated the post-9/11 era.

“As we pivot back [to] an era of great-power competition, clearly [electronic warfare] that is one capability of many that we need to either build or rebuild,” the Army chief said.

The Pentagon has authorized $1 billion in American weapons and equipment to support Kiev’s fight against Russian-backed separatists in the country’s east. In July, the Defense Department approved a $200 million military aid package including new “capabilities to enhance Ukraine’s command and control, situational awareness systems, secure communications, military mobility, night vision, and military medical treatment,” according to a Pentagon statement.

In May, Washington quietly completed the transfer of lethal new anti-tank missile systems to Ukraine, infuriating the Kremlin and signaling a possible escalation in the Ukrainian conflict.