OPINION:
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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” by the Russians.
Russia has the upper hand in electronic warfare against Ukraine, with the result that high-tech U.S. weapons quickly become ineffective and obsolete. But why?
The U.S. is lagging behind, and our enemies can see that.
Why do military planners and appropriating politicians allow the military-industrial complex to maintain the status quo, generating ineffective (and ultimately dangerous) weapons born by the American taxpayer? There is little to no accountability for money flowing from the U.S. government to the military-industrial complex, but thousands of lobbyists spread tens of millions of dollars around Washington to keep the “money train” on track.
Still, relatively inexpensive drones are drastically changing the “assumptions of airpower and ground combat” in a way that could ultimately lead to a devastating defeat for the U.S.
In 2023, the Pentagon announced the Replicator drone initiative in response to China’s growing influence in the South China Sea. Defense innovation experts, however, questioned the feasibility of its proposed timeline (the next 18 to 24 months) based on their experience with slow and cumbersome Defense Department bureaucracy.
They’re right. Ukraine loses about 10,000 drones per month but quickly replaces them using cheap, commercially available drones. Experts believe the U.S. initiative is incapable of this but is “years away.”
The U.S. must focus on upgrading U.S. weapons systems quickly — military experts agree drones will play a significant role in warfare going forward. In addition, NATO government defense departments will have to “transform how they buy weapons to keep up with much faster development cycles of increasingly software-defined weapons and autonomous systems driven by artificial intelligence. … Officials will have to look outside their usual pool of suppliers to involve smaller companies … from a technology background.”
Congress should stop blindly using the same defense contractors and spending money on weapons that are quickly becoming obsolete, and instead pursue U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence, drone innovation and application. Our national security depends upon it.
• Shea Bradley-Farrell is a national security and foreign policy professional in Washington and president of the Counterpoint Institute for Policy, Research and Education. Follow her at counterpointinstitute.org or on X @DrShea_DC and @CounterpointDC.
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