The Russo-Ukrainian War: Lessons Learned to Date

From the proliferation of unmanned systems to the specter of electronic warfare-saturated battlefields, two-and-a-half years of warfare in Ukraine have offered military strategists new lessons in how modern large-scale combat is fought.

Thousands of miles away from the deadly front lines, US military intelligence officials at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) annual conference were asked last week what lessons they, specifically, have taken away from watching Kyiv’s defense of its homeland against Moscow’s invasion. (An Air Force official had to cancel his appearance on the panel, but several officials have spoken before about the change they’re seeing in aerial warfare.)

“So listen, it’s easy to sit at the Pentagon thinking you have a great ideas for innovation,” Andrew Evans, the director of the Army’s ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) Task Force said. “But you know who the best innovators are? The people who have to innovate or they’re going to die the next day.”

The “battlefield innovation that’s occurring in Ukraine,” Evans added, “is unprecedented.”

On The Water: ‘Pretty Impressive’ Asymmetric, Unmanned Capabilities

On paper, Russia’s large naval fleet should have no problem dominating Ukraine’s non-existent Navy. But the war has shown that using smaller, unmanned surface vessels and land-based strikes can hold a traditional navy at risk.

“The first lesson we got out of there was the importance of anti-ship cruise missile defense, when the Slava got hit,” Director of Naval Intelligence Vice Adm. Karl Thomas said, likely referring to the April 2022 sinking of the Slava-class Moskva, which the US said was hit with Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles.

As a follow-up to that shocking, symbolic victory, Thomas said, Ukraine went “into the unmanned world.”

“I think it’s pretty clear that the asymmetric capabilities that the Ukrainians — who didn’t even have a navy — has been able to levy on the Russians is pretty, pretty impressive,” Thomas said. “Quite frankly you’ve got basically the Russian navy, the Black Sea navy, pinned to the eastern side of the Black Sea because [of] what the Ukrainians are doing with unmanned surface and unmanned underwater capabilities.”

Thomas said he’s “excited” after seeing what Ukraine has been doing with unmanned capabiltiies in the maritime theater, especially the “dirty and dangerous” missions military planners wouldn’t want to risk a crew to do, and how tactics are ever-evolving.

“There’s a ton of lessons that we’re pulling down from that, and you can translate into other theaters,” he said. “What I really like, it’s expensive to build ships, and it takes a long time, and what we have today — but you might be able to build a lot of little things that don’t cost as much [and have] kind of an outsized effect or help other people have an outsized effect.”

Thomas’ comments echo what Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, America’s top general in Europe, said over the summer, when he called Ukraine’s ability to counter Russia’s superior navy an “arbiter of the future.”

In Space: Commercial Imagery For Intelligence-Infused Diplomacy

Sitting next to Thomas, Space Force Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Intelligence Maj. Gen. Gregory Gagnon said one of the most important lessons of the conflict for him came before hostilities actually broke out, in December 2021 and January 2022.

“I think that another important element of this was remembering … the significant value that the commercial remote sensing industry played in enabling intelligence, supporting diplomacy,” Gagnon said.

Gagnon said that ahead of Russia’s actual invasion, American officials were able to travel the world to talk to allies about what they were positive the Kremlin was planning, shoring up international support before the first tanks rolled across Ukraine’s borders.

“They could say what they were seeing … [and] there was an image to show,” he said. “And much like in the past, inside secure facilities in foreign capitals, we convinced our allies. But this time, unlike other times, we then empowered our allies with the ability to show it to their public, because it was commercial, unclassified imagery. And they were able to share it with the European public and gain support.”

Gagnon said it was “critical” that the government was able to “use the commercial remote sensing industry to help empower and fortify US diplomatic initiatives prior to the war.”

Online: The Race To Dominate The Information Space

In a way Gagnon’s story was one about information operations, a point US Marine Corps Brig. Gen. William Wilburn, Jr., doubled down after the war broke out.

“The information space was dominant in this fight,” he said. “Never before have we seen in a modern fight the race to get to social media and put the message out, for all sides.”

Wilburn, who is serving as the deputy director for Combat Support at the Cybersecurity Directorate in the National Security Agency, said even he was “surprised” at the amount of information the US government was willing to publicize in the fight for international public support.

“But watching both sides, the Russians and Ukrainians, use that information space to try … amplify their message — in some cases they may even be some misinformation or disinformation out there,” he said. “That was a case study in something that we hadn’t seen, but that’s a TTP [tactics, techniques and procedure] that we should expect to see moving forward, and those that are able to operate in that space are going to be good, and those that aren’t are going to suffer quite a bit.”

On Land: Drones And Reprogrammable EW

For Evans, the Army ISR Task Force chief, the Ukraine conflict revealed two dominant capabilities — cheap aerial unmanned systems and intense, ever-evolving electronic warfare.

He started by pointing to drones in situations where he says the Army is watching $500 UAVs defeat $20 million pieces of armor. “That’s pretty good ROI [return on investment], if you’re in Ukraine or if you’re Russian from the other side,” he quipped.

“So we’ve got to start thinking differently in how we acquire weapons systems, [and] we’re doing that inside the Army today, trying to understand what that right acquisition looks like,” he said.

As for EW, Evans said that’s a “unique area” in which he fears the Army has under-invested, for “protection and offensive capabilities.”

Specifically, he said his service was looking to focus more on EW “reprogramming” — the ability to continually update EW tactics to stay one step ahead of an adversary who’s doing the same thing.

“So if you start to do battlefield innovation, and you see that your effects are being diminished? We have to be able to respond to that very quickly,” he said.

Such a capability will be “extremely vital” in the “next fight.”

Published by Breaking Defense on September 3, 2024.