Caution is advised when drawing conclusions from the course of a war – partly because all warring parties are learning. But some lessons can be learned from the first year of the Ukraine war – also for the defensiveness of Germany and NATO.
1. There is no silver bullet
“Is that the game changer now?” There is hardly a conversation about weapons and new technology on the battlefield without this question coming up at some point. It can be answered in principle and for any weapon: no. Neither Howitzer A, nor Drone B, nor Multiple Rocket Launcher C will turn the tide of war alone. They didn’t do that in Ukraine either.
Some weapons were able to do important things – the Stinger, for example, which, fired from the shoulder, destroyed rows of Russian tanks in the first few weeks. The Bayraktar drones from Turkey, the German Gepard for anti-aircraft defense, the American HIMARS artillery systems, whose missiles dismantled the Russian supply chains far behind the front line.
The HIMARS system was repeatedly given the label “wonder weapon” in local reports because of its enormous accuracy at great distances. But the rocket launcher also celebrated its success through the failure of the Russian side: Large central ammunition depots offered perfect targets for achieving great effects with precise hits. If the Russian troops had organized their supply chains in a decentralized and more mobile manner from the start, the HIMARS hits would have caused far less damage.
The Russians also had and still have problems evaluating their own reconnaissance in a timely manner and aligning attacks accordingly. The command structure often hinders a timely response. That’s why the Russian troops have so far hardly succeeded in locating the missiles and attacking them in turn.
So was HIMARS only so good because Russian reconnaissance was so bad? Not only but also. The ability of a weapon to play to its full potential depends largely on two factors: is it used wisely, is it handled by experienced soldiers, and is it aimed at the targets it can really play to its strengths? And as a second factor: Does the opponent have an adequate response to the weapon? Both questions are just as important as the properties of the weapon itself. It is therefore already valuable for western armies to evaluate the performance and also the limits of their weapons in this war.
2. It all depends on the network
Point 2 is the conclusion from insight number 1: One weapon alone does not make the difference for the entire course of the war. A modern army needs to be broadly based, with capabilities in all dimensions, be it air, land, sea, space, cyberspace or the electromagnetic field.
But it is not enough to be able to operate with something in all domains. Whether or not the various forces act in conjunction with one another is decisive for success in combat. NATO calls this “combat of combined arms” “multi domain operations”. It is “the ultimate in modern warfare and the basis for all future NATO operations and US military doctrines that are being redesigned,” military expert Franz-Stefan Gady told ntv.de.
Executed perfectly, it could look something like this: A battalion of main battle tanks advances, flanked by grenadiers in armored personnel carriers, chasing enemy foot soldiers. The anti-aircraft defense keeps the tanks at bay from threats from the air. Artillery fired their way through the enemy’s first positions from behind. An electronic warfare unit is jamming communications in enemy lines and texting enemy soldiers to their cell phones to surrender immediately.
The ability to tactical teamwork makes the attack more powerful and safer. Expert Gady, who researches for the London Institute for International Strategic Studies (IISS), also reads from the high losses that neither the Ukrainians nor the Russians have mastered the fight with combined arms. Successful combined arms combat is, on the one hand, a question of practice. Trust and routine must be built up through training together. On the other hand, the technical systems must be compatible with each other.
From this point of view, it becomes a problem if, for example, the Bundeswehr is currently working with outdated radio equipment that can no longer establish contact with NATO partners. A capability gap that would make coordination enormously difficult in a future NATO mission. Danger recognized – modernization will take place in the coming months.
“We need hybridity in the structure of future armed forces,” says Gady. Old, reliable systems like the Panzerhaubitze 2000, Gepard or the Leopard II, paired with drones and other technologically advanced systems. “Integrating togetherness will be the challenge of the future.”
3. NATO needs more reserves
The high loss of life and material in the course of the war suggests that even in a future high-intensity war between states, the best units would be decimated very quickly. The reason for this is, on the one hand, the ability of modern weapon systems to cause a large number of casualties. At the same time, the best units would be deployed to those sections of the front where the fighting was the heaviest – a kind of “frontline fire brigade”.
“A high-intensity war would not be comparable to the operations we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 20 years,” says futurologist Gady. “In a conventional war between major military powers, one would have to reckon with very large losses, tens of thousands of dead and wounded in the first few days.”
Ukraine probably lost between 120,000 and 130,000 soldiers in the first year of the war. At the same time, she had at her disposal a 900,000-strong experienced reserve who had served in the armed forces within the last five years. There is also general conscription in Ukraine.
In comparison, the Bundeswehr comes off badly: there are currently around 31,000 positions for the reserve. “But she hardly practices, she doesn’t have a systematic approach to how she could be used in an emergency, in which not only 30,000 additional workers would be needed relatively quickly, but 200,000 to 300,000,” says Gady. “We no longer have this capacity in Germany.”
But Germany isn’t the only one with the problem: “No other NATO country would have held out for long with an attack like the one Russia is now waging against Ukraine,” analyzes Gady. He sees neither the British forces nor the Poles or French in a position to do so. “For the simple reason that we no longer have the kind of reserves in these armies that Ukraine has.”
From the point of view of the military expert, the consequence for Germany and all NATO countries should be to spend significantly more effort on the provision and training of reserve units in order to adapt them to the current threat situation. “This also includes large-scale exercises that involve reserves at brigade and divisional levels to practice combined arms combat. We need that.”
4. Private company technology is not the solution
When Russia paralyzed the satellite network via which the Ukrainian army had communicated via a cyber attack, Starlink came to the rescue: Elon Musk’s company SpaceX replaced the failed system with its satellite network and saved the Ukrainian commandos from disaster. Amazon also helped Ukraine with data transfer.
“Starlink is in many ways the lifeline for quick Ukrainian counterattacks, as it allows for rapid battlefield reconnaissance and coordination between different elements and units,” says Gady.
But the high benefit that Kiev’s army derived from the private satellite network also created a high level of risk. At the latest when SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell declared at a space conference in January that Starlink was not intended to be used as a weapon, it became clear how fragile this support is.
The restriction of Starlink applications had already made it difficult to carry out offensive operations last fall. Shotwell’s testimony indicated that these limitations were intentional by the company. Ukraine’s military dependence on SpaceX fell on the troops’ feet. It showed how fragile such forms of cooperation with private companies are, which in case of doubt pursue other interests than the army they supply.
A second point speaks against relying too much on technology from the private sector: Because the Starlink devices, thousands of which keep the decisive opportunity for communication open in Ukraine, only work so well because the necessary Starlink ground stations are in Poland, Estonia and Turkey are stationed. Amazon also works with servers located outside of Ukraine.
So both companies operate from safe havens that are outside the war zone on NATO territory. Russia cannot attack here. This secures this supply chain for Ukraine, but would not exist in a possible future war between two major powers involving NATO. There would then be no safe places in the territory of the alliance, and the stationary technology of the private companies would be a worthwhile target for the enemy, for example for hypersonic missiles. Because of these factors, Gady warns against over-reliance on the commercial sector in providing technical support in a future great power war. Relying on it is “probably the wrong consequence from Ukraine”.
5. The course of war is unpredictable
As much as people in many countries of the world crossed their fingers for Ukraine on February 24, 2022 – only a few assessments by experts gave reason for hope. The Russian armed forces appeared to be superior in terms of man, material and mobility.
The experts analyzed correctly: the firepower of the Russian weapons, the possibilities of resupply, the logistics apparatus – all these were superior to the capabilities of Ukraine. However, what hardly anyone suspected in February 2022: Russia would make far-reaching strategic mistakes in those first weeks of the war. It would make itself vulnerable to the Ukrainians’ defensive struggle.
How could this happen? The Kremlin felt sure of victory. Moscow did not expect this war to last more than a few days. Russian troops and their leadership were caught off-guard by the ambushed resistance, while the Ukrainians pushed into every capability gap the attacker revealed.
There was also a discipline in which the Ukrainians were clearly ahead of the Russians: morale. That was hardly available on the Russian side. After all, the Kremlin had told its own troops some of the same lies as the Western world: they would only be deployed for maneuvers. Many soldiers did not understand what they were actually doing with their neighbors. The Ukrainians, in turn, fought with the courage of desperation – for the survival of their nation, their compatriots.
In retrospect, this now seems so plausible, as if it had been clear from the start that Ukraine would be able to withstand the attack. But even that assumption would be a mistake. Because the skills of the troops at all levels always have to be supplemented by external factors – be it, very banal, the weather or, even more banal, the factor of chance. Chance often decides whether a mishap on the battlefield develops into a driver for the course of the war or not. For example, reserves that do not arrive in time to close a gap at the front.
Many individual factors that could contribute to a side’s victory or defeat can be assessed in advance, but never their interaction. Beware of people who claim they know how this war will end.
