On the Battlefields of Ukraine, Mass Trumps Tech

Bursting a Tech Bubble

Europe August 11, 2023

On the undulating plains of Eastern Ukraine, a region largely devoid of topographic features, tech wizardry powers and shapes the ultimate, and most lethal, cat and mouse game ever. Here, loss of human life and military kit is accompanied by an upset and the unravelling of modern military doctrine.

Whilst drones buzz overhead and even the lowliest grunts receive battlefield information in real-time on smartphones, scenes on the ground look more like the Great War than Star Wars.

Infantrymen huddle in muddy trenches facing a desolate no-man’s-land that evokes the moonscape of a Flanders Field strewn with shell craters and uprooted trees. The dreary monotony of the mangled scenery inspires a déjà vu.

This is not what military planners and strategists had envisioned as they mulled the impact of high-tech on warfare. Heavy armour such as main battle tanks and self-propelled howitzers, until recently considered relics of a bygone era, are back in vogue. Artillery, whilst never entirely discarded, has also gained renewed prominence.

Incantation Revised

The modern battlefield, awash with sensors that spot, record, and respond to enemy moves in near-real-time, imposes a need for constant rapid movement to evade missiles and shells that strike with unprecedented precision. The revised incantation strategists now repeat ad nauseam is to ‘disperse, hide, and keep moving’.

Technology has allowed firepower and intelligence to be pushed down to platoon level; as a result, headquarters have shrunk. A platoon with access to a StarLink terminal, smartphone, and loitering munition can detect and strike targets thanks to data previously only available to top brass.

Dispersal brings new logistical challenges as well: food, ammo, and medical care need to reach small units spread out over a large area. Recruitment and training too must be updated to match a much looser military hierarchy that demands initiative, decisiveness, and tech skills from soldiers in the field.

Though technology – from space-based surveillance and broadband to drones and AI-powered battlefield management apps – has undoubtedly changed the way war is waged, it has so far failed to materially affect outcomes. Armies adapt to new threats and adopt countermeasures on the fly.

Tech Over Mass?

After a Ukrainian ‘Spetsnaz’ battalion supported by National Guard troops chased invading paratroopers from Hostomel Airport at the start of the war, and continued to ambush and wipe out a column of armour on its way to Kyiv with the loss of over eighty tanks, strategists almost universally hailed this as a victory of tech over mass, vindicating their verdict on the obsolescence of tanks. However, since their humiliating defeat in the Battle of Brovary the Russian generals have wizened up considerably.

The Ukrainians’ remarkable performance was not only grounded in bravery and hurriedly supplied Western anti-tank missiles, but also owed much to a beta version of Delta, the homegrown battlefield management app that is now standard issue and is even being deployed by NATO forces.

Delta bundles and analyses data from human intel (troops and civilian officials) and military data streams from sensors, drones, and satellites, amongst others. The app merges this data in real-time to draw a map of the battlefield including all enemy assets.

Leveraging the analytical power of artificial intelligence, Delta not only improves the situational awareness of troops but also suggests a collective course of action complete with specific combat missions for individual units. During the initial assault on Kyiv, Delta provided up to 1,500 enemy targets per day to the defenders of the city.

There’s an App for That

The app facilitates combined arms tactics, the operational philosophy of NATO ground forces that was originally thought up in the 1910s as a more dynamic alternative to static trench warfare.

The tactic integrates all combat arms to fight as a single mutually supportive and reinforcing unit.

Though airpower is a crucial part of any combined arms operation, it is largely absent on the Ukrainian side. Some (former) generals now even question its need as they consider the limited impact F16 fighter jets may have on the battlefield.

Trying their hand at combined arms tactics at the beginning of the summer counter offensive, even without meaningful airpower, some Ukrainian commanders soon ditched the approach after suffering high losses, reverting to the more familiar Soviet-era method of the massive artillery barrage in a war of attrition.

Former spokesperson for the US Army’s Combined Arms Center in Fort Leavenworth, Colonel (ret) Steve Boylan, is not surprised: “It has taken us many years of training and tinkering to master the tactic effectively – without having to apply these lessons in a war while doing so.”

Up in the Air

So far, airpower appears overrated in this war. Formidable defences have been put in place that deny both sides air superiority over the battlefield. Ukraine’s ageing Mig and Sukhoi fighter jets, of late-1970s vintage, are mostly being used as missile platforms: they stay aloft only briefly, fire their ordnance at distant over-the-horizon targets, and make a quick getaway. It remains unclear how the F16s, controlled by lightly trained pilots, can escape Russia’s beefed-up air defences, and directly support infantry and armour on the ground.

New high-tech equipment did, however, change the patterns of advance and retreat relative to historical experience. Today’s lethal weapons appear to favour defenders as offensive operations often turn prohibitively costly in men and material. The traditional 3-to-1 advantage in troops and firepower required to successfully conduct an offensive operation no longer suffices with some military planners now suggesting a tripled 9-to-1 ratio may be called for.

However, realities on the ground reduce these estimates to guesswork: The war has thus far produced a baffling mix of offensive and defensive outcomes that lack a common denominator. The continuing importance of legacy systems such as tanks, mortars, and landmines hardly heralds an epic shift in the way war is waged.

The Value of Attrition

Historically, innovation does not usually determine outcomes. During World War I, the appearance of aeroplanes and tanks may have helped to a degree but did not clinch the Allied victory. Attrition warfare and an unstable home front did that.

*Soviet troops of the Voronezh Front counterattacking behind T-34 tanks at Prokhorovka.*

Likewise, World War II saw the advent of radio, radar, and high mobility tactics. These advances failed to avoid major disasters such as the Battle of Kursk which cost the German attackers 160,000 casualties and the loss of some 700 tanks – for no noticeable gain.

On a smaller scale, Operation Goodwood, a 1944 British offensive in Normandy described as The Death March of Armour, resulted in a painful Allied setback when up to 400 tanks were knocked out of the fight by German defenders in just three days. In the Italian theatre, allied forces sustained over 40,000 casualties in repeated attempts to pierce the Gothic Line, largely to no avail.

Whilst new and more lethal technology does, of course, matter, the ability of opposing forces to adapt dampen its effect on outcomes which still are determined, as they have for centuries, on a combination of grit, dispersion, concealment, timing, and technical countermeasures – and a pairing of offensive skill with defensive error.

Thus, the change delivered by military technology is evolutionary rather than revolutionary in nature. The mothballing of tanks and other armoured hardware, an already 40-year-old trend in NATO, was premature and perhaps even based on wishful thinking as much as on budgetary constraints. The essence of war has not changed and nor has its objective: to occupy and hold disputed territory by whatever means available.

Cover photo: Leopard 2A7 tank during the annual NATO Day at Ostrava Leos Janacek Airport in Czechia.