Swarms of cheap drones dominate the Ukrainian battlefield, alongside brutal infantry fighting and increasingly blurred front lines. This bloodbath has led some to conclude that Western militaries should shift from focusing on expensive precision weaponry to massed but cheaper capabilities.
It is true that the pursuit of ever more complicated and sophisticated systems has seen increasing costs and shrinking forces. This, combined with personnel costs, have left European militaries small and brittle. They are capable on a unit-by-unit basis, but have poor levels of readiness and deployability, and the sheer volume of casualties they would suffer in an industrial war would render them ineffective after a few weeks.
Ukraine has given a stark lesson in the costs of modern war, with Russian casualties (killed and wounded) now estimated at over a million since the full-scale invasion in 2022, and 250,000 already this year alone. This is in large part due to Russia’s callous use of its infantry, but even accounting for its superior equipment and training, it is probably generous to say that six months fighting at this intensity would essentially wipe out the British Army, as the Minister for Veterans stated at a RUSI conference at the end of 2024.
Swarms of cheap drones dominate the Ukrainian battlefield, alongside brutal infantry fighting and increasingly blurred front lines. This bloodbath has led some to conclude that Western militaries should shift from focusing on expensive precision weaponry to massed but cheaper capabilities.
It is true that the pursuit of ever more complicated and sophisticated systems has seen increasing costs and shrinking forces. This, combined with personnel costs, have left European militaries small and brittle. They are capable on a unit-by-unit basis, but have poor levels of readiness and deployability, and the sheer volume of casualties they would suffer in an industrial war would render them ineffective after a few weeks.
Ukraine has given a stark lesson in the costs of modern war, with Russian casualties (killed and wounded) now estimated at over a million since the full-scale invasion in 2022, and 250,000 already this year alone. This is in large part due to Russia’s callous use of its infantry, but even accounting for its superior equipment and training, it is probably generous to say that six months fighting at this intensity would essentially wipe out the British Army, as the Minister for Veterans stated at a RUSI conference at the end of 2024.