The Strategic Defence Review, which should shape the UK’s military capability for the next decade, is set to drop at last next week. It is critical that the Review incorporates the lessons being learned in the Ukraine war, which is probably the most intense and prolonged “warfighting”-level conflict since WWII. It must drive much of our thinking when it comes to major combat operations in future. The delay to the Review is, I expect, due to the complexity, density and pace of change of modern war fighting, rather than political dithering and confusion amongst the Review team.
The key factor today is the electromagnetic spectrum – he who controls this, controls the battle space and will win the war. The ability to jam the enemy’s signals, and to push your own signals through enemy jamming, confers the ability to operate the most common kinds of drones in any given area. Often a nearby transmission relay – perhaps carried by a “mothership” drone higher above the battlefield – will let drones operate even inside the enemy jamming envelope, as the relay is nearer to the drones than the jammers are and has line of sight to them. In general the Ukrainians have tended to have the upper hand in this electromagnetic struggle, aided at times by harder-to-jam satellite communications such as Elon Musk’s well-known Starlink. But that doesn’t mean they’ve had things all their own way.
The contested electronic environment has seen the advent of drones trailing a hair-fine communications line back to their controller. Some in the media believe these to be a new thing, but in fact these drones appeared quite a long time ago. The line unspools as the drone flies along, in a similar fashion to old-school anti-tank missiles dating back many decades. The comms line can be kilometres long and is completely proof against jamming. This brings a slight smile to old soldiers like me who remember weapons such as the Tube-launched Optically-tracked Wire-guided (TOW) missile, as we see old-fashioned methods overcoming the latest and most brilliant electronic-warfare systems. The fibre optic drone will be effective until somebody produces a flying pair of scissors or something, which they will, and soon.
At the moment, the British armed forces are almost totally unequipped for this kind of warfare, and the Review must lay out a plan to swiftly change this situation. We need to be able to operate on a drone battlefield without being cut to pieces, and we need to be able to take the fight to the enemy in this new way of war.
The Strategic Defence Review, which should shape the UK’s military capability for the next decade, is set to drop at last next week. It is critical that the Review incorporates the lessons being learned in the Ukraine war, which is probably the most intense and prolonged “warfighting”-level conflict since WWII. It must drive much of our thinking when it comes to major combat operations in future. The delay to the Review is, I expect, due to the complexity, density and pace of change of modern war fighting, rather than political dithering and confusion amongst the Review team.
The key factor today is the electromagnetic spectrum – he who controls this, controls the battle space and will win the war. The ability to jam the enemy’s signals, and to push your own signals through enemy jamming, confers the ability to operate the most common kinds of drones in any given area. Often a nearby transmission relay – perhaps carried by a “mothership” drone higher above the battlefield – will let drones operate even inside the enemy jamming envelope, as the relay is nearer to the drones than the jammers are and has line of sight to them. In general the Ukrainians have tended to have the upper hand in this electromagnetic struggle, aided at times by harder-to-jam satellite communications such as Elon Musk’s well-known Starlink. But that doesn’t mean they’ve had things all their own way.
The contested electronic environment has seen the advent of drones trailing a hair-fine communications line back to their controller. Some in the media believe these to be a new thing, but in fact these drones appeared quite a long time ago. The line unspools as the drone flies along, in a similar fashion to old-school anti-tank missiles dating back many decades. The comms line can be kilometres long and is completely proof against jamming. This brings a slight smile to old soldiers like me who remember weapons such as the Tube-launched Optically-tracked Wire-guided (TOW) missile, as we see old-fashioned methods overcoming the latest and most brilliant electronic-warfare systems. The fibre optic drone will be effective until somebody produces a flying pair of scissors or something, which they will, and soon.
At the moment, the British armed forces are almost totally unequipped for this kind of warfare, and the Review must lay out a plan to swiftly change this situation. We need to be able to operate on a drone battlefield without being cut to pieces, and we need to be able to take the fight to the enemy in this new way of war.