Ukraine’s two-year fight to hold off a Russian invasion force is providing an object lesson in how modern war is waged against a dangerous adversary and the U.S. Army’s top officials acknowledged they are paying close attention.
The problem, strategists say, is that Russia’s military also is learning on the battlefield, adjusting tactics while churning out a ready supply of weapons and ammunition.
After two years of brutal fighting in what has become the largest ground conflict in Europe since World War II, Russia has made marked improvements in areas like drone technology, electronic warfare and the use of “loitering” munitions — aerial weapons with a built-in warhead that can remain on or near the front lines until needed.
“Don’t underestimate your enemy, that’s never a good place to start,” Gen. Randy George, the Army chief of staff, said Tuesday during a forum with the D.C.-based Defense Writers Group.
“Like any other organization, [the Russians] are adapting and they are learning. They’ve also done very well by pumping money and energy into their industrial base,” Gen. George said.
The U.S. Army too is going to school, investing in programs like integrated air and missile defense systems and long-range precision artillery. Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters Tuesday said the course of the fighting in Ukraine has shown that the Army is on the right path.
“Many of the ‘lessons learned’ we’ve seen from the battlefield in Ukraine underscores that a lot of what the Army is doing in terms of the kind of modernization programs that we’re pursuing are the right ones,” she said.
But the confident talks comes at a time when both sides said Russia — after a string of reverses in the early phases of the war — has gained the initiative on the front lines in southern and eastern Ukraine, while its marked advantage in weaponry and manpower is starting to tell.
Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said Russia is preparing for a new offensive that could start in the summer. The Institute for the Study of War think tank said Kyiv’s timeline is consistent with its own assessment that Russian forces will soon be able to pursue offensive operations after a lengthy period trying to hold back advancing Ukrainian forces.
“Russia will likely be able to determine the time, location, and scale of future offensive operations in Ukraine if Ukraine conducts an active defense throughout the theater in 2024, thereby ceding the strategic initiative to Russia,” the Washington-based think tank said in an updated analysis posted on Monday.
As long as the Russians maintain the strategic initiative, their commanders will maneuver reserve troop concentrations and determine how to allocate resources while forcing Ukraine to respond defensively, the ISW said.
‘Emplace and displace’
Russia’s lumbering advance toward Kyiv at the start of the war in February 2022 was halted by stiff Ukrainian resistance and the Russian forces’ own logistics challenges. One lesson to be drawn is that a successful ground force needs to be agile on the battlefield, Ms. Wormuth said.
“We have to be able to emplace and displace more rapidly,” she said.
During a recent trip to Grafenwohr, Germany, the Army’s primary training area in Europe, Ms. Wormuth saw that one of the units had reduced the size of its tactical command post out in the field. While it formerly consisted of three armored Stryker combat vehicles, with full crews and a tactical radar array, the unit got rid of one of the vehicles and the radar.
“The whole tactical command post can be set up and taken down in 15 minutes. That’s an important lesson,” she said.
While the Army has invested more funding into drone technology than any other service, Ms. Worth said it’s still insufficient to meet the needs of today’s battlefield. Both Ukrainian and Russian commanders have said large-scale, open-field troop movements are becoming a thing of the past because surveillance drones have largely undermined the element of surprise.
“What we’ve seen in Ukraine underscores that we in the Army have got to do more,” she said.
Faced with a changing battlefield landscape and recruiting struggles at home, the Army is also re-adjusting in other ways, cutting the official saize of its force by 5%, or 24,000 soldiers. Some of the cuts have come in special forces that were critical to the counter-insurgency and anti-terrorist fights in Iraq and Afghanistan but are far less central to the potential “great-power” clashes likely in 2024.
But the Associated Press reported that a new Army restructuring blueprint circulated Tuesday also calls for adding approximately 7,500 troops for other functions, including air-defense and counter-drone units. In addition, five new task forces around the world are being set up with enhanced cyber, intelligence and long-range strike capabilities.
The current Army is “significantly overstructured,” according to the report. The cuts will affect “spaces” not “faces” and the Army will not be asking soldiers to leave the force, the AP reported.
Iran has strongly backed Russia’s war against Ukraine, initially by providing the Kremlin with Shahed drones that are now produced at a factory in Alabuga, about 630 miles east of Moscow. The drones have allowed Moscow to attack critical Ukrainian infrastructure and military targets while depleting Kyiv’s stock of interceptor missiles.
“If Iran indeed provides Russia with a substantial number of ballistic missiles, it will significantly expand Russia’s long-range strike capacity while stretching Ukraine’s air defenses,” said John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. “This is all the more reason why Congress should stop stalling on passing vital aid funding for Ukraine.”
Russia’s casualties from two years of fighting are staggering, with several estimates putting the count of dead and wounded troops at around 300,000. But, Russia has at least a three-to-one advantage against Ukraine on the battlefield and has a much larger population to draw from.
“What you see with Russia really underscores that quantity has a quality of its own,” Ms. Wormuth said. “They have the ability to push thousands and thousands of soldiers into the meat grinder and they’re willing to do that.”
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.