The "new" warfare in the Russo-Ukrainian War

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A string of twitter threads by different authors create an impression that this war is very different, kind of with different rules than previous wars, military doctrines from pre-2022 are obsolete now.

https://x.com/sambendett/status/1927076283000701067

https://x.com/GrandpaRoy2/status/1927714854351085928

https://x.com/Playfra0/status/1928183254089429005

https://x.com/GrandpaRoy2/status/1926930735266509094

I object.

 

Quite generally, when somebody claims that previous military theory is obsolete you should ask yourself what previous military theory this person knows about. You're nearly perfectly safe if you assume the answer is "very, very little" even if said person is a general.  Very few people dedicated much of thier lives tot he study of the art of war and people who learned some of it profesionally (such as generals) hardly ever learned much that goes beyond their own country's doctrine, and very little about how and why their county's doctrine came to be.

The drone war in Ukraine isn't terribly new. It's almost exactly a replay of the air war development 1911-1945, for example.

 

Yes, the kamikaze FPV threat is severe to up to 9 km depth, often extending to 20 km and rarely extending beyond that with almost none happening beyond 40 km depth against non-strategic targets.The long-established military term in English for this is "battlefield interdiction", and air forces aspire to do it not to 40 km depth, but to hundreds of kilometres depth.

To move yourself or goods to the front seems like running the gauntlet on the final 40 km and gets the worse the more close you are to the front? Does that sound all-new to you? Then you're not aware of the experience of the Japanese merchant marine trying to resupply distant island bases in the Pacific War or the experience of the German armed forces in France during June 1944, when the Northern French railway and airfield network was bombed to swiss cheese standards by the 9th Air Force. Do you think it's now that quadcopters are capable of cheap PGM-like precision attacks even on individuals? 8th Air Force fighters got bored in 1945 and began strafing individual bicyclists hundreds of kilometres away from frontlines in 1945.

What's "new" is that wer're in a brief "the bomber always gets through" pahaes during which there aren't enough counter-drone ("C-UAS") defences, so drones of BOTH SIDES are effective at battlefield interdiction instead of one side establishing low level air superiority/supremacy or both sides defending effectively to diminish the threat. That's about the situation we had in the very early 1930s when bombers were not slower than fighters.

All those improved fortifications, evolved through wartime experience? That's fortifications designed by amateurs who learned lessons by spending blood. There were VASTLY better field fortification schemes back in the 1950's already, but the overwehlming firepower of nukes didn't allow them to become very central to doctrines. Netting not just for concealment, but also for keeping drones out is new, but it's also pointless in face of the heaviest anti-trench munitions (bombs, TOS-1, napalm B).

Tanks get cages to keep FPV drones out? How is that conceptually different from cages to keep hand grenades out?

The frontline with up to 40 km battlefield interdiction poses a different challenge than pre-2022 warfare for breakthrough efforts? Sure, but is it really new, or worse? Breakthroughs against ready defenders were never easy, after all. I actually madke the case that the drone war situation is liberating in a way; suppose the FPV munitions are effective in a radius of 10 to 20 km. Traditional ATGMs were effective in a radius of 0.6 to 4 km mostly, with 2 km being a common practical limit in Ukrainian terrain. Now look at my (very) old text about repulsion and let it sink in. The increased radius of action actually liberates the attacker, he doesn't get channeled! Pre-2022 the same effort looked like this and it was the shorter rnage of the ATGMs that was slowing down the attacker. Now there's no such measures to limit losses to ATGMs. Attackers who would want to breakthrough could shout 'Damn the torpedoes, flank speed ahead!' and the breakthrough could be VERY quick if done well, which includes dealing with the WW2 revival band of mines, anti-tank ditches and gimped dragon's teeth as well as a fires plan that would make 1917's Bruchmüller proud.

I could go on, feel free to bring up true novelties in the comments. I have a hunch I'll reply with a military history analogy.

 

Patton was once asked about how he was such a good general and he replied (paraphrased) that nothing was really new to him during WW2. He knew everything from books already. Such students of military history and art people don't get fooled by fake novelty, but they are RARE.

Don't get fooled by people who claim novelty and impossibility because they don't know the past.

 

related:

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/fact-check-military-hardware-novelty.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2009/02/update-ugv-history.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2015/05/another-fact-check-military-hardware.html 

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2023/07/russian-fortifications-present-old.html

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/2025/05/c-uas-on-battlefield-at-very-low.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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C-UAS on the battlefield at very low altitude

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/2017/08/very-low-level-air-defence-against.html

/2018/05/summary-modern-air-defences-for-europe.html

One might increase the rate of fire of a MG3 back to about 1,500 rpm and use a duplex cartridge (two bullets in one cartridge) for 3,000 bullets per minute rate of fire, 50 per second.*

 

All kinds of drones and most missiles would be hit very quickly and be stopped by such a volume of fire even from a single RCWS. The detection of drones might depend on a quickly rotating (~100 revolutions per minute) AESA radar with such lower power and (by radio band) such a high atmospheric attenuation that it senses drones out to no more than 400 m and cannot be triangulated from more than two kilometres away.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

* 20 mm autocannons with simple HE-PD rounds would be an option for tanks, I dislike the specialised and expensive 30 mm autocannon with HE-PROX rounds solution. One might also stick with the duplex round MG3 approach as long as the tank has a coax gun of more powerful calibre, ideally a .338 chaingun.

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A mystery about FPVs and tanks

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The FPV (kamikaze drone) threat is by now well-known to those who paid much attention to what's going on in the Russo-Ukrianian War. Yet, there's a mystery that this war cannot tell us anything about:

What if there was a proper breakthrough and a proper exploitation of the same. Mounted forces roam deep and quickly, expoiting that they are not opposed properly. Would the FPV threat be iminished in such a situation, meaning that such exploitation forces need no great C-UAS defences? Or would the movement (dominantly along roads) create turkey shoot conditions for whatever FPV teams are in the area? Just let one drone rise to spot movements, then the turkey shoot begins?

Properly-planned standoff ECM support would rather not be available, after all.

 

And suppose it's neither extreme, but the FPVs still cause much damage; is the exploitation drive still 'worth it'?  Imagine a FPV unit doing one high value target kill per day during static trench warfare conditions, but ten per day during a four-day mobile phase being on the defender side. The FPV unit's lethality would be way up during the enemy's offenisve, but the harm it does might seem like acceptable losses if the breakthrough exploitation bags many prisoners of war, captures much material and conquers a city or two.

The pychological element may be decisive. A FPV unit may run in panic just as any other unit. Or maybe it doesn't - who knows? I suppose nobody, so we won't know until ther eis acutally mobile warfare again. More mobile than the Kharkiv offensive (which wa skinda slow) and more mobile than the Kursk offensive '24 (same). 

 

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

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