A Ukrainian Sea Baby drone. Ukrainian unmanned surface vessels have effectively defeated the Russian Navy in the Black Sea. Image source: SBU of Ukraine
To Win in Ukraine and Elsewhere, More Innovation is Needed
The U.S. must be ready to innovate to fight and win a conflict in which it is unable to bring to bear all the advantages it would normally enjoy.
With the conclusion of the 2024 Washington NATO conference with month and the announcement of F-16s for Ukraine, there are still no signs the war will end. The Ukrainian army has been on the defensive, faced with the never-ending onslaught of Russian cannon fodder. Ammunition shortages and the failed spring 2023 counter-offensive have placed Ukraine’s military in a precarious position; it cannot afford to pursue risky actions that would dwindle its limited resources or further bleed its forces. Russia is playing the long game, knowing that its massive, apparently disposable population and decades of Cold War Era military stocks amplified by China and North Korea afford it the ability to soak up Ukrainian ammunition at a rate Western allies can’t seem to replenish.
Like the massive land armies of the First World War, the forces of both sides are fighting a tit-for-tat war of attrition with no discernible path to victory. As a result, Western governments have begun relenting in their previous opposition to striking Russia proper with the long-range weaponry they’ve supplied. Ukraine’s strikes on Russian territory with American made weapons have been necessary to prevent Russia from massing and supplying its troops with impunity as they make progress along certain sections of the front line.
Just as in WWI, the advancement of technology prior to the outbreak of war has prevented significant advancement by either side. The current prospects for victory are grim, as Ukraine and Russia’s similar technological capabilities have resulted in a stalemate. Neither side can achieve air superiority due to robust enemy air defenses, forcing infantry to assault fully manned defensive positions across minefields while under artillery and drone attacks. Precision munitions that would normally be used to methodically disassemble enemy defenses are being negated by electronic warfare (EW) capabilities. Infantry and vehicles are unable to traverse the massive minefields and are vulnerable to armed aerial drones too small to track and too expensive to destroy with conventional air defense systems. Wide flanking or other stealthy maneuvers are spotted well before they can be completed, as the presence of these small drones at a scale never seen before establishes an unparalleled reconnaissance capability accessible to both sides.
To overcome the stalemate, Ukraine and its allies must rapidly innovate in both technology and tactics. Without a renewed spirit of innovation motivated by this war, the U.S. and its allies around the world will be unprepared to win the next conflict.
Little Innovation has Occurred
It is remarkable how little technological progress has taken place since the outbreak of the Ukraine war. The U.S. hasn’t been much help, as American complacency in the technologically imbalanced types of combat in which its own troops had been involved for decades has resulted in a loss of the spirit of innovation. During the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the U.S. held the luxury of technological superiority against enemies without defenses against aircraft or GPS guided munitions, and there was little reason to develop weaponry with the capability of overcoming electronic warfare capabilities. The most challenging issue was developing counter-IED technology. MRAPs and electronic jamming against remote IEDs, however, hold limited utility on a battlefield against a military peer.
Compare this to the rapid pace of innovation in World War II, when the allies developed everything from mobile floating invasion harbors to bouncing bombs. Even the concept of a first person view drone (FPV), now ubiquitous in Ukraine, was first tested in World War II by the U.S. Navy.
Certainly, Ukraine has innovated in some ways, whether that’s the degree of drone integration in its combat operations, the development of combat related software to improve situational awareness, or mounting weapons designed for one platform onto others. But most of this innovation has come in the form of adopting or expanding technology and tactics pioneered in previous conflicts—just at greater scale. We have seen drones drop grenades in Iraq and Syria in 2018 and during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2020. We have seen the Russians apply spaced armor to tanks—an idea that’s existed since World War II. Even crowdfunding a reconnaissance satellite is not particularly novel when you consider war bonds and scrap drives in WWII. If there is a potentially profound form of innovation, it may be the integration of AI into drones in order to autonomously attack targets. Overall, Ukraine’s limited innovation has been successful in preventing a complete collapse of the front, but it hasn’t strategically tipped the tide in favor of reclaiming occupied territory.
Compounding the difficulty facing Ukraine, the U.S. has been hesitant to hand over its most advanced equipment. This is understandable considering the need to preserve a technological edge and the element of surprise in the event of direct conflict with Russia or China, but Ukraine’s lack of access to this more advanced gear, combined with the donation of conventional munitions and equipment in frankly limited amounts, further stresses the need to innovate.
Why Innovation Is Necessary
Innovation is vital in warfare, particularly when opposing forces are evenly matched or when a weaker party is trying to overcome a more powerful adversary. A key example is evident in Germany’s adoption of blitzkrieg warfare at the beginning of World War II. As Germany’s military charged into France in 1940, it did so without a major advantage in technology or size. Its tanks were considered inferior to the French tanks seen on the frontlines at that point in time. Instead, Germany combined its air and land power in tactically innovative ways, captured Europe’s most impressive fort, bypassed the major French fortifications of the time, and routed the British Expeditionary Force. The result was a catastrophe for the defenders, who were not prepared to respond to the innovative planning of the German military.
In stark contrast, what has been perhaps most critical to the conduct of the Russo-Ukrainian war is the use of legacy equipment designed to fight a cold war turned hot. None of it provides a strategic advantage—just the ability to stay in the fight and sustain the attritional nature of this war. Ukraine will never be supplied with enough conventional equipment to overcome the obstacles Russia has built, and it is struggling to recruit and conscript soldiers.
Highlighting the problem, the summer counteroffensive of 2023 failed largely because Ukraine was never provided the volume of equipment, training, and operational capacity necessary to conduct a NATO-style attack—a model that relies on air power and rapid breaching capability. Ukraine did not have the air force necessary to overcome Russian air defenses, 200 western-provided tanks along a 600-mile front could not be expected to enable an offensive, and troops advancing across minefields without hundreds of demining vehicles or air cover could not be expected. Seeing the reality of this, Ukrainian is unlikely to mount another significant offensive to rid its territory of Russian occupiers in the near term, especially as it struggles to maintain a solid defensive position on the front line. What Ukraine needs, and what the U.S. and its allies must be prepared to generate, is new innovations to overcome the severe disadvantages it faces.
In a 2023 report on Ukrainian innovation, researchers at CSIS noted that “as the war of attrition continues…it is unlikely that military innovation will be sufficient to outweigh the matériel needs of the Ukrainian military.” This is true at its most fundamental level, as Ukraine needs basic military supplies that are being rapidly expended against Russia’s superior numbers, but the lack of significant innovation contributes to Ukraine relying heavily on firepower volume that it simply cannot sustain. It is precisely because Ukraine cannot outright win a classic war of attrition against its much larger neighbor that it must innovate if it is going to have a chance of ending this war on favorable terms.
So what kinds of innovations does Ukraine need to secure its future? Ukraine needs new means of breaching minefields and determining weak points in Russian lines to as to exploit them. It must develop more effective means of interrupting Russian supply lines to decrease the advantage Russia has in materiel at the front lines. It must develop more effective defenses against drones and aerial munitions, thereby turning a Russian advantage into a waste of money. It must increase its own efficiency. But generally, it must innovate ways to better negate Russia’s superiority without the expectation of Western support.
Consequences for U.S. Policy
The course of the Ukraine War also signals that a war against China in defense of Taiwan is likely to negate a great deal of the technology that the U.S. has used over the past several decades. In the scenario that war breaks out, the U.S. military must be prepared to enter a conflict in which all of its usual advantages are rendered ineffective against a near-peer adversary. America will have to innovate. How will it respond quickly enough to prevent a Chinese landing en masse on Taiwan’s beaches? How will it operate in an area saturated with anti-air and anti-ship missiles in a quantity with which it has never before contended? Will it further sanction the creation of AI-enabled weapons with autonomous targeting?
As made evident by the Ukraine war, many of America’s key innovations and technological advantages, particularly GPS-guided precision weaponry, have been rendered ineffective by advanced electronic warfare capabilities, prompting a need to increase reliance on older, mass fire munitions. In such GPS-denied environments, weapons subsequently relying solely on inertial guidance are less able to hit moving targets, and those equipped with terrain following technology may not have any terrain to follow in an oceanic theater. If high tech weaponry is rendered tactically useless by electronic warfare, then innovation either needs to directly overcome this specific issue, or generate a strategy to combine existing and usable tech in ways that challenge an enemy’s ability to adapt.
In a war over Taiwan, many of the same challenges seen in the war in Ukraine will apply, plus the added dilemma of large-scale naval conflict and the absence of land routes for resupply. Certainly, military planners are taking note of instances where Ukraine has had notable success—especially in the use of sea drones to attack the Russian Black Sea Fleet. In combination with aerial drones and anti-ship missiles, Ukraine, without any significant naval forces, has been able to effectively deny Russia strategic domination of the Black Sea and forced most of the Russian navy to abandon Crimea. Being aware of the delayed response time it will take to muster a force to challenge a Chinese invasion, U.S. INDOPACOM commander Admiral Samuel Paparo has outlined the concept of a hellscape of drones to be unleashed in defense of Taiwan if a war breaks out. Yet a key question remains—will a massive swarm of U.S. drones be able to operate in an environment saturated with heavy EW capabilities? And if it can’t, then what? Is the U.S. also prepared to contend with similar tactics by China?
Recognizing that the U.S. has an interest in protecting its military secrets by not playing its full hand with the extent of its advanced technology in the Ukraine war, it could benefit by employing a middle ground strategy focusing on speed and volume of innovation. Alongside its NATO allies and Ukraine, the U.S. should develop more formal mechanisms for rapid, mid-level innovation, aiming to help Ukraine workshop innovate new tactics, strategies, and technologies that are within its means to use effectively and do not reveal to the Russians or Chinese what tricks the U.S. has up its sleeve. This collaborative innovation environment could help re-spark a spirit of military innovation that the U.S. has not seen in quite some time, and ultimately better prepare it to deal with unexpected challenges in a potential direct conflict with China.
