Expensive lessons learned by the US from the Ukraine battlefield

Witnessing the fierce war of attrition in Ukraine, the Pentagon realized they had to change their combat methods to not rely too much on guidance technology.

"This thing would also kill a lot of American soldiers," General Taylor said.

NTC is a key training base of the US military, located in the Mojave Desert in California. This is a place that specializes in realistic combat simulations, with a regiment playing the role of the enemy, to help US soldiers get familiar with situations that they may encounter in combat.

The US military is having to rebuild its fighting methods, abandoning the counter-insurgency tactics associated with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to ​​focus on preparing for large-scale conflicts with peer powers.

US soldiers next to a camouflaged division headquarters during an exercise in NTC in January. Photo: Washington Post

US officials say the Ukraine conflict is an opportunity for policymakers to learn valuable lessons. The Pentagon has conducted a secret year-long study of what it has learned from both sides of the conflict in order to develop the National Defense Strategy, a document that will guide US military and defense policy for years to come.

"The nature of warfare has changed, and the lessons from the Ukraine conflict will be a source of long-term use," said a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The war in Ukraine has challenged Washington's core calculations, as well as undermined the belief that guided weapons have always played a central role in every US military victory.

"Today's conflict is a war of attrition, in which each side seeks to wear down the other's resources. This form was once considered outdated and no longer suitable for modern warfare," said Stacie Pettyjohn, director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

"That forced Ukraine to combine older conventional artillery with reconnaissance and UAVs to attack targets. US commanders certainly recognized this," Ms. Pettyjohn added.

US officials admit that every action of soldiers, from planning, patrolling to using technology to carry out missions, must be reviewed.

The NTC training grounds, which once mimicked the flat terrain of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now filled with trenches and outposts that resemble the front lines in Ukraine. “What happened in Ukraine shows that Russian artillery can hamper the movement of formations and threaten any forward command post,” General Taylor admitted.

General Taylor told the story of an Apache attack helicopter crew playing the role of the blue army evading an anti-aircraft defense system in a simulation exercise. The red army troops were initially unable to determine the enemy's flight path, but based on data from a mobile phone, they discovered it was traveling at nearly 200 km/h over the desert, and from there, they plotted the Apache's route.

The US commander compared the threat posed by smartphones to the problem of smoking on the front lines during World War II, when soldiers on both sides looked for flickering orange dots in the night to pinpoint enemy positions. “I think addiction to smartphones is as dangerous as addiction to cigarettes,” said General Taylor.

US soldiers also had to pay extra attention to the phones around them. Soldiers posing as civilians at the NTC could take photos, record videos, and mark the positions of the blue army, then post them on a fake social network called Fakebook. This information was used by the red army to plan the attack.

Radios, drone control stations and vehicles all generate large amounts of electromagnetic and infrared signals that can be detected by surveillance systems from afar. NTC commanders say U.S. troops are learning, but there are still many areas to work on.

The US Army commander (second from left) at the field command post during the NTC exercise. Photo: Washington Post

One soldier explained that the camouflage netting was jamming satellite signals, forcing them to place the Starlink antenna outside to maintain connectivity. “It’s going to be a target for enemy UAVs and reconnaissance aircraft. Cover it with a blanket,” General Taylor said.

In recent conflicts, the US has deployed large, expensive unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are only deployed at the command of senior commanders. In contrast, the Russian and Ukrainian militaries now field large numbers of small reconnaissance and attack drones, giving squad-level units autonomy that the US has yet to implement in practice.

The presence of small drones significantly shortens the time to carry out the "kill chain" of reconnaissance, target detection and attack.

The tactic of using drones to drop explosives is considered to be increasingly changing the way of fighting in modern conflicts. Cheap and readily available drones have taken out high-value enemy targets such as tanks, armored vehicles, air defense systems, and even attacked individual soldiers hiding in trenches.

The 82nd Airborne Division became the first US Army unit to train soldiers to use drones to drop bullets on targets on the training ground.

The powerful, low-cost, and anti-aircraft capabilities of these suicide drones have prompted U.S. military leaders to consider the potential for gaps in defense capabilities. A prime example is the January 28 suicide drone attack on a U.S. base in Jordan that killed three soldiers and injured dozens.

The US Army also abandoned two light reconnaissance UAV models, the RQ-7 Shadow and RQ-11 Raven, saying they could not survive in modern conflicts. "The situation on the battlefield, especially Ukraine, shows that aerial reconnaissance has fundamentally changed," said US Army Commander Randy George.

General James Hecker, commander of the US Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), said that the Ukrainian military is deploying a network of thousands of phones equipped with acoustic sensors to detect Russian UAVs based on the noise they make. Specialized units then send warnings to air defense forces and UAV hunting teams to intercept and shoot down the targets.

"This effort has been communicated to the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, as well as US and NATO military commanders for review and learning," General Hecker said.

Those coming to the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) are learning how to build networks of trenches and fortifications, once considered “relics of past conflicts,” to protect their lives from bombs and explosive-laden drones.

"I hope the red army will appear. I don't want to dig trenches for nothing," said one soldier after hours of digging and camouflaging fortifications.

A US general learns how to operate a drone during a visit to Liberty Air Force Base in North Carolina in August 2023. Photo: US Army

In one exercise, the Red Army used a drone capable of detecting WiFi signals and a Bluetooth-enabled device, allowing them to detect the Blue Army's assembly point. In another incident, the Blue Army's command post was identified because it named its WiFi network "command post."

The US and Ukrainian militaries operate differently, making many of their conflict experiences inapplicable to Washington, but Pettyjohn warns that many US commanders are still complacent about the lessons learned from the war and could pay a heavy price in the future.

“They don’t believe that the nature of warfare has changed and still cling to the risky belief that the US military would do better in a similar situation,” she said.

Vu Anh (According to Washington Post )

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