School of War Reader: The Future of War Is Happening Right Now in Ukraine
The Future of War Is Happening Right Now in Ukraine
Aaron Maclean, The Free Press
What do Ukraine’s spectacular drone raids mean for the future of this war, and of war in general? My take:
If what the Ukrainian security service has told the public is even half-true, 1 June’s long-range strikes against the Russian air force were an operational success on a grand scale. The Ukrainians say that they damaged or destroyed roughly a third of Russia’s entire strategic air force, striking targets at bases from the Arctic Circle in Murmansk all the way to the far end of the Eurasian steppe along the Mongolian border in Irkutsk. Russia’s vast depths failed to contribute their customary strategic advantage.
The raids also demonstrated that the future of war is now. To overcome Russia’s advantage in distance and evade its air defences, the Ukrainians infiltrated cheap drones in trucks, launched them remotely in close proximity to their targets, and apparently leveraged local telecom networks for control, though reportedly using some degree of autonomy as well – the details are not clear. Some of the targeted aircraft are no longer in production and are thus likely irreplicable, literally. The Ukrainians say the tab in damaged or destroyed equipment for the Russians is in the vicinity of $7 billion. The cost of the attack was certainly orders of magnitude less than that – just as the effective demolition of Russia’s Black Sea fleet cost much less than the destroyed assets themselves. We knew that an ‘anti-Navy’ was a feature of the modern battlefield; logically an ‘anti-Air Force’ was just as plausible.
The dramatic variation in price tags continues a trend notable in other theatres – recently in America’s tangle with the Houthis in the Red Sea, where multi-million-dollar interceptors and munitions were regularly expended against much cheaper Iranian-axis drones and targets, with the Houthis living to tell the tale and continue to threaten shipping. (This is one of many dimensions where what’s new is quite old – 10-rupee jezails have been providing ‘asymmetric’ advantages to weaker forces for a very long time.) But the operation was also a dress rehearsal for a nightmare scenario already much on the mind of some analysts, where the West’s under-defended major assets could be wiped out in sudden attacks in the opening moments of a direct great power conflict: for example, American assets during a war with China over the future of Taiwan.
As the missile defence expert Tom Karako recently put it to me, ‘People talk about a “Cyber” Pearl Harbor, and a “Space” Pearl Harbor. I worry about a “Pearl Harbor” Pearl Harbor.’ Pearl Harbor itself and bases in the first island chain would obviously be vulnerable to China, as would American ships at quayside in San Diego and even Norfolk, Virginia, not to mention American B-2s in Missouri. There are a lot of shipping containers in America sitting on the backs of trucks and aboard cargo vessels. We will never know what is in them. Such attacks could occur simultaneously with other more traditional kinds of strikes at targets far from the primary theatre of conflict – which is to say, we may need to rethink what we are talking about when we speak of military ‘theatres’. The special significance of Sunday’s raids is to settle beyond question that the time for accepting the emergency nature of such threats is past. The time for preparing adequate countermeasures threatens to pass at any moment.
Concrete Sky: Air Base Hardening in the Western Pacific
Timothy Walton and Thomas Shugart, Hudson Institute
Is part of the answer hardening potential targets?
The United States’ airfields face a threat of severe Chinese military attack. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) strike forces of aircraft, ground-based missile launchers, surface and subsurface vessels, and special forces can attack US aircraft and their supporting systems at airfields globally, including in the continental United States. The US Department of Defense (DoD) has consistently expressed concern regarding threats to airfields in the Indo-Pacific, and military analyses of potential conflicts involving China and the United States demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of US aircraft losses would likely occur on the ground at airfields (and that the losses could be ruinous). But the US military has devoted relatively little attention, and few resources, to countering these threats compared to developing modern aircraft.
Picture credit: https://breakingdefense.com/2024/03/rafael-expects-iron-beam-laser-to-be-active-in-2025-exec/
Israel’s Laser Air Defense Revolution
Elliott Abrams, Council on Foreign Relations
Or is it directed energy countermeasures?
Iron Beam is a game-changer. It is not a substitute for Iron Dome (used against short-range rockets), and the David’s Sling (cruise missiles and medium- to long-range rockets), Arrow and THAAD (intermediate-range and long-range ballistic missiles) systems, but is an additional air defense system that provides a cost-effective answer to the swarms of cheap drones that have become part of modern warfare. For the United States, there are plenty of uses—from defending U.S. bases around the world to helping allies like Ukraine and Taiwan face today’s and tomorrow’s drone attacks. The United States helped finance Israel’s development of Iron Beam, and—like the Israeli "Trophy" tank defense system being used on Abrams tanks by the U.S. Army—its success is another example of the value of Israel as an American ally. Drones have changed the battlefield. Laser defenses will change it again.
The War of Revision Is Coming
Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal
Guest Walter Mead on the hottest show in Taiwan:
China, aligned with Russia, North Korea and Iran, has formed an axis of revisionist powers aimed at challenging the existing world system on every continent, at sea, in space and in the cyberworld. The War of Revision has already begun in Ukraine, and families across the country huddle in bomb shelters as Russian missiles and drones bring the war home to civilians. Stunned into sobriety by a combination of Russian aggression and American unpredictability, Europe is awakening from a generational slumber. Britain’s Labour government has targeted 3% of gross domestic product in defense spending; Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is aiming for 5%. No serious person wants war, but decades of neglect have hollowed out Western defenses, and both the military foundations of American power and the political underpinnings of our alliance system are in poor condition. Between the steadily rising challenge from the revisionists and the uncertain responses of the defenders, peace grows more fragile as the challenges rise. A new era of great-power war isn’t inevitable, but it is getting harder to prevent. All democratic societies will ultimately have to reckon with this unwelcome global transition from a postwar to a prewar era in world history. Frontline states like Taiwan already live in this new reality.
Russia's Summer Offensive Campaigns in Ukraine
Mick Ryan, Futura Doctrina
Recent guest Mick Ryan on Russia’s summer plans for Ukraine:
Ukraine and Europe are dealing with a Russian president who is probably more confident now than at any time since 2022. Putin feels he has the measure of Trump and understands how he makes decisions (impulsively), his strategic calculus (financial, not strategic or values-based) and whether he is willing to increase sanctions or support to Ukraine (not likely at this point - but I would be very, very happy to be wrong about this). So, Putin is feeling confident that his power is secure, that his adversaries are politically more feeble and that western will to resist the rise of authoritarian powers is declining. He now has a good sense for the strategic political and security environment now that the Trump administration and its foreign relationships is a known entity. This gives him more freedom to think about his objectives for Russia and for focusing on achieving his aims for the war in the Ukraine this year.