One Ukrainian drone squad goes to work. Two NATO battalions later and it is clear that the West still has plenty adaption ahead of us. ⬇️
Plenty of combat consternation of late with revelations first reported in the Wall Street Journal that 10 Ukrainians armed with drones made a dramatic impact on a major NATO exercise late last year. The Telegraph sums up the bottom line:
“Hedgehog 2025, a military exercise involving more than 16,000 troops from 12 Nato countries, simulated a battlefield ‘contested and congested’ with a variety of drones, according to the head of Estonia’s unmanned systems unit.During one scenario, a battle group consisting of thousands of troops, including a British brigade and an Estonian division, was defeated by a simulated enemy operated by a Ukrainian team in a ‘horrible’ result for Nato”
There has been a lot of talk about learning the lessons of drone warfare in Ukraine. This was small team working with first person view drones supported with tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones. The sort of capability that could infiltrate deep behind the forward line of own troops or into the homeland before going to work. The sort of capability that can operate in much of the Indo Pacific land domain.
We’ve been seeing tactics, techniques and procedures evolve at speed for both the Ukrainians and the Russians. Retired US General David Petraeus puts it well in a Ukraine24media article on the exercise and whether the West is adapting fast enough:
“Lessons are not learned when they are identified… Rather, they are only learned when you develop new concepts, write new doctrine, change organizational structures, overhaul your training, refine leader development courses, set out new materiel requirements that drive the procurement process, and even make changes to your personnel policies, recruiting, and facilities.”
Are we confident we’ve learned, and adapted accordingly? Or are drones being treated like the Boston Dynamics robot dog at a trade show – a curiosity that isn’t been taken seriously yet as a consumable of combat. Mike Kaufman in Season 8 episode 2 of the Revolution in Military Affairs podcast threw down the gauntlet to Western militaries who proport to be developing drone capability within their force structure:
“If you don’t create drone units, you will not fight with drones. You can talk about buying drones all you want but if I can’t find the Drone Company in the Brigade you will not be fighting with drones – I assure you. If there’s no Drone Company, if there’s no Drone Battalion, if I can’t find manpower allocation, if I can’t find organisational capacity that has that as their mission… you can buy 2 million drones tomorrow but who in the organisation is going to fight with them.”
More than a bit of food for thought in this post!
📷 via X and articles mentioned in the comments – and find Revolution of Military Affairs where ever you get your podcasts.