US learning from Ukraine War

 

The U.S. Military Is Taking Notes on the War in Ukraine

Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, July 14, 2022 

More than a year into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two sides’ successes and failures on the battlefield have provided other armed forces around the world with valuable lessons, helping them to identify applicable innovations, vulnerabilities in their own forces and ways to protect themselves against enemy strengths.

Warfare is an undertaking fraught with many variables that make it difficult to assess the capabilities of a fighting force until you actually fight it. So many things can go wrong—and very often do. So, the effectiveness of an army depends on its ability to adapt when confronted with unexpected developments on the battlefield.

Western militaries invest heavily in training and trusting the judgment of their junior ranks, officer and enlisted personnel alike; some even pretend to rely wholly on them. This reflects what retired U.S. Gen. Charles Krulak described as the strategic corporal and the 19th-century German Chief of Staff German Helmuth von Moltke referred to as mission command: Armies in combat succeed or fail on the judgments and decisions of their junior ranks, so the safest course of action amid the fog of war is to ensure the entire chain of command understands the commander’s intent and the mission’s objectives.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates the shortcomings inherent in withholding information and objectives from lower-ranked officers. The apparent failure by Russian leaders to inform field commanders of their invasion plans meant that the latter could not organize their attacks and logistics or coordinate operations with other military units. Those failures created vulnerabilities that afforded Ukrainian forces precious time to counter the Russian advances in the early stages of the invasion.

The war in Ukraine has also shown that outcomes and conduct on the battlefield directly affect the prospects for a negotiated settlement between the warring sides. It has become fashionable to argue that military force can’t solve political problems. But military force will solve the problem of Russia’s invasion one way or the other, because neither side can lay claim to territory it does not hold. In addition, Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine will foreclose the prospect of a Ukrainian political compromise and might even preclude Kyiv from entering into talks with Moscow, given public resentment of Russian atrocities.

The war also further validates Jason Lyall’s research findings in “Divided Armies”: that to win wars, armies must be cohesive, and that cohesion is strengthened by inclusion. This vision of unit cohesion results less from sameness and more from creating a sense of belonging out of the unit’s diversity. The Russian army has suffered major losses at the hands of a fighting force made up of Ukrainians from all walks of life. It’s an important lesson for the U.S., where the partisan culture wars about “wokeness” have begun to be applied to the military.

Ukraine is drawing not only on the resources of its military, but on its whole society. Citizens report sightings of Russian units on a government-created app that the Ukrainian military then uses to target enemy troops. Teenagers operate civilian drones for surveillance purposes. Communities weave camouflage nets, cast body armor for troops and weld antitank obstacles. Ukrainians’ resilience in the face of major power outages and the terror of air raids has been nothing short of heroic.

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The U.S. might be well-prepared for the kind of war Russia has fought in Ukraine, but it is poorly provisioned for it.

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It has proven to be beneficial not only operationally, but also in sustaining popular support for the war effort and amplifying the message broadcast to foreign audiences of Ukrainians’ unity and will to resist Russian aggression. Ukraine’s resilience also sends a message to Moscow about the likelihood of a vicious insurgency if Russia prevails militarily. Observing the direct contributions of Ukrainian society, the U.S. military—nearly 50 years into its all-volunteer force—looks on with envy at a public so involved in supporting the war effort. 

The unexpected success of the Ukrainian army validates much of the U.S. military’s doctrine and operational art, especially with regard to reliance on the judgment and adaptiveness of the junior ranks; the importance of combined arms operations to reduce casualties and capitalize on battlefield gains; the advantages conferred by pervasive surveillance and precision weapons; and the importance of using longer-range weapons to keep forces out of the range of enemy fire.

When I asked a senior Ukrainian military officer during a visit to the country about the most important advantage Ukrainian forces have on the battlefield, he replied, “We’re inside their OODA loop,” referring to the late U.S. Col. John Boyd’s famous dictum that military forces must observe, orient, decide and only then act. The side that can take action fastest will seize the initiative on the battlefield, forcing the other side to react rather than act. That is what Ukraine is doing to Russia.

Yet there is also cause for concern: The U.S. might be well-prepared for the kind of war Russia has imposed on Ukraine, but it is poorly provisioned for it. In the early stages of the invasion, Russia fired approximately 23,000 artillery shells a day; today, it is still firing more than 7,000 a day. Ukraine is firing fewer shells, but still expending more in a month than the U.S. produces in an entire year. This demonstrates the extent to which the U.S. and other Western militaries have economized on weapons and ammunition, leaving themselves heavily understocked for anything more than a short, sharp war.

Those shortfalls are the result of bureaucratic infighting between the U.S. Department of Defense and Congress, in which the two sides regularly play a game of budgetary chicken, gaming the other’s response. This points to a problem that urgently needs fixing: The Defense Department faces difficulty in signing multiyear procurement contracts, and without the assurances of sustained demand, defense contractors are reluctant to invest in tooling factories as well as hiring and training workers.

Both the Defense Department and Congress have been shocked into action by the war in Ukraine and have begun issuing those multiyear contracts for things like munitions and missile systems. But the procurement system remains littered with impediments to rapid purchases of needed munitions and weapons platforms, and it will take sustained pressure by both the Defense Department and Congress to fix the problem.

It is to Washington’s credit that the U.S. and its allies have been steadfast in their support of Ukraine, including delivering sophisticated weaponry to Kyiv for use on the battlefield. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin meets every month in Germany with 50 of his counterparts to coordinate support for Ukraine. That effort to sustain solidarity with Ukraine strengthens the United States’ international position and is a welcome development for Washington’s European allies, who were dismayed by the U.S. abandonment of Afghanistan in 2021 and the chaotic circumstances of that exit.

But support for Ukraine in Washington is weakening, and it was perhaps inevitable that it would become the object of partisan point-scoring by Democrats and Republicans alike. The U.S. public appears concerned about the heavy price tag—approximately $113 billion already to date—in a time of economic uncertainty. But public opinion is remarkably malleable to persuasion by political elites, and Ukraine has a compelling narrative that is being taken up by political leaders in the two main parties: namely, that U.S. support for Ukraine is the morally correct decision and is in Washington’s interest. For a cost to Washington that amounts to approximately 6 percent of U.S. defense spending, Ukraine’s military is destroying the Russian army. That is an incredible achievement and a cost-effective undertaking for the United States. Russia’s terrible invasion of Ukraine, as well as the courage and resilience of Ukraine’s military and its people, have shown important strengths of the U.S. military’s approach. But it has revealed shortcomings in its procurement processes that must be urgently addressed for the U.S. to be able to sustain the kind of effort required for such a war.