Eyewitness to war: Ukrainian ingenuity and a new kind of war
Ukraine’s war effort is shifting toward self-reliance, using decentralized innovation and off-the-shelf technology.
In a nutshell
- Drone warfare and automation are replacing traditional military systems
- Ukrainians rapidly innovate, finding cost-effective, battle-specific solutions
- European support may fund Ukraine’s growing domestic arms industry
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This is another installment of the series “Eyewitness to war” by Dr. Paul Schwennesen, who writes of his firsthand observations from the Ukrainian frontlines.
In a political landscape increasingly defined by convulsing and hesitant United States support for Ukraine, my frontline observations indicate that this support is becoming less indispensable than Washington imagines. While U.S. technology, intelligence and raw firepower is certainly significant, Ukrainian fighters have entered an entirely new domain of warfare which is gradually reducing the importance of such support.
The “drone wars” are merely one aspect of a larger revolution in the structure of military operations. A new paradigm of waging war is emerging, defined less by military hierarchies and expensive weapons systems and more by a decentralized, evolutionary warfighting culture. This transformation is more akin to a corporate startup than a traditional standing army.
It might well be termed “democratized warfare,” and it is exacting heavily disproportionate losses on the larger, more “professional” Russian war machine. Democratized warfare makes legacy doctrines, along with the massive technical apparatus that once made them potent, increasingly obsolete.
A corporate way of war?
My assessment of the current frontlines near Kharkiv and Izyum indicates that Ukrainian soldiers have matured rapidly onto an entirely new war-footing – one defined by a ready exploitation of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology, especially drones, which have been hacked, tweaked or custom-built to fit a rapidly evolving battlespace. Their reliance on traditional armor and infantry assaults has declined precipitously, and 70-80 percent of kinetic combat operations are now carried out by unmanned vehicles.
Reliance on traditional armor and infantry assaults has declined precipitously, and 70-80 percent of kinetic combat operations are now carried out by unmanned vehicles.
In Ukraine today, the most effective army units are composed of comparatively young, tech-savvy operators. Traditional hierarchy and military discipline are relatively lax – emphasis is instead placed on a rapid, systematic exchange of information and a culture of innovation and on-the-go adaptation.
Innovation on the battlefront
The following are some examples of how Ukraine’s innovation-culture manifests on the battlefront.
Build it yourself
The most effective weapons to arise from this new way of war are custom-built first-person-view (FPV) platforms made almost entirely in-country and often near the frontlines. These construction sites are often housed in roughly retrofitted civilian buildings where ultramodern 3D printer labs and advanced engineering assembly lines build the components needed in near real time.
They drive a hyper-evolutionary engineering cycle that customizes weapons to fit the immediate needs of the day. It is not only the FPV hardware (typically 7-, 10- and increasingly 13-15-inch frames) that are made locally – advanced chipmakers are also involved. They are building and deploying cutting-edge Ukrainian flight controllers and processors with the understanding that Chinese supply lines are tenuous and could be rescinded at any time. While they still utilize cheap Chinese modules when convenient, they are aware they may need to build everything in-country at any moment and are developing the production infrastructure to do so.
Heavy-lift drones are playing an increasing role in battlefield operations. I toured a factory making heavy-lift drones including the Baba Yaga − the notorious “flying witch” − that strikes terror into Russian occupiers. The nondescript factory, which specialized in large agricultural drone sprayers before the war, now makes aerial sprayers that release defoliants and accelerants over Russian positions before immolating them with thermite.
These factories incorporate real-time feedback from their frontline partners to build drones that iterate on heavy-lift designs based mainly on 4-, 6- or 8-arm frames that can lift as much as 500 kilograms. The drones fold to fit into small pickups or SUVs for forward deployment and can be quickly adapted to fit various mission sets – from dropping cases of water bottles to friendly troops to mounting auto-aim machine guns. These heavy-lifters are becoming the new workhorses of the frontline.
Surveillance
I witnessed practically every inch of a typical company-level frontline sector surveilled by drones in all spectra and in nearly all weather conditions (including blinding snow). I watched Ukrainian operators – calmly sipping tea – drop munitions on a Russian soldier in sub-zero temperatures before he could crawl back into his frozen trench position. Thermal drones have come to dominate much of the surveillance space – picking out the heat signature of Russian footprints while drones carefully lay small, custom-made landmines in their path.
Bespoke munitions
One of the more astonishing things I witnessed was a Ukrainian drone team building their own purpose-made precision munitions from scavenged explosives. Tailor-made explosive drone payloads are built at or near the frontlines to exact maximal devastation at minimal cost. In a former potato shed now filled with explosives and components, I witnessed the teardown of a malfunctioning NLAW (Saab/EU New Long-Range Anti-tank Weapon) and the removal of its expensive guidance package to access the explosive bundle inside. The shaped-charge payload was to be refitted to destroy an armored target, though deployed on a $300 drone instead of a $33,000 single-use launch tube.
I observed Ukrainians disassembling Soviet-era anti-tank mines, removing the explosives and melting them down in rice cookers to fill their own 3D-printed casings, complete with titanium and Hardox shrapnel loads to be fitted onto antipersonnel drone packages. Such repurposing is a microcosm of the larger trend: Ukrainians are evolving the modern battlespace at warp speed, holding back one of the largest conventional militaries on earth by countering conventional weapons with unconventional ones.
Rapid EW evolution
The frontline electronic warfare (EW) environment is extremely complex, but Ukrainians are increasingly adept at exploiting gaps in Russian jamming operations. The tactical electronic “weather” is constantly shifting, which makes portable handheld spectrum analyzers one of the more prevalent tools on the front. These can be fitted to surveillance drones to map the jamming terrain at any given moment, offering operators insight into how to tune their receiver/transmitter packages accordingly.
Ukrainian operators, many of whom were professional programmers or information technology specialists prior to their current duty, are skilled at engineering unique guidance packages that can hop frequencies or maneuver through holes in the Russian jamming bubble. Tactically, they have perfected techniques such as tandem-flight or relay-drone protocols that further extend their effective operational range.
Fiber-optic wire-guided “spool drones,” which provide a direct cable link to operators, have now come to define much of the modern battle space. Russians largely pioneered tethered-drone technology to circumvent radio frequency (RF) jamming efforts, but each side is now widely employing spool drones. Ukrainians are rapidly adapting the technology, working on finer filaments (.12 millimeters) and longer spools (23 kilometers plus) to increase effective range. The thin, fishing-line-like filament is draped all over the frontlines, dangling from trees and over trenches in a surreal tangle of modern battlefield debris.
However, Ukrainian forces appear less invested in this technology than their adversaries, and a rough extrapolation suggests that fiber missions currently account for around 10-20 percent of operations. At approximately $500 per spool, this may be a cost-avoidance strategy, or it may be due to Ukrainians’ comparative advantages in engineering solutions for operating in traditional RF environments.
For example, in a somewhat mind-bending twist, elite operators now routinely intercept Russian video transmission frequencies to effectively “see” what enemy drones are aiming at. Like Perseus’s mirror against Medusa, they can watch attacks on themselves in real-time and adjust accordingly, avoiding strikes by taking cover precisely when necessary.
The mood and mode
In view of the minor territorial gains made by the Kremlin’s forces in recent months – coming as they do at a frightfully high cost (estimates are between 1,200 and 1,500 daily Russian casualties) − it would be easy to conclude that Ukrainian forces are possessed of some extraordinarily robust technical or tactical capabilities. In one sense this is true, but the “secret sauce” is not the result of centralized ministry of defense strategic acumen, or of specialized Western weapons (useful as they may be). Rather, the advantage lies in an evolution-driven new form of warfare: an organic, corporate way of innovating and adapting horizontally across empowered warfighters, rather than vertically from the top-down.
Read more from military affairs expert Dr. Paul Schwennesen
- Eyewitness to war: Why Chechens fight for Ukraine
- Drones and asymmetric warfare in Ukraine and Israel
- Eyewitness to war: Drones and implications for America
While the material and manpower odds are stacked heavily in favor of Russian invading forces, the moral and logistical advantages strongly favor Ukraine. Units typically operate on a three-day on, three-day off rotation in the trenches – a luxury almost inconceivable for Russian or North Korean forces. It is not uncommon for Ukrainian fighters to repulse Russian assaults in the morning, then relax over pizza at a peaceful cafe that afternoon – the power of internal supply lines is vast. Ukrainians are tired, but their morale is high: They know their business, and they are no longer fully reliant on Western arms to continue their fight. The mood, in other words, betrays nothing like the levels of exhaustion or despair needed to capitulate.
Ukrainians have developed a unique approach to warfare, a kind of spontaneous national resistance that mobilizes its vast civilian labor and talent pool in a decentralized but effective way. At the frontlines, this manifests as a scrappy yet highly adaptive framework for developing effective weapons and tactics. Much of the innovation base comes from recently mobilized civilian subject matter experts, adept in the use of modern technology.
Horizontal, real-time information flow
A major factor in the mobilization of this expertise is horizontal information flow. I witnessed how frontline units coordinate and cooperate, exchanging operationally useful intelligence through commercial communication applications like Signal and Discord. Units at the frontline not only exchange critical tactical information but also participate in effective systems that tabulate battle data to identify where further innovation is most needed.
Ukraine has transitioned from reliance on foreign aid to working toward self-sufficiency.
For instance, when asked what their FPV drone battle damage assessment (BDA) was, every member of the team immediately accessed an excel spreadsheet on their phone and pointed to a visual-confirmation-based dataset that indicates to a tenth of a percent which units are most effective at any given moment.
This systematic, almost businesslike, pursuit of ever-improving performance may do more than anything to explain how Ukraine has transitioned from reliance on foreign aid to working toward self-sufficiency. The process has not been perfect, but Ukraine’s system of “democratized warfare” helps explain how it has successfully resisted Russia’s full-scale invasion for so long.
Scenarios
Least likely: Ukrainian concessions or collapse in morale
Ukrainians are not nearly desperate enough to concede much (if anything) at brokered peace talks. Life will possibly become more difficult for average civilians, but their resilience has only increased. Based on assessments from soldiers on the front lines, there is a low probability of any substantial fallbacks or territorial losses in coming months, barring, perhaps, pullbacks or a complete withdrawal from Kursk if such a political decision was made.
More likely: Support from Europe to develop Ukraine’s arms industry
Ukraine will continue efforts to leverage political and financial capital in Europe (possibly using profits from Russian assets held at Euroclear, or their outright sale) for continued support. This may arrive more in the form of direct payments to continue growing their organic, domestic arms industry, rather than traditional weapons deliveries. In the view of the soldiers fighting on the front line, it is even possible that a sustained effort by Kyiv to produce its own weapons together with continued European support may put exhausted Russian forces under increased pressure by autumn.
Most likely: Acceleration in the development of unmanned vehicle systems
Cheap, innovative, tech-based, organically developed weapons systems are going to further define the battlespace in Ukraine as expensive, traditional weapons systems become less advantageous. Advancements made in Ukraine will spread abroad, as militaries worldwide take note of the efficacy of the novel, democratized systems and their low cost. This new kind of warfare will likely take root within entrenched military procurement systems, operating in tandem within traditional military norms. Those nations that most rapidly embrace the new order will gain significant strategic advantage over the short and medium term.
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