A New Level of War

What the proliferation of unmanned systems in the Ukraine conflict means for the United States

The conflict in Ukraine has spawned a proliferation of drones and drone technology, with each side using unmanned platforms to gain standoff – the ability to locate and strike an adversary while remaining beyond his reach.  

The Ukrainians are fortunate enough to have at their call a pool of tech-savvy innovators -- the legacy of a thriving pre-war IT sector and a long-seated tradition of engineering that goes back to their Soviet past.  These patriotic technophiles now run a frenetic cottage industry focused on the adaptation of commercial drones for combat, and the manufacture of new platforms specifically designed for that purpose.  The result: a production line of cheap but increasingly capable platforms to mitigate the Russians’ overall advantage in combat power.  And – downrange – they are making a difference: by April of this year, a recent Economist article estimates, drones were playing a role in more than 70% of Russian casualties. 

Evolution not Revolution

Unmanned platforms simply provide a better way to execute the age-old functions of warfighting -- from intelligence to command and control to fires – with the latter including the ability to strike in the electromagnetic and cyber domains.  So much better that it renders all other methods obsolescent, and many Western nations must envy the rapid and adaptive nature of the Ukrainian procurement system as they watch their own defense budgets channel absurd amounts of money into platforms that are obsolete at prototype. 

What we are seeing in Ukraine is just the latest chapter in the evolution of unmanned platforms.  Since the first drone attacks on western soldiers occurred in Iraq and Syria in 2015, there have been signs aplenty that drones are changing the face of war.  

The Speed of Relevance: lessons from the past:

In September 2019, an Iranian supported drone attack incapacitated the Aramco oil processing facilities in Saudi Arabia.  A battery of Patriot air defense missiles provided by the United States was overwhelmed by the attack – an event that would set a pattern for similar attacks launched around the world in the years that followed.

 Patriot missiles are designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles – not small, slow-moving, and low flying drones.  Their inability to respond effectively to the Aramco attack was a harbinger of things to come – but also, for students of history, a reminder of a similar mismatch that occurred during the Second World War.

In 1942, the British launched an attack against the German pocket battleship, the Bismarck, using an outdated bi-plane, the Fairey Swordfish.  In that case the attack was successful because the battleship’s advanced fire control system was unable to track or shoot down low flying, slow moving biplanes – and shells designed to detonate against metal, simply passed through the bi-planes which were made of fabric on a metal frame. More Axis shipping was sunk by the Swordfish than any other British plane, but the Bismarck attack remains its most famous legacy and a brilliant example of how advanced warfighting technology can render itself vulnerable to simple design. 

The United States would do well to take note, because in the realm of drones and counter-drone technology, we are simply outpaced.

Unmanned Proliferation

The use of drones for surveillance is becoming near universal among militaries of the world, regardless of size.  A handful of countries, and some non-state actors, also employ strike drones — and the list is growing. The UAE, for instance, has a fleet of Wing Loongs — a Chinese-made armed drone — that it used to devastating effect in Libya. The Moroccans have signed an agreement with an Israeli defense company to manufacture at home a version of the Harop loitering munition at greatly reduced cost. But it is Turkey, with a defense budget a fraction of the U.S.’s, that has demonstrated how unmanned platforms have changed the nature of modern war, rendering even the most sophisticated air defense systems obsolete and handing the initiative to any attacker who understands how to best use them. It was Turkish drones that turned the tide against Khalifa Hifter's assault on Tripoli in Libya in 2019 and, more recently, halted the Tigrayan advance on Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in 2021. 

The Cult of Bayraktar

It was during the conflict in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus in 2020 that the drone really came into its own. The Azeris — equipped and guided by Turkish advisors — used drones in conjunction with loitering munitions to overwhelm an advanced integrated air defense system (IADS) and break the back of the Armenian military in just 44 days. The videos released every day by the Azeris to the world’s media depicted a robotic ballet of precision carnage that undermined Armenian morale as much as it destroyed their ability to fight. The two systems that became the centerpiece of Azeri dominance were the Israeli Harop loitering munition — referred to in the media as a kamikaze drone — and the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 armed drone.

In the aftermath of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the TB2 became a hot item on the international market, with multiple countries seeking to vaunt their status by joining the exclusive club of states with armed drone technology.

The Turks provided an unknown number of TB-2s to Ukraine– enough to have such a devastating effect on Russian armor that the Ukrainians were left literally singing its praises.

The Ukrainians could use them to good effect, because from the head of the Ukrainian Drone Command to the conscript sitting in his trench, all understand why these platforms are so critical.

It’s the Kill Chain, Stupid

This understanding is based on a dynamic that governs this kind of warfare against an enemy with long-range sensors and precision fires – it’s called the kill chain.

The term “kill chain” is used to describe the process of an attack. It consists of initial target identification, a “fixing” phase which involves determining a target’s location and other relevant details while preparing to strike, the final decision and order to attack, and – finally – the destruction of the target. The term is used for any method of attack whether launched by drones, manned aircraft, artillery, or a ground force. It is also used to describe operations in the information or cyber environment. The more efficient the kill chain becomes, the less advantageous it renders traditional forms of maneuver involving ground-mobile units. During the war in Ukraine, the movement of infantry, uncovered by friendly kill chains, has proven time and again to be suicidal. When this happens – it is because the unit involved has invariably failed to set the conditions by neutralizing the enemy’s kill chain before moving. 

Counter-drone planning focuses on breaking the kill chain between the operator and the drone itself — which involves putting together an electronic warfare package to suppress the enemy’s ability to operate his own drones while interfering with yours. This becomes harder to do as drones come closer to operating autonomously – a real concern for western democracies who, unlike their adversaries, are constrained by the moral obligation to retain a human in the loop.

Each side constantly adapts to gain the upper hand through innovative use of electronic attack, decoys, deception and swarming. While still retaining a human in the loop, the Ukrainians employ drones in such a manner that the find, fix, and finish functions are all performed in quick succession, close to the target, which expedites the process and makes it much harder to interdict.

Against a well planned attack involving multiple drones combined with electronic suppression, it becomes extremely difficult to defend any kind of target — and technology offers little prospect for a solution.

Q.E.D.

In engagements over Syria and Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, and now Ukraine the TB2 successfully challenged the most advanced IADS that nations can muster.

Systems such as the S-400, Buk-M2 and Pantsir-S1 are designed to deny airspace to the latest generation of Western strike aircraft. None of these systems can stop the TB2 — a revelation that Russian manufacturers still try to deny, even when their claims are refuted by high-resolution full-motion video from four conflicts.

Inexpensive drones with the right capabilities, used in sufficient numbers, can not only evade but actively search out and destroy such systems while incurring few losses. This fact alone renders specious most previously accepted assumptions about air superiority.

And it doesn’t have to be a drone as capable as the TB2. Using simple homemade platforms as well as the Chinese made commercial DJ-I, the Ukrainians flood the target area which enables rapid target acquisition and immediate precision engagement.  In doing so they plan for losses.  Drone operators with whom we worked told us that they expected to lose several platforms a day, with a universal admission on the Ukrainian side to losing hundreds to thousands every month.

Skoda vs Ferrari

All of this should be of immediate concern to anyone interested in the national security of the United States – more so in light of the US military’s well-advertised shortfalls.

The TB2 is a “blue collar drone”: inexpensive enough for mass production and thus expendable. The platform costs around $2 million – compared to 15 times that amount for the US MQ-1 and MQ-9 strike drones. Mass production gives it the capability to be employed in swarms designed to overwhelm the target acquisition process of any adversary. And yet, the TB2 is also remarkably sophisticated. In addition to providing identification and targeting data from high-resolution onboard systems that can include a signal’s intelligence capability, the platform carries smart, micro-guided munitions that kill multiple targets autonomously and simultaneously.

By contrast, US long range drones are high-end expensive platforms – so far from expendable that there have been recent instances where the decision was made to ground them in the face of significant air defense threat.   When it comes to having the ability to overwhelm an enemy’s defenses with swarms of unmanned platforms, the US military is not among the front runners, despite having a defense budget larger than the entire GDP of most countries that are.

The SHORAD Dilemma

When it comes to defending against such an attack, even the most sophisticated short range air defense systems are unlikely to keep pace with the proliferation of expendable but increasingly sophisticated drones.

The U.S. Army’s Air and Missile Defense 2028 strategy warns that, “The most stressing threat is a complex, integrated attack incorporating multiple threat capabilities in a well-coordinated and synchronized attack.”  Having defined the threat, the US military is now working to solve a problem that defies traditional solutions.

It’s a physical problem, but also a resource one. Air defense projectiles, such as those launched by the Patriot and Iron Dome systems, are hugely expensive — as much as several million dollars apiece, as opposed to a few hundred dollars for a cheap commercial drone such as the DJ-I.

Cost aside, it is also a problem of manufacturing capacity for these high end interceptors, which at current rates, cannot keep pace with the proliferation of cheap, expendable, and increasingly ubiquitous drones. 

And… In Last Place…..

The United States military faces other obstacles in its efforts to remain relevant on a battlefield dominated by unmanned systems. The reasons lie partially in the upper echelons of DOD where those who reach Flag rank, tend still to identify with the platform that got them there.  Pilots and ship-drivers are unlikely to lead any charge that highlights their own obsolescence.  And, as much as I would like to claim that my own service, the Marine Corps, is exempt, I have watched the current Commandant be excoriated for cutting away two battalions of manned tanks (a decision long overdue).

This problem is trending in the right direction: the Pentagon appears to be increasingly dominated by leaders who understand the direction that National Security should take – but any solution remains mired in a deeply entrenched in a procurement system that lacks the ability to adapt to changing requirements at the speed of relevance. 

In the meantime, given leadership emphasis within each service, much can be done with the tools already at hand – and others that are readily available – but it will take a determined effort to overcome a culture that is based on the ethos of traditional combat arms.

To Locate, Close with and… Die

The Mission of the Marine rifle squad is to close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver: it was a mantra that we repeated verbatim at boot camp, and then reflexively throughout our careers, without pausing to think about how the battlefield has changed since the 80s.  The truth is that the rifle squad today is no more lethal than it was in the late 80s, when PFC Milburn was first handed the squad automatic weapon.

Damn Puma’s broke again, Gunny

In late 2021, just weeks before the start of the war in Ukraine, I was contracted as a consultant to mentor a Marine infantry battalion’s command team as they underwent the Marine Corps’ Marine Air Ground Task Force Warfighting Exercise.   It was my fifth such event, in which battalions, regiments and sometimes entire divisions face off against one another in a free-playing force on force exercise that replicates the conditions of warfare against a peer nation. And every time I came across the same paradox:  the Marine Corps provides subordinate units with what they need to fight such a fight – but not in a manner that enables them to make it second nature.

Remember the first step of the kill chain is to locate the enemy.  Unmanned systems should give the ground-pounder the ability to do so at the tactical level, while protecting him from the enemy’s ability to do the same.  

“Where are your Pumas,” I would ask as the first step to uncovering a battalion’s ability to perform just this function.   

“We’re in great shape – they’re all at company level – we’ve been pushing ‘em hard. The Marines are all over that.”  I would typically hear at battalion headquarters, after a formal 5-paragraph orders process that invariably saw the electronic warfare, signals intelligence, cyber and information specialists sitting in the backrow.

At company, a different refrain: ‘Hey Gunny, where’s all our Pumas again?’, ‘Well, sir – 1st platoon crashed their’s at AP Hill last month, and it’s still getting fixed.  2^nd left theirs at Lejeune cos they’ve lost both operators to PCS.  Not sure what’s going on with 3^rd platoon, I’ll call down to check’.   Third platoon was usually in no better shape.  In one case, I saw an entire platoon get out of their positions to chase an enemy recon team — even though they had unbroken Pumas at hand.

Any squad of Ukrainian soldiers that I encountered would be all over the Pumas before it occurred to them to learn how to shoot their own weapons.

Put Infantry Back in Play

The issue runs deeper than training or maintenance – it is in part organizational:  the Marine Corps rifle squad as currently trained and equipped is obsolete.

An ideal task organization for an infantry battalion going against a force with near peer capabilities (as we must assume most adversaries now possess) would be to field squad sized teams, each capable of conducting reconnaissance and counter-reconnaissance and, each capable of delivering long range precision fires. Organized in this manner, the Marine Rifle Squad would be capable of rapidly executing the kill chain unhindered by competition for firing assets or delays in obtaining authorization to shoot.   

This would also enable the higher-level objective of all modern warfighting organizations: to link all these systems in a coherent overarching kill chain – to which all blue team members have access.  In such a system, all shooters are connected with all sensors in a system that enables rapid decision making – to include the steps necessary for legal compliance.

Getting there from here

The organizational and cultural fixes are not easy, but certainly within grasp if service leaders are willing to pursue this goal without reservation.  On the other hand,  any attempt at defense acquisition reform will face well-funded and politically powerful opposition from entrenched interests – some from within DOD itself.  It will require a concerted political effort focused on a clearly defined roadmap to bring about real change.

Winston Churchill once commented that the United States. “can always be relied upon to do the right thing, after exhausting all alternatives.”  

We may be at that point now.