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When I look back at my 45 years of military service, one of the highlights of my military education was a battlefield tour I participated in during 2001 at the Somme battlefield, alongside other “high flying” students on the U.K.’s Higher Command and Staff course.
The historical element of it was provided by the late Richard Holmes and we students reveled in his masterful narrative history. Holmes explained how the tank had been fielded in 1916 as a predominantly infantry protection platform to provide cover for troops as they moved across no-man’s land. It was not until 1918, after much improvement, trialing, testing and experimentation, that the Allies worked out that combining tanks with infantry, artillery and engineers — connected by rudimentary battlefield communications and supported by airpower — achieved a combined effect that was worth much more than the sum of its parts. This idea of combined arms maneuver was at the heart of the 100 day campaign which led to victory in World War I and of course blitzkrieg 20 years later.
I will never forget Holmes leading us up a slope from the British lines to where the German lines were placed. At each step, Holmes would remember another father, son, uncle, nephew or brother of that particular “Pals Battalion” and where they had fallen. By the time we got to the top of the hill, not one soldier from this battalion would have been with us and neither was there a dry eye among us.
One day, some readers of War on the Rocks may have the opportunity to engage in a similar tour of the battlefields that today witness fierce combat between Russia and Ukraine. They will be struck by the human costs, but also — as I was — by the lessons to be learned from how they fought.
Indeed, all militaries are naturally keen to learn lessons from the war in Ukraine, but we should be careful not to focus too much on technology. All wars have their own characteristics influenced by numerous factors, including technology, but also doctrine, tactics and the military culture of the protagonists. The Russo-Ukrainian War is no different, and unless we place it properly in context, there is a risk our countries’ military forces will leap to the wrong conclusions.
Ukraine’s battlefield technologies — especially drones — do not yet constitute a new way of warfare. Instead, they function mainly as substitutions for missing capabilities and have produced stalemate rather than decisive maneuver. Lasting change in NATO militaries will come only if these technologies are integrated with existing platforms and, even more importantly, employed through doctrine and concepts that truly realize their potential to deliver advantage. And, much like past transformations such as the development of combined arms and AirLand Battle, that will only happen through extensive experimentation and cultural evolution.
Such change in NATO militaries should be informed by, but not beholden to, lessons identified in Ukraine. NATO militaries should also take account of other considerations such as operational analysis, research and development, science and technology, experimentation, trials, fielding, and training to assess not only how technological developments open up new possibilities for fighting effectively, but also how they may challenge some of our assumptions about the way we will be able to fight. Otherwise, they would risk adopting Ukraine’s lessons wholesale, rather than adapting them to the specific contexts NATO militaries will face in future battles, or basing their future force design on false foundations.
What Lessons?
NATO militaries are understandably keen to learn from the war in Ukraine as European militaries work out how to rearm. Holmes is sadly no longer with us, but he would have reminded us that all wars are sui generis, and that care should be taken to apply the right lessons. In Ukraine we see a mix of World War I and World War III. We see technology — including drones, robots, and AI — that presages what we would expect to see in a future war. Yet, we also see a battlefield that, since the initial Russian offensive in February 2022 and the Ukrainian counter offensives later that autumn and in Kursk in 2024, has become remarkably static, attritional and reminiscent of World War I.
Much of the focus of apparent lessons has been on new technologies, especially on what are generically referred to as drones. It seems obvious that future warfare will involve drones, for they have become the biggest killer on the Ukraine battlefield, and their wider potential as cheap but narrowly effective strike weapons has been widely recognized. But rather like the machine gun, artillery, and tanks in World War I, they aren’t yet leading to a decisive outcome, let alone a new way of warfare. So far, they have yielded only stalemate and the type of brutal war of attrition that no army would want to fight.
Ukraine has used these autonomous systems effectively to substitute for other capabilities that it lacks, like artillery and infantry mass. But drones have not yet been used to stimulate a new kind of offensive warfare that might break the deadlock. It seems clear that drones are unlikely to replace capabilities like the tank or the infantry fighting vehicle, as they cannot yet take ground and hold it, maneuver to create shock action, or react in the same way a tank can. As with most new military technologies they seem likely to be a complement to traditional capabilities, at least at first, and they have yet to be effectively integrated with the full range of existing platforms.
Technological advances and the use of off-the-shelf components have made drones of many kinds far more affordable and capable of delivering cost-effective precision strikes at scale. Hence the proliferation of reconnaissance strike drones with mass produceable precision sensing and, more recently, strike. But is this simply a development from the expensive uncrewed surveillance platforms we increasingly fielded in the post 9/11 campaigns, such as Predator, Reaper and Hermes, used predominantly for precision targeting of insurgents or terrorists in favorable airspace? Or are we standing on the threshold of something much more innovative, with swarming drones and mass precision possessing the same potential as the tank in 1916?
As we think about answering this question, we need to unpack the term “drones”, which currently obscures more than it illuminates. We need to be careful not to conflate systems that are not designed to have their software updated (such as the cheap quadcopters and first-person view systems produced in the millions for Ukraine) with those that are software-defined (such as AI-enabled one-way platforms or loitering munitions) and, given their open architecture, are able to be updated via their software and thus retain effectiveness despite rapid battlefield change.
These software-defined systems may have significant latent capability that is not yet being utilized, not least the potential for flexible, unpredictable, yet coordinated fires that might be realized through a version of what is often and loosely called ”swarming.” Yet beyond this still nebulous term, there is probably more that could be achieved with these systems if they were used in a practiced command and control structure, combined with a comprehensive battle management system. This would allow for both the benefits of delegated decision making over devolved fires capabilities (which loitering munitions provide) and the coordination and concentration of fires needed to deliver advantage and potentially re-enable maneuver.
However, we should also ask what more could be achieved not only by fully integrating these new systems — and other applications of software-defined defense, especially military AI, including in command and control and battle networks — with the full range of legacy air land capabilities, but by using this newly expanded toolbox to develop new ways of warfare led by doctrine and concepts. In short, we should not obsess on the technology itself, but rather on its potential to lead to a new way of warfare that might change the character of the conflict once more, reasserting conventional deterrence and saving the lives of those otherwise to be lost in the continuing brutality of World War I attrition.
How Does This Lead to Change?
In my experience, our way of warfare rarely changes unless it is led by doctrine and concepts, but also, invariably, requires cultural change.
I was fortunate to grow up in the British Army during NATO’s evolution of the AirLand Battle doctrine in the 1980s. The need for a new approach had become clear from the sobering experience of the Vietnam War and the lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War and from the Army’s own assessment of its position in relation to its prime adversary. The stakes were raised by the Soviet Union’s achievement of nuclear parity with the United States, combined with its conventional advantage in the numbers of troops, tanks, artillery and aircraft in the Central European theater and the increasing effectiveness of these systems, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft capabilities. Then- Maj. Gen. Edwin Bramall, a Green Jacket like myself, estimated in the early 1970s that the British 1st Division in West Germany under his command might — if they fought with skill — be able to hold out for around five days against an initial Soviet onslaught, but would likely be overwhelmed by a second echelon attack.
As Ben Barry has recently laid out in detail, the search began for a more effective way to fight, initially utilizing the enhanced infantry defensive capability provided by wire guided anti-tank systems like TOW and MILAN, leading to the development of the so-called “Goodwood Defence” introduced by Gen. Sir William Scotter. While this envisaged a “counter-move” phase, the primary focus was on attrition, destroying as much of the Soviet armored advance as possible, as the Wehrmacht had done to the British Army during Operation Goodwood in 1944 at Normandy. While major exercises showed that this would be more effective at blunting the initial attack, it still did not answer the second echelon question, nor how the necessary attrition would be achieved against growing Soviet combat power.
Gen. Sir Nigel Bagnall, from 1980 Commander of 1st British Corps, and from 1983 the British Army of the Rhine and NATO Northern Army Group, substantially changed tack, shifting the emphasis to the “maneuverist approach” and “mission command.” The former’s focus was on shattering the enemy’s cohesion and will to fight, rather than just grinding physical destruction. The latter was about decentralized command and control, empowering commanders at all levels to understand the bigger picture, use their initiative, and then seize fleeting opportunities that might realize their commander’s intent. This shift matched the development of AirLand battle in U.S. forces at the time and came as part of greater coordination between the NATO militaries in the Central European theater, which Bagnall helped foster.
The new approach became possible because of advances in technology and equipment. We saw the entry into service of tanks like the M1 Abrams, the Challenger and the Leopard 2. We moved from armored personnel carriers to infantry fighting vehicles like the Bradley, Warrior and Marder that could hold their own with armor. And we benefitted from fielding more powerful and numerous self-propelled artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, and attack helicopters, as well as rudimentary drones.
Impressive as these new platforms were, the bigger change was taking place in allied doctrine, force design, tactics and culture. This resulted in a much more mobile form of warfare and was really an evolution from the blitzkrieg of World War II. At the heart of it was Bagnall’s “maneuverist approach” and mission command. Yet the cultural and doctrinal shift went far beyond tech-enabled decentralized networking. For both the air and land components of AirLand Battle to function, real lessons had to be learned, and technology had to be harnessed through these lessons rather than used in place of them.
In the air, the alliance began to field new generation jets including the F-15, F-16 and Tornado. The U.S. Air Force, in particular, was also implementing lessons identified in the Vietnam and Yom Kippur wars, and learned through realistic combat training and exercises like Red Flag. A new doctrine of rolling back enemy air defense, which would go on to become the suppression and/or the destruction of enemy air defenses, was developed by visionaries such as U.S. Gen. Wilbur Creech.
This aided the quest for air supremacy, allowing allied air power to again act in interdiction roles. It, along with land based long-range fires including self-propelled guns, multiple launch rocket artillery, and cruise missiles, would be used to smash — or at least severely hinder — the second echelon that the Soviets relied on to exploit any breakthroughs made by their operational maneuver groups. Taking the second echelon out of the equation created more favorable force ratios that would allow the first echelon to be defeated in the close battle by NATO’s forward corps.
Of course, we never tested AirLand against the opponent it was created to defeat, though we played our part in deterring a Soviet attack on NATO. But this approach would soon evolve into the sort of networked warfare that the world saw so vividly in the Gulf War of 1990-91. The land component of this war — the four day crushing of Iraqi forces — has often been held up as evidence of AirLand’s potency. The land component was preceded by an air campaign that achieved near complete air superiority, partly using suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses but also “going low” which considerably raised risks, as the Royal Air Force knows all too well, having lost seven Tornados (ten percent of their force) to air defenses. In the air and on land, the effect was undeniably impressive, but the context — and the enemy — were very different than that for which AirLand was designed, and Desert Storm cannot simply be used to assume effectiveness in a peer or near peer high intensity war.
Nonetheless, I do remember being excited by this new way of warfare. It was reassuring not to be asked simply to participate in a modern-day version of the attritional slaughter that Holmes later made so vivid on our visit to the Somme. It was stimulating to be part of this transformation, and to feel part of the visionary thinking of such luminaries as Bagnall and U.S. Gen. Don Starry. But on reflection I concluded that it required much more than just new technology and the type of training pioneered at Fort Irwin in the United States or at the British Army Training Unit Suffield in Canada. A new way of warfare has first to be envisioned.
So while the stories of the “second offset”, which ushered in networked warfare, have been well told — not least in these pages — now it seems we are too willing to reduce lessons learned to those about which technologies and platforms worked well, and which did not. We should avoid this mistake as we seek to derive lessons from the war in Ukraine.
Can We Envision a New Way of Warfare?
It would be a mistake to treat Ukraine’s use of drones as a ready-made model for NATO. Ukraine is compensating for capability shortfalls, particularly with artillery and infantry. Its drone-centric approach has produced stalemate, not a breakthrough. And NATO should avoid drawing the wrong lessons.
Having seen the way in which AirLand Battle was envisioned and then implemented, the drivers for real change are doctrine and concepts, not gadgets. Technological adoption should be subordinated to evolved doctrine, operational concepts, and culture. Technology alone cannot deliver a new way of warfare, although it can effectively enable it.
Establishing change involves a systematic process of research and development, operational analysis, experimentation, trials, fielding, and realistic training, and it mirrors how past revolutions like combined arms maneuver and AirLand Battle were created — not just technology enthusiasm. We cannot possibly know, for example, whether an autonomous swarm of drones would be the most effective way of dealing with targets in depth unless we test the idea systematically.
This systematic process also involves all the capability lines of development — including doctrine, force design, training and logistics — encapsulated in the British acronym TEPIDOIL and the U.S. equivalent DOTMLPF-P, and will likely lead to very different force and career structures. As with the evolution of the tank from 1916 onwards and AirLand Battle 60 years later, so this evolution should be informed by our armed forces, academia, and industry working together.
Integration is the real source of advantage. Drones, AI, and software-defined munitions should be combined with tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, airpower, and effective command and control networks. The real potential of new systems will only become obvious once they are integrated with legacy capabilities into a coherent force with appropriate operational concepts.
It is clear that technology and access to information is allowing much more rapid decision-action cycles, compressing the levels of command, and enabling more precise and longer weapon ranges. This will markedly change the planning yardsticks at every level of command in the land domain, as well as the management of low level airspace — the so-called “air littoral.” This will require new command and control and battle management approaches to be developed, requiring decentralized decision-making enabled by advanced command and control, battle networks, and delegated fires.
Both concepts and command processes will have to deal with temporal compression, spatial expansion, and the saturation of sensors and shooters, which some see as creating a more transparent and uniformly deadly battle space. This saturation creates challenges to be overcome if NATO militaries are to be able to determine how they fight rather than being overwhelmed, discombobulated, and disoriented. But these are also challenges that militaries faced, relative to their own time and technology, in World War I and the Cold War — and overcame them through concept-led change born of iterative thinking and experimentation.
Different theaters will require different operational concepts. A NATO-Europe concept will differ from the Indo-Pacific. For example, Ukraine’s drone-heavy close battle does not automatically translate to operations against Chinese advanced anti-access area denial systems, even though it may have applicability in the close battle in Taiwan or Korea.
In my experience, it is culture that is invariably at the heart of real change. For AirLand Battle, the new way of war required cultural reform: empowering initiative through mission command, accepting risk in training, encouraging mistakes that lead to real learning, and building the adaptability which allows an enemy to be outthought and outmaneuvered — all enabled and empowered by new technology, coherently and effectively employed.
Effecting change today necessitates fielding software-defined and autonomous systems at scale now to learn how to use them — and to test how our assumptions hold up or are amended under the challenges of temporal, spatial, and saturation conditions noted above. True revolution will only come from deploying these systems widely enough to understand their real operational potential and limitations and draw these into operational concepts. History reminds us that this requires a systematic process infused with an organizational and leadership culture that can turn all of this into real change.
Ultimately, which direction that change takes will depend on how NATO countries envision the change they want to make. And how our enemies do the same, for the enemy always gets a vote, not least as they also strive to wring maximum advantage from new technology. Invariably there will be advocates who will direct the technology and the direction of change toward attritional approaches, and there will be advocates who will seek to enable maneuver. NATO militaries will likely need some elements of both, but as servants of Western democracies, they would do well to recognize that their tolerance for casualties is somewhat less than our authoritarian enemies – so envisioning how NATO countries want to fight is the first and most important step in realizing the necessary change.
Gen. (ret.) Nick Carter, a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, served for 45 years in the British military, including as chief of the General Staff from August 2014 to June 2018 and as chief of the Defence Staff from June 2018 to December 2021.
Image: Cpl Tim Hammond via U.K. Ministry of Defence
