Every military struggles early on in any major conflict trying to figure out what from the previous wars – and what the good idea fairy thinks works now – will actually of use in the war at hand.
Some expectations were spot on, some wildly wrong, and others unexpectedly important that were once thought insignificant.
Before a big war, there are often smaller conflicts in the years leading up to them that provide hints to what will come. The classic example on the edges of living memory was the Spanish Civil War prior to WWII.
As we are distracted by our neo-colonial policing actions of recent times, there is a little laboratory of modern war that our army has been quietly watching and learning from. Of course, I’m talking about the war in eastern Ukraine.
Colonel Liam Collins, USA over at the Association of the US Army has a fascinating article about what we are learning, and in some cases re-learning.
You don’t see too hard to see why we need a Navy/Marine Corps mind or dozen soaking in what is happening;
Electronic warfare. Russia has deployed a wide range of electronic warfare systems in Ukraine, using them to jam communications, locate headquarters and subsequently target them with long-range artillery. Few active U.S. Army members grew up in an age worrying about the signals their antennas and radios produced.
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We have returned to an era where communications must be short and infrequent … command, control and communications (will be) more difficult, and commanders will have to get comfortable in an environment where they don’t have information dominance and don’t know the exact status of each of their units at all times. Additionally, with a force largely reliant on GPS technology, it is time for soldiers to go back to being expert navigators using only a map and compass.
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Air Superiority. … the air superiority we have become accustomed to over the past 30 years is no longer certain. We can’t take for granted that we will have close-air support evacuation or fires anytime we wish, nor that we will have unfettered access to the sky to conduct ISR.
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UAVs. … UAVs currently dominate counter-UAV capability. The concept of air superiority increasingly looks like it might be a dated one.
Read the whole thing. All is not new – but we have forgotten a few “hardy perennials” of war that are coming back strong.
When I read this my first thought was; where is the US Navy’s observers in eastern Ukraine? The maritime component is minimal, but not insignificant – but the Navy-Marine Corp team is much more than that – the air, EW, and ground lessons are too valuable to ignore.
If we do have some, where are they writing in open source?
