Ukraine: The Revolution in Warfare That the U.S. Army Is Not Prepared For - Part I

This essay is the first installment of a three part series. Subscribe to the SOFX Report for future installments.

PART I

A column of four Ukrainian Army Bradley Fighting Vehicles near Zaporizhzhia were moving in formation like ‘ducks in a row’ when the lead vehicle hit a mine, resulting in a mobility kill.¹ The following vehicles quickly scattered, but the second Bradley also struck a mine. The remaining armored vehicles attempted to turn around, but were immediately targeted by armed drones and artillery fire, with observers directing the strikes from drones. Ukrainian soldiers, having dismounted from their Bradleys, were left vulnerable; many fell victim to antipersonnel mines or were killed in the subsequent artillery barrage. This incident occurred during Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, which initially employed battalion- and company-sized formations as advised by U.S. and allied partners. However, tactics soon shifted to smaller units, leading most later engagements to be conducted at the platoon level. Even the current Russian offensive operations rely heavily small unit actions.

Large-scale combat operations, with its lumbering corps and division formations moving in relatively close proximity to each other such as the world saw in Desert Storm and the initial invasion of Operation Iraqi Freedom, will be the exception not the norm for future battles. With the notable potential conflicts on the Korean Peninsula or in the deserts of the Middle East, future conflicts will take place in micro engagements where battalions, companies, or platoons are fighting in urban or rural areas. Technology such as the constant surveillance from drones, enemy social media postings, and the increased accuracy of indirect fires, will make large troop formations and headquarters easy targets. Synchronization of efforts across all domains and across geographically dispersed areas as well as the understanding of the common operating picture will be even more complicated.

Drone footage of the Ukrainian HIMARS strike that destroyed a Russian convoy, causing dozens of casualties last night in Rylsk, Kursk Oblast. pic.twitter.com/gPi2LJ6trz
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) August 9, 2024

Electronic warfare and pinpoint attacks on command, control, and communications will further cloud that understanding. The U.S. Army will need to change the way it equips, organizes, trains, and fights, based on applicable observations from the Ukrainian battlefield. It is time for the prevailing doctrine, airland battle, to have a reckoning beyond changing the name to Multi-Domain Operations and recycling the Cold War formations of the corps and division that the U.S. Army is planning with the Army 2030 Force Structure.² The U.S. Army is taking the wrong approach to restructuring the force and needs to analyze the war in Ukraine from an unbiased paradigm, specifically within the Warfighting functions of Mission Command, Maneuver, and Intelligence.

Military analysts should be careful to take away the applicable lessons learned. Every conflict has aspects that are unique to that war. Ukraine is no different. One of the common flaws when discussing lessons learned from Ukraine (or criticism of the Ukrainian counteroffensive) is that it critiques the conduct of the war from a Western paradigm. The “Western way” of war makes several assumptions about their capabilities and capacities. They predict that the U.S. will quickly dominate the air and counter battery fires will negate enemy artillery. There is also the assumption that-corps and division-sized combined arms operations are the best way to achieve success during large-scale combat operations with a focus on the division as the unit of action as opposed to the current brigade focus.³ Furthermore, the U.S. and its allies’ take for granted that their strong engineering capabilities and capacity will overcome most obstacles and protect engineers. They also assume that in an electronic warfare environment, the threat can be minimized and friendly forces will have reliable communications and GPS. Western forces generally have the luxury of standardized training and equipment across all services and units. Finally, there is the assumption that any disruptions to resupply, medical evacuation, and the ability to operate in the rear area can be mitigated.

Ukrainian soldiers evacuate a wounded comrade despite a shell landing nearby on their route pic.twitter.com/PE2jI3T0GI
— WarLife (@WarLifeTelegram) November 25, 2024

The battlefield in Ukraine is different from anything the U.S. and its Allies have ever faced; especially since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. has never had to fight in an environment where UAS saturate the air domain.⁴ Also the battlefield is the most heavily mined place in the world and the layered obstacle belts cause assaulting units to quickly culminate.⁵ Furthermore, constant and heavy artillery barrages are a gamechanger and can quickly stall an assault and cause unsustainable casualties. This combination of relentless accurate heavy indirect fires, multiple-layered obstacles belts, and the constant threat of drones either exposing your movements or engaging you kinetically will negate many U.S. advantages and much of combined arms doctrine developed since World War II.

Russian (and possibly Chinese) forces have the following doctrinal, cultural, political advantages that the U.S. does not, they are willing to accept large casualties and they rely on cheap dumb munitions massively employed.⁶ They also use overwhelming numbers of soldiers to overcome defenses. Eventually, machine gunners must change out barrels or U.S. battalion mortars will run out of rounds. In the numbers game, most armies will eventually be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

The U.S. military has several vulnerabilities that can be exploited asymmetrically. It relies heavily on unmanned sensors, cell phones, and satellites. As seen in Gaza, Hamas was able to defeat the Israeli sensors, by taking out the cell phone towers.⁷ Another vulnerability is the U.S.’s large headquarters from battalion formations and up. These sprawling tent cities have a huge electromagnetic and heat signature that can be easily exploited through EW and/or precision indirect fires (the U.S. must downsize these headquarters, disperse, or go underground). On the modern battlefield, size matters. U.S. combined arms formations are too large for battlefields that are saturated with artillery, drones, mines, and obstacles. They are cumbersome, slow, and too easily targeted. The heavy use of mines and obstacles channelizes and constricts their movement so they have to bunch up. The U.S. will face these same challenges in the Pacific with islands and places like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan which are very mountainous and the terrain is constrictive.⁸ Another potential vulnerability is inherent to Western culture, risk aversion. These breaching operations, urban combat, subterranean, and river crossings are manpower intensive and will result in much higher casualties than what the U.S. has experienced in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Syria.⁹

I will address these observations and ways to mitigate these new battlefield realities by U.S. Army Warfighting Functions. Warfighting Functions are the way the U.S. Army categorizes and bins combat power by function: mission command (or leadership and command & control), maneuver & movement, fires (artillery, direct fires, etc.), intelligence, sustainment (logistics), and protection (protecting the force).¹⁰

Mission Command

An Ukrainian serviceman installs a Starlink satellite (Photo: Armed Forces of Ukraine)

Ukrainian servicemen of the 3rd Assault Brigade monitor and coordinate as units move towards Andriivka, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

The new realities on the battlefield will require a change in mentality when it comes to Mission Command. The tempo of operations in Ukraine has sped up and as a result, planning times have been drastically reduced. The U.S. current way of conducting Military Decision Making Process takes too long and there are too many steps (even the Rapid Decision Making Process is too “product” focused). The Military Decision Making Process at the brigade and below must be compacted to 6-12 hours. You can reduce the timeline by only presenting one or two courses of action based on the time available. The planning process should mainly focus on mission analysis and synchronizing the timelines of the enemy, maneuver, fires, and logistics/medical. It should also be centered on the reconnaissance and rehearsals and less time spent sending staff elements to their respective corners to plan in a void. Also too much time is spent producing products that are only useful for a specific phase of planning. A lot of time is wasted with staff sections explaining and hashing out the elements of their work. Wargaming can be done during the rehearsals.

Hasty mission planning at the brigade level down should be drilled into staffs instead of being seen as the exception, not the norm. It focuses on answering the six questions: who is doing what, when they are doing, where are they doing, why are they doing it, and how they are doing it. During hasty planning, most of the work will be done during rehearsals, especially for the “how.”

It is concerning that the U.S. Army has gone back to the corps and division as the units of action. During the past 20+ years, it was the brigade. The corps, if there was one, and the division headquarters were more administrative in nature. When you add more layers of command and “more cooks in the kitchen”, the list of demands on subordinate headquarters increases and the time subordinate commands have to plan, rehearse, train, etc. decreases. I am not advocating dissolving corps and division formations. You need higher headquarters to help coordinate the massing of operational effects. The activation of U.S. Army V Corps was necessary in Europe as an intermediate headquarters between U.S. Army Europe and the division level headquarters rotating in from the U.S. during Operation Atlantic Resolve in 2020. In 2015, I observed the 4th Infantry Division Mission Command Element struggle to serve as the administrative headquarters, command and control subordinate units, and interface with an Army Service Component Command headquarters. It was no fault of theirs, but it just was too much for a division level headquarters which was the size of an augmented division tactical command post.

In Ukraine, the basic fighting formation that is attempting to breach the Russian lines are reinforced platoons. As mentioned previously, larger formations, company and above, are just too cumbersome, plodding, and easy to target due to the advances in precision of indirect fires and constant drone surveillance. The element of surprise is very hard to achieve when you are constantly being watched, so the U.S. must learn how to work around it using smaller more agile formations as well as deception and obscuration. Commanders must empower their subordinate commanders to conduct operations in a void. With the constraints of an electronic warfare intensive environment, units must be able to go analog with the expectation of intermittent communications between commanders and their subordinates as well as loss of the use of GPS. The U.S. Army and Marine Corps should consider elevating the platoon commander position to that of a 1st lieutenant or a captain and create a platoon executive officer so you have more experienced leadership and the ability to break down into sections led separately by the platoon commander and executive officer. Company commanders should be a senior captain or a major. Parts of this model works well in U.S. Army Ranger and Special Forces companies (company commanders in Special Forces companies are majors and detachment commanders are captains, Ranger platoon leaders are senior 1st lieutenants leading their second platoons and company commanders are commanding their second companies).¹¹ At higher levels, battalions and brigades should have deputy commanding officers who can command a more modular unit.

Finally, on the modern battlefield and the increased lethality and accuracy of indirect fires, commanders will have to accept more risk to achieve success. As I will mention later, the U.S. military cannot guarantee a medical evacuation “golden hour” standard of care. This new reality will inevitably lead to more casualties. Furthermore, the psychological toll on soldiers from prolonged indirect fire cannot be discounted. Leaders at all levels will have to dig deep to get soldiers to move forward during barrages and also be vigilant for increased psychological trauma and traumatic brain injuries.

This article was authored by Erik Kramer, Senior Fellow with the National Center for Urban Operations and co-founder of the Ukraine Defense Support Group. Kramer has over 33 years of military and government service, including his time as a Special Forces officer, and has been in Ukraine since 2022 advising the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He just published his first book, “American Dystopia-a cautionary tale.” Through a series of fictious interviews with a cross section of Americans, the book shows what the U.S. would look like two years after a collapse and how its demise would affect every aspect of life to include culture, the economy, education, international relations, and politics. Edited by Noah Schmidt, Editor at SOFX.