The war in Ukraine grinds on, well into its third year, now punctuated by Russian drone aircraft violating Polish and Romanian airspace. No clear victory or negotiated conclusion to the conflict is in sight.
The greatest lesson so far is the reconfirmation of the unpredictability of war.
Clearly, Russian President Vladimir Putin and associates miscalculated badly regarding how easily Russia’s military would be able to overrun the country and suppress resistance. As in wars throughout history, determination and courage of the Ukrainian people have been the vital factor.
Russia is turning increasingly to drones, a highly flexible precision weapon, but here being used to kill civilians. So far, any effects on Ukraine’s opinion appear to be to bolster morale.
There is no precision involved in this latest example of terror bombing, and the mass killing of civilians was a principal feature of unrestrained ancient warfare.
With the Industrial Revolution, weapons technologies initially evolved to favor defensive strategy and tactics. This development is best understood from a relatively long-term perspective.
Early in the 20th century, World War I from 1914 to 1918, on the Western Front, demonstrated defensive dominance. Fighting rather early devolved into bloody trench warfare of an unchanging character.
Unimaginative European generals institutionalized the horrific slaughter. The eastern front, where Germany and Austria-Hungary faced imperial Russia, involved relatively more movement, partly because of the different geography.
The frustrating, static quality of combat directly reflected the development of the modern machine gun, and greatly enhanced the accuracy of firearms, including rifles and artillery. The introduction of barbed wire also significantly hampered movement.
Military planning, limited by inflexible myopic generals, was woefully slow to adjust.
The American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, especially the final year, provided insight regarding this future. On the eastern front, the armies of Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee fought from a series of fortified positions until settling down to extended siege warfare around and south of Richmond.
Casualties were very heavy and continuous on both sides. That earned Grant the ugly label “the butcher,” an insult not deserved. Grant from early in the war used flexible, imaginative tactics and skillful employment of terrain that kept Union casualties relatively low, plus strategic vision that got the job done.
European strategists generally ignored American experience.
Yet eventually, innovation overcame the dominance of defense over offense. The tank provided a decisive breakthrough, literally. Dwight D. Eisenhower early on befriended George S. Patton Jr. They coauthored work on the potential of armored warfare, and Patton proved a genius at modern armored warfare in World War II.
In that war, an important change created a much more fluid battle environment. The tank plus other motorized vehicles, long-range effectively armed aircraft, modern electronic communications and other innovations drastically altered battle.
More Top Picks How We Test
The Vietnam War witnessed additional important developments. One was the Tube-launched Optically tracked Wire-guided missile, or TOW, a small lethal anti-tank weapon.
In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam launched a massive armored invasion of South Vietnam. TOW missiles, especially launched from helicopters, devastated large numbers of Soviet-supplied tanks along with other targets. This offensive was decisively defeated.
Other Precision-Guided Munitions (PGMs) include the Stinger anti-aircraft missile. This weapon proved crucial in defeating the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, over a decade starting in 1979. Drones proved of great value for Allied reconnaissance during the massive, mercifully brief, Persian Gulf War of early 1991.
Nonetheless, the human dimension remains essential. Precision weapons are only a means.
Arthur I. Cyr is the author of “After the Cold War – American Foreign Policy, Europe and Asia” (NYU and Palgrave/Macmillan).
Contact [email protected]