Three weeks later, it’s possible to draw some important lessons that should inform Western armies as they plan for the next war. In short, drones give, and they take away; connectivity is everything; and attacking is extremely difficult under even the best circumstances.
Twin decisions wreaked havoc on Russian command and control early this month. At the behest of the Ukrainian government, billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink bricked the thousands of smuggled and stolen satellite communication terminals Russian forces relied on to control their drones and coordinate between front-line troops and their distant headquarters.
At the same time, the Kremlin — apparently seeking to shut off alternative news and chat apps — cut off military access to popular social media, including the Telegram messaging app, which many Russian troops use to exchange key information along the front line.
The combined effect was to partially blind and mute many Russian drone teams, assault groups, and regimental headquarters. Wireless drones couldn’t fly. Assault groups no longer knew where they were going. Headquarters lost contact with forward units.
Swiftly organizing brigade-sized battlegroups, the Ukrainians went on the attack—especially in the southeast, where Dnipropetrovsk Oblast borders Zaporizhzhia Oblast. It was here, just east of the town of Pokrovs’ke, that Russia’s 36 Combined Arms Army and its four front-line regiments had been swiftly advancing as recently as December. (Ukrainian brigades and Russian regiments both have around 2,000 troops apiece, on paper.)
In three heady weeks, the Ukrainians pushed back the 36th CAA and cleared potentially hundreds of square kilometers of Russian troops. The final outcome of the southeastern counteroffensive is unsettled, but as of the time of this writing, the Ukrainians still had the momentum, and the Russians were still in disarray. It’s not too soon to draw some broad conclusions.
The proliferation of tiny explosive drones has tilted the balance of power on the battlefield toward the defender. It’s now extremely perilous for infantry and vehicles to break cover and attack across the drone-patrolled no-man’s-land.
The Russian force in Ukraine has managed to advance in the two years since Ukraine’s ill-conceived 2023 counteroffensive ground to a halt under relentless Russian bombardment and well-constructed fixed defensive lines. But the cost in manpower and heavy equipment has been staggering. The Russians have captured perhaps 1% of Ukraine while losing thousands of vehicles and suffering hundreds of thousands of casualties (most recent estimates suggest 1.2 million Russian casualties, with around 325,000 dead).
The problem with a drone-first defense is that, despite the spread of hardwired fiber-optic drones, most still need a solid radio signal, either beamed directly to and from the operator or bounced off a satellite. Lose the signal over a wide area, as happened when the Russian Starlinks went down, and your best defense becomes a liability. There may not be enough infantry to defend your positions when your drones can’t fly.
The Russians’ recent disarray is a reminder that no technology is a panacea. And every technological measure has a countermeasure. That’s a strong argument for redundancy in force planning. Invest in drones, sure — but don’t disband the infantry to pay for it.
Without Starlink and Telegram, Russian troops struggled to communicate with each other. This was particularly vexing for newly mobilized Russian troops who had just arrived at the front. Unfamiliar with the terrain, they often relied on their distant commanders to guide them, one kilometer at a time, across no-man’s-land.
They did this by connecting cameras to Starlink terminals and streaming forward-facing video so that commanders always saw what the assault troops saw. Remember when one Russian cavalry team — yes, you read that right — strapped a camera-Starlink combo to a horse? It was likely to aid navigation.
Without Starlink, assault groups got lost — and got wrecked by more experienced Ukrainian troops who still enjoyed strong connectivity. In one particularly dramatic skirmish, the better part of a Russian platoon riding in a single unarmored truck blundered into the path of the counterattacking Ukrainians near the town of Huliaipole. As many as 15 Russians died as Ukrainian drones, artillery, and infantry opened fire.
Again, redundancy is of utmost importance. When the loss of any single form of communication can lead to doom, you’d better have backup comms. It’s not for no reason that, according to CEPA contributor David Kirichenko, some Ukrainian drone units have heaped as many as 15 comms links onto a single robot.
Widespread loss of connectivity across multiple technologies could still be crippling, however. The solution is an old one: a concept called “mission command.” In mission command, the junior officers leading small infantry groups are expected to understand the mission and execute it entirely on their own without input from headquarters.
Only mission command is foolproof in an environment of comms denial. The Russians’ ongoing retreat amid their weeks-long comms meltdown is a sign they still haven’t mastered this.
For all their advantages, now that the Russians can’t reliably communicate, the Ukrainians have made modest gains. Yes, they’ve cleared Russian forces from hundreds of square kilometers. But that’s less than 0.1% of Ukraine — and barely 0.3% of the part of Ukraine under Russian occupation.
Long gone is the era when fast-moving mechanized forces could advance at a gallop, swiftly capturing thousands or tens of thousands of square kilometers in carefully orchestrated offensives. Satellites see every attempt to mass forces. Manned and unmanned air power, minefields and artillery complicate every attack. Even a comms meltdown on just one side of a 21st century land war probably won’t hand the other side a decisive advantage.
In that sense, land warfare has devolved by evolving. Satellites and drones have dragged us back to World War I, when armies routinely traded tens of thousands of lives to advance a kilometer. Everyone in leadership on either side of the East-West divide should expect every war to become a bloody, intractable grind. No matter how chaotic the enemy’s comms are.
David Axe is a journalist, author, and filmmaker in South Carolina. For 20 years, he has covered war for Forbes, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, The Village Voice, Voice of America, and others. He has reported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. Right now, he is focused on covering Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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