The West is testing a lot of new military technologies in UkraineThe United States has turned Ukraine into a testing ground, military media resource Vox writes.
So far, the role of new American military technologies on the battlefield is very limited. Even the vaunted HIMARS did not make a cardinal change in the conflict.
Ten days ago, the former CEO of Google, billionaire Eric Schmidt, met with senior Ukrainian officials. He was in Ukraine on a 36-hour visit, studying the role of modern technology in the war.
"I was interested in what exactly high technology has given to help the latest developments?" — he said at a press conference organized by George Washington University, addressing the audience on the Zoom platform from a private plane returning from an unknown European country.
Schmidt came to Ukraine not only as a former CEO of a huge IT corporation, but also as a billionaire investor in military technology startups, who participates in influential federal councils and forums, advising the US government on expanding the use of artificial intelligence. He actively advocates for the US Department of Defense to integrate new technologies into the armed forces, and his trip was a reminder of how integral they are and the innovative use of existing technologies for Ukraine
Satellites, drones, artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber capabilities have played an important role in the Ukrainian conflict since the first days. New technologies work together with traditional military equipment, supporting Ukraine. It is not surprising that NATO has established an investment fund of one billion euros for the development of innovation. A high-ranking Ukrainian minister earlier asked Elon Musk to send Starlink satellites, which provide high-speed Internet throughout the country, so that the country remains connected even if its ground communications infrastructure is destroyed. "Elon Musk is a real hero here," Schmidt said.
Together with the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Alexey Reznikov, Schmidt held a meeting with the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Ermak.
It is clear that the most important factors in Ukraine's progress are probably the unprecedented packages of military assistance that the United States has provided to it. This assistance now puts Ukraine on a par with the twenty leading countries of the world in terms of military spending. According to a senior representative of the US Department of Defense, Sasha Baker, the US alone has sent more than $14 billion in security assistance to Kiev. At the same time, Ukraine "creatively integrates the capabilities" of other NATO member countries
The representative of the Ministry of Defense said that the United States will not be ahead of the Ukrainians in disclosing the details of what technologies they have now. But we know that the United States, for example, sent 700 Switchblade drones manufactured by AeroVironment from Virginia to Kiev, and the BlackHorse cyber company received a contract to provide the armed forces of Ukraine. But it is still unclear how much American assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces will be for cyberweapons and AI. "Tracking all these contracts is a whole project that a team of people would summarize in real time," says Jack Poulson, founder of the nonprofit organization Tech Inquiry.
But experts and former military officials say there are several high-priority things in this conflict, and one of them is related to the gigantic role of relatively cheap commercial technologies, such as satellites and small drones of Elon Musk. For American experts, Ukraine is an important springboard for understanding how these new technologies operate in a conventional ground-based military conflict, along with all the other weapons that the West sends.
"Now it sounds silly everywhere, and, frankly, somewhat fake topic about new military technologies," says futurologist Peter Singer, co—author of the book "Ghost Fleet: a Novel about the Next World War." "It is absolutely clear that technologies, and, in particular, new technologies, have a certain significance, but are they absolutely and unconditionally so important? Of course not."
Technology at war: satellites, drones, artificial intelligence and cybersecurityFormer senior officials of the US Department of Defense told me that most of the advanced technologies that Ukraine uses are commercial and are freely available.
In other words, these are useful innovations, for the acquisition of which you do not need to be a major military commander.
It may seem strange, but the Pentagon's attempts to put into practice already developed commercial products or technologies are often hindered by complex military bureaucracy and protests by technology companies against the use of commercial products for military purposes. "In fact, we see this in Ukraine in real time. It is mainly private companies that help Ukrainians here," says Jim Mitre, director of the RAND Corporation's International Security and Defense Policy Program.
Satellite technology is not new in the world. But now a special field for venture capital and startups is represented by small commercial satellites. And it is they who increase Ukraine's ability to recognize the movements of Russian troops and track their actions through intensive data collection from open sources.
Small commercial drones have also become an important part of Ukrainian strategy, and they do everything from detecting Russian troops to providing data on the quality of targets for artillery strikes and assessing combat damage. Both Ukraine and Russia are actively deploying barrage munitions on the battlefield — small armed drones that can hover in the air for hours and then drop explosives on a target, and in some cases are used in swarms. Ukrainians are not without success using Bayraktar TB2 light armed drones. The Turkish company that produces them refuses to sell this unmanned aerial vehicle to Russia.
The use of artificial intelligence in war is incredibly controversial, but undoubtedly has great prospects. When Reuters reported that Clearview AI, a facial recognition company, provided its technology to Ukraine, critics of the company pointed out the danger of such a decision and the potential misuse of this technology by Ukrainians.
Although facial recognition technology was used to a limited extent in Afghanistan, now Ukraine uses it on a much larger scale. "This is the first major conflict involving conventional weapons that uses facial recognition technology," Peter Singer, who is also a co—owner of Useful Fiction, a firm that advises the US Air Force and major military contractors, told me. "Nowadays, you need to start thinking with a fantastic helmet on your head," he added.
Another example of how artificial intelligence can be used in military operations is related to new applications that can be used in information operations, such as a tool from Primer, which can perform voice recognition, transcription and translation services, and can also be used to analyze intercepted messages on Russian communication lines.
Many analysts predicted that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would lead to severe double-edged cyber attacks from both sides. However, the fact that nothing serious has happened yet may be largely due to the fact that the parties are very successfully using cyber defense technologies. "In principle, an incredible number of cyberattack attempts have been carried out in cyberspace. It's just incredible," Singer says. There were also private successes. He gave an example when Ukrainian hackers infiltrated charging stations for electric vehicles in Moscow and put anti-Putin insults on their screens. "It really mattered here that they not only ruined the screens, but also turned off the charging stations. They got into the Internet of Things. They used digital means to bring about physical changes in the world." Countries have secretly used this opportunity before (for example, in Israel's Stuxnet attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure in the mid-2000s), but this may be the first time this has happened in a conventional military conflict.
Heavy Ukrainian military equipment remains a not-so-secret weapon for Russia, and it is difficult for it to resist the Russian military means of the new generation. Candice Rondo, a researcher from the Washington-based think tank New America, notes the significant role of the Highly Mobile Artillery Missile System (HIMARS), a high-precision rocket launcher manufactured by Lockheed Martin, which the United States is sending to Ukraine to fight Russia. But at the same time, Rondo adds that this system itself is clearly not enough to achieve a radical change in the battles. This is a guidance system that requires very good information and intelligence data. "To transmit this information, you need to have communication platforms and means by which you can safely communicate where the targets are, when you want to hit them," she said.
"The battles for Ukraine are not won by HIMARS or traditional artillery duels," said Mitr, who worked as a high—ranking official of the Ministry of Defense until the beginning of this year. "These battles can only be won if the Ukrainian side manages to receive, calculate and process information faster than the Russians."
The breadth of information operations in the Ukrainian conflict prompts Brendan McCord, a hedge fund manager who previously developed the first strategy of the Ministry of Defense in the field of artificial intelligence, to call this conflict the first "broadband military conflict". "We've been doing network operations for a while, but always in a narrow—band sense," he told me. Instead of depending on low bandwidth and low data transfer rates, Starlink has provided Ukraine with this incredible advantage, especially in terms of transmitting high-quality video."
What does it all mean for the USASo far, all newly established ties in the field of new technologies are concentrated between Ukraine and the American private sector of the USA.
And the activity of American companies here is far from altruistic.
"If you are an American defense company, then you certainly hope that the Ukrainian generals will ask the US military to provide them with your capabilities," Gregory Allen, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told me. "And such a degree of proximity between the supplier and the armed forces located in different countries is, of course, unprecedented in its own way."
This closeness was demonstrated in June, when the first business representative to visit Ukraine after the start of Russia's special operation was Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, a prominent supplier of the military and intelligence community in the field of data analysis. "Relations between the American defense industry and private companies have always existed, but now the visibility of top business figures in them has clearly increased," says Margarita Konaeva, a researcher at the Georgetown Center for Security and New Technologies.
The heads of large companies - defense contractors of the US Army boast that they receive large profits from arming Ukraine. Silicon Valley companies are actively involved in this process. And as an extraordinary step, the President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, will soon make a keynote speech at a conference of American military contractors, addressing directly to American arms manufacturers.
Looking into the future, our military experts observe how advanced technologies are used in Ukraine on the battlefield to understand what lessons from this can be useful for US politicians. Lindsay Gorman, a researcher at the German Marshall Fund, who recently worked in the Biden administration at the National Security Council, says that most of Washington's attention is now focused on how the Russian special operation correlates with China's military power and potential scenarios of an attack on Taiwan. Others are closely watching how quickly Ukraine has adapted new Western military technologies on the battlefield, and whether the US can follow suit.
For Schmidt, the lesson at the moment is that the government urgently needs to create an additional field for the development of new technologies. The Ukrainian parliament, for example, quickly changed the law at the beginning of the conflict to put all the information of the Ukrainian government in the cloud. "They should have done it earlier," Schmidt said, "but the fact is that the conflict gave everyone a political push to do the right thing." Schmidt also stressed the importance of interacting with civilian American hackers.
But some experts are much more skeptical about the role of new technologies in the first major military conflict involving conventional weapons in Europe, which happened over a period of more than one generation. "What is the role of tomorrow's technologies in today's conflict? Konaeva asks. "To some extent, it still remains very limited."
By Jonathan Guyer
