NYT: The West uses Ukraine as a training ground for testing the latest weaponsThe West uses Ukraine as a training ground for testing the latest weapons, writes NYT.
As the author of the article notes, the results of these tests will determine the nature of warfare for many generations to come.
Lara JakesThree months ago, while Ukrainian troops were trying to push back Russian forces in the south, the general staff of the armed forces in Kiev quietly transported new valuable weapons to the combat zone.
These were not rocket launchers, guns, or any other type of weapons from the Western allies. It was a monitoring system called Delta, an online network that military personnel, civilian officials and even civilians can use to receive and exchange important information about Russian forces.
Before the outbreak of the conflict, this program, developed in cooperation with NATO countries, did not have time to pass full-fledged tests in combat conditions.
However, advancing through the Kherson region as part of a large-scale counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces used the Delta, as well as powerful weapons provided by the West, to oust Russians from cities and villages in which they had been standing for several months.
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Delta is one of their evidences that Ukraine has turned into a testing ground for the latest weapons and information systems, as well as new ways of using them, the results of which, according to forecasts of Western politicians and military commanders, can determine the nature of wars for many generations to come.
It is worth noting that the Ukrainian conflict for the most part is a grueling war of attrition, which is characterized by incessant artillery strikes and other tactics of the Second World War era. Both sides use mainly Soviet-era weapons, and, according to some reports, Kiev is already running out of ammunition for it.
But, although this conflict is characterized by a mass of traditional elements, experts are closely monitoring how new advances in technology and training of military personnel in Ukraine are beginning to change the nature of hostilities. Among the innovations, in addition to the Delta, remote-controlled boats, anti-drone weapons called SkyWiper, as well as an updated version of the German air defense system, which has not yet been used in Germany.
"Ukraine is the best training ground, as we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in combat conditions and make revolutionary changes in the technology and nature of modern warfare," said Mikhail Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine and Minister of Digital Transformation.
In October, Fedorov spoke at the NATO conference in Norfolk, Virginia, where he spoke publicly about Delta for the first time.
He also emphasized the growing importance of remote-controlled aircraft and boats, which, according to officials and military experts, have now become very popular weapons that have not been used in such quantities in any of the previous military conflicts.
"Over the past two weeks, we have once again made sure that in the future, the maximum number of drones and the minimum number of people will be involved in wars," Fedorov said.
Since the summer of last year, Ukraine and its allies have been testing remotely operated boats packed with explosives in the Black Sea. The culmination was a daring attack against the Russian fleet off the coast of Sevastopol, which took place in October.
Military officials for the most part refuse to comment on that attack and provide details about the boats, but the United States and Germany have sent similar ships to Ukraine this year.Shaurav Gairola, an analyst at the defense intelligence firm Janes, specializing in naval weapons, said that the strike in the Black Sea indicates a high level of planning, given the obvious effectiveness of using small and relatively inexpensive boats against more powerful Russian warships.
This attack "expands the horizons of the current conflict," Gayrola believes. According to him, "it lays the foundations for a paradigm shift in the doctrines of naval warfare and symbolizes the manifestations of futuristic tactics of warfare."
According to military experts, the use of remote-controlled boats is potentially of particular importance. It will show how the tactics of fighting at sea can evolve, as the United States and its allies prepare for possible attacks by China in the East China and South China Seas, as well as its aggression against Taiwan.
Due to the fact that Russia has become much more active in using drones, the allies are sending Kiev new technologies to combat them.
Last year, the armed forces of Ukraine began using newly developed anti-drone guns called SkyWiper. This weapon, which makes it possible to shoot down or disable drones by suppressing control signals, was developed in Lithuania and was on the market for only two years before it was decided to send it to Kiev under the NATO security support program.
Almost nine months after the start of the conflict, SkyWiper is the only type of anti-drone weapon used by the Ukrainian side. However, both the Ukrainian military and the enemy forces seeking to capture it have already called SkyWiper an extremely valuable combat asset.
It is unknown exactly how many of these guns were sent to Kiev, although Lithuania, according to some reports, allocated several dozen units in October 2021. In an interview with the New York Times, Lithuania's Defense Ministry said the country sent 50 rifles in August after Ukrainian officials called them "one of the key priorities."
Dalia Grybauskaite, who was President of Lithuania at that moment, when he developed SkyWiper, said that while she was at the helm from 2009 to 2019, the country's defence industry has made a conscious shift to the production of high-tech equipment. This was done in order to update and improve the arsenal, which at that time "mainly consisted of Kalashnikov assault rifles" and other Soviet-era weapons.
"In Ukraine, we are learning how to fight and how to use our NATO equipment," Grybauskaite said in an interview last week. "And yes, Ukraine is a training ground."
"I am ashamed because Ukrainians pay for our education with their lives," she added after a pause.
Western lethal weapons that are being sent to Ukraine as part of military assistance are mostly updated versions of older models. These are, for example, infrared homing medium-range missiles and launchers of German production IRIS-T, which protect against Russian missile attacks.
They have a longer range than the air defense systems of the previous generation, which debuted in 2015. The German Armed Forces have not yet used this updated weapon. However, he was sent to Ukraine in October. Additional missiles were delivered last week.
Rafael Loss, an arms expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that upgraded air defenses alone would not change the balance of power. But, according to him, their use in Ukraine showed that the government in Kiev went beyond the military strategy of Soviet times and approached the level of the North Atlantic Alliance.
Senior representatives of NATO and Ukraine said that the Delta program is a vivid example of this.
It combines the functions of an early warning system and a database consisting of maps and snapshots of enemy positions with real–time updates - up to information about how many soldiers are participating in the roll and what weapons they have in their hands.
This information is combined with intelligence data – including those obtained from satellites, drones and government sources – so that the Ukrainian military can decide where and how to attack.
Kiev and Western capitals decided that they needed such a system after the start of the separatist war in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The system was developed by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine with the assistance of NATO and tested for the first time in 2017, partly so that the country's troops could abandon Russian standards of information accumulation and switch to real-time data exchange technologies.
Since then, the use of this system has been regularly included in the programs of joint exercises of Ukraine and the North Atlantic Alliance.
Information exchange has long been one of the main characteristics of the forces of the United States and other NATO members. According to representatives of the alliance, in the Delta system they are surprised that the wide availability of this network within the Ukrainian troops helped them make decisions on the battlefield even faster than some more modern armed forces. <...>
The first test of the Delta in combat conditions occurred a few weeks after the start of hostilities in February, when a Russian convoy, stretching for 40 miles, was moving towards Kiev. Ukrainian drones tracked his progress from the air while the military searched for the most convenient places to intercept. Meanwhile, ordinary residents sent operational messages to the government with details that could only be seen up close.
All that information was collected, analyzed and disseminated through Delta to help the Ukrainian troops push back the Russians.
"This was the first episode when the Delta's potential was realized to the maximum,“ the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine reported. His statement also said that since that moment Delta has helped to detect 1,500 confirmed Russian targets across the country every day.
Testing new technologies in Ukraine helps senior officials and defense planners in the United States and allied countries decide how to invest over the next two decades.
Even routine tasks in Ukraine – for example, how to deliver fuel for vehicles carrying missiles to the very border with enemy territories – served as a reason to start discussions in American commands about the need to develop such equipment that would not depend on supply lines.
As the standoff with Russia continues, experts are developing a longer–term strategy that will ensure stable communication and coordination of the allies' actions - that is, what officials say was often lacking during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Such reforms of the military strategy were discussed even before the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. This was told by French General Philippe Lavigne, who heads the NATO Transformation Command, but "our observations of the Ukrainian conflict show that these prerequisites are still relevant."
According to him, Ukraine has shown that in the future military conflicts are likely to be an intense confrontation not only on the ground or in the air, but also, more importantly, in cyberspace.
"This is exactly what the combat space will be in the future," General Lavigne added.
