What Can Western Military Learn from Russian Invasion of Ukraine?

The West has long feared the Russian military, but the latter’s catastrophic performance in Ukraine suggests that it is time to rethink our military defense.

There are 30 countries in NATO and the US outspends everybody else in the world. That we should go around being terrified of Russia and fret about ramping up defense budgets makes absolutely no sense. Look at how NATO completely outspends Russia. We outspend Russia 15 times, yet ever since the Trump years there has been this fear mongering that we are not spending enough.

Instead, we need to learn lessons from this war about what works and what doesn’t work. Instead of spending more, we should spend far more wisely than we do today.

There are a lot of boring things that have proven very important in this war.

• Communications and situation awareness — the Ukrainian military could wipe out elite Russian forces at the Kyiv airport because the Ukrainians had cameras and communications working. They could monitor the Russian advance and launch artillery strikes when they moved into designated areas for artillery strikes. Meanwhile, Russian communications failed, and they had to talk on open radio, thus giving away their moves.
• Cheap weapons systems prove effective — Commercial drones are used effectively for artillery and mortar spotting. Bayraktar TB2 drones are a very cheap and effective way of destroying armored vehicles. The same is true for Javelins, Panzerfaust, M72, and many other anti-tank weapons.
• Asymmetric warfare — You don’t see large tank battalions clashing with each other or crowds of soldiers opposing each other. Instead, there are lots of ambushing and skirmishes taking out Russian supplies and making their tanks run out of fuel.

As a history geek with interest in historical warfare, what I find interesting about this war is how much it reminds me of medieval warfare. Most of us tend to think of battles a bit like how ancient…