NATO learning hard lessons about its future in Ukraine

While the causes for war vary, inevitably a war becomes a testing ground for technology, battlefield tactics and strategy.

The war in Ukraine is no different, in fact, in some ways, it is a poster child for changes in modern warfare. Unfortunately for NATO, it is also a harbinger of bad news.

While it is perfectly true that Ukraine lacked suitable air power and should never have put itself in a position to be attacked by Russia, it did so mostly based on promises from NATO and particularly the United States.

The US and NATO offered massive military aid of US$100 billion and counting, amounting to an astonishing $100 million a day. Despite these huge sums, Ukraine has taken back little of the territory the Russians grabbed and, even more pertinently, has suffered huge manpower and equipment losses.

The above spending does not include decisions to increase defense spending at home. Poland, for example, just decided to buy new Patriot air defense systems at a cost of $15 billion and $12 billion worth of Apache attack helicopters from US defense contractor Boeing.

Germany is buying Israel’s Arrow Air defense system for $3.5 billion. Poland will spend 4% of its GDP on defense, far outpacing the other NATO countries other than the US. In fact, only 8 countries out of 30 meet the 2% GDP NATO spending target.

The one bright spot for NATO has been providing Ukraine with overhead surveillance and targeting information, some of it coming from drones and electronic aircraft operating over the Black Sea in international air space.

Offering this kind of help – thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink capable of relaying target data, hooked up to commander’s smartphones – greatly improved the effectiveness of smart weapons such as HIMARS. At the same time, overhead surveillance made it possible to track Russian force movements and anticipate hot spots in ways impossible in the past.

Unfortunately, NATO will lose this advantage in a wider war where the Russians, or any other major adversary, will go out and destroy reconnaissance assets, even in international air space.

Despite NATO’s massive involvement in Ukraine, including on-the-ground special forces acting as advisors (as well as alleged mercenaries, many of whom are well-trained NATO soldiers), Russia has exercised considerable restraint against the overhead threat, not wanting to see the war spill over outside of Ukraine’s or Russia’s borders.

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