A week before Russia invaded Ukraine, expectations varied considerably. The US government was certain the Russians would strike at Kyiv and seize the Ukrainian capital in 72 hours. The Russian presidential administration concurred. In Paris and Berlin, officials were briefing that Anglo-American hysteria was leading the world to another Iraq WMD moment and that the Russians were just posturing.
Views varied in Kyiv, but the government’s assessment was that a period of political destabilisation would be followed by a limited Russian offensive against the Donbas. I thought Russia would invade only to find itself in a gruelling unconventional battle in Ukraine’s cities; the roads west of Kyiv would be severed, cutting off the city from European allies; Ukrainian troops in the Donbas would withdraw owing to shortages of ammunition after about ten days of fighting. All of the above assessments as it turned out were – to varying degrees – wrong.
Ukraine now has a viable path towards bringing about the Russia’s defeat within the next year. It is important to reflect upon why pre-war assessments were incorrect and how these errors can be avoided in the future. I, along with my colleague Nick Reynolds, have worked in Ukraine both before and during the conflict, interviewing senior Ukrainian security and military officials, observing operations, and examining captured Russian equipment. More recently, I’ve been reviewing the operational data gathered by the Ukrainian military. For much of that period, it has not been appropriate to publish detailed information about Ukrainian operations. RUSI, the defence thinktank I work for, has therefore focussed on assessing the enemy’s most likely and most dangerous courses of action, and primary vulnerabilities. Now that the threat of further Russian offensives has abated, however, it is becoming possible to discuss some aspects of the Ukrainian side of the equation.
The data demonstrates that the realities of the war diverged considerably from the public narrative. To take an example, many have speculated that Russian electronic warfare systems – comprising interference with electronic systems – have been ineffective. Just look at the proliferation of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) throughout the conflict: surely Russian electronic warfare and air defences could have neutralised these technologies. Yet UAVs have proven their usefulness. The Ukrainian military would agree that the overview of the battlefield they offer is vital.
However, the operational data reveals that 90 per cent of Ukrainian UAVs flown before July were lost, mainly to electronic warfare. The average life expectancy of a quadcopter was three flights. The average life expectancy of a fixed wing UAV was six flights. Surviving a flight does not mean a successful mission; electronic warfare can disrupt command links, navigation and sensors, which can cause the UAV to fail to fix a target. Contrary to the narrative, Russian EW has been successful on the battlefield. Instead, what has proved decisive is the sheer number of drones that Ukraine has been able to deploy. The most useful UAVs, according to the data, are cheap fixed wing models. This is not because they are difficult to defeat but because they are inefficient to target, flying too high for short-range air defences while being too inexpensive to engage with medium or long-range systems.
This is a good example of where having both sides of the equation – Russian and Ukrainian – is critical to identifying the right lessons from Ukraine. Beyond confirming that Russian electronic warfare is effective – and that the lack of NATO investment in this area is a mistake – the loss rate also demands a re-evaluation of how NATO armies think about UAVs. At present, UAVs are treated like aircraft. They come under flight control and in the UK must be assured for flight by the Military Aviation Authority. This means that the force cannot generate large numbers of trained operators and limits how many UAVs can be deployed. UAVs are therefore designed to have higher payloads and longer flight times to compensate, driving up cost. Instead, UAVs need to be cheap, mass producible, and treated like munitions. The regulatory framework for their use should be changed.
The example of UAVs is specific, but it is precisely in these tactical details that the truth about the inaccuracy of pre-war assessments lies. To use my own assessment – that Ukrainian forces would hold their initial positions in the Donbas for a maximum of ten days – this was premised on a calculation of their available ammunition. The assumption was that much of their second line ammunition would be interdicted by Russian air and missile strikes.
The Ukrainian military began to disperse its ammunition from major stockpiles several days before the war as a precaution against widespread strikes. This was noted and tracked by Russian agents. Nevertheless, the Russian military appeared very reluctant to adjust the order of its priority strike list for attacking targets. Some of the targets towards the top of the Russian targeting list hadn’t been military sites for up to a decade.
Even though the Russians observed that the ammunition was being dispersed, they still prosecuted their initial strikes against the ammunition’s original location. Consequently, of the 20 major ammunition stockpiles used by the Ukrainian armed forces, the Russians destroyed significant stocks at only one. Russian strikes often lagged more than 48 hours behind their targets’ movements, not because the Russians lacked new information about the target’s location, but because they still struck its previous position first. Russian forces massively underperformed against their potential, largely for reasons of culture, process and weaknesses in planning.
We are still in the process of conducting our assessment of the operational data, but it is very clear that the gap between Russian success and failure was often narrow, and more often a product of culture, morale, and training than equipment or numbers of troops. It is also evident that the Ukrainians adapted faster in conditions of uncertainty and that it is the capacity of a force to recover from mistakes that often gives it the edge on the battlefield.
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