: What the U.S. Military Needs to Learn from the Ukraine War #WorldNEWS As the brutal fighting continues in the Ukraine War, it seems likely to fundamentally upend the way we wage war in the 21st-century.

What the U.S. Military Needs to Learn from the Ukraine War #WorldNEWS
As the brutal fighting continues in the Ukraine War, it seems likely to fundamentally upend the way we wage war in the 21st-century. From new tactics to equipment, the Russian invasion of Ukraine may presage fundamental changes in how war is conducted. What can Western militaries learn from the war thus far?
First, the extraordinary success the Ukrainian forces (armed with western technology) are enjoying against Russia armor. The numbers of tanks, armored vehicles, and heavy trucks destroyed by the Ukrainians are almost certainly in the thousands. This is largely the result of the hand-held anti-armor weapons provided by NATO countries (NLAWS from Britain, Javelins from the U. S. , etc).
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But it is also indicative of a tactical approach by the Ukrainians that fuses the intelligence provided by the West; the portability of the missile and drone systems; the employment of them by small, light special forces teams; and entirely new systems like the Switchblade drones.
Most importantly, each tank and armored vehicle destroyed means more dead Russians. Russian soldiers killed in action probably number around 15,000 over five weeks, which is staggering. As a point of comparison, the U. S. lost 7,000 in twenty years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the lost armor stocks will be difficult to replace in the short term. Each Russian tank costs more than million, but each missile is only a hundred thousand dollars or so. War is hell, as General Sherman said in the American Civil War, but it is also expensive.
Is it time to write the obituary for the tank on the battlefield? Will they turn out to be the battleships of the 21st century, rendered obsolete by new technologies and tactics? It is certainly time to consider reducing tank inventories (as the U. S. Marine Corps is already doing) and using the resources to move toward new systems, notably unmanned. Tanks can still be effectively employed, but must be used in a coherent combined-arms manner that includes protection of them from such “cheap kill” mechanisms.
Second, the concept of close air support is increasingly at risk as well. Alongside the concerns about the efficacy of heavy armor are about the vulnerability of helicopters. We are seeing million Russian attack helicopters destroyed by a hundred thousand dollar stingers—over and over. This was a key tactic in allowing the Afghanistan mujahideen to defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Again, the economics of this, especially for a weak economy like Russia, are daunting, as well as replacing trained pilots.
And that is before new swarm drone systems come into full force. As artificial intelligence becomes a wartime reality, the ability to control large numbers of unmanned systems and operate them in synch to attack large relatively less maneuverable platforms like helicopters and troop transports.