Not heroism, but professionalism grants victory

It is easy to see what the secret of Ukraine's victories over the "second army of the world" is by taking a look at the frontline. In Bakhmut, I met with the fighters of the 205th Kyiv battalion of the Territorial Defense Forces, who fought continuously for 2 months in contact battles at a distance of 10 to 20 meters with Russian assault groups, held their positions, and, despite significant losses, retained their combat capability.

So, in the trenches with machine guns and grenades were 2 highly qualified sowtware developers, an electronic engineer with many years of highly qualified experience, the owner of a car service station with 30 years of experience, an electrician with 20 years of experience from a construction company in the capital. These are all extremely scarce and important specialties for modern warfare, but here they are fighting in the trenches with weapons and tactics of the 1940s. The platoon commander is a chef at a Michelin-rated restaurant in Poland, whose entire family has long lived in Europe, and who returned on February 25 to defend Ukraine. The transportation is provided by the owner of a transportation company who has his own trucks. The company commander is a well-known press secretary in politics, a deeply intelligent man. 

The first thought is what an invincible country we are, where the real elite of the nation, who have high-paying jobs and the opportunity to settle abroad, but take an ordinary Kalashnikov and fight to the last with the Russian marginal trash that Putin sent to war. This is the main secret of our victories: the enemy does not have anywhere near the quality of human resources.

“What an invincible country we are, where the real elite of the nation, who have high-paying jobs and the opportunity to settle abroad, but take an ordinary Kalashnikov and fight to the last with the Russian marginal trash that Putin sent to war”

The second thought is that we are probably the richest country in the world, because we have adults who go into battle as ordinary infantrymen, whose training and education took decades of hard work, and whose qualifications cost hundreds of thousands of dollars on the market.

The third thought is that modern warfare is waged by technology, and each of these infantrymen, if used according to their specialty at the frontline, could kill enemies much more and risk much less because there is a pressing need to set up sensors, drones, control systems, aiming, and repair equipment to kill the enemy from longer distances with long-range precision weapons.

And the fourth thought. We are undoubtedly winning the war for the country. But the fact that we continue to misuse people, do not use our advantage in intelligence, culture, qualifications, motivation of our people, the fact that we are trying to wage a war of the 21st century according to the Soviet models of the Second World War is a defeat for the Ukrainian nation. Yes, it is a defeat, because these are losses that can never be restored.

“We are undoubtedly winning the war for the country. But the fact that we continue to misuse people, do not use our advantage in intelligence, culture, qualifications, motivation of our people, the fact that we are trying to wage a war of the 21st century according to the Soviet models of the Second World War is a defeat for the Ukrainian nation. Yes, it is a defeat, because these are losses that can never be restored”

What should we do?

No, I don't mean that let's let others die in the trenches instead of them - I mean that if we use people in the war according to their qualifications, we can inflict many times more losses on the enemy and many times less losses on Ukrainians. Someday we will be supplied with weapons, someday we will learn how to manufacture them ourselves, but we will never be supplied with programmers, car technicians, electricians, engineers with leadership skills and incredible patriotism.

The war has changed, and the generals and politicians who lead the military need to realize this. But this realization is not coming.

“We must use people in the war to create a technological advantage, to ensure that every infantryman on the front line is provided with drone vision, thermal imaging, stable communication, a tablet with a tactical situation, and is supported by high-precision shots from all available weapons systems from maximum distances”

We have to use people in the war to create a technological advantage, to ensure that every infantryman on the front line is provided with drone vision, thermal imaging, stable communications, a tablet with tactical information, and is supported by high-precision shots from all available weapons systems from maximum distances. So that we do not try to seek an advantage in the number of soldiers with Kalashnikovs, tanks and guns, as in the 40s of the 20th century, but that our advantage is in the number and quality of sensors, electronic intelligence, automated control systems, military equipment, engineering vehicles, logistics, and the accuracy of the destruction. It is not heroism that grants victory, but professionalism and the ability to use modern machines instead of people in the battlefield.

Victory for Ukraine means saving lives. For this purpose, it is necessary to immediately create a modern doctrine of warfare, modern defense planning, based on technology, based on intelligence, in order to save lives and win not in words but in deeds.

Source.

About the author: Yuriy Butusov, journalist, soldier with the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

The editorial board does not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.