Ukraine develops battle management system on a shoestring

The Wall Street Journal reported on the new system.

“Ukraine has achieved a cut-price version of what the Pentagon has spent decades and billions of dollars striving to accomplish: digitally networked fighters, intelligence and weapons,” the outlet writes.

The WSJ notes that Kyiv's network of drones, fighter jets and weapons, linked through satellite communications and special software, provides the Ukrainian military with a level of intelligence, coordination and precision that gives it an advantage over Russia's large but lumbering army.

The outlet adds that the Ukrainian series of systems are built mostly on standard equipment, so it is far from the large-scale and ambitious efforts of the US Army in this direction. But Ukraine's success in creating a virtual command and control system "on the fly" provides valuable lessons for the West, particularly on the need to experiment and involve non-military experts.

British Lieutenant Colonel Glen Grant, who has been working with the US and Ukrainian armed forces on defense reform since 2014, notes that bureaucratic Western militaries are "too slow and too heavy.” Due to this, he believes, they cannot quickly apply new technical solutions to solve problems on the battlefield. The journalists added that Ukraine's tech-savvy population has managed to update guerrilla warfare techniques in the digital era.

“In Ukraine, home to a thriving tech-outsourcing industry and hackers who operate outside the law, the motivated people are often software engineers who connect using digital services like encrypted messenger Signal and networks from companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX. And their tools have become mobile apps, 3-D printers and consumer drones,” the WSJ writes.

The outlet gives examples of how the Ukrainian military managed to "digitalize" the war. It successfully modifies drones to subsequently drop grenades into Russian trenches, builds unmanned vehicles with machine guns, etc. Journalists also quote the Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov, who last week noted: "The enemy has been preparing for a full-fledged [technical] war for 20 years. We made a technological leap in 10 months."