Three months ago, as Ukrainian troops struggled to advance against Russian forces in the south, military headquarters in Kiev quietly deployed a valuable new weapon onto the battlefield.
It was not a rocket launcher, cannon or other heavy weapons of the western allies.
Instead, it was a real-time information system known as Delta, an online network that military troops, civilian officials, and even monitored bystanders could use to track down and share desperate details about Russian forces.
The software, developed in coordination with NATO, had just been tested in combat.
But as they pushed through the Kherson region in a major counter-offensive, Ukrainian forces used Delta, as well as powerful Western-supplied weapons, to drive the Russians out of the cities and towns they had occupied for months.
The big payoff came on Friday with the withdrawal of Russian forces from the city of Kherson, a important prize in the almost nine months war.
Delta is an example of how Ukraine has become a testing ground for cutting-edge weapons and information systems and new ways to use them, which Western political officials and military commanders predict could form to war for generations to come.
The battle for Ukraine, to be sure, remains largely a war of attrition, with relentless artillery strikes and other WWII-era tactics.
Both sides rely mainly on Soviet-era weapons, and Ukraine has reportedly been running low. no ammo for them.
But even as traditional warfare continues, new advances in technology and training in Ukraine are being closely monitored for the ways they are changing the face of fighting.
Beyond Delta, include remote controlled boatsanti-drone weapons known as SkyWipers and an upgraded version of a German-built air defense system that has yet to be used by the German military itself.
“Ukraine is the best test bedas we have the opportunity to test all hypotheses in battle and introduce a revolutionary change in military technology and modern warfare,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.
He was speaking at a NATO conference in Norfolk, Va., in October, where he discussed Delta publicly for the first time.
He also highlighted the growing reliance on remote-controlled planes and ships, which officials and military experts say have become weapons of choice like no war has before.
“Over the past two weeks, we have convinced ourselves once again that the wars of the future will be about a maximum of drones and minimum of humansFederov said.
Since last summer, Ukraine and its allies have been testing remote-controlled boats filled with explosives in the Black Sea, culminating in a daring attack in October on the Russian fleet off Sevastopol.
Military officials have largely refused to discuss the attack or provide details about the vessels, but both the United States and Germany have supplied Ukraine with similar vessels this year.
Shaurav Gairola, a naval weapons analyst at Janes, a defense intelligence firm, said the attack in the Black Sea showed a sophisticated level of planninggiven the apparent success of small and relatively inexpensive ships against Russia’s more powerful warships.
The attack “propelled the conflict further,” Gairola said.
He said it “imposes a paradigm shift in naval warfare doctrines and symbolizes an expression of futuristic warfare tactics.”
The use of remotely operated ships could become especially important, military experts said, showing how warfare at sea could play out as the United States and its allies prepare to possible future naval aggressions by China in the East and South China Seas and against Taiwan. .
Inevitably, Russia’s growing use of drones has prompted Ukraine’s allies to send new ones technology to stop them.
At the end of last year, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began using weapons from interference of newly developed drones known as SkyWipers to counter Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region.
SkyWipers have been developed, which can divert or disrupt drones by blocking their communication signals Lithuania and they had only been on the market for two years before being delivered to Ukraine through a NATO security assistance programme.
Nearly nine months into the war, SkyWipers are now just one type of drone jammer used in Ukraine.
But they have been singled out as a well coveted on the battlefield, both for Ukrainian troops and for enemy forces hoping to capture them.
It is not known how many SkyWipers have been shipped to Ukraine, although Lithuania reportedly shipped several dozen in October 2021.
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In a statement a The New York Timesthe Lithuanian Defense Ministry said it had sent 50 SkyWipers in August after Ukrainian officials called it “a top priority”.
Dalia Grybauskaite, who was Thuania’s president when the SkyWipers were designed, said her country’s defense industry made a calculated shift toward producing high-tech equipment during her tenure, which spanned 2009 to 2019. for update a stockpile of weapons that “were mostly Kalashnikovs” and other Soviet-era weapons.
“We are learning in Ukraine how to fight and how to use our NATO equipment,” Grybauskaite said in an interview last week.
“And, yes, it’s an educational battlefield.”
He paused and then added:
“It’s embarrassing to me because Ukrainians are paying with your life these exercises for us”.
The lethal Western aid sent to Ukraine consists, for the most part, of recently upgraded versions of older weapons.
This was the case with launchers and infrared guided missiles German-made mid-range vehicles known as IRIS-T, They protect against Russian missile attacks.
They have greater range than the previous generation of air defense systems that debuted in 2015.
The German military itself has yet to use the updated version of the systems, which were shipped to Ukraine last month.
More missiles were delivered last week.
Rafael Loss, an arms expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said improving air defenses by itself does not “represent a game changer”.
But he said its use in Ukraine showed how the government in Kiev has evolved beyond Soviet-era warfare and brought it more in line with NATO.
Senior NATO and Ukrainian officials said theto the Delta network it was a great example.
More than an early warning system, Delta combines real-time maps and images of enemy assets, down to the number of soldiers on the move and the type of weapons they are carrying, authorities said.
This is combined with intelligence, including from surveillance satellites, drones and other government sources, to decide where and how they should attack Ukrainian troops.
Ukraine and Western powers decided they needed the system after Russia instigated a separatist-backed war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.
It was developed by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense with assistance from NATO and first tested in 2017, in part to wean troops off Russian silo storage standards. between land units instead of sharing it.
In the following years it was included in training exercises between the Ukrainian army and other NATO planners.
Information sharing has long been a staple of US and other NATO forces.
What NATO officials said was surprising about the Delta system was that the network was so widely accessible to troops that it helped them make battlefield decisions even faster than some more modern militaries.
In Kherson, Delta has been helping Ukrainian troops quickly identify Russian supply lines to attack, said Inna Honchar, commander of the non-government group Aerorozvidka, which develops drones and other technology for Ukraine’s military, on Sunday.
“Bridges were certainly key points,” Honchar added.
“Shops and checkpoints have been damaged and troop supplies have become critical” as the Russians have become increasingly isolated, he said.
Delta’s first real test came in the weeks immediately following the February invasion, when a 40-mile-long Russian convoy headed toward Kiev.
Ukrainian drones tracked his progress and troops assessed the best places to intercept him.
Residents sent text messages to the government with details that could only be seen up close.
All information was collected, analyzed and disseminated via Delta to help Ukrainian military forces withdraw from Russia, Ukrainian officials said.
“That was the first time Delta’s capabilities were fully realized,” Ukraine’s defense ministry said in a statement.
He said Delta has since helped identify 1,500 goals confirmed Russians across the country on any given day, with “hundreds of them wiped out” within 48 hours.
The tests in Ukraine are helping senior defense officials and planners in the United States and its allies decide how to invest military spending over the next two decades.
Even routine missions in Ukraine, such as refueling missile vehicles on the edge of enemy territory, have sparked discussions among US commandos about how to design equipment that do not depend of the power lines.
And the long-term strategy for how to coordinate and communicate among allied troops, which officials now say has been a challenge during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is unfolding as the battle against Russia continues.
Such strategic military reforms were under discussion before Ukraine was invaded, the general said. Philippe Lavigne of France, who heads NATO’s Allied Command Transformation, but “our first observations since this war are that these assumptions still hold.”
He said Ukraine demonstrated how future warfare is likely to be frenetic and highly contested not only on the ground or in the skies but also, more importantly, in the air. Cyberspace.
“This is the future operating environment,” Lavigne said.
c.2022 The New York Times Company
Source: Clarin
