Cheap drones, AI-enabled targeting and agile manufacturing apply in Ukraine, but have rewritten the tactical rule-book globally. Unless it modifies existing doctrine, procurement and training at speed, the continent’s defence risks falling behind foes that adapt more quickly, warns Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges, former commanding general of US Army Europe.
The war in Ukraine has become a brutal laboratory for the future of conflict. Few campaigns resemble the mud-churned trenches and constant overhead buzzing that now define the eastern part of the country, said Mr Hodges during Cogis Events’ Digital Defence Series 2.0.
Drones over land may fill social media, yet the general is more struck by events off Odessa. “Clearly unmanned systems, particularly in the maritime domain, is something that for me is more of a significant change than what we’ve seen with drones over land,” he observed. Ukraine has turned explosive sea-surface craft and aerial reconnaissance into a makeshift navy.
A doctrine stuck in peacetime
“Ukraine was able to destroy most of the Black Sea fleet to make it a non-factor, even though Kyiv does not have a navy in the traditional sense of its own.” That feat up-ends assumptions underpinning Russian and even American maritime doctrine. Western navies will need flotillas of autonomous boats, cheap decoys and sensor fusion to survive in cluttered littoral zones.
Interoperability, the dull glue of coalitions, remains NATO’s biggest handicap. Mr Hodges recalled a live-fire drill in Bavaria: British guns, American radars and incompatible software prevented a digital fire mission. He concluded that “what the alliance has to do is inject this somehow into the requirements for what we do and then in the exercises making it where if you are not interoperable … then you pay a price.”
You might be interested
Too often multinational manoeuvres end with every formation declared a winner. The general wants the sadism of America’s National Training Center, where a free-thinking ‘enemy’ smashes ill-prepared brigades, to become the norm in alliance drills.
Calls for ‘future force’ blueprints proliferate in Brussels (EU Perspectives stands guilty as charged). Mr Hodges is wary. “I think that the alliance should of course use exercises to test different models,” he said, but only under conditions “that look a whole lot like the best that the enemy force … can do at Hohenfels,” he referred to the renowned—if often feared and loathed—US training area.
Testing before redesign
Dramatic reorganisations on paper mean little if aerial jamming or massed drones collapse them on day one. Ukraine has shown how quickly field commanders hack commercial kit into kill-chains; NATO must learn to prototype in mud, not in PowerPoint.
Precision strikes cripple an enemy only if there are enough missiles to keep shooting. Mr Hodges rails against just-in-time logistics. “These are not choices, these are requirements,” he said of stockpiles, forward production and dispersed industry. “Defence is not a business.” He scorned the ‘Napa auto parts’ model (minimising inventory to please accountants). “There has to be redundancy.”
European treasuries blanch at warehouses stuffed with shells, yet Ukraine’s army lost Avdiivka, a fortress it had held for years, largely because “they didn’t have enough artillery ammunition.” Quantity still has a quality all its own.
Compliance through combat simulation
To make this checklist more than a military-only agenda, Brussels must embed it in statute. Draft EU defence-industrial measures now circulating—aimed at joint procurement, subsidy flexibility and common stockpiles—will succeed only if they bake in hard interoperability rules and oblige capitals to hold inventory, not just place options.
Having women and men in uniform that are fit, committed, smart and able to adapt and fight in these conditions while getting pounded is still important, just as it has always been.—Lt-Gen Frederick B. Hodges
Unless legislation demands that radios, fire-control software and drone data links meet shared technical standards, the patchwork of incompatible kit that the general deplores will persist. Equally, any EU-backed financing scheme that favours lean, just-in-time supply chains would clash with his insistence on redundancy and deep magazines.
EU lawmakers could also test proposals against the brutal feedback loops Mr Hodges prizes. Before releasing new funds, the Commission could require proof—via large-scale exercises—that fresh equipment and concepts survive electronic attack and drone swarms. That sort of ‘compliance-through-combat-simulation’ would turn legal texts into operational muscle.
Industry, take some risk
Governments alone cannot fix the gap. “Industry has to take chances,” Mr Hodges insisted. Firms must tool up before orders exist, but German export and budget laws often forbid such speculation. The general urged parliaments to rewrite rules that stifle pre-production.
Equally, ministries should stop “perfectionism” in specifications that create gold-plated Franken-vehicles, long delayed and few in number. If France’s future infantry fighting vehicle must swim, climb and fire lasers, it will arrive late and cost more than the army can afford. Trim the wish-list and deliver in months, not decades.
For two decades Western troops fought militants who lacked electronic-warfare (EW) gear. That indulgence is over. “The Russians have always had better EW capabilities than us,” Mr Hodges admitted. Units that chatter on unsecured radios are hunted by loitering munitions within minutes.
At Hohenfels, the army now arms the exercise enemy with Russian-style jammers and drones; blue-team battalions “got crushed” until they relearned camouflage, dispersion and silence. “After a few days of that, then you start doing what you have to do.” NATO air defenders, once relaxed about GPS outages, must relearn analogue gunnery and optical backups.
Mass versus precision
Russia still holds an advantage in raw numbers of guns and men. Yet General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, once remarked that “the way you defeat mass is with precision if you have enough time.” Mr Hodges endorsed that mantra. Long-range strikes on headquarters, depots and oil refineries sap the Kremlin’s edge.
The West therefore needs rapid production of cheap glide bombs, longer-range rockets and autonomous loiterers. Ukraine’s pinpoint attacks on drone factories inside Russia illustrate the concept; deprive Moscow of logistics and its hordes stumble.
Many of these prescriptions require political backbone. Defence ministries must penalise laggards that refuse to share encryption keys; frontline states will not wait for consensus. Mr Hodges described the US-led battalion in Orzic, Poland, where Croatian, Romanian, British and Polish companies lack common secure radios.
The wrong lesson
In any Suwałki-corridor emergency, junior officers will improvise on mobile phones under drone fire. Better to enforce standards now. Those who comply could train and deploy together, forming a de facto high-readiness corps, while slower allies catch up.
All of this offers an institutional lesson — but one that comes with a number of caveats. “The first thing that immediately should come to mind is don’t learn the wrong lessons,” General Hodges warned. NATO armies, tempted to slash heavy platforms in favour of swarms of quadcopters, should pause. The alliance must find ways to protect armoured columns from drones and sensors rather than assume steel is passé.
Clearly unmanned systems, particularly in the maritime domain, is something that for me is more of a significant change than what we’ve seen with drones over land.—Lt-Gen Frederick B. Hodges
Mr Hodges cautioned that “the environment in which [Ukraine’s defenders] are fighting is a pretty unique environment.” That does not mean traditional capabilities are obsolete. Russian glide bombs and massed artillery still matter; so do well-armoured vehicles that can force a breakthrough. “I guarantee you every Ukrainian battalion commander, brigade commander, company commander, wants a tank or something like a tank,” he said, adding that Ukrainians are “not walking away from armoured vehicles, they’re trying to figure out how do they get them into the fight.”
The human factor endures
Technological wizardry grabs headlines, yet Mr Hodges repeatedly returned to people. “We should also not lose sight of the importance of the human dimension,” he argued. Ukrainian drone pilots endure relentless counter-battery fire and electronic jamming. “These are not 19-year-old gamers,” he insisted. “Having women and men in uniform that are fit, committed, smart and able to adapt and fight in these conditions while getting pounded is still important, just as it has always been.”
The point sounds banal, but Western recruiting, fitness and reserve systems are creaking. Unless armies can field soldiers with stamina and initiative, no amount of silicon will offset fatigue at the front.
General Hodges’s final warning cut through the jargon. “We need to acknowledge that they are at war with us,” he said of Russia’s grey-zone sabotage. Complacency about an arm’s-length conflict is dangerous; budgets, production lines and training calendars must shift to wartime urgency. “Just-in-time is not going to work.”
From summits to action
Neither will abstract strategies signed in glossy summits. Ukraine’s defenders adapt in weeks because survival demands it. NATO still moves in fiscal years. If Europe wishes to deter future aggression—and avoid blood on its own soil—it must apply the battlefield’s unforgiving feedback before the shooting starts.
Not every fight will mirror Kharkiv or Kherson. China probes Pacific cables; Iran floods the Red Sea with drones. Yet technology, mass and morale interact the same way everywhere. Uncrewed craft grant reach; EW denies vision; shells still smash trenches. The alliance must integrate these lessons into a force that can plug into any theatre.
Mr Hodges’s recipe—relentless realistic exercises, interoperable kit and ample magazines—sounds obvious, because in war simplicity wins. The question is not whether NATO understands the message. It is whether, this time, it will act on it — if it survives the current period of President Donald Trump’s sulking over Iran, that is.
