Israel and Ukraine: real wars lessons for the US Army

The US Army is constantly preparing for future wars, but the fighting in Ukraine and the Gaza sector has shown that the modern war has changed. The US military spends countless time, energy and effort to prepare for future wars. However, real wars occur periodically, destroying hypothetical structures and showing how constantly changing the interaction of doctrines, technologies and leadership influences the nature of war.

Conflicts raging today in Ukraine and Gas are tragic examples of two different types of modern wars - one of them is mostly the usual clash between states, which takes place on a thousandth -grade front line and the other is a non -confessional conflict between the terrorist group and the state leading combat Actions in a close and densely populated urban area.

Although it is too early to draw conclusions from these current conflicts, they nevertheless point to the alarming gaps in thinking of the US military in conflicts of the future. Focus translated David Barno and Bensahel's article on the lessons of the Russian-Ukrainian War and the War in Israel. There are three new realms in which the US military may be absolutely not ready for the changing nature of the modern war.

They are related to the problems of large -scale urban wars, a new definition of the preference in the air and the fact that some private companies are essentially participants in hostilities. US military leaders continue to emphasize the likelihood of urban operations in the future, but they have done almost nothing to develop and prepare their forces for these extremely difficult battles.

In 2016, the then Chief of Land Forces Staff, General Mark Millie, noted: "In the future, as I can say with a very high degree of confidence, the US army will fight in urban areas . . . [But] we are not ready for it now. " In 2023 little changed. Despite the experience of combating the rebels in Iraq, the US military has not been fighting in major cities since the Tetsky offensive in Vietnam in 1968. However, the growth of urbanization is one of the most obvious global trends of this century.

According to the UN forecasts, by 2050, 68% of the planet's population will live in cities. More than one million people live in 578 cities, and by 2030 their number will increase to 662. Today, there are 32 metropolitan areas in the world with a population of more Ukraine was the main battlefield.

Although the Russian military would almost probably prefer to fight at the beginning of the war in large expanses of open terrain, they were inevitably drawn to cities - mostly because Russia was needed to replenish their forces through large rail and automobile networks in urban conditions. Intense battles and widespread destruction in cities such as Mariupol, Bakhmut, Kharkiv and Kherson, reminiscent of the Images of Stalingrad of the Second World War.

In any terrestrial conflict of the future, opponents will inevitably gravitate to urban areas-and the most visual battles of the future war may well happen. Although the war in Ukraine takes into account the major city battles, the scale of today's operation of the Israeli Defense Army in Gaza - one of the most densely populated areas of the world - exceeds almost all the recent experience of city battles.

In the city of Gaza, Israel collided with a well -armed and deeply rooted grouping of fighters, which was scattered among the civilian population with 1. 1 million people, all of which under the close attention of international media and in accordance with the strict laws of armed conflict. Israeli Land Forces involved infantry and armored vehicles for maneuvering the blocked streets, using methods developed during the last large -scale invasion of gas in 2014.

They continue to disassemble buildings, protect the terrain, fight in underground burrows and fight with Hamas fighters hidden among hundreds of thousands of peaceful civilians. The Israeli Air Force also inflicts massive aircraft, which destroyed large parts of the northern part of the Gaza. When did the US infantry battalion clean the hospital or skyscraper? The US military will not be able to rely only on the tactics of confrontation and accurate blows during urban operations in the big city.

To establish control of the city landscape, they will have to resort to large-scale tank-infantry operations, during which many both combatants and civilians will inevitably die. This means that the US Land Forces (including the army, the Marines and Special Operations) should be better organized, trained and equipped for intensive city battles. The US Air Force understands that in future major conflicts, they will be able to achieve local preference in the air only in certain periods.

But current wars, especially in Ukraine, show that in the future conflict they are likely to not be able to achieve true air control, as the sky will fill cheap and numerous drones. Expensive and outdated air forces play a limited role in Ukraine, since air defense against manned planes have become more powerful (and the US and Russia seek to limit potential escalation).

However, the drones flutter the ubiquitous shadow on each Ukrainian front - they provide intelligence on the enemy's forces, define targets for artillery and rocket fire and carry powerful ammunition, capable of destroying tanks, infantry and undering infantry and undermine logistics. They also help neutralize expensive Russian air defense equipment and aim for Russian equipment to create electronic obstacles.

It is the drones of the far radius of the action, not the bombarded bombers, who regularly strike in the depths of the territory for the most important purposes from Moscow to Kiev. Above the front line of Russia and Ukraine, drones are now dominated by the so -called "air liter" - the space between the Earth and the high altitudes at which there are piloted air operations.

Earlier, control over the airspace over the armies, conducting land fights, belonged only to expensive and complex high -tech Air Force, and today it is carried out by whole armies of cheap drones. This revolution makes traditional concepts the benefits in the air are incomplete, except not outdated. War in gas also shows how drones change the value of the preference in the air.

Israeli Air Force is one of the best in the world and fly on the most modern manned aircraft, while irregular Hamas formations actually operate without aviation. But even the bloody Hamas attacks on October 7 took into account many attacks of relatively cheap drones on air and marine purposes, many of which were stunningly effective, despite the indisputable conventional domination of Israel in the air.

Both conflicts indicate that the real advantage in the air can no longer be achieved only by creating high-tech military-air forces worth several billion dollars capable of defeating similar opponent opportunities. And in the future, the battles will fly even more drones than today, as they are becoming cheaper and widely accessible to any state or group who want to buy them.

Cheap drones, especially when used mass use, will continue to dominate the air litter and strike the ground troops, while the highly developed and expensive military-air forces will be virtually powerless to stop them. For troops on Earth, attacks of mass drones worth $ 200 are as deadly as bombs dropped from multimillion -dollar enemy fighters.

The US Air Force should come up with how to achieve advantages in this new disputed airspace over flocks of unmanned aerial vehicles - a task for which their expensive fighters are not adapted. Reductors are not the only commercial technology that plays a key role in both Ukraine and in gas. Starlink's satellite network Ilon Mask has become the most famous example. It now provides the entire online model, which Ukraine relies on in its war.

But commercial products adapted for use in wartime can be seen everywhere in both conflicts, including a large number of cheap Chinese drones of DJI Mavic and the use of Hamas Commercial Internet fighters in gas to provide communication and promotion of terrorist videos on a global audience. It has enormous consequences for future wars.

Small states and non -state entities will be able to buy satellite images that are not inferior in quality of photographs from extremely expensive military satellites, which will further increase the transparency of the battlefield.

This means that a wide range of weak states and non-state entities, such as rebels-houses, Iranian proxy in Iraq and Syria, Islamic State militants and drug cartels in Latin America, will now be able to access the pictures previously exclusive Property of the Great States. The use of commercial technologies during military operations raises a number of extremely difficult issues. One of them is related to the disabilities of the US government to influence the actions of private companies.

Take as an example of Starlink. The US government may ban the mask companies to take pictures of Russia in accordance with sanctions imposed after invasion of Ukraine. But if Musk decides to block Ukrainians' access to Starlink, as he has repeatedly threatened, the US government can do little. It could nationalize Starlink as the most important strategic asset, but it is difficult to imagine that such a radical step will be taken in a truly existential conflict for the United States.

The government can also try to turn to the conscience of the mask and embarrass it by conducting a hearing in Congress or mobilizing public support. But the final decision remains a mask, regardless of its enormous strategic consequences. Closing Ukraine with access to Starlink will instantly make Ukrainian armed forces much less effective - and can even provide Russia with a decisive strategic advantage. There are also many complex legal issues.

If you continue an example with the Starlink satellite, does Russia's international right allow the Starlink satellites to be legally hit, as Ukraine explicitly uses them to provide military operations? If the answer is positive, then to what extent the US government is responsible for protecting these satellites or compensating for Starlink losses? And if the answer is negative, and Russia still attacks satellites, how much does it keep companies from supporting future military operations and what consequences? We are not lawyers or claim to understand all the intricacies of the laws that can be used.

However, we believe that unprecedented integration of commercial technologies and companies that provide them will raise new practical and legal issues in military operations that directly affect the US Armed Forces in the future conflict. Real wars make it possible to understand the changes in the nature of the war that will never be able to fully reveal the concepts of peacetime and Bargeima.

Wars in Ukraine and in Gaza show that the US military should strengthen the preparation for large -scale urban conflicts, expand the concept of preference in the air to solve the problem of drones in the disputed air litor, and in conjunction with the US government to think about some acute issues that arise when arising when arising when Private companies are essentially participants in hostilities.