This week marks 1,000 days of war in Ukraine. The i Paper has the stories you need to read to understand how we got here, what happens next – and what you can do.
1,000 days of war, explained | Fears over Trump-Putin deal | How you can help Ukraine | Ways Europe could step up | Will Putin ever stop?
If the multitude of advances in arms and tactics that have emerged amid the carnage of the Ukraine war could be melded into a single killing machine, that weapon may well be the SAKER Scout.
The Ukrainian-made drone looks much like any of the swarms of “quadcopter” aircraft now routinely filling the skies over moonscape battlefields from Donetsk to Kursk as the Kremlin this week takes its ruinous invasion of Ukraine into its 1,000th day.
But the Scout is different. Using artificial intelligence algorithms originally perfected by its Kyiv-based manufacturer to sort types of fruit, it is claimed to be capable of recognising dozens of types of Russian military equipment, from artillery and personnel carriers to the uniforms and weaponry worn and carried by Moscow’s troops themselves.
Crucially, it is also capable of identifying and launching attacks on those targets without the intervention or supervision of a human operator. According to its inventors, it is capable of being used by Kyiv’s troops to survey battlefields and, where necessary, autonomously destroy Russian equipment or personnel if jamming prevents a Ukrainian operator from doing so.
As one of the designers of the SAKER drone put it in a recent interview with Ukrainian media: “Once we reach the point when we don’t have enough people, the only solution is to substitute them with robots.”
The age of the drone
Drones, in particular smaller, piloted machines rigged with cannibalised munitions such as rocket-propelled grenade warheads, have come to define the conflict. According to the London-based RUSI think-tank, Ukraine is getting through some 10,000 of these “first-person view” or FPV drones a month. A Ukrainian commander acknowledged recently that medium and short-range drones now account for the majority of casualties on both sides.
Definitive evidence that drones like the SAKER Scout machine – described by its manufacturer as a “drone platform with AI capabilities for autonomous missions” – has been fully deployed as a so-called “killer robot” is hard to obtain. Online videos show the Scout’s onboard targeting system appearing to “lock-on” and destroy a variety of Russian armour but whether or not the target has had prior human approval is unclear.
What is clear, however, is that fully-autonomous technology is increasingly available to Ukrainian commanders (and quite possibly their Russian opponents) should they need it. It is the latest and perhaps most seismic recasting of warfare in a conflict which has acted as a crucible for military innovation from the start – from the use of anti-tank weapons to stymie Vladimir Putin’s original invasion to the development of naval drones to neutralise Russia’s once formidable Black Sea fleet.
‘Massive’ Russian missile and drone attack targets Ukraine energy
Russia launched around 120 missiles and 90 drones during a “massive combined strike on all regions of Ukraine” on Sunday, 17 November.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow was targeting the country’s energy infrastructure and had left some areas without power.
The missiles – cruise, ballistic and aeroballistic – included “zirkons, Iskanders, and daggers”, Zelensky said in a post on Telegram.
Drones included Iranian-designed Shaheds. Ukrainian air defences destroyed more than “140 air targets”, he said.
The strikes were described as one of the largest air attacks on Ukraine in months. “Peaceful cities, sleeping civilians” and “critical infrastructure” were targeted, the Ukrainian foreign minister said.
Russia confirmed the strikes and said the focus was on energy resources supporting Ukraine’s military-industrial complex.
Ukraine’s military airfield infrastructure was also hit, Russia’s defence ministry claimed.
Ukrainians fear that large attacks by Moscow are intended to devastate Ukraine’s power generation capacity ahead of the cold winter.
For Ukraine, the case for deploying its autonomous drones is growing stronger as Russian assaults eat into its territory, albeit at vast cost to the Kremlin. According to a UK Ministry of Defence assessment, October was the deadliest for Moscow since the invasion with an average loss of 1,354 dead or wounded per day. At the same time, Kyiv is facing difficulties recruiting sufficient troops to rest and replenish its frontline units.
A Western diplomatic source told i: “When you are facing an enemy with little or no regard to its own losses, you are going to look at every tool available to you. If you are in an existential fight and providence has given you drones capable of eliminating enemy forces more efficiently – without even the touch of a button – then moral arguments tend to fall away. It is understandable that the threat of defeat would make autonomous weapons a necessity rather than a luxury.”
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister in charge of digital transformation, appeared to nod to such a rationale recently when he said: “We need maximum automation. These technologies are fundamental to our victory.”
Ukraine turned into a deadly laboratory
It is a challenge which Ukraine is embracingly vigorously. SAKER is one of a dozen or so companies within the country developing autonomous drones and other platforms, including robotic vehicles mounted with machine guns. Although these vehicles have yet to be applied in a fully autonomous mode, developers have made clear it would merely take a software update for them to be able to do so. In a game of technological cat and mouse, Russia has developed its own autonomous capabilities, in particular with its Lancet loitering munition, regarded as one of the most effective weapons in the Kremlin’s arsenal.
Such a prospect goes to the core of the Ukraine war’s status as a conflict which has turned battlefields from Kharkiv to Kherson into a vast and deadly laboratory, driving inventiveness by the defender and aggressor states but also serving as a testing ground for weaponry provided by supporters as diametrically opposed as Britain and Iran, and America and North Korea.
The current state of the conflict, where Ukrainian troops have now taken to wearing £5,000 “hedgehog” backpacks fitted with spiky antennae designed to deflect Russian FPV drones with a personalised jamming “dome” of radio signals, already seems a far cry from the first days of the Kremlin’s invasion in February 2022.
Moscow had expected a quick victory by sending in huge armoured columns designed to bisect the country and seize Kyiv from supposedly ill-equipped and unmotivated defenders. Instead, President Putin suffered a humiliation when Ukrainian troops capitalised on shambolic Russian planning by seizing on the capabilities of anti-tank missiles, in particular the American Javelin and the British-made NLAW, to score a devastating hit rate on enemy Soviet-era armour and ultimately force a retreat by Moscow.
The Ukrainian success in the face of an enemy with vastly superior manpower and materiel set the mould for the first 18 months of the conflict. Despite being vastly outgunned, in particular when it came to artillery, Kyiv’s forces have relied on a certain technological agility to bring the fight to Putin.
With the help of American AI giant Palantir, Ukraine has built DELTA, its own bespoke real-time computerised battlespace which relays data from multiple sources, ranging from drones flying overflying firefights to intelligence on Russian troop movements supplied by Ukrainians in occupied areas, back to commanders to make decisions with the maximum level of integrated data.
But the ability of Kyiv to shift the axis of the conflict is perhaps nowhere better displayed than in Ukraine’s single-handed reinvention of seagoing warfare by developing the formidable weapon that is the naval drone.
War at sea
The early days of the war brought Russia domination of the Black Sea by destroying Ukraine’s antiquated navy and asserting the dominance of Moscow’s formidable fleet. But in October 2022, Kyiv struck back by unleashing a new type of weapon – fast uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) controlled via satellite links and laden with explosives – on the Russian naval base at Sevastopol. The attack presaged a series of subsequent assaults which have sunk or badly damaged at least 10 Russian ships of various sizes and effectively denied Moscow access to the Black Sea – a maritime domain it once considered to be its own.
As H I Sutton, a naval warfare expert, told Rusi recently: “The success of Ukraine’s USVs is indisputable. The Russian Navy is now on the defensive, and consequently conducting minimal naval operations. It is one of the clearest examples of the success of asymmetrical threats against a larger, more powerful, opponent.”
It is nonetheless the case that the Ukraine conflict, in contrast with the conflicts in Afghanistan or even Iraq, is being fought by two industrialised nations with access to similar and advanced technologies.
And it is here that Russia has sought to press home its advantage of scale.
Ukraine has repeatedly had to pass around the geopolitical begging bowl to its allies in America and Europe for fighter jet, armour and limited access to guided missiles such as Washington’s ATACMS system and Anglo-French Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles to allow it to strike into Russian-held territory. It is also largely reliant on outside help for air defence assets such as the American Patriot system and Germany’s IRIS-T and Gepard anti-missile weapons.
The result is what at times has shown itself to be a mismatch between Moscow’s ability to bombard Ukraine’s towns and cities, and the capacity of Kyiv to repel those assaults.
In recent months, Russia has been able to subject Ukrainian positions to brutal bombardment using Soviet-era bombs which have been fitted with satellite-guidance kits to turn them into so-called smart bombs capable of hitting targets with vastly improved accuracy.
A key feature of the Kremlin’s evolution of its arsenal in the last 1,000 days has been the pairing of its stocks of guided missiles such as the Iskander ballistic missile, the Kalibr cruise missile and even the Kinzhal hypersonic missile with the distinctly less advanced armament that is the Iranian Shahed-136 “kamikaze” drone.
The delta-shaped Iranian weapons, dubbed “flying lawnmowers of death” because of their noisy piston engines, were initially viewed as evidence of Russian weakness as the Kremlin, suddenly facing a much longer conflict than it had initially bargained for, approached Tehran and Pyongyang to replenish its own dwindling stocks of munitions.
Quartet of chaos
The result has been a deepening military coalition between Russia, Iran and North Korea – supported in terms of supply of “dual use” components by China – which has not only presented the West with a new “quartet of chaos” but provided Moscow with a vital new source of armaments and even personnel.
The Kremlin now routinely fires salvoes of Shaheds, now manufactured in a factory in Russia built with input from Iranian advisors, along with its own missiles in its attempts to terrorise civilian populations and destroy energy infrastructure in Ukraine.
Conversely, Western efforts to change Ukraine’s fortunes on the frontline have proved a mixed blessing. The provision to Kyiv of state-of-the-art armour and tanks, including British Challenger 2s, for a much-vaunted summer offensive in 2023 amounted to little after revamped Ukrainian forces failed to breach heavily-engineered Russian defences built in anticipation of the assault. The long-held belief that Western technology built for a Cold War-era land battle can overcome a less agile opponent has been shaken.
The war has also driven innovation in less obvious directions.
Both Ukrainian and Russian intelligence services are waging multi-dimensional clandestine campaigns, including using social media and dating sites such as TikTok and Tinder to gather information on the whereabouts of enemy forces and launch missile strikes.
The conflict has also reshaped how its military victims are treated. Ukraine has built special underground hospitals – part of a system of tiered medical facilities – some 10km from the frontlines to ensure the quickest and most advanced treatment can be administered to wounded troops as it seeks to maintain manning levels in its fighting units.
But it is also an innovation which speaks to another grim paradox of the Ukraine war – that for all it is being fought with the most advanced 21st-century weaponry available, it is also in many ways a repeat of the grinding, attritional conflicts of the century before.
Alexander Hill, professor of military history at Calgary University in Canada, argues that despite the massed ranks of precision weaponry and computerised battle spaces, the battlefields of Ukraine retain “many elements that would be easily understood by soldiers in the First World War”, not least of which is the reliance on front line infantry dug into trenches to conduct the vast bulk of often vicious combat.
Echoes of the Somme battlefields
Many of the weapons systems that turned the Somme countryside into killing fields, in particular artillery, remain key to the Ukraine war more than century later. Innovations such as surveillance drones are analogous with predecessor technologies such as the observation balloons which once directed gun fire in northern France.
It is in this context that Professor Hill argues too much emphasis should not be placed – at this stage at least – on the transformational nature in Ukraine of systems like autonomous drones which remain unproven. They are also likely to be vulnerable to “friendly-fire” incidents by failing to distinguish between the Soviet- weaponry used by both sides or indeed troops with similar equipment.
He said: “Autonomous drones would be likely to lead to far too many ‘friendly fire’ incidents and the deaths of far too many civilians. Currently often all that distinguishes between Russian and Ukrainian troops from a distance is different coloured tape used to distinguish friend from foe – hardly much for autonomous drones to work with.”
All of which highlights the fact that participation – in one way or another – in the Ukraine war is very far from being limited to the two combatant nations.
Lessons for Nato
It is a stark reality of the conflict that Ukraine’s territory is being used, in the words of one Nato intelligence source, as a “vast weapons laboratory” for interested parties from Washington and London to Tehran and Pyongyang to test weapons systems and tactics that have never been used in a war between industrialised nations.
Whether it be the elite North Korean units deployed this month to try to repel Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk or Britain’s Storm Shadow missiles and Iranian ballistic missiles, it is inescapably the case that allies on each side are gathering vital information about their own warfighting capabilities as Ukraine is torn asunder. As the source put it: “This war is an opportunity to see how systems and platforms never tested in anger actually function. The trick will be ensuring they then don’t have to be used in anger by ourselves”.
Indeed, there are those who argue that Nato countries including Britain in particular face a race against time to learn the lessons of the Ukrainian conflict and adapt their own forces lest war arrives on their own doorstep.
The Henry Jackson Society, a right-leaning UK think-tank, last month issued a report warning that the Ukraine war represents a “fundamental transformation of modern conflict” and the world stands on the brink of warfare driven as much by the ability to sift and manipulate data to lethal effect as the age-old metric bombs and bullets.
David Kirichenko, the report’s author, said: “Ultimately, the Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted the need for Nato countries to embrace and adapt to the technological advancements seen in Ukraine, many of which are emerging from off-the-shelf commercial technologies. Nato must prepare for the future of warfare, where the first large-scale drone war is rapidly transitioning into the first AI-driven war.”
This week marks 1,000 days of war in Ukraine. The i Paper has the stories you need to read to understand how we got here, what happens next – and what you can do.
How a Trump-Putin peace deal is sparking fear in Kyiv. Senior Kyiv official concedes that the President-Elect could force a harsh deal to end the war as a third of Ukrainians would now accept giving up land to Russia for peace. Click here to read
The seven ways Europe could step up to help Zelensky. Europe is facing growing questions over how far it can – and will – go to help Ukraine fight back. Click here to read
1,000 days of war in Ukraine – what’s happened and where we are now. Hundreds of thousand of Russians and Ukrainians have died since Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion in February. Click here to read
How to help Ukraine, from where to donate to hosting a refugee. Organisations continue to support Ukrainians – both in Ukraine and in the UK. Click here to read
Putin will never stop. Because he cannot. Putin won’t stop – the West cannot ditch Ukraine now. Click here to read
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