What Ukraine Tells Us About the Future of War
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 3 August 2023
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over the past eighteen months, Ukraine has served as the stage for a proxy battle between superpowers, with the invading Russians on one side and a U.S.-led coalition of Western allies backing Ukraine on the other. As such, it’s the closest thing we’ve yet seen to what many military strategists believe will be the defining challenge of the next strategic era: a near-peer conflict between two or more technologically sophisticated major powers. In this way, the conflict has served as a canary in the coal mine for new military trends, tactics, and technologies that may soon be brought to bear against the West (or by it).
Last month, Shashank Joshi, the Defence Editor for The Economist, published a special report in The Economist outlining what lessons military leaders in the West are taking away from the Ukraine conflict as they prepare their own militaries for their next fight. He sat down with Lawfare Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson to talk over his findings and what Ukraine can tell us about the future of war.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the law |
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| 0:21.0 | offerings, rational security, chatter, law fair no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:29.0 | First of all, around 86% of all Ukrainian targets arrived from drones, according to the data that I've seen. |
| 0:41.0 | And that is remarkable, right? Not by aircraft, not by soldiers on the ground, not by forward observation, but by drones. |
| 0:48.0 | So it's a sheer volume of targets. The second point is it's the speed of striking. |
| 0:54.0 | What we call the kill chain, the time from identifying a target to effectively striking it. |
| 0:59.0 | If you look it in the first six months of the war, Russian artillery units that didn't have their own drones took around |
| 1:06.0 | half an hour and were not very accurate. Those that did have their own drones could strike targets within three to five minutes. |
| 1:12.0 | And more broadly, we're seeing that kill chain time go down to a couple of minutes. |
| 1:17.0 | I'm Scott R. Anderson and this is the law fair podcast for August 3rd, 2023. |
| 1:22.0 | Over the past 18 months, Ukraine has served as the stage for a proxy battle between superpowers, |
| 1:29.0 | with the invading Russians on one side and a US-led coalition of Western allies backing Ukraine on the other. |
| 1:35.0 | As such, it is the closest thing we've yet seen to what many military strategists believe will be the defining |
| 1:41.0 | challenge of the next strategic era, a near-peer conflict between two or more technologically sophisticated major powers. |
| 1:49.0 | In this way, the conflict has served as a canary in the coal mine for new military trends, tactics and technologies |
| 1:56.0 | that may soon be brought to bear against the West or buy it. |
| 2:00.0 | Last month, Shashankyoshi, the Defense Editor for the Economist, published a special report in the Economist |
| 2:06.0 | outlining what lessons military leaders in the West are taking away from the Ukraine conflict as they prepare for their own militaries for the next fight. |
| 2:14.0 | He joined me on today's episode to talk over his findings and what Ukraine can tell us about the future of war. |
| 2:20.0 | It's the law fair podcast for August 3rd, what Ukraine tells us about the future of war with Shashankyoshi. |
... |
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