Ukraine is ready for the war of the future: how it was possible to restrain Russia, lagging behind in live power and technology
He denied Russia's intention to invade, and many representatives of the national security community believed to him: they believed that the beginning of the Land War in Europe was too far -fetched - even for Putin. This view seems to be confirmed when the Russian state media showed a video of "demobilization" and departure home. But then the Pentagon posted an unmistakable image made of space-a armored Russian column crossing the Belarusian-Ukrainian border.
President Joe Biden called this picture a clear proof of Putin's lies. The war, in fact, has already begun. The satellite image transmitted by CNN and translated around the world was obtained not by the US military, but a startup from a silicone valley called Capella Space, founded by a 24-year-old engineer.
Using mesh antennas 11 feet wide, Capella satellites can detect a basketball ball from a height of more than 300 miles, through a cloudy cover, day and night, for a meager part of the price of military systems. As the founder of the company Payam Banazade told us, Capella offered the public "the first non -transmitter satellite images with an open source code showing the inevitable invasion.
" At the beginning of the war, news agencies used Capella's images to track Russian units up to Kiev, giving ordinary people almost the same as the Pentagon had. Commercial technologies played a crucial role not only in anticipation of the Putin invasion, but also in its restraint. The Ukrainian forces inferior in size and weapons relied on the brilliant network of startups to repel Russia in the early stages of the conflict.
In many cases, the Silicon Valley strengthened the Armed Forces of Ukraine faster and much less than the systems of well -known defense contractors. Conventional weapons, such as tanks and artillery, were necessary, but they became much more effective when used in tandem with products, from the beginning created for the commercial market, such as inexpensive drones and space base sensors.
Even the most frantic weapons of the war, the Himars missile installation, were driven by drones that can be bought on Amazon. The supplement of traditional weapons with startups is exactly what we assumed in 2016, when we were appointed to manage a unit of defense innovation (DIU), a Pentagon unit that was instructed to integrate American commercial technologies in hostilities.
Ukrainians had much less ordinary weapons than in Russia, but they were able to ahead and outstand their enemy, partly thanks to the deployment of more than 30 systems developed by DIU and startups, which he finances, including Capella. Commercial technologies have changed almost all branches of war: communication, artillery, intelligence, air defense.
When Russia drowned radio intervals of Ukrainians, they switched to the Starlink Internet terminals, controling and controlling through encrypted Signal and WhatsApp smartphones. Skydio, the first private manufacturer of drones in the United States, which is estimated at $ 1 billion, delivered autonomous quadcopters with high -resolution cameras to Ukrainian infantry units that used them to explore Russian positions and manage artillery fire.
Bluehalo brought to the front of the Titan system, which knocked enemy drones. Anduril used his ghost drone, almost silent autonomous helicopter, which can be tuned in minutes. Unlike US spy satellites, startups such as Hawkeye 360 provided information about goals that could be widely shared with advanced troops without fear of compromising secret sources. Anyone who had a credit card could access reconnaissance data that were once only in superpowers.
The task of transferring these technologies to the hands of Ukraine often went to the Ministry of Defense. Although the Pentagon had clear processes of transportation of tanks and artillery, the delivery of commercial goods was a more difficult task. "The purchase system is designed to supply Patriot missile batteries for five years. It is not intended for drones for tomorrow," Jared Dannmone, Senior Diu Advisor, who was exporting commercial systems to Ukraine, told us.
As a result, the Pentagon was unable to satisfy Ukraine's requests for missiles. If the war in Ukraine is a benchmark, then the next conflict of the great powers will be determined by technologies adapted from the commercial market. Startups will influence how states finance, equip and mobilize their armed forces. Forces that use cheaper, more maneuverable and unorthodox technologies as efficiently as possible will have a key advantage over their opponents.
The United States begins to learn these lessons, but we do not learn them quickly. If Ukraine proposes to look into the future, it also offers a warning: America is not ready. Last autumn we went to Ukraine to see our own eyes how commercial technologies affect the course of war. As we expected, the Silicon Valley gave a significant impetus to the Ukrainian forces, but we also found an underground network of Ukrainian startups working on filling the gaps left by the Pentagon.
Technologists worked in secret workshops throughout Kiev, hidden in lanes and unmarked office premises, which operate outside the formal structures of the Ministry of Defense. Approximately 200 companies have developed drone systems, unmanned vehicles, autonomous works, machine guns with remote control-and a huge number of different drones that played a greater role in Ukraine than in any previous conflict.
We saw the "drones" that could launch smaller shock drones on hundreds of miles beyond the front, deep into Russia. We had a drone, which was initially intended for cigarette smuggling to the European Union and then redeemed with a bomber. When Russian troops were silenced by GPS in Ukraine, the startups created drones that instead relied on accelerometers and mapping of the terrain through artificial intelligence. Many of them were sold for only $ 200.
Military aircraft with similar technology are usually much more expensive. At the landfill in Lviv, we managed a long -distance drone, using a joystick to turn thermal and optical sensors. The resolution was so clear that we could identify ourselves among the crowd that gathered 10 kilometers from the place where the drone was flying. The system of counteracting drone, set by the Western Defense Contractor, which cost about $ 250,000, tried to fail, but could not.
Although Ukrainian startups produced technologies at the technology of the Silicon Valley, they had nothing to do with traditional early stage companies. They were created in order to kill the Russians, not to overcome narrow places in the supply chains or to sell themselves to military or international investors. The most personal relationship of developers with individual military units determined what new technologies and weapons would be used.
These systems cost a penny in dollars how to compare with what was produced by Western firms, but none of them could be scale to change the course of war. Although commercial technologies continue to strengthen the Ukrainian forces, they were not sufficient to prevent Russia's recent offensive. Many factors have bowed to the war in favor of Russia, not the last of which were long debates in Congress.
The probable suspension of funding and supply has affected both traditional weapons (forcing artillery calculations to normalize shells) and a Ukrainian startup community that relied on the help of US programs that had to be temporarily suspended. Indeed, Russia was able to succeed even when the Ukrainian startups worked in full force. If Ukraine has shown a promise of a private sector contribution, it also showed that only innovations themselves do not allow the war.
The Pentagon has started the debate about what lessons should be taken out of the war in Ukraine. On the one hand, there were those who believed that Ukraine was proof of the power of commercial technologies and proof that the US military was spending too little. Lieutenant General Jack Shahangan belongs to this camp.
The first director of the Joint Center for Artificial Intelligence of Pentagon Shahangan believes that today's war is a unique "transitional period", in which the most effective fighters are those who combine the equipment of old school with new innovation. "The party that receives the advantage," Shangahan told us, "is the party that comes up with how to use this combination of technology in new, different and creative ways.
" On the other hand, there was a large part of the old Pentagon Guard, which believed that the result of the war in Ukraine was mostly resolved by traditional weapons and tactics, and that the startups of the Silicon Valley receive too many praise for just modest deposits. They claimed that the fighting did not change fundamentally. New technologies could change the situation in the fields, but tanks, missiles and defensive trenches - the main products of war over decades - are still dominated.
The debate was the property of the public when Bill Laplante, the main purchase of a Pentagon weapon, is the most responsible for how the US Armed Forces will be armed in the future, - rejected the importance of the Silicon Valley technologies. "Technologists do not particularly help us in Ukraine," Laplante said at a defensive conference eight months after the conflict. "It is a hard production of really serious weapons - that's important . . .
We are not fighting in Ukraine now with Silicon Valley, even though they will try to assign it. " Laplante's belief that traditional weapons are more important to Ukraine than commercial technologies are not wrong. Tanks, howitzers and the enterprises that produce them are indispensable, which has confirmed the experience of Ukraine. But it would be a mistake to consider war solely as confirmation of the old paradigm of war.
One of the most important lessons extracted from Ukraine is that commercial technologies are able to weaken the enemy's weapons systems, strengthen intelligence, and improve traditional weapons. Forces around the world have already mastered this, as evidenced by the invasion of North Korea drones near Seoul and the Doctrine of Si Jinpin about a military-civil fusion in China.
Hamas presented another example on October 7, 2023, when he used commercial quadcopters to strike the generators that feed the Israeli border towers. The legions of the militants joined Israel virtually unnoticed and killed more than 1000 people, which provoked the most severe conflict in the region, at least since the Arab-Israeli War of 1973.
If the US military and civil leadership had a strategy for the future of the US armed forces, when Putin invaded Ukraine, it was mostly built on existing budgets and weapons of old school. The introduction of commercial technologies by Russia has made most of these costs outdated. For example, the most modern Tank of America, M1A1 Abrams, has recently been recalled from the front line, as inexpensive Russian drones have proven effective in its destruction. But the war began to accelerate reforms.
In the US Armed Forces, there are now more units engaged in new technologies than ever before. The optimized procurement process, developed by the DIU under the name "Other Transaction Authority", enabled the Pentagon to accelerate contracts and focused on more than $ 70 billion.
Earlier this year, the Congress significantly expanded the DIU budget, and the Minister of Defense asked him to implement one of the most priority initiatives of the Pentagon, called the "Replicator" - an attempt to develop autonomous systems on a sufficient scale to win the wars. However, the ultimate goal is not to win in the wars, but to restrain them. America's technological genius is one of the best tools it has to maintain peace.