When Russia annexed Crimea and meddled in Ukraine’s Donets Basin, or Donbas, region in 2014, its military revealed new technology, organization and tactics—and upended much of the U.S. military’s thinking about modern warfare. Now, as Moscow keeps U.S. and European leaders guessing about whether it will invade Ukraine again, the Pentagon is pushing forward with projects that reflect priorities set after the onset of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Technologies currently in development include futuristic-sounding projects such as swarms of autonomous drones and a supercannon that can fire a projectile to a distance of 1,000 miles. And perhaps the most staggeringly ambitious campaign aims to combine existing radar and communications with state-of-the-art cloud computing and artificial intelligence in order to create an automated system that coordinates operations across multiple combat areas.
Many of these efforts can be traced back to a U.S. Army study of Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. During that incursion, Russia displayed an ability to expand the traditional battlefield through the use of cyberspace, electronic warfare and information weapons. The study determined that, in a future fight, Russia’s new capabilities could be paired with robotic weapons and long-range strikes involving high-precision missiles, including air- and space-launched attacks. The net effect, the report concluded, would leave the U.S. outmatched in several key areas, including armor, artillery, air defense, space and cyberspace. Catching up, the authors wrote, would require the U.S. to adapt to “new realities of the modern battlefield” or face defeat in a conventional fight—which could risk the cohesion of the NATO alliance and raise the possibility of nuclear conflict.
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