There’s been some late Cold War nuclear saber rattling from Russia, starting when they understood what a horrible mistake they’d made in attacking Ukraine. Nukes have always been something to have, not something to use. Russia’s (mis)adventure in Ukraine is proliferating precision strike capabilities, which is another major change in military affairs in the last four years.
As we saw in Drone Doctrine Deficit last spring, the primacy of the maneuver warfare that immediately preceded the Cold War is dying at the hands of drones trailing fiber optic cable. We are back to a world of grinding defensive encounters that evoke World War I’s Passchendaele, not Barbarossa or the relief of Bastonge.
The proliferation of precision strike glide bombs is something that I’ve observed via Suchomimus on YouTube, but not appreciated strategically. This is NOT about Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile, which presumably has a seven digit cost similar to western counterparts. The U.S. Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) kits cost just $20k - $40k and permit us to deliver 500 to 2,000 pound Cold War era dumb bombs with great precision and HIMARS like distances.
So the point here is that, once you can get strike aircraft operating near the front lines and near their service ceiling, you can drop the hammer deep inside your opponent’s rear area, without spending a fortune to do so.
Here is some background I asked a retired intelligence professional for two months after the Ukrainian invasion. The source was a senior NATO officer and the query was in regard to how we would respond to a tactical nuclear weapon usage.
That said, using a nuke is game-changing and think there will be a demand for action. In my experience in military circles around campfires around the world, when this subject comes up, we tend to discuss global strike options with precision conventional weapons; SOF and intel ops. We do not need to use nukes because we can achieve a precise effect through other means.
The Network Effect:
The contact between two opposing forces is another network analysis problem. There are a wide variety of ways to project force, everything from drone dropped 40mm grenades to hypersonic missiles that swiftly, but fairly inaccurately bypass air defenses. When the west introduced just a half dozen HIMARS launchers to the Ukraine conflict network, the Russian advance, that had already been dramatically slowed by the Javelin and other man portable ATGMs, ground to a halt.
The glide bomb is not the sort of precision mentioned above, the deep strike to punish tactical nuke usage, it’s a thing for just a bit behind the point of contact. The effect is that it thins what can be done along that line of contact. There’s less ammo, less fuel, less armor, and fewer troops at the front when concentrations get smashed as soon as they are detected.
That thinning has become quite visible in the Suchomimus coverage. The armored battalion sized attacks are years in the past and the light vehicle swarms that replaced them are fading, too. This fall the talk is of infiltration units - the Russians are reduced to squad sized elements on foot if they seek to advance. There was even a recent report of a unit sent out to crawl through a sewer pipe to access a contested village. When armored personnel carriers give way to knee pads, what nation state is going to accept the attendant losses?
Assuming Trump really was announcing a policy change in his meeting with Zelenskyy yesterday, Russia’s grasp of the strategic situation is slipping badly. Ukrainian fortitude and ingenuity are prevailing. Russia has been testing NATO’s patience during the Zapad 25 exercises. If the U.S. will stand with our allies, even shakily, I don’t think Putin will dare grasp for the Baltics or try to link up with Kalinigrad.
I usually have a section labeled Conclusion: but that’s just not appropriate here, I don’t think any entity that can DO something about what is happening has internalized all the changes pouring out of the Ukraine conflict.
Can you enumerate Nazi Germany’s contributions to the art of war, even as they were so obviously losing? Cruise missiles. Ballistic missiles. Jet propelled bombers and interceptors. Shoulder fired anti-tank weapons. Shoulder fired anti-aircraft rockets. Assault rifles. I’m sure I’m missing many lesser changes, those are the big ones. The Russo-Ukrainian war is delivering a similar burst of innovation.
And what this means when the nuclear genie is now spreading to the more capable NATO members and there’s a Saudi/Pakistani defensive arrangement? *shrug*
The only thing that’s certain here is that this does NOT contribute to climate change remediation.