The war in Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people. It has also served as a testing ground for new weapons systems and raised an uncomfortable question for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO): is the Alliance ready for the next war it may have to fight? Events on the battlefield are evolving so quickly that some NATO weapons and tactics risk becoming obsolete, five Ukrainian and Western military officials told Reuters.
The report noted that while Ukraine - which is not a member of the alliance - adapts within weeks, NATO takes years, sometimes decades, to acquire and develop systems.
The article added that the war in Ukraine and U.S. President Donald Trump's criticism of European allies have prompted many NATO members to sharply increase their defense spending.
The Pentagon is currently reviewing its military presence in European countries that Trump accused of "free-riding" from American defense and refuse to cooperate in its unpopular war against Iran.
Europe continues to spend significant amounts of money on tanks, equipment that many military analysts say will continue to play a key role in future battles.
In addition, cheap drones have changed the nature of warfare in other ways; troops massing in groups or large convoys of vehicles become much easier targets.
In June of this year, the agency visited NATO military exercises near Paldiski, Estonia, a small Baltic state that is currently strengthening its 210-mile (338 km) border with Russia.
During these exercises, American and European soldiers treated dozens of "casualties" (simulated cases) in field hospitals set up to simulate war. But the exercises were conducted under the assumption that NATO would control the airspace over hospitals, an assumption that can no longer be taken for granted in the era of cheap, hard-to-detect long-range drones.
Rather than simply receiving training and assistance from NATO, Ukrainian officials stressed Ukraine’s growing role in sharing with the alliance the experience and lessons learned from the war with Russia.
At the same time, they noted that NATO’s military bureaucracy is having difficulty fully absorbing those lessons.
In particular, a Ukrainian officer who received NATO psychological operations training in Romania told Reuters that some of the alliance’s training materials are still based on examples from World War II.
The war in Ukraine has also exposed a vulnerability that NATO officials say is much harder to fix: anti-aircraft and anti-missile defenses. defense.
The continued missile strikes by Russian forces on Ukrainian cities have highlighted Europe's dependence on modern American missile defense systems, such as the Patriot, which was first used during the 1991 Gulf War.
Ukraine is facing an acute shortage of interceptor missiles for the Patriot systems - the munitions fired to destroy approaching threats.
The publication states that due to concerns that dependence on the Patriot systems could become a strategic vulnerability, Europe is developing non-American alternatives.
Ukraine is awaiting the delivery of the new Franco-Italian SAMP/T-NG air defense system, designed to intercept ballistic missiles.
France has promised to accelerate its deployment in Ukraine, and European diplomats previously told the agency that the system's arrival is expected by next spring. The article notes that in a statement, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that Ukrainian and NATO troops have much to learn from each other.
The ministry described Ukraine's use of drones and electronic warfare systems as "unparalleled on a global scale" and praised Europe's efforts to help counter Russian drone and missile attacks.
Source: news.bg