The added dangers of fighting in Ukraine when everything is visible
For centuries the “fog of war”, the inability to see through the confusion of combat, has been a given. No longer. The front lines in the war between Russia and Ukraine are now saturated with surveillance drones livestreaming video footage in real time. Everyone can see pretty much everything. Armies are having to work out how to fight on what is being called the transparent battlefield.
The surveillance is layered. Orbiting satellites scan the Earth from space. Tactical drones have ranges of 200km or more. Smaller surveillance drones relay sightings to the operators of first-person view drones (FPVs), which carry a small munition to attack soldiers on the ground. Add a thermal-imaging camera and soldiers can also be spotted at night.
“Darwin”, an FPV operator in Ukraine’s 92nd Brigade, says the changes that the drones have wrought are colossal. Three years ago, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, a drone team could operate in open fields. Now they hide in the woods and don’t leave their positions during the day. “Before, operations could be carefully planned,” he says. “Now every mission is a lottery, you can be lucky or unlucky.”
Reconnaissance and foot patrols from forward positions have virtually ceased and it is increasingly perilous to evacuate the wounded or retrieve the dead. Infantry avoid gathering in large groups. Open ground is a killing zone, speed the only protection. Soldiers use quadbikes and motorcycles to outrun the reaction time of an FPV operator. And though it is impossible to move, it is also dangerous to stay in one place. Fortified trench systems are obvious targets. Armoured vehicles have been virtually neutralised. “When a tank appears it’s like dropping a plate of food in front of a table of hungry drone operators,” says Darwin.
To disrupt the omnipresent drones, Russians and Ukrainians are engaged in an electronic-warfare arms race. Operating in a village or a town means cellphone signals can be disguised in the welter of civilian connections. In the field, soldiers limit their use of phones to avoid creating an obvious cluster. Radios are adjusted to send weaker signals that can be picked up only over short distances. Soldiers cover themselves with “multi-spectral” camouflage nets to block heat signatures: invisibility cloaks against thermal cameras.
Bad weather and night afford some protection. Wind and rain hamper drone flight, cloud and fog reduce visibility. It’s harder to orient a drone in the dark, says Darwin. Thermal cameras can see soldiers at night, but not at any great distance.
Long-standing tactics have been upended. “One of the most obvious”, says Glib Voloskyi, an analyst for Come Back Alive, one of the largest volunteer organisations raising money to donate equipment to the Ukrainian armed forces, “is that it’s hard to achieve surprise.” It is also almost impossible to achieve local force superiority: to gather and concentrate troops for an attack. The lethality of fire is greater because targets are easily identified, and artillery adjustments can be made quickly. The transparent battlefield gives the defender the advantage. “Offensive operations,” says Mr Voloskyi, “are a really nasty business.”
Infantry now operate in small groups, which are harder to spot. The Russians have been able to make advances in recent months by sending handfuls of soldiers forward to gain a foothold. Most are picked off by the drones; this incremental nibbling, says Mr Voloskyi, is working in part because the Russian tolerance for casualties is high and refuseniks are shot.
AI is being used to analyse surveillance data and cross-reference it with signals intelligence and open-source information, like Russian soldiers’ social-media posts, which can reveal their positions. But object-recognition software is in the early stages. Mr Voloskyi says AI can generate false signals, muddling the picture, “and this might actually decrease transparency”. There is a difference, he points out, between seeing something and understanding what you are looking at. Last summer the Russians saw the Ukrainian build-up of troops in the Sumy area, but never imagined they would attack across the border into the Kursk region. “That’s the problem with transparency,” says Mr Voloskyi. “You can see actions, but you don’t necessarily correctly interpret them.” ■
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