War in Ukraine will change approaches to weapons in future wars - Pentagon
The war in Ukraine has shown the importance of using relatively cheap and oversized equipment. This will affect future wars around the world.
This was stated by Deputy Pentagon Chief of Staff Kathleen Hicks, Censor.NET reports citing Voice of America.
"Future full-scale warfare is likely to be characterised by a mix of means: large, expensive, sophisticated systems working with many more small, smart, cheap systems used en masse," Hicks said.
She noted that initially, the new tools and concepts used in Ukraine seemed to be "a minor adaptation made possible by the global spread of commercial technology". "Over time, they have become larger-scale changes embedded in the conduct of warfare. And these trends are bound to reverberate in future wars, at least for the next generation," Hicks added.
She noted that while manufacturers argue about the importance of one weapon or another, "the reality is that both are important."
"We need both unmanned systems and 155mm artillery rounds. We need both in large quantities," the official added.
The US deputy defence secretary stressed that the combination of old and new technologies in Ukraine, such as small drones that allow real-time artillery adjustments, "is also a broader trend" that the world will obviously see in future wars.
"The best armies will master both. And the one that will likely have the greatest advantage is the one that can combine existing and new capabilities to most effectively achieve its operational objectives," Hicks said. She noted that the United States "will continue to adapt" as "competitors and adversaries do the same."
According to Hicks, one of these challenges is solved by the US Department of Defence's "Replicator" initiative, one of the areas of which is to strengthen countering the threat of small drones.
At the same time, she added that the Russian-Ukrainian war once again confirms that technologies, both old and modern, are rarely decisive in themselves: "For example, we have repeatedly seen Russia launching joint fire strikes in an attempt to seize Ukrainian territory. This alone did not work, even when they spent their best ammunition... Make no mistake: seizing and holding territory still requires capable ground forces."
