The Ukraine crisis was the most important event in the field of international security to have occurred in the past year. Despite many academic studies, the focus on this event is unevenly distributed: While there are many strategic-level discussions, research on the level of combat operations remains rather insufficient. The following article attempts to examine this crisis based on the evolution of forms of warfare (战争形态) so as to analyze the possibilities of future warfare.

Every country has its military forces. The purpose of the military is to engage in combat, and the direction of building the military is to prepare for future warfare. However, the evolution of warfare is not linear. Instead, it advances by leaps and bounds. Future wars never simply repeat the last war. Therefore, every outbreak of war receives a high level of attention from the defense community. Countries take advantage of every war to judge the direction of how war progresses and make military-building plans based on their specific conditions. The Ukraine crisis involves the extensive application of new types of weapons and equipment and the participation of nuclear powers, and it remains a typical proxy war. It is also a war in which military operations are closely coordinated with economic and financial sanctions and countersanctions. From a research point of view, it is a very good specimen, providing considerable insights into military strategy, combat operations, and military construction.

I. The Ukraine Crisis is a Contest between Two Forms of War

The greatest impression people get from the Ukraine crisis is that the war’s progress went far beyond expectations. The Russian army did not continue to build on its strong and sweeping momentum from the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict and the 2015 Syrian invasion, but became mired in a quagmire on the Ukrainian battlefield. The Ukrainian army reversed its image of weakness from the Crimea incident in 2014. It not only checked the Russian offensive, but also launched frequent counterattacks. This can be explained by many factors, but from the operational point of view, it is because this war is a contest between two forms of warfare, mechanized warfare and information warfare. Mechanized warfare is centered on platforms, with aircraft, tanks, and artillery all fighting independently. It features tremendous destructive power but insufficient operational efficiency. The core of information warfare is systematic warfare (体系化作战), which integrates various units and platforms into a whole. It excels in providing a clear battlefield overview, strong joint connectivity, and precision strikes. Both Russian and Ukrainian forces show qualities of mechanized warfare and information warfare, but it must be acknowledged that Ukraine’s combat philosophy, combat methods, and military organizations lean closer to information warfare. Although Russia is considered to be the second most powerful military power, it did not put many high-end weapons and equipment into the battlefield. Its combat philosophy and fighting style still retain deep marks of mechanized warfare. Looking at Russia’s military strategy, one may even have déjà vu of panzer group and deep battle strategies used in the Second World War.

On April 14, 2022, the Russian cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, sank. There are different theories as to what caused it to sink, but one common theory is that it was sunk by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles. The cruiser Moskva was 186 meters long and had a full-load displacement of more than 10,000 tons. To sink the ship, the two missiles would have to strike its critical parts. According to reports, the missiles of the Ukrainian army did hit such critical parts. One missile had hit the engine, causing the cruiser to lose its power; and the other had hit the ship’s magazine, causing it to detonate. In the early morning on January 1, 2023, Ukraine fired six HIMARS rockets and launched a surprise attack on a temporary garrison in the town of Makiivka in the eastern Ukrainian area controlled by Russia. Russia reported that the attack killed 89 Russian troops, but Ukraine claimed that a total of about 400 Russian troops were killed with 300 more injured. This raid was also carried out with precise accuracy. What enables Ukraine to have carried out strikes with such precision? It is believed that this was done using cell phone signals, especially since so many new recruits were using their cell phones at the same time at the start of the new year. These two events reveal that the Ukrainian army, with the support of NATO, possesses powerful capabilities in detection and surveillance, intelligence transmission, command and control, and precision strikes. Namely, their capabilities in carrying out systematic warfare: quickly identify targets—seize the window of opportunity—deploy combat troops—implement precision strikes. Although the Russian army has also carried out powerful strikes on important military targets in Ukraine, overall, their degree of precision and combat effectiveness are relatively poor, and there is a lack of coordination among various units, between air and ground forces, and between combat and logistics forces.

II. Cheap Weapons are Playing an Important Role

For thousands of years, combat platforms have always been the focus of building the military. The bigger the platform, the better; the more complete its functions, the better; and the more advanced the equipment, the better. Guided by this thinking, aircraft carriers, cruisers, multi-purpose fighter jets, bombers, and advanced tanks have become the targets pursued by major powers, while their prices have also been steadily rising. The Ford Class aircraft carrier of the United States cost $13 billion U.S. dollars, each B2 stealth bomber costs $2.4 billion, and each M1A2 SEP main battle tank costs $8.5 million. However, in the context of systematized combat, the efficiency of cheap weapons is multiplied, and expensive combat platforms may be destroyed with a single blow. During the Ukraine crisis, the combat efficiency of the three cheap weapons has been astonishing, leaving a deep impression on observers.

The first is Javelin, a single-person shoulder-fired anti-tank missile. This missile is easy to carry and operate. It can be called an “idiot-proof” missile because it can be launched with only simple training. After the target tank enters its range, one only needs to aim at the tank’s general direction and pull the trigger. After the missile is launched, one can just leave it be. It is not only self-powered, but also can automatically find the target with an extremely high hit rate. A considerable number of Russian tanks were destroyed by Ukrainian Javelin anti-tank missiles.

The second is the single-person shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missile. Its size and mechanism are similar to those of the Javelin anti-tank missile, except that it is used to attack aircraft. It has been proven to be able to shoot down the Russian Su-25 attack aircraft, Su-34 fighter, and even the Su-35 fighter. The Su-25 attack aircraft is equipped with 24mm titanium alloy bulletproof steel plates on the bottom and sides, giving it strong survivability. Although it is known as an “air tank,” it still cannot withstand the strikes by Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Many people were surprised that the Russian army was never able to seize air supremacy over Ukraine. One important reason for this is that the Stinger missiles gave a great deal of trouble to Russian air forces, especially when Russian combat aircraft would fly at low altitudes.

The third is the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The Ukraine crisis can be considered the war that involves the most UAVs in history, and both sides have deployed UAVs in large numbers. The most typical case happened over Snake Island in the Black Sea, where a TB2 UAV from the Ukrainian military destroyed a Russian Mi-8 helicopter, while a second UAV recorded the entire event. This was likely the first time in human history that a UAV shot down a manned aircraft.

In terms of value, the price of one Javelin missile is several tens of thousands of U.S. dollars, the price of one Stinger missile is only $100,000, and many drones cost only a few thousand dollars each. However, the tanks they have destroyed are worth hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and the helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft they have shot down are worth millions to tens of millions of dollars. This gives them an extremely high cost-benefit ratio. This shows that, under the system of information warfare, the significance of cheap weapons embedded in the system has risen rapidly, while the problem of defending combat platforms has become more pronounced. This trend will have a massive impact on military building of various countries.

III. Proxy Warfare has Entered a New Stage

The Ukraine crisis is a classic proxy war, with Russia on one side and NATO on the other. Ukraine is the country that provides the manpower and land for war, while basically everything else needed for the war, including weapons and equipment, military training, and financial support, are provided by NATO led by the United States. NATO reconnaissance aircraft fly dozens of sorties over Poland, Romania, and the Black Sea every day. Together with satellite surveillance, maritime reconnaissance, and human intelligence, they provide a steady stream of battlefield intelligence to Ukraine. Of even greater note, at the start of the crisis, the United States and the West imposed unprecedented economic and financial sanctions on Russia and persistently kept Russia in diplomatic isolation.

There is no doubt that the Ukraine crisis has greatly expanded the proxy war in both its breadth and depth. Ukraine was formerly a republic of the Soviet Union, and its weapons and equipment, combat philosophy, and command and control systems were all Soviet-style. When the Crimea incident erupted in 2014, the Ukrainian military system was no different from that of the Russian military in many respects. However, in the short period of only eight years that followed, Ukraine has transitioned its military from the Soviet-style system to the NATO system to a great extent, and it has been carried out in a rapid pace as well. The performance of the Ukrainian military in the Ukraine crisis has shown the outstanding result of this transformation. This reveals a very cruel reality. Namely, as long as the U.S.-NATO group provides sufficient weapons and equipment, military training, and intelligence support, supplemented by economic and financial sanctions and diplomatic isolation of the opponent, it can provide sufficient support for a weak force to battle a strong opponent in a very short period of time. This may change the future geopolitical environment and even the international strategic landscape to a great extent.

IV. Civilian Technologies are Widely Used in Warfare

In the Ukraine crisis, commercial technology has made a deep impression on observers, the most well-known being Elon Musk’s Starlink system. In the early stage of the conflict, many people were questioning why Russia did not destroy Ukraine’s command and control system. In fact, though the Russian military did have this option at first, the involvement of the Starlink system made this a much more complicated issue. First, the Starlink system has thousands of satellites, so it is impossible to destroy them all. Second, if Russia truly wanted to attack the Starlink system, it would be tantamount to declaring war on the United States, and the scale of war would expand dramatically. Finally, attacking the Starlink system would also mean expanding of the war into space, while space warfare is an important symbol of war escalation.

UAVs are also an important example. Both Russia and Ukraine have modified commercial UAVs and added necessary military equipment so that they can be used on the battlefield for aerial reconnaissance, relay communication, artillery range correction, and even firepower strikes. Civilian UAVs and military UAVs are no longer readily distinguishable.

With the increasing commercialization of civilian technologies, the boundaries between civilian technology and military technology are becoming increasingly blurred, the extension of civilian technology to the battlefield is inevitable, and the composition of warfare is becoming more complex. This will have an important impact on the international security situation. More and more countries can easily obtain technologies and equipment from the international commercial market and use them in combat immediately or only with slight modifications. This has a huge impact on the balance of power between the two sides in a war. It will be even more problematic if an international terrorist organization intervenes. A terrorist can spend a few thousand dollars to buy a simple drone, load it with a bomb, and then drop the bomb on a high-value target to produce a horrific terrorist attack.

In short, with the rapid advancement of science and technology and changes in the geopolitical environment, the forms of warfare are undergoing significant changes. To a certain extent, the Ukraine crisis is symptomatic of these changes, and it also pushes the evolution of war forms toward deeper dimensions. We should stand at the forefront of the military revolution, keenly observe these changes, and discern the possibilities of future warfare.