EU Today presents an English translation of an opinion essay by General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a Ukrainian four-star general, former Commander-in-Chief (2021–2024), and since July 2024 Ukraine’s Ambassador to the UK. Writing in the context of DSEI 2025, he analyses the war’s shift toward positional attrition driven by drones, EW and emerging AI, and sets out priorities to regain technological initiative and strengthen counter-UAS defence. The views expressed are the author’s.

Visiting the DSEI-2025 international exhibition in London — one of the world’s largest defence and security industry events, where new technologies of warfare are on display — I involuntarily recalled the events of 2023, which for me were, if not fateful, then certainly defining.

Despite most exhibits still showcasing the weapons of the last war, it was encouraging to see Ukraine represented at a high level. Dozens of our companies presented genuinely innovative solutions which, in 2025 — unlike in 2023 — have attracted considerable interest not only from foreign manufacturers, who view developments through a business lens, but also from military professionals who, incidentally, are here largely from beyond Europe.

More interesting still, there are foreign developments that already take direct account of the experience of the Russian-Ukrainian war, especially in the fields of unmanned systems, electronic warfare (EW) and artificial intelligence. What has changed over these two years, and was I right when I wrote that today’s war would be so dynamic and technological? And, most importantly: is there now any understanding of what the situation will be in two years’ time?

My article in a well-known British publication in November 2023 was intended to prompt our partners to rethink contemporary forms of combat and to overhaul their own doctrines. In my view, we needed time to seize the technological initiative, something impossible to achieve alone in the absence of modern technologies. Our strategy of strategic defence for 2024 likewise required their support. Things unfolded differently. Yet, as I toured the exhibition, I realised I had been right in some respects.

A fundamental re-assessment of the summer offensive stemmed not only from a reaction to attempts to turn such a hard element of war into a reality show, where first our plans somehow reached Russia and then various pundits commented on the course of events online — many later sanctioned or put on wanted lists. I still feel the failure of those plans acutely. The key point, however, was to draw the lessons and immediately change strategy — a strategy that would allow survival in an entirely new kind of war.

What, then, did I write at the time, and what did I mean?

The First World War and its positional character broadly resembled the situation in autumn 2023. In positional warfare, with no open flanks, the only form of manoeuvre in the offensive is a frontal breach of defensive works, the depth of which — as artillery’s rate of fire, power and range increased — consisted of numerous echeloned, engineered defensive positions and lines.

The result was positional warfare: a relative lull along a sector of the front, where neither side can conduct offensive operations. This form of confrontation has specific features:

• a continuous front forms along the entire line of contact;

• positions are equipped with strong fortifications and a dense, complex system of engineering obstacles;

• the opponents are separated by a strip of territory — the so-called grey zone — which neither side controls;

• defensive positions include, beyond military facilities, infrastructure to accommodate large numbers over time (toilets and laundries, field hospitals, etc.).

This form was widespread in the First World War because the weapons and equipment of the period made defence far more effective than attack.

Defence was aided by numerous new technical means — heavy artillery, aviation, machine guns, mines and barbed wire. There were few equivalent offensive systems capable of breaking through. Only at the end of the First World War was the problem of breaking defensive lines partially solved; the problem of exploiting success remained unresolved. Mass use of fast tanks supported by strike aviation became possible only in the Second World War, breaking the positional deadlock.

Today, reviewing those days and my own materials, I maintain that the armed forces of both Russia and Ukraine indeed reached a positional impasse akin to that of the First World War.

In fact, from autumn 2022 on the Donetsk axis, hostilities gradually took on a positional character.

The “stasis” I described differed from fully fledged positional warfare. Despite the general stability of the line of contact, there was slow, sometimes local and sometimes broader, creeping movement — with disproportionate losses comparable to a “meat grinder” — unlike the sharp blows of manoeuvre armour.

Such local Russian advances occurred in the battles for Bakhmut and Avdiivka.

Unlike classic annihilation operations, the Russians employed a tactic of squeezing or forcing our units from occupied defensive positions. Except in Bakhmut, our forces rarely lost combat effectiveness.

Another feature of the positional deadlock is that the absence of a rapid breakthrough prevents the most effective form of manoeuvre — encirclement. The inability to suppress enemy air defences also precluded the airmobile actions so prominent in NATO doctrine.

The principal factor determining this stasis during our 2023 offensive was, above all, the classic insufficiency of forces and means within the groupings conducting the attack.

To break through such a front, one needs decisive superiority in forces and means at the point of rupture, as well as mobile reserves able to enter the breach quickly and reach operational depth before enemy reserves arrive for a counter-attack or a new defensive line is organised. For objective and subjective reasons, we could no longer generate such superiority on the eve of the offensive.

This shortfall arose primarily from the dispersal of already-prepared assault groupings to other directions, and from creating land components to conduct combat under other ministries and agencies which, consequently, were, to put it mildly, not fully ready for modern combat. Some commanders also failed to appreciate the importance of rotating capable units and preparing them specifically for offensive action.

There was an insufficient — at times absent — minimum level of armament in newly formed units, wholly dependent on our partners’ vision and capabilities. This led to a lack of prepared reserves for large-scale manoeuvre offensive operations and, as a result, to predominantly positional fighting across assault sectors.

The enemy, for its part, possessed extended defensive lines — multilayered and highly developed in engineering terms.

Decisive, however, was the high effectiveness of UAVs initially as tactical-level aerial reconnaissance, enabling the enemy to detect concentrations of our armour and personnel in real time and to redeploy reserves to expected axes of our strikes.

This also enabled highly effective target designation for precision strikes by rocket forces and artillery, achieved through the widespread use of reconnaissance drones in the tactical command chain to detect our actions and adjust fire.

Reconnaissance UAVs along the line of contact demonstrated that aerial reconnaissance could be conducted almost round the clock, including with night-vision devices. Their capabilities were likely supplemented by space-based reconnaissance and radar reconnaissance from airborne early warning and control platforms.

In due course, we acted similarly where we had the means. Conditions thus arose for the inevitable detection of any concentration of strike groups both near the line of contact and in the rear. This was compounded by long-range, precision and cluster strikes; the location of reserves revealed likely axes of attack. Achieving surprise in breaching defensive lines became virtually impossible.

One could object by citing the Kursk offensive. Such actions, if justified in terms of human losses and with limited objectives, can be conducted. In practice, however, an isolated tactical breach on a narrow front has not brought the attacker the required success. The defending forces used technological and tactical advantages to prevent a tactical breach from becoming an operational success and later themselves achieved local tactical gains — also without operational effect. I do not know the cost, but it was evidently very high.

In summary, the essence of the positional deadlock lies not only in the difficulty of breaching defensive lines; more importantly, it is the inability to complete operational tasks, including breaking out into operational depth.

Notably, the major conflicts of the early twenty-first century in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere did not end in positional deadlock, for two main reasons.

First, enemy forces were largely destroyed by stand-off air strikes and precision weapons — primarily air- and sea-launched cruise missiles — combined with manoeuvre by limited ground contingents.

Second, high-tech armed forces (e.g., those of the United States and NATO countries) faced a markedly weaker opponent, often the fragmented remnants of an organised army of Soviet vintage or irregular formations. In Russia’s war against Ukraine, for the first time in the twenty-first century, two high-tech militaries — thanks to our partners — have confronted each other with roughly comparable combat capabilities, albeit different in size and resources.

Our war shows that precision missiles are expended rapidly, large-scale air operations are constrained by air-defence systems, and, as in the Second World War, classic large-scale ground combat regains primacy.

So it was then. And then the notion of large-scale ground combat exposed another problem requiring a solution: mobilisation.

We shall address that below. The problem of positional warfare revealed another pattern. When war becomes positional, it drags on and carries major risks for the Armed Forces and the state as a whole. It benefits the enemy, which seeks to restore and build up its military power. This may have been the most important observation, indicating that successful conduct of hostilities would be at risk without a fundamental review of the strategy for preparing and waging war.

Accordingly, finding ways out of the positional deadlock offered a genuine chance of victory. What has happened over these two years, and have we found a way out of this dead end, which is predictably unacceptable for Ukraine in resource terms? Let us try to understand.

Although I realise I give my critics a chance to accuse me again of excessive study of Russia (which, they argue, is unacceptable during war), I shall side with the non-Russian Sun Tzu and study the enemy. Early in 2024, as the Armed Forces of Ukraine began a major reorganisation of the command system linked to changes in leadership, Russian military science launched wide-ranging work to find ways out of the positional deadlock. In debates across Russian academic platforms it was recognised that the core novelty in the conduct of hostilities in the so-called “special military operation” (SMO) was the extensive use of UAVs at the tactical level. To be fair, our strike-UAV companies had already been operating for nearly a year, though still in need of large numbers of drones. Russia, until then, viewed UAVs mainly as auxiliary tools for rocket forces and artillery.

By spring 2024, a year after us, the Russians noted the widespread use in the SMO of small FPV quadcopter-type drones piloted in first-person mode. Drones were employed en masse as carriers of improvised explosive devices weighing up to several kilograms, for dropping mines up to 120 mm or warheads from shells to hand-held anti-tank grenade launchers. They were also indispensable for delivering supplies and ammunition to the line of contact.

One possible route out of the deadlock they identified was the covert accumulation and subsequent mass use of small FPV drones and loitering munitions both to breach defensive lines and to destroy personnel, fortifications and armour in depth. Practical implementation soon raised doubts, as our EW systems continued to advance rapidly and in effect neutralised this advantage. This compelled Russia to develop new communications and control systems for these drones and loitering munitions. This gave our forces an opportunity to employ armour in offensive actions on the Kursk axis, where Western equipment, well protected by our EW, was able to make a leap onto enemy territory. That, however, triggered another response. To counter our armour and overcome EW, a new FPV type appeared in the summer — command signals transmitted not by radio but via tethered wires — opening a new phase of counter-measures and new challenges in the positional deadlock.

All this has shaped infantry tactics — the arm that bears the main burden of war.

Infantry has become hostage and victim to the proliferation of drones of various types in the so-called lower sky. As a result, the battlefield has become fully transparent, depriving combat of manoeuvre. This links directly to “mobilisation”, because the front must be manned.

The current picture of combat rests on the fact that large concentrations of personnel are impossible even in defence. Any increase in numbers on positions leads to their immediate destruction by FPV or artillery, cued by UAVs. Defence is therefore built on dispersed positions held by relatively small groups forced to act autonomously for periods under extremely harsh conditions. Another fact: the kill zone of both strike UAVs and cooperating artillery is constantly expanding. The recent strikes on civilian vehicles on the Sloviansk–Izium and Sloviansk–Barvinkove roads confirm that the zone of precise engagement is growing. This not only disrupts logistics but also erodes the very notion of a rear: traditional locations less than 40 kilometres behind the line can no longer be used due to constant enemy fire control. Defence is thus transforming from active positional holding with interaction between first and second echelons, reserves and fire assets, to the survival of small groups under sustained pressure from stand-off reconnaissance-strike means and waves of small infantry groups.

As a result, defence built in this way blurs the seemingly continuous forward edge and sometimes leads to uncertainty about the exact delineation of our positions. Russia has exploited this with another means to break the positional impasse: infiltration — the penetration of individual soldiers and small infantry groups into our depth through gaps in our dispositions. We saw this clearly at the Dobropillia salient, in Pokrovsk and now near Kupiansk.

The same applies to attackers. Unable to mass large numbers for assault, the enemy literally saturates our positions with attacks by small assault groups. Most such attacks fail and lead to losses among the attackers. According to one prisoner of war, there are eight unsuccessful attacks for every successful one. All entail heavy personnel losses. Yet through these attacks the enemy exposes our positions, fire assets and observation posts, destroys them, forces us to expend ammunition and medical supplies, and wears down our defenders morally and physically.

According to that prisoner, Russian assaults continue after failure as long as they have personnel. Sooner or later, given their ability to interdict our logistics by UAVs, this leads to the loss of positions by our units, changes the configuration of the line of contact and threatens other positions. Thus, through this tactic of saturating our lines with numerous small-group assaults, the front moves — regrettably, in our direction.

Re-levelling the front and recapturing positions likewise occurs through assault units in much the same way, leading to the natural “attrition” of these units with the predictable results described above and without prospects of a deep breakthrough.

Another theoretically restraining factor is the timely detection of the enemy and timely fire response via UAVs. Yet launch sites and operators have already become priority targets.

In sum, purely on the battlefield a positional deadlock does exist, with characteristic features, but there is a persistent trend towards Russia finding ways out of it.

Until a method is found to break the deadlock, and while Russia has sufficient manpower to “saturate” our positions and to infiltrate, it will continue to wear our forces down physically, combining assaults with inflicting maximum losses. In its strategy of attrition, such losses are knowingly accepted: operations are conducted to ensure a level of casualties that becomes unacceptable for us, while maintaining constant social pressure, including through tougher mobilisation measures. Systematic depletion of forces and means will, sooner or later, lead to the complete “burn-out” of the defenders. A possible battlefield route out of the deadlock, as Russia sees it, is to clear the “near sky” used by tactical-level drones.

All this compels us to prioritise counter-UAV measures at the tactical level to preserve the lives and health of personnel operating both on and beyond the line of contact. The transparent battlefield created by thousands of drones and sensors has already formed a kill zone of more than 20 kilometres with a high probability of engagement, where every heat signature, radio emission or unnecessary movement triggers an immediate response aimed at destruction. Death, injury or psychological breakdown are, in effect, inevitable outcomes of prolonged exposure at the forward edge under current conditions. This is today’s reality, known both to those who persistently evade mobilisation and to those who, having hunted “Shaheds” yesterday, now await their fate in an SZCh unit or a reserve battalion.

Worse, further deterioration is likely. Advances in artificial intelligence will bring first semi-autonomous and then fully autonomous strike systems, creating a qualitatively new level of threat to humans on the battlefield.

One hypothetical response is to remove humans from the line of contact and replace them with robotic systems. That would evidently reduce personnel losses from strike drones and reconnaissance-fire complexes. However, the absence of requisite technologies and the current state of unmanned and autonomous systems do not yet allow human substitution at scale.

Moreover, the imposed tactic of saturating with assaults still requires trained personnel to hold positions, albeit not in large numbers. The only solution today is to develop as quickly as possible the means and systems that increase personnel survivability. This links directly to mobilisation and training. It is a difficult task: not only to design and scale the needed technological solutions, but to overhaul methods of employment and, consequently, the structure of the Armed Forces in the area of counter-drone defence. Previously, protection focused on threats from artillery, aviation and small arms, even weapons of mass destruction — all posing constant risks of physical injury or death. We now need a system to counter a new threat in a new kind of war: drones. They have become the principal cause of personnel losses and thus a key determinant of combat outcomes. Today, strike UAVs account for almost 80% of losses in personnel and equipment. Protective measures of the previous era — fortifications, armour on fighting vehicles, even individual body armour — are negated by the scale, lethality and precision of modern drones. This also calls into question training for combat, where human performance cannot match the reaction speed and accuracy of a robotic system guided by AI.

While Russia exploits technologies and throws more and more personnel at our positions, imposing this tactic, we need another path — a reliable instrument to curb the killing power of new weapons.

To find such protection we must first understand the nature of technological development and anticipate future challenges.

The “digital operation” I mentioned in 2023 should be understood as viewing the modern battlefield as an integrated network of cyber-physical systems. Unmanned and robotic systems are linked through sensors and supporting command-and-control infrastructure to software. In this digital space, mechanical systems (today, UAVs and robotic platforms) are integrated with software control to provide situational awareness, coordination and real-time execution of tasks.

At present it is clear this cyber-physical system functions through a network of devices that collect and transmit visual, acoustic, seismic and other data to command posts or intermediate processing systems, and that execute actions on command.

All of this depends on communications networks — still one of the principal vulnerabilities on a modern high-tech battlefield.

Because communications are vulnerable, autonomous systems will develop, with most information processing, situational analysis and decision-making occurring on-board. Intervention from central command would be reserved for exceptional or non-standard situations. Such systems may be capable not only of effective strike tasks but also of reliable protection.

To realise this, several key problems must be addressed at state level:

1. Create a clear strategy and mechanisms for developing advanced defence technologies at national level. Using the example of nuclear-energy build-out, this strategy should cover the state approach to research support, production and operation, with clear allocation of responsibility. It should be preceded by a dedicated state research programme in advanced defence technologies.

2. Mobilise sufficient specialists, above all in software solutions, to develop, implement, integrate and support these systems. War complicates matters, but many such specialists are already in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and could enhance our scientific potential.

3. Resolve access to microprocessors (chips). This is the most complex issue, creating significant geopolitical risks to stable, open supply of critical components, as key manufacturing capacity remains concentrated in a limited number of regions — chiefly China, Taiwan and the United States.

4. Use currently available defence-technology exports to form security alliances and leverage partners’ technological and scientific capabilities.

5. Ensure full scientific and technological isolation of Russia while focusing on Western scientific and research potential, particularly institutions with unique capabilities such as CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Ukraine’s victory today means depriving Russia of the ability to impose its terms through war. This is the minimum programme for survival.

State resilience in a war of attrition depends entirely on the situation at the front, even though forms and methods of combat have changed fundamentally. The front’s situation, in turn, depends on many factors, the principal one being technological development, which changes daily with a clear trend. Rapid mastery of these technologies, their practical testing and scaling will allow us to adapt to new conditions and leave the positional deadlock before our adversary does. Only by implementing military innovations can Ukraine compensate for traditional resource shortfalls and inflict disproportionate losses on Russia. Russia also understands this and is already taking steps we can feel.

Ukraine’s advantage lies in its people, who not only stopped the enemy but have already turned the country into a centre of battlefield innovation.

It is evident that innovation will underpin a strategy of sustained resistance amid, if not permanent war, then constant hostility. This will allow us to survive, adapt and prevail without illusions, rendering war operationally pointless for Russia.

To achieve this, it is crucial to seize back and retain the technological initiative, forcing Russia to adapt, endure pressure and defend itself.

First published on zn.ua.