Learning lessons from Ukraine: Mass still critical to success

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shattered many long-held, post-Cold War myths, whether it was the unrestricted liberalisation of the global economy, the ultimate triumph of liberal democracy over autocratic systems or the “End of History” as championed by US academic Francis Fukuyama in the widespread elation that swept across the Western World for much of the early post-Cold War years.

Fast forward to today and we now know that those heady days of optimism have been replaced by an overwhelming sense of hubris as autocratic nations across the globe are on the march in the face of a retreating post-Second World War economic, political, and strategic order.

An equally important part of this fraying world order is the declining economic, political, and strategic capacity and resolve of the world’s established great powers, whether the United States, United Kingdom, Japan or Germany.

This evolution in the global balance of power has also seen a shift in the ways in which nations go to war. Nowhere is this clearer than in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine which has emerged as a major proving ground for the next-generation of warfare.

While the 20th century was largely dominated by conventional, nation versus nation, with mass movements of manpower and machines to engage in total war, Ukraine’s “conventional” approach to conflict is a massive departure from the guerilla and counter-insurgency heavy conflict that dominated the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, and others throughout the 1990s.

As a result, many major powers were ostensibly caught off-guard by the evolution in terms of doctrine, technology, and the importance of brute strength as we once again face the uncomfortable reality that nations are likely to go to war once again.

Unfortunately, this uncomfortable reality is only serving to hasten the end of the US-dominated monopolar world, giving rise to a new, multipolar world.

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However, Ukraine has reinforced the importance of “mass” as an essential tactical and strategic determining factor on the modern battlefield, despite the emphasis on emerging technologies, advanced situational awareness, and smart systems.

This has recently been highlighted by the British Chief of the General Staff (CGS), General Sir Patrick Sanders, who said, “Ukraine has reminded us that success can only be achieved with a secure land industrial base together with the stockpiles to sustain the fight. That mass is still indispensable. That we need to plan to reinforce and regenerate the force, for to only focus on the first echelon – i.e. those troops that we will put into battle at the start of a war – is to prepare for failure.”

Not to be outdone, the US-based Atlantic Council think tank has recently built on the comments of GEN Sanders in a piece by Andrew Michta titled, Mass still matters: What the US military should learn from Ukraine, which highlights that “for the United States and its NATO allies, there are big lessons from this war that are already circulating through the policy bloodstream, but those lessons are encountering serious headwinds generated by what has been establishment thinking over the past three decades”.

The paradigm has changed

Front and centre to this shift in thinking about the future requirements of future major power conflict is that despite our technological advances and proliferation of advanced systems, future conflicts will look an awful lot like those of the Second World War or even the Korean conflict.

This tempo and style of conflict is, as mentioned, vastly different to the style and tempo of conflict in which we have fought over the last three decades.

One could safely argue that the conflicts of “choice” which dominated the early 21st century excelled during the era of “just in time” supply chains; however, in an era of renewed great power competition, this will spell disaster.

Michta explains, “The overarching lesson from the unfolding war in Ukraine is simply the scale of what’s required to fight a modern state-on-state war. No Western military has prepared for such levels of weapons and munitions consumption and force attrition. No NATO ally today – save for the United States – has the armour or munitions stocks that could last longer than a few weeks or months at best on Ukraine-like battlefields.

“This war has brought front and centre the enduring centrality of mass in modern conventional warfare with a near-peer adversary. It should also put paid to the obsession with precision strikes that has dominated the US defense acquisition culture in recent years.”

This bleak picture paints a particularly uncomfortable reality for Australia as we continue to shuffle the deck chairs in order to deliver the findings of the government’s Defence Strategic Review.

Unpacking this further, Michta adds, “This war has brought into focus an enduring truth in warfare: In a state-on-state conflict, mass trumps precision. The impact of mass is immediate and registers at the point of contact, while precision strikes on enemy forces concentrated in the rear, on ammo depots, or on logistical chains will only register over time, perhaps after the decision on the battlefield has already been reached.”

In particular, the West’s emphasis on precision and exquisitely engineered, costly weapons systems will only provide advantage when combined with the traditional concept of “mass” on the battlefield.

Michta explains this predicament, stating, “While technology gives Western forces an edge, that edge will only go so far when confronted with sheer numbers ... In a protracted conflict, the decisive factor could be the capacity to reconstitute forces – both personnel and equipment – to compensate for those that have been attritted on the battlefield. And here an excessive fascination with ever more complex systems could play against the United States. It will need to replenish losses faster than its adversary, which is likely to be producing simpler and cheaper systems.”

While this has been mitigated to some degree by the advent of low cost, mass producible, and effective uncrewed systems, traditional manpower and platforms will still prove the ultimate decider on the field of battle.

Highlighting this, Michta provides some important information worth consideration, not just in the United States, but especially in Australia as we struggle to chart our way through the era of great power competition.

Michta states, “The United States needs to embrace the old principles of mass and redundancies that paved the way to victory in World War II and allowed it to successfully deter and ultimately defeat the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The war in Ukraine continues to show that one’s military needs mass to counter the adversary’s mass – a reality that has been all but absent from US thinking about the nature of warfare since the end of the Cold War.”

For Australia, this approach is equally relevant, as we have a demonstrated need to rapidly rebuild our industrial base to provide not just economic resilience, competitiveness, and national security, but to provide ourselves with the necessary mass across a host of sectors to add value in the allied supply chain and ensure that the Australian Armed Forces can continue to operate without fear of supply chain constraints.

Final thoughts

Importantly, in this era of renewed competition between autarchy and democracy, this is a conversation that needs to be had in the open with the Australian people, as ultimately, they will be called upon to help implement it, to consent to the direction, and to defend it should diplomacy fail.

Our economic resilience, capacity, and competitiveness will prove equally as critical to the success in the new world power paradigm as that of the United States, the United Kingdom, or Europe, and we need to begin to recognise the opportunities presented before us.

Dr Ross Babbage of US think tank Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments reinforces this, saying, “I think what we’ve got to show, what’s the vision for Australia, you know, what can we achieve and what, you know, if we go on the trajectory we are on at the moment. I’ll tell you what, you know, a lot of people, a lot more people in a decade’s time are likely to be either in really dumb jobs or maybe not have jobs at all, and in the society, be a lot weaker and will be a lot less prosperous.

“So what we want to say is, look, there’s plenty of scope for doing more and smarter things, encouraging investment to do that, and then there will be some very, very interesting additional jobs and opportunities, a lot of high tech, and so on, I can tell you that, you know, talking to foreign investors, they’re quite keen on principle to work here, and do a lot more here and provide a lot more good jobs for Australians.”

Expanding and enhancing the opportunities available to Australians while building critical economic resilience, and as a result, deterrence to economic coercion, should be the core focus of the government because only when our economy is strong can we ensure that we can deter aggression towards the nation or our interests.

This also requires a greater degree of transparency and a culture of collaboration between the nation’s strategic policymakers, elected officials and the constituents they represent and serve – equally, this approach will need to entice the Australian public to once again invest in and believe in the future direction of the nation.

Additionally, Australia will need to have an honest conversation about how we view ourselves and what our own ambitions are. Is it reasonable for Australia to position itself as a “middle” or “regional” power in this rapidly evolving geopolitical environment? Equally, if we are going to brand ourselves as such, shouldn’t we aim for the top tier to ensure we get the best deal for ourselves and our future generations?

If we are going to emerge as a prosperous, secure, and free nation in the new era of great power competition, it is clear we will need to break the shackles of short-termism and begin to think far more long term, to the benefit of current and future generations of Australians.

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