The war in Ukraine has been an arms race since the beginning. It moved far beyond traditional military technology quite quickly, rendering equipment like tanks virtually obsolete thanks to the new drone warfare. Small and cheap FPV drones were taking out tanks, so tanks had to be equiped with ‘cope cages’ as protection. So-called ‘turtle tanks’ took this to its maximum extent. The next step was mobile electronic jamming of drones, followed by fibre optic drones which could not be jammed, but left spider web like trails all over the line of combat contact. This was followed by placing nets over roadways to prevent access.
FPV drones have been a complete game-changer. Concentrations of forces are no longer possible, as they will be seen from above almost immediately, targeted, and taken out as a group, by drone, artillery, or an Iskander missile. Combined with satellite targeting, eyes in the sky have made have made stealth extremely difficult. Drones can be equiped with thermal and night vision. They can enter a dugout and drop a grenade inside. One counter tactic is not to destroy a drone, but to follow it back to it’s operators and take them out instead. Forests and treelines have become important for providing some form of cover. Where cover isn’t available, advances are often made by small squads of motorcycle dragoons, since the motorcycles are fast and manouverable. This is why progress along the frontline has been slow.
Modern warfare is now all about missiles and drones, with the emphasis on drones. Naval drones have also been very effective. The Black Sea fleet is now stationed on the far eastern shore as a result, after several ships were destroyed by exploding drones. Attempts to take out the bridge between Crimea and the Russian mainland in this way have so far failed. Larger airborne drones, such as shahids, gerans, and lancets have been used to target infrastructure, along with Iskander and other missiles, and more recently the medium range Oreshnik, which is hypersonic and can deliver warheads across and range of targets at once. It doesn’t need to carry a warhead, as the damage is done by the pure kinetic energy of the tungsten ‘rods from God’ that it carries, coming down at Mach20.
Last year Ukraine managed to block Russian access to the Starlink system that they’d been using for targeting, battlefield observation, communication, and coordination. This was a significant setback, which slowed the inevitable Russian advance. In response, Russia has been launching its own satellites for this purpose, but it’s also doing something more interesting in anticipation of what may come next. It’s using mesh technology carried by a drone swarm to create a manouverable connection corridor, allowing deep penetration into Ukrainian space before choosing an eliminating a target. Because Ukraine has no way to know the target before the attack, there is no time to act to protect it in advance of the strike.
The most interesting, and disturbing, aspect of this is the reason this method has been chosen. The next phase of the arms race may well be the destruction of satellites in space, in order to blind the other side. The mesh system would allow for visibility and targeting with no reliance on satellites. They are likely doing this in anticipation of an escalation of the war to include all of NATO overly, instead of covertly, as is currently the case. NATO countries have no experience with modern warfare, and blinding them on top of that would prevent them from doing much of anything with conventional weaponry.
The most disturbing aspect of the idea of space warfare targeting satellites is the prospect of a Kessler Event, which could actually occur even without the deliberate destruction of satellites, but is much more likely if this does begin. A Kessler Event is a chain reaction occurring as debris hits a satellite and destroys it, generating more debris which can destroy more satellites, and so on. Low Earth orbit is crowded these days. Such an event could bring the era of satellites to an end for the forseeable future.
Needless to say, the impact of this would be monumental on a global scale. Space debris eventually falls out of orbit, but not for hundreds of years at least. Space station access would no longer be possible, GPS would be lost, and countless other functions would also cease to be possible. Humanity may be about to destroy modernity and deindustrialise itself in many ways at once.
