Seven Strategic Endeavours, Part 2

The second part of my assessment of the key strategic endeavours that are most likely to determine the course of the war in Ukraine during 2025.

Image: @DefenceU and the 126th TDF Brigade

Now it would be foolish, however, to disguise the gravity of the hour. It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage. Winston Churchill, Ye Be Men of Valour, 19 May 1940.

This week I posted the first part in this exploration of the key strategic drivers in the trajectory of the war in Ukraine in 2025. In that post, I examined four key strategic endeavours - the ground, air and strike, mobilisation and economic wars - from the Ukrainian and Russian perspectives, and there are opportunities and challenges.

Today, I conclude this examination of the seven strategic endeavours with the following topics being covered.

• The Robot and Algorithm War.

• The War of Narratives.

• The Learning and Adaptation War.

The article concludes with an overall assessment, including an examination of asymmetries in the war.

Seven Strategic Endeavours, continued

The Robot and Algorithms War. One of the things that future historians will note about this war is that it is the first one where drones have had such a significant impact on both tactical and strategic activities. Drones, in the air and on the ground, have been around since the Second World War, and have been used in nearly every significant conflict since. But, since the large-scale Russian invasion of 2022, there has been an unprecedented acceleration in the number of drones used, the breadth of missions they perform across the air, land and maritime domains, and the range of counter drone systems being produced and deployed.

While Russia had good loitering munition solutions before the war, early Ukrainian battlefield experimentation during the Battle of Kyiv appears to have cemented in units an operational culture of using drones, and constantly learning and adapting about the best missions, tactics and technology. Largely, the Ukrainians have led the way with innovation, and the Russians have been fast followers. This is not the case in all types of drones however, particularly with Russian loitering munitions, and some forms of uncrewed ground combat vehicles and short and mid-range strike drones (sourced from Iran and now produced in Russia).

But it has been Ukrainian innovation that has featured most heavily in the adaptation battle between Ukrainian and Russian drones. In 2024, Ukraine had a competition to identify the best interceptor drones. Several solutions have already been deployed include one with a stabilised shotgun. Ukraine’s drone manufacturers have also developed some indigenous alternatives to widely used Chinese drones. The substitution of Ukrainian for Chinese drones is a strategic imperative given how reliance on Chinese drones in the Ukrainian armed forces has left them dangerously exposed to disruptions in supply chains. More recently we have seen ground and maritime drones piggy-backing aerial drones in strike operations and in the Battle of Lyptsi.