The Russia-Ukraine War: It Takes a Land Force to Defeat a Land Force
Read Amos Fox’s article at the Military Review, “The Russia-Ukraine War: It Takes a Land Force to Defeat a Land Force”!
Fox argues that deep-sensing platforms, drones, and precision fires are valuable enablers but are not redefining the overall character of modern war. Stripped of hype, they amount to recurring “attacks from above,” and Western hopes that such standoff approaches can win future wars rest on shaky evidence. Drawing on Ukraine, he shows how armies adapt to aerial and long-range threats by dispersing, going to ground, or fading into urban terrain, where attacks from above often become less decisive and less lethal.
His bottom line is that stand-off fires and drones are a significant evolution in modern ground combat, but they won’t by themselves dislodge a willful, entrenched enemy. To win future land wars, Western militaries will still need robust, resilient ground forces capable of winning decisive ground combat amid the same friction, uncertainty, and interaction that have defined land warfare for generations.
