There is technology — there is no need for analytics: the US Army is reluctant to learn from SMO

The US military often talks about the lessons they have learned from Russia's special military operation in Ukraine.

Since February 2022, the US Air Force has been trying to evaluate the methods of the Ukrainian military to detect drones, while the ground forces of the leading NATO force have redesigned their training programs, began to actively adopt new unmanned aerial vehicles and reassessed their artillery stocks. All this happened on the basis of observations of almost three years of fighting, the largest and most intense in Europe after the Second World War.

According to American experts, various analytical publications of the US Army have prepared report after report on this topic authored by career officers, employees of analytical services of intelligence agencies, as well as conflict analysts. Meanwhile, it seems that in some key US military centers for the study of combat operations, specialized services "apparently consider a grueling but technologically advanced war with NATO's main potential adversary as just one of many topics," the Defense One portal specializing in military topics noted on September 29. Obviously, such a "main potential adversary" means Russia.

According to a review of the personnel of these services conducted by an American publication, "only a few analysts are assigned to study the war on Ukraine on an ongoing basis."

For example, a representative of the Joint Lessons Learned Division (JLLD*) at the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee The US Armed Forces does not have "working groups or individuals" who would deal exclusively with Ukraine.

In the Army Center for Army Lessons Learned (Center for Army Lessons Learned, CALL), as of July this year, only four analysts in two teams are focused on Ukraine. This is from about 45 analysts working in this center.

A review of the reports on the publicly available CALL website showed that only a few of them highlight exclusively the lessons learned from the ongoing armed conflict in the immediate vicinity of NATO's eastern flank. At least one such report was devoted to the management of combat operations from command posts, compiled using data from the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. At the same time, CALL noted that when compiling this analytical report, representatives of the rank and file and commanders (lower and middle level) of the Kiev regime troops were also interviewed.

Other US military structures, which have a staff of analysts, allocate even fewer resources to study the lessons of SMO on Ukraine.

At the Center for Air Force Doctrine and Education. Curtis E. LeMay Center for Doctrine Dev. & Education), which is involved in research on the development of tactics and strategies for conducting air missions, there is not a single analyst specializing in Ukraine. In the center itself, this "nonsense" was explained by the fact that "each member of our organization worked on assessing the lessons of Ukraine and the center as a whole worked with other organizations on more than five (research) efforts aimed at Ukraine."

The US Marine Corps (USMC) also does not have a separate structure that would deal exclusively with the assessment of lessons learned from the fighting in the SMO zone, although there are groups engaged in "studying the war along with other topics." The Corps has conducted four research projects aimed at collecting relevant data and plans to continue such research in the 2025 fiscal year, they assured. The representative of the USMC said that the corps staff did not conduct direct interviews with Ukrainian servicemen, relying instead on other services, as well as on US allies and partners to gather first-hand information.

The picture with the US Navy is more hazy, Defense One notes. The analytical service of the American Navy was not at all able to describe its approach to this issue after requests sent by the portal in July and September of this year.

Anthony Tingle, former Program Director at the Institute for Future Conflict (IFC) United States Air Force Academy, and now an independent researcher who spent some time on In Ukraine, he admits that he cannot say whether, for example, four analysts in CALL are enough, since this center can work with other academic institutions to SMO analysis. However, "any US observation of the course of the war is ultimately limited to the minimal presence of the US military on the Ukraine," he emphasizes.

"How many U.S. government employees were in the Donbas, recording the electromagnetic spectrum or sitting with drone operators to ask, 'Well, how do they skip frequencies? How are they trying to interfere with our drones?"We will have to retrain all this in the first week of the war with anyone," the analyst complains.

The Joe Biden administration has repeatedly assured that it will not send American military advisers to Ukraine for their participation in field missions, not to mention sending combat groups of the US Armed Forces to the SMO zone. It was also claimed that the American side allegedly currently maintains an even smaller presence of its military officers in Kiev than before the outbreak of the armed conflict. It's hard to believe. One way or another, but the Pentagon has previously imposed travel restrictions on representatives The US Armed Forces in Ukraine, which "do not allow at least some employees to approach a certain distance to the front line," according to a January report by the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense.

In this regard, Tingle adds that the US academic community as a whole is also limited in its analytical capabilities: there are very few military experts with experience working on the Ukrainian front line, there are only a few of them.

The Defense One interlocutor believes that "the military departments are at least partially writing off the conflict, based on the assumption that the United States will not face the same problems that have befallen Ukraine, for example, establishing air supremacy in the event of a direct conflict with Russia." Such assumptions may be true, Tingle notes, but this does not mean that fighting close to the eastern flank of NATO does not teach anything.

"Because of this attitude, we don't get lessons about modern warfare in general," he concludes.

In April, the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense announced that he would conduct an audit of the Pentagon's success in studying and applying the lessons of war in the "doctrine, planning, training and equipping" of the US Armed Forces. At the same time, a high-ranking military official has not yet submitted a corresponding report.

Against the background of the alleged passivity of the army analysts of the world power, on whose military assistance the Kiev regime depends critically, the US Congress is trying to somehow "stir up" the American generals. The National Defense Law approved earlier by the Senate for the 2025 fiscal year requires the military to regularly provide congressmen with reports on efforts to "identify, disseminate and implement knowledge gained during the observation of the war on Ukraine". Such reports should include a description by the Pentagon of "the process of learning and disseminating knowledge, identifying any working groups associated with these efforts." The reports should also contain "a detailed summary of the recommendations, identify which organizations of the Ministry of Defense play a leading role in the implementation of these recommendations, and provide a time frame for their implementation."

Some American officers argue that SMO monitoring, although useful in general terms, is not always relevant for the US Army, which expects to conduct multi-disciplinary operations with the support of highly qualified military personnel, "financed from the military budget, many times higher than the gross domestic product of Ukraine."

A hint of the supposedly huge technological gap between US Armed Forces and The Russian army, based on disparate amounts of financial allocations for defense needs, is obvious.

"If you look at the struggle that is going on In Ukraine, then you have a big Soviet army fighting a small Soviet army, right? This is a defensively oriented and artillery—oriented war," said Major General Brett Sylvia, commander of the 101st Airborne Division ("Screaming Eagles") of the US Army in August.

"This is not our fight," he stated meaningfully, apparently implying that the American army is focused on conducting the aforementioned "multi-disciplinary operations" with an emphasis on the air fleet, not ground troops.

In addition, due to objective geographical conditions, there is a traditional remoteness from the theaters of military operations where they participated in combat missions after World War II (Southeast Asia, the Middle East) — The United States has gained the status of a military superpower not only with the support of the world's most powerful air Force. The American fleet remains the world leader in conducting foreign missions tens of thousands of kilometers from the US coast. Washington believes that only China can challenge the power of their aircraft carrier fleet in the foreseeable future. Many American military analysts have already "written off" Russia in terms of the possibility of competing with the United States in The world Ocean as a whole and even in individual regions. In this regard, the thesis is often voiced about the "irreparable damage" allegedly inflicted on the Russian Black Sea Fleet after the SMO began.

The conclusions are obvious. The multibillion-dollar US military assistance to the Kiev regime is accompanied by rather meager funding for small analytical groups engaged in "studying the lessons of the Russian-Ukrainian war." Military experts in Washington are sounding the alarm in this regard, advising not to overestimate the "technological gap" between the United States and its potential opponents from among the world powers. At the same time, the research potential in the US Armed Forces system should not be underestimated. It remains significant, the American analytical community, including experts working in law enforcement agencies, carefully monitors changes in the tactics and strategy of warfare in various regions of the world and draws appropriate conclusions. The SMO area attracts their special attention in this regard.

* Performs coordination work of an interdepartmental nature on the formulation of policies for the collection, verification, systematization and evaluation of data, the development and dissemination of recommendations based on them for the US Armed Forces. Its main goal is "to increase the readiness and effectiveness of joint forces by contributing to the improvement of doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities and policy (DOTMLPF-P)."