|
「戰爭」、「反戰」、與「和平」-- 開欄文
|
瀏覽17,340 ｜回應36｜推薦1 |
|
|
|
2023年我收到傅大為、盧倩儀、馮建三、和郭力昕等四位教授發起的《我們的反戰聲明》時，就想專闢一欄刊出該聲明，並收集網上以及我自己討論「戰爭」與「反戰」的文章。但是，由於這個題目很大，我一時三刻間寫不出一篇提綱挈領的「開欄文」；所以作罷。後來將該聲明和拙作《「我們的反戰聲明」爭議淺見》分別單獨刊出。
現在想想這其實不是個充分理由。最近讀到一篇介紹雷博教授著作的文章(本欄第三篇)，覺得有寫篇評論的必要(本欄第四篇)；寫作過程中，由於搜查相關資料，又看到史投克教授的大作(本欄下一篇)。我認為它值得介紹，就決定以這三篇文章為基礎而開此欄。
史投克教授的大作不但分析了「全面戰爭」這個「概念」，他借這個分析來強調：使用「明白清晰」的概念在建構理論和政策上非常重要。史投克教授在該文中並簡明的闡釋了韋伯「理想型」概念；軍事學之外，全文在「方法論」上也頗有參考價值。
我一向認為論述中所用詞彙和「概念」需要明白易懂，以及其「所指」應該確定而無岐義；我曾經說過和史投克教授同樣的話：
「如果一個詞彙或概念『無所不指』，則它實際上就會變得『無所指』」。
我不敢說和史投克教授「英雄所見略同」；或許，理性、務實的人在思考邏輯上都是同路人吧。
本文於 修改第 12 次
|
|
俄國改變俄烏戰爭的宣傳說詞 - Oleksandr Sukhobrus
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
請參見本欄2026/07/20貼文。
Russia, losing in Ukraine, abruptly changes its propaganda narrative
Oleksandr Sukhobrus, opinion contributor, 07/29/26
Russia has radically changed its main propaganda narrative in the war against Ukraine.
Starting with its large-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin's key narrative directed at Western audiences was that Russia will win in Ukraine no matter what. Ukraine will be subordinated to Putin's iron will. Sanctions against Russia and Western arms supplies to Ukraine will only prolong Ukraine's agony and lead to additional casualties. They will not prevent Ukraine's military defeat — or so the reasoning went.
The logic that Russia tried to convey to the West was that Western attempts to help Ukraine would only lead to the loss of money spent on military and material aid to Ukraine. Help for Ukraine would only mean more victims — there was no chance of preventing Russia from conquering Ukraine.
This Russian narrative was actively promoted at all levels of propaganda and had a significant impact on sentiment among European and American elites regarding aid to Ukraine. The narrative of inevitable Russian victory persisted from the beginning of the 2022 large-scale invasion. But just now, four and a half years later, the obvious disconnect between this narrative and the real state of affairs on the front line has become obvious to everyone — even to Russia's most ardent apologists.
For politicians, journalists and military experts following the war between Russia and Ukraine, it has already become obvious that Russia cannot conquer the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine even at enormous cost in lives and treasure. Massive daily Ukrainian drone strikes — against Russian oil refineries and oil tankers in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov — have demonstrated the narrative's falsity.
Faced with a reality that completely refutes the propaganda, Russian propagandists have been forced to take a sharp turn. They have now begun broadcasting a narrative that Russia's defeat in the war with Ukraine is undesirable and will harm the West.
Where the old line depended on a certain Russian win, the new line points to unpredictable and undesirable consequences inside of Russia if it loses. These consequences will supposedly have detrimental effects upon not only Russia but also the West itself.
In the event of an increasingly likely Russian defeat, unrest inside Russia could lead to internal conflict and even civil war. Russia's vast nuclear arsenal and raw materials supplies would hang in the balance. China would likely establish some form of control over part or all of Russia. Several extremely unfavorable scenarios for the West would follow from there.
The goal of the new narrative remains the same as before: to tamp down Western support for Ukraine; to force the West to pressure Ukraine to accept Russian demands and give up territory.
A rather unusual method was chosen to introduce the new narrative into the Western information space: Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko wrote a column for The Economist, outlining Russia's new narrative regarding the war. Melnichenko, a businessman close to Putin and one of the pillars of the current regime in Russia, attempts to convey a new message from Moscow: Russia's defeat on the battlefield in Ukraine is not in the West's interests, since it could lead instability in Russia — something extremely dangerous, given Russia's enormous nuclear potential.
The message and the entire newly minted propaganda narrative are fundamentally false. Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, created a system of power in Russia that works to maintain his own grip on power and nip in the bud any discontent or disobedience. Russian law enforcement maintains effective control over Russian society. Neither mass expressions of discontent nor attempts to publicly express disagreement with state policies are currently possible. The lockdown on public opinion applies as much to the nationalistic supporters of Putin's War as it does to anti-Putin dissidents.
The Russian elites, meanwhile, are completely subordinate to Putin, and no independence of thinking within the military exists any longer. Putin learned the lessons of Prigozhin's mutiny and did everything possible to ensure it can never happen again. No one remains who would upend Putin or be capable of leading the people in his place. Thus, the likelihood is minimal of an internal armed conflict and the collapse of Russia due to defeat in Ukraine.
Russia can no longer convince the West that it is winning on the battlefield. It is therefore trying now to convince the West that a Ukrainian victory would be against the West's own interests.
And so Russia's propaganda narrative has changed, but the goal remains the same: control of Ukraine and the West's recognition of Russian hegemony over the whole former Soviet Union. As before, the narrative is full of holes. Europeans and Americans alike must keep clear heads and see through it.
Oleksandr Sukhobrus is a Ukrainian citizen, a licensed lawyer, psychologist and former diplomat based in Lithuania.
Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
英美學者如何解讀《戰爭論》 - Stephen L. Nelson
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
索引
Liddell Hart, B. H.：李德哈特，《戰略論》作者
Presentism：此處：執今論古謬誤
antithesis：對立(命題、想法、主張、…)
我對軍事學的了解，在《孫子》、《吳子》、和《戰爭藝術》三本書以外，要感謝李浴日將軍在一些軍事雜誌上對克勞塞維茲和李德哈特兩位著作的介紹。那是我高中和大學時代的事了。
下文對讀懂《戰爭論》應該有所幫助。另請參見本欄2025/07/05貼文。
The Three Lives of Clausewitz: How Anglo-American Strategists Remade On War in Their Own Image
Stephen L. Nelson, 07/21/26
“A little research, a little study and reflection bring out the facts that Clausewitz’s book on war, published in 1832, occupies about the same relation to the study of the military profession as does the Bible to all religious studies. — Oliver Prescott Robinson, The Fundamentals of Military Strategy (1928)
The Multiple Images of Clausewitz
Carl von Clausewitz outpaces every contemporary from Napoleon and Jomini to Scharnhorst and Wellington as the premier military theorist of the modern age. His masterwork, On War, published posthumously in 1832, gave the intellectual rationale for later thinking on mid-nineteenth-century warfare and advanced the first rigorous case for civilian control of the military. Admirers have called him the “Shakespeare of military writers” and the “Marx of military theory.”
His most famous detractor, B.H. Liddell Hart denounced Clausewitz as “the Mahdi of mass and mutual massacre,” due to his theoretical contribution to the practice of frontal assaults during the First World War. That a single theorist provokes such extreme and opposing reactions across a century of strategic writing is itself a subject worth examining.
What follows is a historiographical argument: that Anglo-American writing on Clausewitz from 1950 to the present divides into three distinct schools — strategic holism, strategic atomism, and strategic relativism — and that the competition among them mirrors a deeper transformation in how the word “strategy” itself changed.
Strategy began in the twentieth century as a verb, a practice — something commanders did during mobilization to the battlefield. Toward the end of the century, it became a noun —a framework—something governments theorized in committee rooms.
Clausewitz, depending on who was reading him, authorized both. The debate over Clausewitz was therefore also a debate over strategy’s transformation: whether strategy remained an art practiced by commanders, had become an abstract framework for policymakers, or could survive only by continual adaptation to new political and technological conditions.
Mapping the Field
Strategy and tactics once belonged to the same professional universe. A general understood both because both lived on the same ground — one describing the engagement, the other the campaign it served. You could argue about where one ended and the other began, but the argument happened between soldiers; after 1945, that changed.
Strategy got pulled away from the people who had always owned it and handed to a different kind of expert — economists, physicists, political scientists — men whose relationship to combat was largely theoretical. The map table didn’t disappear. It just stopped being where the important conversations happened.
The Google Books Ngram Viewer captures this in unbridled publishing terms. Search “Clausewitz” and “On War” and you get a jagged line that rises whenever English-speaking countries go to war — both World Wars, Vietnam, the Gulf, the post-2001 campaigns. The Prussian gets read when blood is being spent, and answers are needed.
The second search is where things get interesting. Track “military strategy” against “military tactics” from 1800 onward, and the two terms stay close — close enough that for most of that period the distinction between them was one of degree rather than kind. A commander thought tactically about the battle in front of him and strategically about the campaign it belonged to, but both modes of thinking lived in the same professional mind. After 1945, the graph splits. Strategy climbs. Tactics don’t.
Since at least the Napoleonic era, the military profession had rested on one bedrock conviction: that organized violence could be made to pay, or rather that brutal inputs could be exchanged for durable political outputs.
Hiroshima cracked that conviction at its foundation. When the logical terminus of strategic competition was mutual destruction, the men trained to compete most effectively became beside the point.
Civilian theorists stepped forward, more comfortable with game theory than ground operations. Clausewitz entered their world but didn’t quite survive the crossing. A systematic theorist of war became, too often, a source of portable quotations.
That transformation — shifting the strategy from verb to noun — is the thread connecting the three schools of thought.
The atomists believed Clausewitz could not survive the translation.
The relativists thought he required constant updating to remain useful.
The holists argued that reading him whole revealed a theorist already equipped to navigate the new world.
All three were arguing, fundamentally, about what kind of word “strategy” should be.
The Atomists: Clausewitz as Liability
The atomists had the first postwar decade largely to themselves. Their complaint against Clausewitz was not subtle: he belonged to a continental, Napoleonic world that nuclear weapons and colonial insurgencies had made unrecognizable, and reading him seriously was therefore an exercise in misplaced nostalgia. What they produced instead was something closer to selective demolition — lifting passages that confirmed the indictment, discarding the rest.
B.H. Liddell Hart’s Strategy led the charge. For Hart, Clausewitz had reduced the art of war to “the mechanics of mass slaughter” and stripped strategy of its indirect, economical possibilities.
Hart believed Clausewitz would have dismissed his preferred approach — sapping the enemy’s strength and dissipating its center of gravity — in favor of savage frontal assault.
This critique is revealing precisely because Hart himself, in a candid passage, admitted that a broad reading of On War shows Clausewitz actually considered defense the stronger and more efficient form of strategy. Hart’s quarrel, in the end, was less with Clausewitz than with those who misread selected passages of him.
J.C. Wylie, whose Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control appeared in 1967, was more measured but reached a similar verdict. Wylie granted Clausewitz a place of honor in the intellectual canon — his writing on the nature of war, Wylie said, remained unrivaled in sophistication — yet he saw it as a continental theory unable to account for maritime, aerial, or Maoist cumulative approaches.
Wylie’s deeper charge was structural: Clausewitz’s framework, rooted in Napoleonic sequential thinking, could be broken by an enemy who refused to seek decisive battle. Vietnam seemed to prove the point.
The atomist critique, however, has a fatal weakness that its practitioners rarely acknowledge. Their objections almost always stemmed from reading Clausewitz in fragments — proof-texting (斷章取義) a theorist whose explicit method was dialectical, whose famous trinity of violence, chance, and reason was meant to be held in simultaneous tension, not decomposed into usable parts. The critics, in other words, were doing exactly what they accused Clausewitz’s admirers of doing.
The Relativists: Clausewitz as Mirror
The relativists never coalesced around a program. What they shared was looser: a working assumption that On War looked different depending on where you stood when you opened it, and that a theory capable of absorbing that kind of pressure without breaking apart was probably doing something right.
Bernard Brodie’s case is one worth dwelling on. Coming out of the Second World War, he had written Clausewitz off. Nuclear weapons had severed the connection between military action and rational political purpose — how do you fight for achievable ends when the means promise to incinerate both sides?
Then the thermonuclear tests of the early 1950s pushed him back to the On War text. In Clausewitz and the Americans, he found Clausewitz describing war as planned violence and therefore controlled, with procedure and objective required to remain proportionate. That was not an obstacle to deterrence thinking. It was practically a founding statement. The theorist had not failed the nuclear age. His readers had failed the theorist.
Kenneth Waltz approached the problem of war less as a military historian than as a political scientist. Man, the State, and War was not interested in how battles were won. It was interested in why wars happen, and what structural characteristics of the international system make some outcomes more likely than others.
In Clausewitz’s view, states were not simply aggressive by nature, but responsive to the pressures around them, able to check each other through coalitions and competing interests. On this account, fighting well was less important than understanding the system well enough to avoid the worst outcomes.
Waltz interpreted Clausewitz’s emphasis on the interplay of political objectives, military means, and fortuitous circumstances as a starting point, but he reframed it within the broader outline of the international system and thus activated Clausewitz as a verb—what was needed to act today.
Other relativists used Clausewitz less generously. In The American Way of War, Russell F. Weigley credits Clausewitz with shaping American military professionalism but treats Hiroshima as the event that transformed what that professionalism could mean. As a result, Weigley was able to honor tradition while explaining away its failures.
Similarly, John W. Shy’s approach to Vietnam was to set impossible conditions, constrain available resources, and then blame the soldiers when the math didn’t work out. In Shy’s hands, Clausewitz proved the case against civilian interference.
Lykke, who taught strategy at the Army War College, rejected both maneuvers. The ends, ways, and means fall out of balance because someone lets them. It is the practitioner who is responsible for doing that. Clausewitz described the relationship. He did not guarantee that anyone would honor it.
The relativists’ most significant vulnerability is their tendency toward presentism. John Gaddis, in On Grand Strategy (2018), reads Clausewitz through the lens of Afghanistan and finds an unwieldy, contradictory book that risks “mental disorientation” in readers who take it too seriously. Robert Citino, in The German Way of War, classifies On War as romantic rather than rational, valuable mainly as a challenge to Enlightenment systematizers.
Both scholars credit Clausewitz as a first-rate philosopher while declining to read him as one. The result is a Clausewitz permanently contemporary but also repeatedly subordinated to the critic’s prior conclusions.
John Keegan represents the reductio ad absurdum of the relativist tendency. In his widely read A History of Warfare, Keegan declared Clausewitz irrelevant to cultures that did not organize war around the state. The critique would be stronger if Keegan had read his subject.
Christopher Bassford’s analysis of Keegan’s public statements on Clausewitz concluded that nothing in the record demonstrates that Keegan had actually read On War. Michael Handel, in Masters of War, put it plainly: Keegan’s summary of Clausewitz “has nothing to do with what Clausewitz said.”
The Holists: Clausewitz as System
The holists began with a reading rule: On War was a dialectical structure in which every claim existed in tension with others, and the tension was deliberate — the point, not the problem. Reading selectively produced not a simplified Clausewitz but a counterfeit one, and the Western strategic tradition had been passing that counterfeit around for the better part of a century.
The foundational act of the school was Michael Howard and Peter Paret’s new translation (Princeton, 1976). The Graham-Maude translation had produced a wooden text easily mined for slogans. Howard and Paret aimed instead for the ipsissima vox — the living voice — over the ipsissima verba, the exact words. The translation was itself an argument: Clausewitz was a systematic thinker whose ideas required holistic engagement.
Michael Howard’s War in European History (1967) offered a historical rebuttal to those seeking technical solutions to the Vietnam War. Howard’s argument — that “as states change their nature, so will their policy change, and so will their wars” — treated Clausewitz as a template for thinking about the permanent relationship between political communities and the violence they authorize.
Paret reinforced the point in The Cognitive Challenge of War, defending Clausewitz’s historical examples as “time-specific references that come to support timeless recognitions.”
Harry Summers brought the argument inside the military. Working backward from the North’s 1975 victory, he concluded that counterinsurgency had distracted American commanders from the essential nature of war. Summers did not argue that Clausewitz had failed Vietnam. He argued that Vietnam had failed Clausewitz.
The holists reached their fullest expression in Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History (2013) and Colin Gray’s The Future of Strategy (2015).
Freedman identified what the other schools had consistently missed: that Clausewitz understood rational policy as always competing with “the blind natural forces of violence, hatred, and enmity.” The famous trinity was not a bureaucratic diagram but a description of permanent tension every belligerent must navigate.
Gray agreed on Clausewitz’s value while defining his limits precisely: he was invaluable for understanding recurring problems in war, but less useful as a direct problem-solver for historically specific challenges. He was an educator, not a trainer — equipping the mind to discern, but not to decide.
Strategy as Noun: The Cost of the Transformation
Before 1945, tactics and strategy appeared on the page at roughly the same rate because they described adjacent problems that commanders solved in sequence. Those two concepts split after 1945, and the gap continued to widen.
Strategy had moved indoors. It became increasingly abstracted from the battlefield and relocated into committee rooms, policy memoranda, and interagency debates. The map table did not disappear, but it no longer monopolized the strategic conversation.
It became a word that staff officers used in memos and cabinet secretaries deployed in testimony — and Clausewitz traveled with it, pulled from the shelf when an argument needed ballast and returned when it didn’t. His concepts thus served to create tensions in NSC briefings, and his name began doing work that his arguments were never meant to do.
The National Security Council meetings of the Eisenhower administration were notorious for the tension created by Eisenhower’s view that a general war would certainly lead to total war with the Soviets, yet also, in contrast, by his advisers’ desire to use the threat of war for diplomatic reasons.
For example, he shifted policy akin to a massive preemption strategy versus the brinkmanship of a massive retaliation strategy favored by his JCS and Dulles. At an NSC meeting in 1957, he alluded to the need to blunt a Soviet attack, and his further comments on resource allocation made it apparent to those present that he favored preemptive strikes and that nothing should be left on the table. Thus, the same text that Howard and Paret were laboring to translate faithfully was being misread at the highest levels of government.
The holist project was, in part, a direct response to this institutional misapplication. Beatrice Heuser’s Strategy Before Clausewitz (2018) represents the field’s most recent effort to understand how strategy came to mean what it means — tracing the word’s genealogy back to the fifteenth century to show that Clausewitz was shaped by predecessors, not born in a vacuum.
Christopher Bassford’s The Reception of Clausewitz in Britain and America offered a corrective that the field has still not fully absorbed. Bassford’s corrective is that changing historical circumstances, rather than the actual content of On War, have led Clausewitz to be described in one era as the “apostle of total war” and in another as “the preeminent military and political strategist of limited war.” The book has not changed. Its readers have.
The Antithesis Endures
Strategic holism and strategic relativism now share the field, the atomists having largely been discredited by evidence pointing to the selective nature of their readings.
The present debate — animated by the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, by the return of great-power competition, and by the renewed relevance of limited war — is a contest between those who believe Clausewitz’s theoretical framework remains structurally sound and those who believe it must be continuously renegotiated against new political realities.
Clausewitz himself anticipated the impasse. “Where two ideas form a true logical antithesis,” he wrote, “then fundamentally each is implied in the other. If the limitations of our mind do not allow us to comprehend both simultaneously and discover by antithesis the whole of one in the whole of the other, each will nevertheless shed enough light on the other to clarify many of its details.”
The strategists and historians who have argued over On War for seventy years have, in aggregate, demonstrated his point. The atomists clarified the holists. The relativists exposed the atomists’ historical myopia. The holists disciplined the relativists’ presentism. Each school, in contesting the others, has produced a richer account of what strategy is and what it costs when it is badly done.
What remains unresolved — and what the next generation of strategists will be forced to confront directly — is Clausewitz’s first and most demanding instruction: before anything else, “the statesman and commander have to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.”
That question, posed in 1832, has not been answered. It has only been argued over in more sophisticated ways. Whether that constitutes progress is, itself, a matter of strategic judgment.
Stephen L. Nelson has served from the tactical to strategic level as a military officer. His views are his own and do not represent the position of the U.S. DoW. He currently Chairs NATO Systems Activities Analysis (SAS 219) Research Task Group (RTG) High North Scenarios for Wargaming and Analysis. He completed graduate degrees in security studies, organizational leadership, military operations, and theology.
本文於 修改第 2 次
|
|
伊朗戰爭帶給中國的警訊 ---- Carter Malkasian
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
請參考：
* 美、伊戰爭3.0開打 (該欄2026/07/22，作者：Ben Finley/Farnoush Amiri)
* Pentagon hiding missile shortage from White House, insiders fear
* Almost 100 US soldiers injured in fresh Iranian strikes
* The Pentagon, sinking billions into Iran war, is quickly running short on cash
* Iran may be stronger than we thought
從以上5則報導/分析可以看出：馬克席恩教授是位非常稱職的啦啦隊隊長；但當他打扮成軍事分析家出場時，就荒腔走板，難登大雅，上不得檯面了。
The Iran War’s Real Lessons for China
U.S. Tactical Successes Should Give Beijing Pause
Carter Malkasian, 04/10/26
0. 前言
In nearly six weeks of war with Iran, the United States’ and Israel’s military performance has been unexpectedly effective. Between the start of the war on February 28 and the start of this week’s cease-fire, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes destroyed thousands of targets in Iran. Although Iranian retaliatory strikes caused damage, American and Israeli air defenses worked well. Complete details about the targets the U.S. and Israeli militaries hit, the Iranian drones and missiles they intercepted, and the units they deployed are not yet public. But judging by the available information, it is likely that the two militaries’ methods and technology attained new levels of tactical effectiveness.
The performance should give pause to U.S. adversaries that have been watching the war in Iran unfold. Massive volleys of long-range drones and ballistic missiles are a preferred offensive tool of China, North Korea, and Russia, used to pound military bases and headquarters, sink fleets, and level civilian infrastructure.
If a U.S. adversary were to undertake a war of aggression in Asia or Europe, its plan would be to launch strikes to try to neutralize U.S. and allied military forces, likely inflicting high civilian losses in the process, and then use that cover to carry out its war objectives.
The success of high-end Western missile defenses against Iranian strikes calls such a plan into question. Ballistic missiles and drones may not be the decisive offensive weapons that many countries thought them to be. They could still be effective in a campaign of attrition and coercion—but this would be a slow process, not a path to quick victory.
The implications are most consequential for a potential war with China. Until now, U.S. defense analysts expected that China could use long-range strikes to severely impair American air and naval operations in a conflict over Taiwan. The way the war in the Middle East has progressed suggests that this basic assumption must be reassessed. The United States may be able to carry out far more effective operations against China than analysts once thought—and this potential could give China good reason to refrain from military aggression for some time.
1. BETTER THAN EXPECTED
For years, the U.S. military predicted that a war with Iran could become quite costly. As of early 2026, Iran had a large arsenal of more than 2,500 ballistic missiles and several thousand one-way attack drones, including its own Shahed drone, that could reach the Gulf states, Israel, and U.S. bases in the Middle East.
In a war, those missiles and drones were expected to cause widespread damage. General Frank McKenzie, who served as head of U.S. Central Command from 2019 to 2022, warned in his memoir that the volume of Iranian strikes “would overwhelm air and missile defenses and reach their targets,” resulting in “many thousands of casualties, both military and civilian.”
U.S. air and naval bases near the Persian Gulf could be incapacitated, the Gulf states’ oil and energy infrastructure might be destroyed, and Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz with mines and antiship missiles launched from its own coast.
Iran managed to close the strait, but its missile campaign fell well short of expectations. The BBC reported that in the first five days of the war, Iran launched 550 ballistic missiles and 1,500 drones against targets in the Gulf and 128 ballistic missiles and 1,100 drones against Israel.
Thanks to U.S. air defenses and those of U.S. allies, very few got through. On February 28 and March 1 alone, U.S. and Gulf militaries intercepted 400 Iranian missiles and 1,000 drones, according to The Wall Street Journal. Iran launched 262 ballistic missiles and 1,475 drones at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the first ten days of the war; only two missiles and 90 drones hit the country. Of the more than 290 missiles and 500 drones that Iran had launched at Israel by March 15, none were reported to have hit any military target of significance.
After March 15, a few missiles and drones infiltrated Israel’s air defenses and struck civilian areas; one hit the Old City in Jerusalem. As of April 3, at least 250 Israelis had been killed or injured, and air raid warnings have been frequent. The overall harm, however, was still relatively low.
Iran’s missiles and drones struck at least 17 U.S. military bases and installations across the Gulf, doing notable damage to radar systems and to the U.S. naval base in Bahrain.
The worst consequence has been economic. The few missiles and drones that sneaked past air defenses wreaked havoc on airports and energy infrastructure, including the Ruwais oil refinery and the port of Fujairah in the UAE, oil fields in Saudi Arabia, and the Ras Laffan liquefied natural gas complex in Qatar.
Qatar shut down the complex on March 2 rather than risk further strikes and damage, a move that raised gas prices throughout the world. On the same day, the Saudi national oil company Aramco shut its Ras Tanura refinery as a precaution after incoming drones were intercepted.
Although the resulting energy crunch has imposed costs on the United States and its allies, the damage pales in comparison to what most experts predicted.
Iran did not, for example, inflict thousands of military and civilian deaths or destroy all the region’s oil refineries. Washington’s ability to project power has not been curtailed. Gulf bases remain operational; the damage from Iranian missiles was not severe enough to impair air operations and force the U.S. military to rely on aircraft carriers, distant bases, or intercontinental bomber missions.
Before the cease-fire came into effect, the Pentagon had reported that hundreds of U.S. and Israeli sorties were mounted daily from land bases and aircraft carriers to hit military or industrial targets inside Iran.
The United States and Israel, meanwhile, made impressive achievements with their own strikes on Iranian leadership and ballistic missile sites. The Israeli military said that it killed 40 senior military figures in the first minute of its February 28 attack, including the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Iranian army’s chief of staff, and Iran’s former defense minister. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in his home. Iran’s intelligence minister, the head of the Basij militia, and the influential security chief Ali Larijani were killed in Israeli strikes in the following weeks.
Targeting an adversary’s leadership is hardly new to warfare, but it has rarely, if ever, been so comprehensive. Striking individuals at long distances from the air is particularly challenging.
U.S. special operations forces became adept at these targeted killings during the war on terror, but even model cases, such as the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006, and of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the so-called Islamic State, in 2019, involved years-long campaigns. In the current war, the United States and Israel knocked out most of their adversary’s senior leadership at the outset.
The United States and Israel also successfully went after Iran’s ballistic missile launchers. In March, they claimed to have destroyed or disabled roughly 50 to 80 percent of Iran’s 400 or so launchers. Hitting ballistic missile launchers is the holy grail of modern warfare: it is cheaper to strike a missile or its launcher on the ground than to defend against an incoming missile, and destroying an opponent’s launchers reduces the frequency and size of its missile volleys.
Typically, this task is tricky because missile launchers are mobile. By taking out as many as they did, the United States and Israel exceeded expectations.
Success in both decapitation and strikes on ballistic missile launchers was due in part to Israel’s superb technical and human intelligence capabilities. Israel has been collecting intelligence on Iran for decades, long enough to get close to leaders and learn the locations of sensitive military targets.
The U.S. military, meanwhile, refined the process of collecting intelligence, finding a target, tracking the target, and then striking it during 20 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Surveillance from U.S. and Israeli drones and satellites has steadily improved, and the United States can now monitor any part of the battlefield at all times.
Although the U.S. government has not released details, The Economist has reported that both militaries used artificial intelligence tools to help filter through data to find military targets and to design the strikes against them in ways that maximize the probability of a successful hit.
This tactical success in Iran is not a one-off affair. The current war is the fourth time in two years that U.S. and Israeli air defenses have parried the Iranians, following missile barrages in April and October 2024 and the 12-day war in June 2025.
Israel also eliminated the upper tier of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership between 2023 and 2025 and killed dozens of Iranian senior military leaders and scientists in the 12-day war; in January 2026, the United States located and detained Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a lightning special operation.
There is one significant challenge that the United States and Israel did not overcome: preventing Iran from using antiship missiles, drones, and mines to close the Strait of Hormuz.
They similarly have had trouble stopping the Houthis’ attacks on ships in the Red Sea over the past few years. Even the most sophisticated militaries struggle to locate and neutralize antiship missiles and drones before an attacker launches them.
The difficulty is likely to persist because of the small size and mobility of these weapons. Surveillance and airstrikes can chip away at this advantage, but in general, approaching the shore of a hostile country by ship remains a dangerous proposition.
2. GAME-CHANGER
How Iran has fared in this war has direct bearing on how China might fare in a potential war in Asia. China, similar to Iran, would very likely rely on long-range precision-strike weapons at the outset of such a conflict.
Since the mid-2010s, U.S. defense analysts have been writing study after study and playing endless war games to consider how a war over Taiwan might pan out. Nearly all have concluded that China would use ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles to strike Taiwan and U.S. bases in Japan and the Philippines.
Beijing would likely launch a massive air campaign to clobber Taiwan, as well as send a thousand or more ballistic and cruise missiles—depending on the model and scenario—to rain down on U.S. bases and either sink U.S. Navy vessels or drive them far from China’s coast.
Analysts often predict total destruction, precluding U.S. air and naval operations near Taiwan.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies ran one war game 24 times in 2022 and found that the United States and Japan “lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of servicemembers”—losses that “damaged the U.S. global position for many years.”
The war in Iran does show that the United States and its Asian allies have vulnerabilities. In a war over Taiwan, for example, China might follow the Israeli and American example and try to decapitate Taiwanese political and military leadership with direct strikes or covert action.
Beijing is rumored to have many supporters in Taiwan and elsewhere in the region. Its agents may be well placed to identify, locate, and track key leaders. Better Taiwanese and U.S. operational security and counterintelligence is necessary to thwart that activity.
Furthermore, China’s missiles and air defenses are much more capable than Iran’s. Beijing is reported to have prototype hypersonic missiles that are fast, maneuverable, and difficult to intercept.
It is also likely to have a better ability to identify critical targets, including radars, air defense systems, and moving ships. Above all, the war with Iran has reduced the United States’ stockpile of interceptors, and Washington will need to replenish them as quickly as possible. Otherwise, U.S. forces will be much more vulnerable to strikes from China than they have been to strikes from Iran.
But on the whole, Washington’s success calls into question pessimistic assumptions about Taiwan, particularly given how few Iranian missiles and drones were able to penetrate U.S. and allied defenses.
Iran’s barrage was by no means small—it had launched approximately 850 ballistic and cruise missiles by mid-March—and was certainly large enough to warrant reassessment of how many Chinese missiles U.S. and allied defenses may intercept.
Even a small reduction in the efficacy of Chinese strikes could be significant if it allows some U.S. bases and a good number of ships to remain operational. War games tend to assume that U.S. and allied air defenses can shoot down between 75 and 91 percent of incoming missiles, until interceptors are exhausted or destroyed by the enemy.
But the war with Iran suggests that these numbers may be too low. The UAE appears to have intercepted 99 percent of all incoming missiles and to have done well against drones, too, without exhausting its interceptors.
If U.S. and allied defenses again prove more efficient than expected in a war against China (and if Washington adequately restocks), bases in the Western Pacific might endure a Chinese bombardment, enabling U.S. air and naval operations to degrade Chinese forces amid an invasion of Taiwan. The U.S. military may still not be able to thwart a Chinese invasion, but if China expects to incur higher losses, it could change its calculations.
China might also have reason to worry about the safety of its ballistic missile launchers and military commanders, depending on the effectiveness of Chinese air defenses. If those defenses match the U.S. and Israeli capabilities that have been on display over the past several weeks, there is less cause for concern, since the United States would be unable to conduct decapitation attacks or hunt ballistic missiles and other mobile targets in the event of a war.
Yet if China’s capabilities are substantially weaker—unlikely, but a possibility China cannot rule out—its missile launchers on the ground and even its military leadership would be vulnerable.
These anticipated costs should affect China’s strategic calculations, especially if the U.S. forces now engaged in the Middle East quickly redeploy to Asia after the current war ends.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping may decide to postpone aggression until his military can build enough ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, and drones to overwhelm better-than-expected U.S. and allied defenses.
The economic damage of the war in Iran could also prompt Xi to hold off. A war in Asia would halt trade and suspend Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, hurting the U.S. and Chinese economies alike.
Taking into account that unwanted consequence and the increased difficulty of a military campaign, Xi may instead focus on other means of pursuing “reunification” with Taiwan, such as diplomacy, economic coercion and incentives, and political subversion.
3. TIME FOR A RETHINK
Over the past four years, first-person-view drones have revolutionized small-unit infantry tactics in Ukraine and surface drones have undermined the supremacy of conventional fleets in the Black Sea.
These successes have suggested that, in future conflicts, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and one-way attack drones could be used to incapacitate U.S. and allied militaries and cause vast economic and civilian devastation. Yet the success of missile defenses and decapitation strikes in blunting Iran’s ballistic missile and drone threats suggests that the danger of such offensive campaigns has been exaggerated.
Rather than providing an adversary with the capacity to wipe out entire bases and neutralize U.S. and allied militaries, missile and drone strikes may function more like traditional bombing campaigns, slowly damaging key targets over time. The effects of such campaigns can be mitigated by defensive investments. U.S. power projection might be relatively unimpaired.
Only six weeks after the start of the war with Iran, any assessment of its implications is, necessarily, a preliminary one. But U.S. and Israeli tactical successes so far should motivate Washington to revisit its operational and strategic thinking.
Incorporating real-world performance metrics—such as interceptor hit and expenditure rates—from the war in Iran into U.S. modeling, war-gaming, and quantitative calculations could change expected outcomes in a potential conflict with China, which could help the U.S. military refine its operational plans.
The demonstration of American capabilities in Iran, moreover, should serve as a warning to the United States’ enemies. It might even be enough to deter China, the most formidable among them.
And if so—if Beijing rethinks its aggression and Washington addresses its remaining vulnerabilities in Asia—the current war will have some positive outcomes. It could keep Asia peaceful in the years to come.
Carter Malkasian is Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the National War College. He is the author of The American War in Afghanistan: A History. The views expressed here are his own.
More by Carter Malkasian
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
俄、烏戰爭的「論述」大戰 -- Mark Temnycky
|
|
|
推薦2 |
|
|
|
請參考：
* Laura Loomer meets Zelenskyy in Ukraine after her major reversal on the war (07/24，Laura Loomer：美國極右派悾悾)
* On Ukraine, Trump Now Buys the ‘Tide Turning’ Narrative：Western efforts to force Russia to surrender have only intensified the conflict.(Leonid Ragozin, 07/17/26)
* Competing narratives of the Russia–Ukraine war: Why the West hasn't convinced the rest (Hilary Appel, 08/27/24)
* What Caused the Ukraine War? (Joseph S. Nye, Jr., 10/04/22)
* The Ukraine Crisis: A Clash of Narratives? (Emma Mateo, 10/2018)
下文再度顯示我說的：「凡論述必有前提；凡判斷必有立場」這句話是個「硬道理」。
一般來說我雖然反戰，也不認為戰爭有任何「正義性」或「正當性」可言；但我接受：「生存」可以被當做「最高原則」之一；所以，在「俄、烏戰爭」議題上，我是個支持烏克蘭人民的「鷹派」。
雖然俄、烏戰場上到目前為止還是「膠著」態勢；但俄軍師老無功，普丁焦頭爛額則是不爭的事實；當年替老普「吹喇叭」的政論家和傳聲筒可以考慮自己是否該「封鍵」了。
Despite Ukraine’s Victories, False Narratives About The War Persist
Mark Temnycky, 07/16/26
Summary
Despite Ukraine's recent battlefield successes, including a drone campaign crippling Russian oil refining capacity, critics across the political spectrum continue to argue that Ukraine cannot win the war. This piece examines claims that argue Ukraine faces inevitable defeat and that NATO expansion, not Russian aggression, caused the war. Drawing on verified battlefield data and reporting on Russian influence operations, the piece argues these claims do not hold up, even as they converge across ideological lines. Ukraine continues to hold off the world's second-strongest military four and a half years into the invasion.
On July 10, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak stated that some Russian oil refineries had partially halted production due to Ukraine’s recent drone strike campaign against them. Additionally, Reuters reported that “Russian gasoline output fell to a level equivalent to only around 65% of the seasonal average consumption after Ukrainian drone attacks.”
Ukraine’s missile and drone campaign targeting Russia’s energy industry resulted in a degradation of Russia’s economic capacity to continue the war. Russia’s energy sector has been helping the Kremlin stay afloat amid international sanctions and continues to fund Russia’s war through export sales revenue. The recent decline in Russian production will reduce the cash flow, limiting Moscow’s purchasing power for weapons and staffing and paying its high-casualty army to continue fighting.
The Ukrainian success in targeting Russian oil industries has now led some Western elected officials and journalists to speculate that Ukraine can win the war. After four years of fighting, Ukraine has destroyed about half of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Russia’s “entire active duty tank force [has been] destroyed,” and the Russians have lost billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment.
Despite this, the crucial battle for hearts and minds continues, with some critics arguing that Ukraine cannot win. Some of these experts are entranced by the Russian military power and appear honestly skeptical. Others are rather obviously repeating Russian talking points about the war having been started by the West and the inevitability of a Ukrainian loss to Russia. This latter group spans the political spectrum, but is united in a view of Russian power politics and a cynical, almost paranoid distrust of Western motives.
According to a report published by Foreign Policy, much of the motivation for the isolationist and anti-Western camp, right or left, lies not in vindicating Russia, but in opposing anything America does. Some on the far left are imbued with nostalgia for Soviet power or are intoxicating themselves with stories about the “colonialist” West and the “purity” of the “Global South”, and how the West must be essentially destroyed and replaced. For those on the far right, some see dominance by “great powers” as part of the natural order and also have embraced Russia’s role as a “traditional great power” and a standard-bearer for Christian Orthodoxy, leading them to criticize Ukraine and oppose continued Western, and especially European, support for the invaded underdog. According to the Institute for the Study of War, this cognitive warfare against Ukraine, the United States, and the West at large, is at times directed or manipulated by the Kremlin, often creating algorithm-assisted echo chambers.
Take, for example, reactions surrounding the death of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a strong advocate for Ukraine. His sudden passing drew tributes from Ukrainian officials, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who stated that the U.S. Senator was a “true defender of freedom.” In sharp contrast, Ana Kasparian, Armenian-American co-host and executive producer of The Young Turks, reacted to Senator Graham’s death by posting “good riddance” on her social media account. Her show co-creator Cenk Uygur also mocked the Senator’s death.
Kasparian has previously accused NATO of responsibility for the war in Ukraine, claiming that expansionism provoked the Kremlin and that the Western provision of weapons to Ukraine, such as ATACMS, would result in a “dangerous escalation.” Nevertheless, she is also on record claiming that Ukraine has no chance of winning.
Like Kasparian, self-described “reactionary” and founder of the America First Foundation dedicated to “nationalism, Christianity, and traditionalism,” Nick Fuentes, also posted “good riddance” on his own social media account following Graham’s death. Fuentes has previously praised Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, and he has expressed his admiration for Stalin and Hitler. He has previously stated: “Can we get a round of applause for Russia?” Finally, he has called on Russia to “liberate Ukraine.”
Russia does not rely solely on extremists. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has previously reported that the Russian Federation cultivates relationships with politicians, academics, business leaders, journalists, and other influential figures whose views are considered to carry some mainstream credibility.
Eldar Mamedov is a former Latvian diplomat who served as a senior political adviser in the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and is now a member of the Pugwash Council and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Mamedov was previously suspended from his position as an adviser to the Socialists & Democrats group, the second-largest bloc in the European Parliament, amid an investigation into alleged foreign influence in the European Parliament from Qatar and Morocco.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Mamedov has argued that a European proposal for Ukraine to join NATO in the future would “kill any deal to end the war.” Furthermore, he has called for Ukraine to adopt a neutral status without joining Western organizations, and suggested that the war be frozen along the contact line in the Donbas. Finally, he states that the international community should propose concrete economic incentives for Russia to end the war, such as reintegrating the Russian Federation into European markets and renewing the gas trade. He concludes that “strategic stability with Russia must be restored.”
Mamedov has also opposed aid to Ukraine. In a piece last year, he claimed that providing Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv risks “catastrophic escalation” of the war, and that this could possibly lead to “nuclear brinksmanship” (a line of reasoning that places responsibility on the West for the possibility that the Kremlin may use tactical nuclear weapons in a war that Russian President Vladimir Putin himself started).
Some academic experts have repeated similar points. John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, has continuously blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine. In his works, Mearsheimer argues that NATO expansionism led to the Russian invasion. He also believes that it will lead to a “stunning defeat for NATO” and that Russia is “likely to prevail.”
Similarly, Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University and former Director of Columbia’s Earth Institute, claimed that the United States and the United Kingdom “talked Ukraine out of” a peace deal with Russia, stating that the war has continued unnecessarily as a result. He has also alleged that sanctions imposed by the international community to punish Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine are “likely to fall short.”
The claims made by Kasparian, Fuentes, Mamedov, Mearsheimer, and Sachs have become a familiar refrain. Most are easily refuted. However, their utility for the Kremlin lies not in their accuracy, but in their reaching the same conclusions despite the very different backgrounds and partisan bents of the media and academic personalities publicizing them.
No one knows how or when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will end. Nonetheless, Ukraine has demonstrated that it has been able to hold the world’s second-strongest military at bay and that the Ukrainians will continue to do whatever it takes to defend their homeland against Russian aggression.
When Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, few predicted that the Ukrainians would be able to survive the Russian onslaught. More than four and a half years later, in the face of new evidence on the battlefield, many are at least beginning to rethink their analyses.
Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
Mark Temnycky is a freelance writer focused on defense and energy.
Find Mark Temnycky on LinkedIn. Visit Mark's website.
Forbes Daily: Join over 1 million Forbes Daily subscribers and get our best stories, exclusive reporting and essential analysis of the day’s news in your inbox every weekday.
By signing up, you agree to receive this newsletter, other updates about Forbes and its affiliates’ offerings, our Terms of Service (including resolving disputes on an individual basis via arbitration), and you acknowledge our Privacy Statement. Forbes is protected by reCAPTCHA, and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
本文於 修改第 2 次
|
|
台灣沒學到烏國救亡圖存秘笈 – D. Petraeus/C. Kaluderovic
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
總統府和國防部官員的當務之急：
1) 讀懂這篇分析；
2) 研究和徹底了解其中適用部份；
3) 擬定詳細、具體的落實方案。
相對於中國環環相扣、緊鑼密鼓的「整軍經武」步驟(請參見「中國軍事力量篇」一欄的相關貼文)，台灣官員還是老神在在的睡大覺、做春夢(「美國協防」？)。
如下文兩位作者所說：剩給台灣的時間真的不多了！
The Ukraine Lesson Taiwan Keeps Missing
It’s Not the Drones—It’s Everything Around Them
David Petraeus/Clara Kaluderovic, 07/08/26
The conflict in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, has provided extraordinary lessons about the future of war. The enormous impact of cheap, remotely piloted unmanned systems—on the ground, in the air, and at sea—cannot be overstated. But there is a danger that military strategists will look at the battlefield in Ukraine and see little more than a catalog of weapons to buy.
Although lessons about particular weapons systems are relevant, the more important lesson is about the ecosystem necessary for these new tools to be effective. Ukraine, for instance, has developed Sky Fortress, a network of 14,000 acoustic sensors that locate Russian drones by sound, even at altitudes radar cannot see, to provide a high-fidelity picture of incoming threats. It also has its own battle-management software systems that direct unmanned surveillance, as well as the Unmanned Services Force, an entirely new military service—alongside the army, navy, and air force—that is dedicated to drone warfare, with its own doctrine, leader development, procurement processes, and even recruiting and basic training. Perhaps most critically, the ecosystem in Ukraine also includes manufacturers that can produce enormous quantities of unmanned systems and constantly refine the software and hardware of those systems in response to developments on the battlefield.
The risk of missing this wider lesson is especially acute for Taiwan, which also faces the threat of invasion by a larger aggressor. Taiwan’s leaders and partners frequently say that the island is intently focused on understanding the nature of modern warfare, especially what is happening in Ukraine, in order to prepare for and thus deter Chinese aggression. But while Ukraine’s achievements are admired in Taiwan, that admiration has not yet produced the enormous, fundamental changes that enabled Ukraine’s success.
Indeed, it is not yet clear that Taiwan’s leaders fully understand the Ukraine lesson. Despite the current administration’s stated ambition to eventually field tens of thousands of aerial drones and well over a thousand uncrewed surface vessels, Taiwan’s legislature struck domestic drone production from the government’s special defense budget earlier this year. The opposition parties that control the legislature cited fiscal discipline as well as concerns about potential corruption in domestic procurement, but the move’s overall effect was to dramatically reduce new domestic procurement of unmanned systems and to cut funds set aside for joint development of such systems with the United States.
Even if Taiwan’s politicians can one day muster the funding for substantial quantities of drones, the island remains far from making the considerable institutional changes needed to ensure their effective employment. The gap between admiring Ukraine’s success and replicating it, in other words, is precisely the gap Taiwan has yet to close.
HOW UKRAINE REWROTE THE RULES
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine sank its own flagship (lest it be seized by Russia) and was left, in effect, without a navy. Yet within two years, Ukraine had driven the Russian Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol, sunk over one-third of Russia’s ships on the Black Sea, and forced the remainder of the fleet to tie up in a port as far from Ukraine as possible. Ukraine accomplished this not by acquiring traditional ships but by devising a means of contesting the sea without them: using aerial drones to find the Russian ships and maritime drones to sink them.
That experience—and Ukraine’s similar experiences with aerial and ground drones of various types, ranges, and capabilities—illustrates the most profound lesson of the war: that an overall architecture that links sensors with analysts, leaders, and shooters can enable remotely operated surveillance and weapons systems to work at scale. To build this architecture, Ukraine turned command and control into a software problem. Ukrainian software engineers and technologists, and the foreign volunteers supporting them, produced the Delta system, their own battle-management system, rather than purchasing one from elsewhere. Now run by Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense, the Delta system gathers data from sensors on the ground, at sea, and in the air and then distributes the resulting high-fidelity picture to Ukrainian military units. It is the connective tissue that allows a mass of cheap systems to be directed against a smaller and far costlier array of traditional weapons.
Ukraine also overcame enormous manpower and economic disadvantages by adapting its defenses. When Russia started using relatively inexpensive Shahed drones against it, Ukraine knew it could not defend itself with costly missile interceptors. American-made Patriot interceptors, for instance, cost several million dollars; Shaheds cost less than $50,000. Ukraine reversed this ratio by developing interceptor drones that cost only a few thousand dollars apiece. The Shaheds thus went from being relatively cheap to being relatively expensive.
The particular figures matter less than the principle they illustrate: that the relative cost of each engagement is itself a strategic variable, and it may be turned to the defender’s advantage by invention and production rather than by purchase. One of Ukraine’s greatest advantages in its war with Russia has been the speed of its adaptation, which has been enabled by embedding engineers with the units they support and equip. Ukrainian manufacturers, meanwhile, have demonstrated extraordinary flexibility, often making software changes to systems every week or two and hardware changes every three or four weeks. (This year, Ukraine is expected to produce a staggering seven million missiles and drones.) The result is that improved designs are delivered to the field well before the enemy can adjust. Ukraine, in other words, has compressed into weeks a cycle that takes years in traditional procurement processes.
THE PROCUREMENT REFLEX
Taiwan, by contrast, has treated its defense as something to be supplied rather than constructed. For more than three decades—going back at least to its purchase of F-16 fighters in 1992—it has invested in traditional manned platforms that are guided by someone else’s military doctrine. This instinct is natural enough; such systems have anchored every modern force, and the United States, Taiwan’s guarantor and weapons provider for decades, has built its own forces around them. But this has left Taipei with an establishment that knows how to buy things and is fluent in U.S. doctrines, but that does not know how to develop systems and is unable to articulate its own beliefs about strategy.
The consequences are visible throughout Taiwan’s force, which still prioritizes the acquisition of expensive manned platforms. The same pared-down special budget that eliminated domestic drone production, for instance, preserved billions of dollars for purchases of U.S. weapons systems. Taiwan’s military has also not yet settled on a new doctrine for defense and deterrence that recognizes the contributions that unmanned systems could make. This has enormous downstream effects since the military’s organizational structures (such as a dedicated unmanned-systems service), training, leader education, procurement, personnel policies, and facilities won’t be updated to effectively field unmanned systems—or to train forces in their employment.
Ukraine overcame manpower and economic disadvantages by adapting its defenses.
Taiwan’s engineers, among the most capable in the world, also seem to be on the sidelines. The modern force must be able to contest the entire electromagnetic spectrum—from radio waves to infrared light—by building electronic-warfare capabilities, such as jamming and counterdrone defenses, while also preserving one’s own data links. But there are no signs that Taiwan’s engineers have been enlisted to confront this challenge. In Ukraine, Sky Fortress and the Delta system alike began as volunteer engineering projects that the military then adopted. Taiwan has produced no counterpart—no comparable channel through which its world-class commercial engineers contribute to defense solutions—and its drone manufacturers complain publicly that they don’t see clear demand from the government. If Taipei signaled that it understood the requirements of contemporary warfare, it would catalyze crucial changes in Taiwan’s formidable industrial base. Instead, at the very moment China is producing drones by the millions, Taiwan’s legislature withdrew the funding on which any serious scaling depends. Manufacturers cannot build mass for a customer that has not committed to buying their products, and foreign partners will take their collaboration only to markets that can demonstrate real demand.
Geography makes these deficiencies particularly worrisome. As an island, Taiwan is overly dependent on maritime imports that can be disrupted or blocked once fighting begins. Whatever Taiwan needs to have in a crisis, it must possess before the crisis begins. The island imports its energy and, at times, has held only weeks of reserves. It has also already seen maritime “accidents” sever the Internet cables that bind it to the world. Taiwan, in other words, cannot assume the luxury of choosing the war for which it prepares. Its readiness is a matter of organization and capacity, not merely of procurement.
TRANSLATION, NOT IMITATION
The lessons of Ukraine cannot, of course, be transferred to Taiwan unaltered. Ukraine contests terrain along a continuous front that is close to 1,000 miles long and has considerable depth to retreat, when needed. Taiwan, by contrast, would have to contest a strait and endure an aerial and missile campaign directed at a homeland that features no room for withdrawal. The task before Taipei is therefore not imitation but translation: the recasting of Ukrainian innovation for a theater more maritime and more exposed to the air.
Of the lessons from Ukraine, neutralizing the aggressor’s navy is at once the most readily applicable and the most in need of adaptation for Taiwan. Indeed, this is Taiwan’s greatest opportunity: a mass of distributed, expendable, unmanned maritime systems, on the surface and beneath it, cued by aerial drones overhead, that could be capable of denying an invasion fleet the freedom to operate. To be sure, the waters of the strait are not those of the Black Sea. Taiwan’s application would demand designs that are suited to a harsher sea and a challenging coastline, as well as the persistent surveillance required to direct such a force and production at a scale and price that would allow Taiwan to absorb considerable attrition.
Taiwan also requires a counterpart to Ukraine’s Delta system, conceived and sustained by Taiwanese hands, rather than licensed from abroad, and trained on data drawn from Taiwan’s own circumstances rather than Ukraine’s. What must be reproduced is not a specific system but the manner of its making: the close and continuous collaboration of operators, engineers, and analysts, as well as granting authority to those nearest the problem to constantly refine the solutions.
Taiwan’s potential adversary has drones, the largest conventional missile force in existence, and the world’s largest manufacturing capacity. For that reason, Taipei cannot rely on a modest stock of scarce and costly interceptors—although it will need substantial numbers of those for the missile threat. It must also field defenses that are affordable, layered, resilient, and abundant, and it must manufacture and accumulate them well in advance of any crisis. Such defenses would look much like Ukraine’s: dense networks of passive sensors to detect and track incoming systems; electronic warfare to jam and confuse them; interceptor drones of all types, produced locally and in volume, to destroy them; and the training pipelines and doctrine, continually updated, to knit these layers together.
TAIWAN’S CHOICE
Ukraine’s tempo of adaptation is the result of constant contact with a living and evolving enemy. Taiwan, rightly focused on deterrence, has no such instructor and cannot conjure one. What it can do is approximate the conditions—through exercises rigorous and unscripted enough to expose real issues, through the placement of its engineers with its operators rather than apart from them, and through the disciplined study of the Ukrainian experience.
Taiwan still has time to build the architecture that will deter Chinese aggression. It likely does not, however, have the time to purchase its way to safety, especially given the pace of deliveries from its major suppliers. (Only in April did Taipei receive the last of the 108 U.S. M1 tanks it ordered back in 2019.) The choice before Taipei, therefore—and, to a considerable degree, before those countries that have an interest in Taiwan’s ability to defend itself—is whether to persist in acquiring modest numbers of expensive but increasingly vulnerable manned platforms or to undertake the harder work of building expendable mass at home and the architecture to enable it. Other countries may assist in that task, but they cannot perform it. The deterrence posture of Taiwan is, in the end, Taiwan’s to sustain. And the principal lesson of the war in Ukraine is that a nation determined to survive must be willing to learn how to defend itself.
DAVID PETRAEUS served as Director of the CIA, Commander of Coalition Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Commander of the U.S. Central Command. He is now Chairman of the KKR Global Institute, a Partner at KKR, and the Kissinger Fellow at Yale’s Jackson School. More by David Petraeus
CLARA KALUDEROVIC is Co-Founder and CEO of Mental Help Global (MHG), an AI nonprofit working in Ukraine, and Co-Founder of ex2, a nonprofit that develops AI applications for defense and humanitarian operations. She is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. More by Clara Kaluderovic
本文於 修改第 2 次
|
|
「正義戰爭說」的討論 -- Richard Haass
|
|
|
推薦0 |
|
|
|
在很多場合下，「正義戰爭說」淪為「強權」的「羊頭」或遮羞布。我無意推測教宗李奧14強調這個議題的動機；不過，提出它至少有以下兩個正面作用：
1) 聚焦這個理論，藉釐清其意義和應用可以解消與破除它的「羊頭性」。
2) 提升這個理論的曝光度，從道德高度加強民眾對「軍事手段」的憎惡。
Questioning the Just War Doctrine
Richard Haass, 06/19/26
With war becoming more frequent and more lethal to civilians, Pope Leo XIV and the College of Cardinals are wading into the debate over its legitimacy. The best outcome of the “consistory” Leo is convening in in late June would be to authorize an overhaul of the just war doctrine for the modern era—and ask the necessary questions.
NEW YORK—Pope Leo XIV is convening an extraordinary “consistory”—a gathering of the College of Cardinals—in late June at the Vatican. One of the four scheduled sessions will be devoted to the “just war” doctrine.
This emphasis is hardly new. The Catholic Church has sought for nearly two millennia to provide guidance about when war is justified (jus ad bellum) and the right way to fight one (jus in bello). The goal was, and remains, to limit the frequency of warfare and its toll.
Leo has twice spoken on the subject in recent weeks. In Magnifica Humanitas, the encyclical on artificial intelligence that was released last month, the pope questioned the essence of just war theory. “Today, more than ever, without prejudice to the right to self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm that the ‘just war’ theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. Humanity possesses far more effective and capable tools for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness.”
Then, in early June, the pope returned to the theme, telling a group of journalists, “The notion of a just war no longer applies. The problem is that just war theory developed in centuries when no one could have imagined the weapons we have today or humanity’s capacity for destruction.”
These comments strongly suggest that Leo is seeking to limit the scope of just war to self-defense, such as the war Ukraine is fighting against Russia. I expect he has been heavily influenced by recent history. The 2003 US-led war against Iraq, Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, elements of Israel’s response in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the US-Israeli war against Iran were all wars of choice that would not be considered “just” in design, execution, or both.
To be just, a war must be fought for a worthy cause, judged as likely to succeed, authorized by a legitimate authority, and undertaken only as a last resort. Just wars must be conducted in a manner that uses no more military force than is necessary (the proportionality standard) and respects the safety of noncombatants.
This guidance is meant to influence the thinking of the 1.4 billion Catholics around the world, individuals and leaders alike. But it is also meant to influence policy and policy debates more broadly.
It turns out that determining what should constitute a just war is easier said than done. It is widely agreed that preemptive military intervention against imminent attacks is covered under the definition of self-defense. More controversial are preventive attacks to avert gathering but not yet imminent threats. The fear is that a world where preventive wars were seen as legitimate would become a world of frequent conflict.
But what is to be done when the means of war are being produced or acquired by an enemy, and there can be no certainty of sufficient warning to act before those means are used? Some Americans argued this fear justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Many Israelis argued the same in the case of Iran last year and again in recent months.
So, what makes for a worthy cause? And how much risk should a country take in not resorting to force if the penalty for being wrong could mean thousands of its own citizens being killed?
Determining what constitutes a worthy cause can be difficult. At what point does stopping repression of a population (not to mention genocide) justify the proper use of military force? When does inaction become unjust?
Then there is the question of what constitutes a legitimate authority. The United Nations often fails to endorse or condemn wars, because one or more veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council blocks collective action. Russia and China, for example, refuse to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Years earlier, Russia prevented UN approval of military action against Serbia when there was evidence it was committing ethnic cleansing against Kosovar Albanians. Did the fact that NATO blessed the action make it any less legitimate?
Adding to the complexity is the reality that popular approval of a war does not make it legitimate—even when the country’s constitutional practices are followed. A leader calling for war may be acting out of domestic political or personal interest rather than principle.
Much of just war theory is a matter of judgment. I have no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin expected success when he decided to attack Ukraine, as did US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they went to war against Iran. Obviously, they were wrong.
But any leader about to initiate a war expects success. And wars are inherently uncertain, which makes this long-standing requirement close to meaningless.
Questions about how force should be used are equally complex. A new question concerns when and how to respond to potentially devastating attacks carried out through non-military means, such as cyberattacks or, in the future, AI-enabled attacks designed to cripple a society. What constitutes proportionality in such cases?
Likewise, just war theory emphasizes not attacking civilians. But what is to be done when countries or non-state actors (such as Hamas in Gaza) hide fighters and weapons in schools or hospitals? Leo has gone on record criticizing attacks on such sites, but to rule them out invites the use of civilian sites as military sanctuaries. This would be untenable, which again raises the question of what practical guidance the church is prepared to offer.
With war becoming more frequent and more lethal to civilians, it is understandable that Leo and the Cardinals are wading into the debate over its legitimacy. They will be frustrated, though, if they rely on the Church’s traditional criteria for useful guidance. The best outcome of the consistory would be to authorize an overhaul of the just war doctrine for the modern era—and to ask the necessary questions.
Richard Haass, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, senior counselor at Centerview Partners, and Distinguished University Scholar at New York University, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-03), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He is the author of The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens (Penguin Press, 2023) and the weekly Substack newsletter Home & Away. He’s ben writing for PS since 2000.
相關閱讀：
* The Intelligence That AI Is Missing, Jun 1, 2026, Anne-Marie Slaughter
* AI Must Not Encroach on Human Dignity, Jun 5, 2026, Michael R. Strain
* Why Is Europe’s Economy Falling Short?, Jun 10, 2026, Simon Johnson
* Where Is China’s Trillion-Dollar Trade Surplus Going?, Jun 9, 2026, Miao Yanliang
* After the Liberal Order, May 19, 2026, Carla Norrlöf
* Is the US Stock Market Too Big?
Jim O'Neill identifies big discrepancies between major economies' shares of global GDP and domestic equity valuations.
Can democracy survive without independent journalism?
On June 30 at 2:30 pm CEST, the Meliore/PS Media & Democracy Summit will convene leading voices from across Europe and beyond to discuss press freedom, media capture, AI-generated mis- and disinformation, and the future of democratic discourse. The event will be streamed live online.
REGISTER NOW
|
|
《未來戰爭目前已經正在進行》讀後
|
|
|
推薦0 |
|
|
|
該文重點不在：無人機或人工智能有多厲害；而在於強調(請見本欄上一篇)：
1) 無人機或人工智能改變了戰爭的形式和型態。
2) 面對這種改變，國家領導階層必須重新評估和制訂與「軍事」相關政策；以及修正所有跟「軍事」相關的決策邏輯。
3) 面對這種改變，國家領導階層必須使用新的概念和思考方式來處理跟「軍事」相關事務。
附帶提一句，跟一般新聞報導相比較，下文「寫作風格」的程度要高一到兩個層次(1)。不仔細讀可能會有些「霧煞煞」。
附註：
1. 下文原載於《深思》網誌；作者嘎德爾先生為該網誌主編。該網誌名稱的原來意思是：「思考」、「思考對象」等。胡賽爾以它為現象學基本概念之一；做為該哲學學派術語，我會把它翻譯為「意向對象」。從以上簡單說明，我們或許可以多少了解嘎德爾先生的「寫作風格」。
相關報導/評論：
* 本欄2026/06/11、2026/04/29、2026/04/08、2026/03/02等各篇貼文，以及它們所附「參考報導」。
* 此欄相關貼文和所附「參考報導」。
* 此欄2026/02/14貼文。
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
未來戰爭目前已經正在進行 -- Nathan Gardels
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
The Warfare Of The Future Is Already Here
AI and drones are changing the scope, scale and speed of battle.
Nathan Gardels,, 06/17/26
When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 with a direct assault on Kyiv, the conventional odds were that Russia’s post-Cold War military prowess, replete with a world-class nuclear arsenal, would readily conquer its former Soviet republic and fold it back into the restored empire.
Four years on, the battle not only still rages but it has also changed the nature of warfare as the first conflict to use AI-assisted precision-guided drones. Though pounded regularly by Russia, not least with hypersonic missiles as well as waves of drones, Ukraine has achieved the once unimaginable. It has increasingly brought the war deep into the Russian homeland, most recently hitting St. Petersburg — 1,000 miles away from Kyiv — with a drone strike on an oil refinery and military base supporting Russia’s war effort.
Similarly, the most damage done to the integral infrastructure of the oil-and-gas-rich U.S.-allied Gulf States at the height of the hot war with Iran was inflicted by inexpensive drone swarms launched by the theocratic state.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has moved on from fostering AI development at the tech giant to founding companies that have become key innovators of battlefield drone warfare in defense of Ukraine. In an interview with Noema, he looks at the big picture of the technological shift in how war is waged. He calls the introduction of AI and drones into combat “the largest revolution in military affairs in history.”
From A War Of Platforms To A War Of Systems
As Schmidt sees it, the first thing to understand is that we are shifting from the conventional “war of platforms“ to a “war of systems.”
“The right unit of analysis,” he explains, “isn’t the drone or the missile or the launcher. It’s the integrated architecture that lets a military see, decide, communicate, strike, survive and update faster than your adversary. In the future, the front line will be a new form of the no-man’s land of World War I, as sensors and drones mean that anything that moves can be struck.
“Second, every weapon will be supported by AI in the system I mentioned. Third, and this is the part I think people are slow to appreciate: In future wars, the humans will go in last, not first. Today, the basic order is humans first, with the technology supporting them. In the next war, that principle inverts. You send the robots in first to absorb fire and clear the battlefield.”
I asked Schmidt about the role humans will still play in this future. Will they remain in the loop?
He noted, “In March of this year, 96% of Russian casualties were caused by Ukrainian drone units. The drone operator is now the highest-value target on the battlefield — Ukrainians prize killing a Russian drone operator even more than killing a tank. So the pressure to move the human farther from the battlefield is already very real.”
He continued: “The question then moves into what systems replace the human operator on the battlefield. The future will entail ‘humans on the loop’ of a distributed system, rather than always ‘in the loop’ — supervising, auditing and intervening when something looks wrong, but not necessarily authorizing each individual shot. This is really just the algorithmic form of the delegation down the chain of command that has marked militaries forever.”
One wonders if precision targeting by AI will make war “cleaner,” with less collateral damage, or just invite a broader scope of destruction.
“We are in an era of ‘precision mass’ in warfare,” Schmidt argues. “In conflict, you used to have to choose between mass and accuracy. Either you fired a great deal of artillery inaccurately, or you fired a small number of expensive precision-guided weapons accurately. What has changed in the last few years is that cheap drones, cheap GPS and cheap sensors have upended that trade-off.
“You can now field huge numbers of weapons that each hit exactly what they aim at. The war in Ukraine and against Iran have shown what this means. In Ukraine, FPV [First-Person View] drones in the hands of trained operators have produced minimal collateral damage in the engagements I’ve seen. The dumb war of mass artillery flattening a city block is far worse than a $500 drone going through a single window. This is the strongest case for the era of precision mass.”
AI In Nuclear Command & Control
In an earlier Noema interview with Schmidt, we discussed a 2023 visit he and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger made to Beijing to persuade President Xi Jinping to reach an agreement with the U.S. on the role of AI in nuclear strike decisions. So I asked him when we spoke again recently, will the evolving logic of warfare that he has explained apply to nuclear strategy as well?
“Nuclear weapons are the one category where the cost of a mistake can be civilization-ending, and where the case for AI-driven speed is weakest. The whole logic of nuclear stability for 70 years has rested on a small number of human beings, in a small number of minutes, having the ability to question what a system is telling them and judge the steps that should be taken. The danger of taking the human out of the loop is not that the machine malfunctions in some science-fiction sense but that the machine functions exactly as designed, with bad data, and faster than anyone can stop it.”
In short, the only thing worse than a human with their finger on the atomic trigger is an AI quick on the draw based on faulty intelligence.
We’ve now seen how powerful frontier AI models like Anthropic’s Mythos can spot and exploit software vulnerabilities that humans can’t, opening the door to cyberattacks on critical infrastructure by bad actors. Such models could just as easily penetrate nuclear targeting systems and the intelligence they rely on.
Unfortunately, Schmidt agrees. “As AI advances and is incorporated into the intelligence process, it can challenge the longstanding foundations of nuclear deterrence.
“Nuclear strategy has always rested on the assumption of each side having second-strike capabilities. As AI gets better at finding the hidden submarines or mobile launchers, however, that premise disintegrates. Furthermore, the data centers and computer centers that train AI might look like targets in their own right. This is the conversation the United States, China and Russia ought to be having now, in the way the nuclear powers during the Cold War negotiated limits on testing and on certain delivery systems.”
The Wrong Kind Of Weapons For A New Kind of War
The experience of the war in Ukraine is upending the way the American military-industrial complex, and by extension the complexes of other great powers, have gone about procuring the means for warfare. So much in the pipeline of military budgets will be obsolete on the battlefield of the rapidly arriving future.
Schmidt puts it this way: “The arithmetic of warfare is fundamentally changing. The Russians are aiming to produce 1,000 Shahed drones a day to fire against Ukraine, while Lockheed Martin produced 600 Patriot interceptors last year. For all of what AI will do for warfare and the world, that gap has to be filled by investing in our industrial capacity and building the cheaper, abundant systems that have been shown to be so important by the war in Ukraine.
“American military doctrine is still organized around exquisite, expensive platforms designed for a kind of conflict that is no longer the one being fought. A great deal of current military spending is going to systems whose purpose, training pipelines and budgets are built on assumptions Ukraine has already disproven. The institutions have not yet acknowledged that the doctrines and resources no longer match the war they will have to fight.”
The great worry is that the transformation of warfare is happening so rapidly that those with the most extensive arsenals will become the most insecure about the capacity of their rivals to gain the advantage by adapting faster.
War most readily beckons when an imbalance of power, or its perception, arises. Any apparent advantage by others is inevitably regarded as concealing aggressive intentions. That results either in a debilitating arms race or, worse, a war of choice waged out of the fear that it will otherwise be too late.
本文於 修改第 2 次
|
|
個案研究：戰爭對社會的影響 - Lauren Kent
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
請參考：
* Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time
Russia’s overwhelming manpower advantage against Ukraine is starting to wane
Lauren Kent, CNN, 06/14/26
What would you do with an $80,000 bonus, more than quadruple the amount of an average annual salary? Or with $140,000 in debt relief?
Those are the questions being posed to men in Russia, as the military advertises multi-million-ruble incentives to fight in Ukraine. Ads plastered on roadside billboards and embedded in young men's social media feeds are offering eye-watering sums – more than many people earn in years – alongside promises to become a "hero" or be fast-tracked to Russian citizenship.
And yet military recruitment was down by 20%vin the first quarter of this year compared to 2025, and there are signs it's still faltering, according to Russian economy expert Janis Kluge.
The Kremlin's strategy has long been to outlast Ukraine in an attritional war profiting from its immense population and large military industry that can sustain a slow, grinding campaign. And now, with the Ukraine war in its fifth year, President Vladimir Putin's war coffers are getting a much-needed boost thanks to the Iran war increasing oil prices.
The problem?
"Rubles don't fight wars," said Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He noted that this is the first war in Russia's history in which the state is paying citizens to fight rather than forcing them – and that is leading to economic strain and manpower issues.
"There are signs that this incentive may no longer be working effectively, and that Russia has begun to lose more troops than it can recruit," Gould-Davies said in a recent report.
Analysts say Moscow is resorting to increasingly desperate measures to shore up its forces, and Putin will likely be forced to make more unpopular decisions this year if he wants to continue his invasion of Ukraine.
After all, if a potential military recruit was unwilling to take a hefty signing bonus last year, it is unclear what would make them change their mind now, especially given reports of poor treatment on the front lines and of soldiers bribing their officers to avoid being sent on certain-death ground missions.
Russia has already sent tens of thousands of former prisoners to the front lines, been reinforced by three separate waves of North Korean soldiers and incentivized immigrants to join its military. The government recently announced another recruitment drive, offering to pay off debts of up to $140,000 for men who sign up and might otherwise face penalties for defaulting.
And the conflict's drain on men of fighting age has had ramifications for the rest of the Russian economy, which is now dealing with a wider labor crisis.
"It's not just struggling to find people to go to the front… they're struggling to find people to employ," Gould-Davies told CNN.
For the defense industry specifically, there are signs that it's already operating at maximum capacity, with factories working around the clock. That means it's difficult for Russia to increase the military output any further, while the demand for factory workers places even more strain on the rest of the economy.
"The whole Russian economy is suffering from the most severe labor shortage in history,." Gould-Davies said.
Nearly 500,000 Russian soldiers have died in the war, according to some Western intelligence reports, and hundreds of thousands more have left the country to avoid being drafted. The resulting labor shortage is driving up wages, another source of inflation in the country.
"Labor is a scarcer input than physical capital or finance. It is also harder to increase," according to Gould-Davies. "With effort, it is possible to build a new factory or raise money. But the state cannot dictate the birth rate."
The labor shortage could compel the Kremlin to recruit more labor from India, North Korea and various African nations to ease pressures on both the civilian and military sectors.
More drastically, it could mean a second forced mobilization of troops, coupled with measures like curtailing the freedom of citizens to leave the country – particularly men of conscription age. That's something Putin has been keen to avoid, after the first "partial mobilization" proved hugely unpopular and caused many Russians to emigrate.
"The Kremlin will soon face a fundamental choice over whether to radically escalate its demands on Russia's economy and society or to scale back its war aims," Gould-Davies predicts.
War heightens economic strain
Some experts, including Maria Snegovaya at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, think the Kremlin can muddle through its recruitment issues by putting more pressure on the regions outside of major cities like Moscow, pushing students to sign military contracts and recruiting more foreign nationals. The fact that the defense sector is approaching maximum capacity also presents difficulties for Putin, but is "not catastrophic," Snegovaya said.
Economically, though, "the strain is becoming increasingly visible," Snegovaya told CNN. "This year in particular we see the economic costs finally imposing difficult tradeoffs on the Kremlin."
She noted that "the fiscal burden of sustaining the war effort" has increased, given that Russia's military personnel and recruitment costs account for tens of billions of dollars each year, amounting to 9.5% of total federal budget and 2% of the country's GDP by some estimates.
Russia is experiencing growth stagnation – even recession by some economists' estimates – as well as rampant business closures and declining consumer confidence, Snegovaya said.
Despite some wage growth, incomes haven't kept pace with persistent inflation. The official annual inflation rate as of June is 5.52%, according to Russian state media TASS. Ordinary Russian households face food prices that are up more than 18% compared to January 2024, sky-high utility bills, and a recent two-percentage-point hike in sales tax. Ukrainian strikes on Russia's critical infrastructure have also led to gasoline shortages in some areas and persistent airport delays.
Even though the overall rate of inflation has slowed again, Snegovaya said consumer sentiment on the issue remains negative.
"These trends could …weaken support for the war, potentially increasing social discontent," Snegovaya said. "However, the regime is boosting its repressive apparatus."
"The Kremlin has tended to double down on its goals rather than scale them back," the analyst warned.
Ukraine outpacing on innovation
Meanwhile, Ukraine's advancements in drone warfare and technology mean its military is inflicting far more casualties on Russia than earlier in the war.
"Ukrainian forces are achieving and out-innovating" on the battlefield, particularly when it comes to their use of tactical drones, according to analyst Kateryna Stepanenko at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Earlier this year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that his forces had captured a Russian position using only drones and robots for the first time, and had conducted more than 22,000 unmanned ground missions using robots in just the first three months of 2026.
In May, Ukraine had a net territorial gain of nearly 100 square kilometers (39 square miles), making it the second month in a row that Russian forces experienced a net loss, according to Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Russian casualty rates stand at around 30,000 to 35,000 a month, according to Western officials, although estimates vary. Syrskyi has claimed that in May, Ukraine's drone operators killed or wounded more soldiers than Russia could recruit.
And while Ukraine's war tech is improving, experts say the Russian army has become weaker as it sends larger numbers of former prisoners and untrained soldiers to the front.
Moscow's efforts to recruit students for its own expert drone units have been mired in distrust and setbacks, according to Stepanenko, after Russia's Ministry of Defense committed some drone operators to frontline ground assaults.
"That created a really-not-helpful PR campaign for the unmanned systems forces recruitment," Stepanenko said.
CNN's Anna Chernova contributed to this report.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
烏克蘭武器研發的能力與效率 - Verity Bowman
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
請參考：
* Ukraine's Zelenskiy confirms drone strike on refining facilities in Russia's Tyumen region (06/21；Tyumen region在西伯利亞，距離烏克蘭2,000公里)
* Ukraine is putting weapons stations on ground robots to make 'small tanks' that hunt Russia's infiltration teams (06/19)
* Ukraine strikes Moscow oil refinery amid large-scale drone attack (06/19)
* The end to years of brutal fighting is in sight for some of Ukraine's battle-weary troops (服役4年以上之烏軍將依既定方案秋後退伍；06/18)
* Ukraine Retaliates With Fiery Hit on Moscow Oil Plant As G7 Meets (06/16)
* Ukraine's newest attack drones are delivering the kind of strikes that its HIMARS couldn't for years (HIMARS：海馬士多管火箭系統 ；06/16)
高科技新型武器將是現代/未來戰爭決勝因素之一。而人民的創新力則是決定這一類型武器效用的重大因素。
The Ukrainian weapons boom catching Putin off guard
How a nation under fire ditched defence bureaucracy for ‘if it works, just build it’ lethality
Verity Bowman, 06/09/26
In tiny workshops scattered across Ukraine, a war machine is being built at a pace that has left Nato's most powerful members standing still.
In May alone, Ukraine's ministry of defence certified 175 new weapons systems for operational use, nearly 93 per cent of them designed and built entirely within the country.
Germany, by comparison, certified fewer than 20 new systems in the whole of 2024 – its fastest year on record.
The United States fields between two and five genuinely new platforms per year, with procurement cycles averaging 10 years.
Four years ago, Ukraine was desperately importing whatever its allies would send. Today, it is certifying six new weapons systems every day.
"Put it all together, and you've got a defence procurement ecosystem that is completely unrecognisable compared with anywhere else in Europe," said Keir Giles, an associate fellow of Chatham House's Russia and Eurasia Programme and the author of Who Will Defend Europe.
The question is how a country under sustained bombardment managed to build this in four years.
The answer, according to Mr Giles, begins not with the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022 but in 2014, when Russia first seized Crimea and backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
"It's not from scratch," he said. "Some industries and innovations have obviously been kick-started by the war, but Ukraine had already spent eight years before the full-scale invasion developing these capabilities; there is a deep reservoir of experience, particularly in outsourcing to private industry, that Ukraine has built upon rather than invented."
What the full-scale invasion changed was the speed. Under the pressure of an existential threat, Ukraine stripped out bureaucracy that in other countries causes procurement to take years or decades.
It adopted a "fail fast" principle: if a weapon works, adopt it; if it doesn't, discard it, with far less cost and delay than a Western-style proving process would involve.
It pushed development down to individual battalions, which now update and modify their own equipment in the field.
"Ukraine's defence ecosystem is turbocharged by initiatives like the Brave1 military tech marketplace, where units purchase what they know works well," explained Robert Tollast, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. "Their will for survival and lethality drives efficiency."
The 175 new weapons range from interceptor drones and ground robots to ballistic missiles and armoured vehicles.
Among the newly certified drones, including the Tin, Tur, Mamba, Palii, and D'Artagnan, is the Lupynis-10-TFL-1. 視頻
It was developed by The Fourth Law, a "miltech" start-up founded in 2023 by Yaroslav Azhnyuk, whose previous company made remote-controlled pet cameras.
What makes it remarkable is what "first level of autonomy" means in practice.
For most of its flight, a human operator retains control. But in the final 500 metres, where Russian electronic warfare is most intense and jamming most likely to sever the pilot's connection, the drone's onboard AI takes over entirely, identifying and locking on to its target without human input.
The company says this increases mission success rates by two to five times, at an additional cost of just 10 to 20 per cent.
"In essence, this is an internal weapons market where every manufacturer and every idea has the opportunity to be realised, with the best and most effective designs ultimately remaining," said Dmytro Zhmailo, deputy head of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Centre.
Another crucial new drone is the Sichen, built for deep strikes at ranges of up to 870 miles, carrying an 88lb warhead.
0906 Sichen long-range strike drone 機型與規格
Its ability to navigate active electronic warfare enables Ukraine to carry out strikes within Russia despite Moscow's campaign of drone interference and hijackings.
Ground robots, including the Gnom, Primar-Killer, Vepr, Plyushch+ and Ratel X, which were all approved in May, are also key.
Most significant is the Ratel X, a low-profile combat robot capable of reconnaissance, mine-laying and casualty evacuation in the line of fire, as well as launching its own fibre-optic FPV attack drones directly from the battlefield.
Ukrainian forces have already captured a Russian position using only robots and UAVs.
Mr Zhmailo said the driving force behind Ukraine's ground robotics push was the emergence of so-called kill zones, which are sections of the front line up to 20km deep under constant fire from both sides, where sending in soldiers had become tantamount to sentencing them to death.
"In certain situations, robotic systems and drones make it possible to keep personnel away from the zone of direct fire contact, reducing the risk of injury or death, and thus minimising the loss of Ukraine's most valuable asset: its people."
The push for autonomy does not stop at the front line.
Ukraine has also quietly built a domestic missile programme from scratch, with the FP-7 ballistic missile with a 200km range already in active service.
The more powerful FP-9, with a reported range of 850km and an 800kg warhead capable of reaching Moscow, is expected to complete testing this summer.
And the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, with a range of 3,000km and a 1,150kg warhead, has already struck targets more than 1,500km inside Russia.
"Ukraine had little option but to develop its own alternatives, as we've seen with the long-range strikes into the heart of Russia using technologies that were developed in Ukraine, because the United States did not wish to allow Ukraine to strike into Russia," said Mr Giles.
1908 Flamingo (MP5) cruise missile 機型與規格
While Ukraine relies on smaller factories set up by former civilians, Russia's approach is the opposite: a state-controlled monopoly concentrated in facilities such as Alabuga, producing one weapon at a massive scale with no competition and no incentive to innovate.
It is dangerous in its raw volume, but brittle in its inability to adapt.
Mr Tollast argued that the comparison increasingly favours Ukraine, not just because of its dispersal model but because of its growing two-way pipeline with Western defence firms.
"Initially we learned a vast amount from Ukraine's innovation," he said, "but this is increasingly a two-way pipeline of talent and material."
The West, meanwhile, has been watching and largely failing to draw the right lessons.
"Of course, corners are being cut in Ukraine," said Mr Giles. "But the corners being cut are the ones that make British defence programmes take decades."
Ukraine's domestic defence production capacity has grown from $20bn (£15bn) in 2024 to $35bn (£26.2bn) in 2025, with output forecast to reach $50bn (£37.5bn) this year, a figure that would make it one of the largest defence producers in Europe.
The lesson for Europe, Mr Giles said, is that it should not wait until it faces the same existential pressure to reform its own procurement processes.
"Ukraine needs to win the war. And Europe needs Ukraine, because it has developed all of these technologies and capabilities."
Verity Bowman is The Telegraph’s Foreign and Global Health Security Reporter, covering conflict, human rights abuses, global development and international health issues, with a particular focus on Ukraine. See more
Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.
本文於 修改第 7 次
|
|
|
本城市首頁
看回應文章
等級：8
