[US Journal: A Certain Ability Enables Ukraine to Avoid Failure]

On June 6, Christian Kareil, a journalist who has long studied Russian issues, wrote an article titled "The Ukrainians' New Way of War" in Foreign Policy. The article points out that after more than three years of extreme exhaustion, Russia is even further from victory than it was at the beginning of the invasion.

Despite having a clear advantage in various military resources, Russia has still been unable to defeat Ukraine in this all-out war. The key reason lies in the astonishing adaptability of the Ukrainians—they always manage to find clever ways to counter every heavy blow from the Russian army.

Kareil cited an example: In the fall of 2022, when the Russian army began using large numbers of "Shahed" suicide drones, traditional Ukrainian detection methods proved ineffective. These drones flew at extremely low altitudes, utilizing terrain undulations to avoid radar detection.

Two Ukrainian engineers soon found a solution. Today, the country is covered by a network of 9,500 microphones, installed on poles two meters high. Microphones connected to cell phones track Shaheds through sound and transmit these data to a central system. Each pole with a microphone costs less than $500, making the entire network called "Sky Fortress" cheaper than two Patriot missiles.

Kareil believes that this ability to counter a powerful Russia with low-cost asymmetric solutions is the underlying logic of the "Spider Web" operation. "The disparity in strength forces Ukrainians to be creative, bypass traditional bureaucratic systems, and allow soldiers and entrepreneurs to jointly explore unconventional solutions to meet battlefield needs. This new philosophy that disrupts the traditional military hierarchical 'top-down' slow process can be called 'Flat Warfare'."

Kareil emphasized that "Flat Warfare" is Kiev's established strategy rather than a passive response. This philosophy reflects Ukraine's modern political history—from Soviet-style centralization to a modern decentralized model.

Kareil stated, "The most significant feature of the new strategy is the principle of cost-effectiveness." In the "Spider Web" operation, hundreds of dollars worth of drones have destroyed aircraft worth hundreds of millions. Many critical decisions made by the Ukrainian army do not come from the presidential office or the general staff but are autonomously made by brigade-level units: including personnel recruitment, task allocation, weapon procurement, and even producing drone parts themselves. This direct interaction between soldiers and weapons manufacturers produces remarkable results—"few armies in the world dare to deploy naval drones that shot down Russian Navy aircraft over the Black Sea in actual combat."

The article also mentioned Ukraine's breakthroughs in the militarized application of artificial intelligence. Joyce Hackme, deputy director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, pointed out, "Ukraine's advantage does not lie in any single technology but in its continuous lead over Russia in the speed of innovation cycles." Kareil agreed with this view and believed that speed has become a weapon for the Ukrainian army.

America has begun to partially emulate this special tactics: The Pentagon launched the "Replicator" program to mass-produce low-cost drones, and the Army introduced the "Procurement Acceleration and Technology Innovation" program to bypass traditional procurement processes, which were clearly inspired by the Ukrainian experience.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1834210581212160/

Disclaimer: The article represents the author's personal views only.