Kathrine Frich
He says they must reshape their forces.
When technology leaps forward, old playbooks quickly become useless.
In the military world, sticking to familiar habits can cost lives on the front lines.
Now, a prominent former intelligence chief is warning that Western armies are falling behind the times.
Rethinking the battlefield
Western militaries need a complete overhaul if they want to survive tomorrow’s conflicts, retired General David Petraeus warned at the Warsaw Security Forum. According to Ukrinform and Ziare.com, the former CIA director argued that NATO allies must study the war in Ukraine and rebuild how they train, buy weapons, and organize troops.
Simply buying modern gear or handing extra gadgets to existing squads will not solve the problem. “It’s much more than, say, giving 500 drones to a tank brigade. It all starts with a new conception of how to wage war, with a new fundamental idea,” Petraeus said, as quoted by Ziare.com.
Once generals embrace a fresh strategy, they must reshape their forces and scrap older crewed vehicles that can no longer survive modern combat. Petraeus praised Kyiv for upgrading its battlefield tech at breakneck speed.
“It takes the ability to change software every week and hardware every three to four weeks, as is happening in Ukraine,” said the former CIA director, according to Ukrinform.
So far, though, Petraeus noted that no NATO member or Western nation has built a doctrine bold enough to support changes on this scale, covering everything from leadership training to military bases.
Warnings from the east
Future battles will shift away from remote-controlled drones toward smart machines that team up using artificial intelligence, Ziare.com reported. Because of that rapid shift, Petraeus urged Western capitals to learn faster from Kyiv’s daily reality with electronic jamming and unmanned weapons.
“There are, of course, certain lessons to be learned from the Gulf War, but the real laboratory of the war of the future is in Ukraine,” Petraeus said at the forum.
His warning lands as fears grow along NATO’s eastern border. While alliance leaders insist they have crisis plans ready for direct clashes or hybrid attacks, which blend military force with cyber tricks and fake news, some neighbors remain nervous.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs recently warned that Europe is lagging behind in drone warfare and that most NATO members are not ready for a Russian missile strike, according to Ziare.com.
Meanwhile, even as leaders in Estonia and Lithuania try to reassure citizens, analysts cited by Ziare.com see troubling echoes of 2014 and 2022 across the Baltics, including online disinformation, groups pushing “people’s republics” on social media, and new Kremlin powers to use force abroad.
