Drones in Ukraine show the way Western militaries are run is 'outdated,' UK warns
The war in Ukraine has shown that the way Western militaries are run is "outdated" because of how fast battlefield tech like drones evolves, a defence minister has warned.
Luke Pollard, the UK's armed forces minister, said Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion showed "the way we have run our militaries, the way we have run our defense, is outdated. And that is the case across the NATO alliance."
Pollard said that drones had "shifted the tectonic plates of warfare," and the speed of their innovation showed how much faster procurement and innovation have to happen.
Drone tech "iterates every two to three weeks on the front line" with a "fundamentally different" model, Pollard said Wednesday, adding, "That means we have to fundamentally challenge our assumptions about how we procure."
He said that NATO militaries "build and procure really expensive high-end bits of kit. And it will take you five, 10 years: five years to run a procurement challenge, another 10 years to build it."
"If we allow ourselves to be stuck in old-world thinking, we will not be providing the tech that Ukraine needs, we will not be providing the security that we need," Pollard added.
Pollard was speaking at the Drone Summit, which brought together drone companies, military officials, and government ministers in Latvia, a NATO member bordering Russia.
Drones have played a bigger role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine than in any other conflict in history, and have upended many traditional fighting rules by taking the place of some artillery and infantry.
Cheap drones have also , like tanks and air defenses.
Oleksandr Yabchanka, the head of the robotic systems for Ukraine's Da Vinci Wolves Battalion, which operates ground drones, told Business Insider in March: "What was up to date and relevant half a year ago is not up to date and relevant anymore."
Pollard was echoing previous warnings that the West needs to change its approach to weaponry to fight an adversary like Russia.
Military officials and warfare experts have warned that the West must amass a larger volume of cheaper weaponry and shift its focus away from fewer pieces of more advanced and expensive kit.
In January, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte gave a similar warning, saying, "speed is of the essence, not perfection."
Officials also questioned the value of some high-value weaponry in the face of drones. US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll said earlier this month that the US can't keep developing and buying expensive weaponry that can be destroyed by far cheaper drones.
New rules
Pollard told the summit that, with drones, there must be a change "that is built into all our procurements that says what we can buy and build and scale faster than we have done before."
He said this change would be harder for larger companies, but there needs to be a startup-style culture for companies to "not go along with the guide rails and the rules of the game but to innovate based on what is working."
Pollard said that, while a coalition of 18 countries had delivered tens of thousands of drones to Ukraine, the war shows how much more needs to be done.
"Big numbers need sustainable supply chains that can scale up when wartime demand requires it. Our industrial bases across Europe, across the globe, must become as agile as the systems we seek to produce with our people as skilled as the operators who deploy them on the frontline of Ukraine," he said.
Stark warnings
The gathering saw repeated warnings that the West's work is not enough.
Ruben Brekelmans, the Netherlands' defense minister, told the summit that, in much of Europe, "We are quite fast at developing drones, but we are not producing drones on a massive scale. And I think that's a step that we need to take."
He added Ukraine's allies had to work together to achieve "mass production quite quickly, because Ukraine needs it. We need it as well."
Many European countries have warned that they could be attacked next, and supply Ukraine not only to keep Russia's war machine occupied, but to test battlefield tech.
Russia still has a large military, and it has kept some of its advanced equipment out of Ukraine and unscathed from the war. Many current and former Western military officials also warn that Russia's war machine is far more spun up than Western ones.
"Russia has surpassed us technologically. And more dangerously, it has surpassed us in terms of speed and scale," Valerii Churkin, Ukraine's deputy defense minister, said at the summit.
"The enemy moves faster than we do," he added.
Churkin urged more collaboration, telling his country's European allies, "Ukraine is not just a recipient of aid. We are your test."
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