The West must not forget the 20th century’s hard-learned lessons of war

A large-scale, brutal conflict of the kind that many assumed lay in the past but no longer in the future has been witnessed by governments, military organisations and the public at large in the 116 days since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It is important to learn from this because it is possible that other massed attrition-style wars may occur in our near future. This is something that democracies have dealt with before yet we have, unfortunately, forgotten many of the hard-learned lessons of the 20th century.

Perhaps one of the most important lessons to have been forgotten is that a vital part of any national deterrent is the capacity to design and produce the artefacts of war – weapons, ammunition and trained humans – in large quantities.

In the wake of the Cold War, and the draw down on military spending, military forces were downsized (reducing demand), and militaries engaged in operations that only had short periods of high intensity combat. As a consequence, most military organisations lost the institutional memory of industrial scale activities.

In an essay this week, former US Army officer Alex Vershinin explored the issue of ammunition shortages, particularly for artillery, in the Russo-Ukraine War. His findings make sobering reading. This isn’t just because of the huge increase in artillery ammunition that will be needed for the Ukrainians to sustain their defence against Russia. It is because this is also an issue that applies to many other aspects of contemporary military institutions beyond ammunition production.

Three areas need our attention

There are three key aspects requiring attention to ensure countries like Australia, the United States and others are able to sustain their militaries in wars that may last more than several days.

Equipment

One area is equipment. As seen in Ukraine, war is expensive in consuming equipment. In war, tanks, trucks, artillery, weapons and even personal protective equipment are destroyed by the enemy, in accidents or it just wears out.

This can occur in large quantities — and it has in Ukraine. Even if the Ukrainian updates on Russian losses overestimate the destruction of Russian equipment by 100 per cent, that is still 700 tanks and more than 1000 other armoured vehicles destroyed in four months. Contrast this with the US tank production which currently sits at about 130 per year.

Therefore, an important component of strategies that prepare military forces for 21st century conflict must be the scaling up national capacity to build large numbers of complex modern weapon systems. Tanks and trucks, artillery and helicopters are expensive and are currently produced in limited numbers. The problem is magnified for ships and aircraft which are produced at a limited number of shipyards and factories.

Because of the huge cost and time in building these systems, we will see the greater use of smaller, cheaper autonomous systems. Necessity will drive this in even the most conservative and risk adverse military cultures. But they cannot fully replace tanks, ships and aircraft. We will still need to produce these as well.

Infrastructure

A second area requiring attention to build more sustainable forces is infrastructure.

This is an often-overlooked element of building military capability. Militaries need infrastructure such as bases (where they live and store equipment), jetties and ports, airfields and fuel farms, logistics bases, transport hubs, and training areas.

Currently, most western military forces have scaled their infrastructure for their “force in being”. Bases are sized and supported for a known number of occupants, with minimal expansion capacity. Consequently, any expansion to larger military forces for a large-scale future threat must consider expanded infrastructure.

Personnel

Finally, Western military institutions must review their personnel policies. The central capability of any good military institution is its people. This includes recruiting (or conscription), training, education, experience, leadership, personnel policies, pay and conditions. Unfortunately, wars are expensive in people.

Since the end of the Cold War, most military institutions have moved to smaller all-volunteer forces. These smaller forces are trained and educated to a very high level, regardless of their speciality. However, the exquisite training and education systems we have developed in the last three decades are unlikely to scale up if we need to undertake a significant expansion in the size of military forces.

The throughput of current training institutions is designed to fill the force in being, not a much larger institution. And systems such as Australia’s would not cope with the need to replace hundreds of casualties each day. Additionally, the length of many military courses, which is suitable for peace time, will be too long for expanded organisations.

A shift to industrial scale warfare requires a different approach to training and education. One that has a massively increased throughput capacity, and one that focuses just on combat needs.

‘Mass is back’

A key trend in 21st century conflict is that “mass is back”.

As I wrote in my book War Transformed, this “involves large-scale conventional forces, the massed use of autonomous systems, and the wide-scale use of the tools of influence, including sophisticated algorithms.”

We are seeing this play out daily in Ukraine.

As Vershinin describes, there is much we can learn from the war in Ukraine. But to demonstrate we have learned about war on the industrial scale, Western military institutions will also have to act.

They will need to convince their civilian masters of the need to invest in the capacity to build military forces and employ them at industrial scale.

Mick Ryan is a strategist and recently retired Australian Army major general. He served in East Timor, Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a strategist on the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff. His first book, War Transformed, is about 21st century warfare.