Armies will be able to maneuver on battlefields again, but it’s going to be difficult and bloody

This exactly describes the situation on the First World War’s Western Front, a comparison made by Ukraine’s top general after the 2023 counter-offensive. But modern technology has added a new twist: drones and guided munition in what ISW calls — based on a Cold War-era Soviet concept — the “tactical reconnaissance strike complex.”

“The TRSC is the combination of pervasive tactical reconnaissance, primarily by drone; drone-corrected precision artillery fire; precision munitions delivered by fixed- and/or rotary-wing aircraft; drone-launched precision munitions; and large numbers of FPV [first-person view] loitering munitions,” ISW explained. While both the attacker and defender can use the TRSC, it is the attacker who must break cover and expose himself in the open.

In this conception, the TRSC is dynamic, a cat-and-mouse game where each side seeks to jam the links between enemy drones and their operators, while constantly updating their own drone systems to beat jamming. For Ukraine — or the US — to launch successful ground offensives, it will need to exploit “fleeting technological advantages to disrupt the defender’s TRSC in support of the initial penetration operation and to sustain the advantage long enough to create a moving envelope that protects exploitation forces through to their planned culmination and transition to the defensive having secured their objectives.”

In other words, the assault force needs to be protected by jammers and air defenses as it rumbles a path through the enemy’s defenses.

Some Western experts advocate the creation of mobile “bubbles” in which troops would safely move under the protection of jammers, anti-drone weapons and other defensive systems. “The requirement is not to destroy them [drones] permanently or universally,” the ISW report said. “Temporarily suppressing the local TRSC will require combining the EW [electronic warfare] and other counter-drone capabilities described above with effective counter-battery fire and other capabilities to suppress traditional artillery alongside effective tactical air defense against fixed- and rotary-wing attack aviation in pre-determined sectors to permit the concentration first of penetration and then of exploitation forces.”

However, the attacker must also take care that it only disrupts enemy drones, and not friendly ones as well. “EW systems must thus be designed and operated in a way that does not suppress all drone activity in the attack sector,” ISW noted. That’s still a work in progress for Ukraine, which also lacks the advanced EW disruptors that can defend wide areas of the battlefield.

The debate over whether armies can still maneuver also turns on a capability hardly available to Ukraine: fighter jets that provide close air support. Its new F-16s are mostly flying far from the front to avoid the Russian surface-to-air missile batteries that have gutted its air force. In contrast, debates about the US Army’s ability to maneuver may turn on questions about the effectiveness of its attack helicopters and Air Force planes like the A-10 Thunderbolt and the AC-130 Ghostrider.

Ukraine may be able to compensate for its lack of airpower by using drones and ground-launched long-range rockets to perform close air support, as well as battlefield air interdiction to hit Russian reinforcements and supply columns just behind the front line and isolate the defenders. “Ukrainian forces will have to find ways to use the drone and missile strike systems it has to generate the effects of BAI and CAS in direct support of the penetration battle and the exploitation phase of each offensive operation,” ISW said.

Even though Ukrainian forces are outnumbered by the Russians, Ukraine can also use shrewd tactics to restore maneuver warfare, ISW contends. For example, Ukrainian forces can judge the “culminating point” of Russian offensives, when the attack begins to run out of steam and the attacker is vulnerable to a sharp, well-timed counterattack. Such a “backhand blow” strategy was used with some success by German mechanized forces to stop Soviet offensives in World War II, though ultimately the panzer divisions were worn down.

Regardless of whether ISW’s concept is viable, the cyclical pattern of military history suggests that the luster of firepower will eventually fade, and maneuver will once again become ascendant. “The long history of war makes clear that maneuver will ultimately be restored to the battlefield despite the current challenges,” ISW concluded.

Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.