I'm taking a regional conflict where the total manpower of both sides outnumbers all the rest of the armies of NATO without the US. Where one side, Ukraine, sends OPFORs to NATO exercises and wins handily with drones because NATO doesn't know how to fight drones, or how to operate in a front line that's 20km deep and the enemy knows everything going in it and it's impossible to mass forces because tube artillery is still cheap.
And yes, this is what warfare is now. When Russia invaded in 2022, it was using its new armored battalion tactical groups, and they failed to reach Kyiv at all, or to conquer Kharkiv or Sumy--they just surrounded them and stretched out along the highways, where infantry teams with Javelins destroyed them in detail.
The battlefield transparency that drones bring is a sea change in warfare, and a big part of that change that Ukrainians and Russians have learned is total force dispersion. You can't assemble an armored fist because it's bombed to oblivion before it ever sees the enemy, or encounters an artillery deployed minefield that didn't exist the night before.
NATO will take years to ingest the obvious lessons from Ukraine and adjust its doctrine to handle them. Until that time, they face an adversary who knows them in its bones.
> A million casualties and three-year stalemate in Ukraine is "worked out"? Good for them.
Could NATO take a million+ casualties and still be fighting with another million in uniform and the nation not yet undergoing general mobilization?
> This is the Russian drone infantry currently occupying Kyiv?
If that Russian drone infantry suddenly showed up on Estonia's borders, what chance would you give the Estonians?
>> the US just disbanded its drone warfare division because drones aren't manly enough for Hegseth
> Please explain what you think this means.
It means the most expedient way for the US to learn to apply the lessons of the war in Ukraine was just discontinued. The Pentagon does not see drone warfare as a top priority.