A US veteran who fought in Ukraine stated that the US military focused on fighting rebels for so long that they forgot “what it means to actually fight a war,” Business Insider reported.
We have neglected a lot of the training [on] how to fight and survive in a peer-on-peer adversary war.
The former soldier stated that “in the US military, we mostly have been focused on a guerrilla war” and counterinsurgency, referring to Iraq and Afghanistan. He described how his training in the US military a few years ago compared to what he saw in Ukraine, where he fought from the outbreak of the war in February 2022 until December last year.
The serviceman claimed he fought in Iraq as a contract soldier after leaving the US Army, whereas in Ukraine he fought in hotspots, such as Kharkiv and Bakhmut. He served as a combat medic in his unit, treating fellow soldiers injured in combat.
We’ve gotten so used to the idea of just fighting guerilla wars and f***ing fighting terrorists and everything else that we kind of forgot what it means to actually fight a war.
By focusing on wars in the Middle East for much of the present century, the US and some of its NATO allies in Europe allowed the skills needed for this kind of conflict to atrophy. The veteran revealed that when he was in training, he never received any real preparation for peer-to-peer conflict.
A little bit of talking about it and just a little bit of training, but nothing to the point that would have prepared me for the war in Ukraine.
He also claimed that he had seen many Western soldiers fighting in Ukraine, as “they already have a set idea about how things should be and everything, and it’s just not that way out in Ukraine.” The military man added that US soldiers were used to fighting with an advantage in equipment and manpower, but against Russia in Ukraine “a lot of time I’ve fought at a disadvantage compared to the enemy.”
Another US veteran, also on condition of anonymity, spoke of similar concerns. He revealed that his friends who were still serving in the US Army were asking him for advice on how to fight with drones or in the trenches, as they were not receiving training that fully reflected what was happening in Ukraine.
Many NATO countries trained Ukrainian soldiers, but the veteran stated that some of the Ukrainians he fought with found some of this training inappropriate or inadequate. The volunteer reported that some Ukrainian soldiers who had been trained in the UK told him that when they asked how to get through Russia’s huge minefields, they were told to simply bypass them.
Such advice is unlikely to help, as Ukraine claims that some of Russia’s minefields stretch for miles, making that strategy virtually impossible. Moreover, open areas that are not mined could already be subject to artillery or other threats on the battlefield.
Some Ukrainian soldiers trained abroad stated that the training they received was not suitable for the combat operations required for the war against Russia. A Ukrainian commander who was trained by US, British and Polish soldiers claimed last year that if he had followed those countries’ advice exactly, he would have been killed.
Many Ukrainian units used NATO training and tactics when Ukraine launched its counter-offensive last summer, but some of the approaches, such as an overemphasis on manoeuvre warfare without air support in the face of dense minefields and other intimidating obstacles, ultimately failed. The Ukrainians then changed their tactics, suffering serious losses in a move that some military analysts praised, but it was not enough.
Another veteran revealed that many foreign fighters came to Ukraine expecting the same advantages they had in previous conflicts, but many were killed because of “the wrong mindset.”
Ukraine is fighting in an environment very different from the one in which the US and its NATO allies have fought in recent decades. Lessons from the Cold War and world wars must be re-learned, with some modern events requiring new ways of warfare to be learnt from scratch, veterans stated.
Many soldiers describe the war in Ukraine as similar to World Wars I and II more than any modern conflict, although it has modern elements, such as drones and missiles. This comparison was also made by the US volunteer. He stated that fighting to clear Russian trenches made him feel like he was “fighting World War I.”
