Ukraine Turned Russia's Biggest Advantage Into Its Biggest WEAKNESS

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Become a Member Today and Unlock EXCLUSIVE Videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKfak8fBm_Lhy4eX9UKxEpA/join  When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, conventional military metrics pointed to a swift victory for Moscow's vast armor, navy, and manpower reserves. Nearly five years later, Ukraine has rewritten the rules of modern combat by turning asymmetric warfare into formal state doctrine. By leveraging agile drone networks, ultra-fast defense tech iteration, and autonomous systems to preserve personnel, Kyiv has transformed Russia's massive conventional advantages into severe strategic liabilities. Discover how Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces and tech-driven defense model continue to reshape the battlefield.  ⏱️ CHAPTERS: 00:00 - David vs. Goliath: Framing Asymmetric Warfare as State Doctrine 03:14 - Formal Asymmetric Warfare: Integrating State, Tech Sector, and OSINT 04:39 - Reframing Mass: FPV Drones Against Multi-Million-Dollar Capital Assets 08:09 - Forcing Defensive Expenditure: Disruption, Scrambles, and Economic Attrition 09:15 - The Vulnerability of Scale: Defense Costs Across 6.6 Million Square Miles 11:32 - Unmanned Systems Forces & Rapid Industrial Fast-Tracking 12:34 - Eliminating Bureaucracy: 24-Hour Testing Loops vs. 6-Month Western Schedules 13:55 - Rudimentary vs. Over-Engineered Hardware: 3D Printing & Decentralized Production 15:43 - Demographic Asymmetry: Autonomy as a Force Multiplier to Preserve Manpower  Support us directly as we bring you independent, up-to-date reporting on military news and global conflicts by clicking here: https://www.youtube.com/@TheMilitaryShow/join  #militarystrategy #militarydevelopments #militaryanalysis #themilitaryshow  SOURCES: https://pastebin.com/QMQjtuj0

Transcript

00:01From the day it started, the Russia-Ukraine war has been described by experts, analysts and commentators as the ultimate

00:08David versus Goliath battle.

00:10On the one side, there's Russia, with all of its immense resources, unrivalled stockpiles of tanks and armoured vehicles,

00:17vast Navy and Air Force fleets, and Hydra-like army, where there always seems to be thousands of fresh recruits

00:23to replace those that are lost.

00:24On the other side, there's Ukraine, far smaller, far weaker, at least on paper, and with far less military muscle

00:31to throw around.

00:33This is why, back in 2022, the end result of the war always felt like a foregone conclusion.

00:39Russia had so many advantages, it simply couldn't lose.

00:42Yet, here we are, almost five years in.

00:45The conflict is still raging, and a resounding Russian victory seems an increasingly distant and unlikely prospect.

00:51This wouldn't have happened without Western aid, of course, but it also could have happened without Ukrainian resilience, innovation and

00:58adaptation either.

01:00Kyiv's forces somehow found a way to turn Russia's biggest advantage into its greatest weakness, and in doing so, it

01:07gave itself a very real chance of not merely enduring this war, but winning it.

01:11But before we explain how, the military show now offers exclusive content for channel members only.

01:17Consider joining the family today to enjoy instant access to some of our most exciting reports.

01:23Now, it's no understatement to say that when Russian forces took their first steps into Ukraine in February 2022, this

01:30looked like one of the most uneven contests the military world had ever seen.

01:34No matter what metric you looked at, Moscow appeared to have the advantage.

01:39It had more tanks, it had more armoured vehicles, it had more combat aircraft, warships, artillery, missiles and air defences.

01:46It didn't just have an edge in aspects like manpower funding or industrial capacity, it was positively light years ahead

01:53of its opponent.

01:54Ukraine may have had some stockpiles of old Soviet systems, but its defence sector had been underfunded and overlooked for

02:01many years.

02:02Its air force had undergone some serious downsizing since the fall of the Soviet Union, and its navy was basically

02:08non-existent.

02:09But it wasn't defenceless, and it had some exceptionally shrewd and highly experienced tactical planners in charge of its operations,

02:17with more brilliant minds from the country's civilian population subsequently signing up to join the war effort and play their

02:23part in defending their homeland.

02:25Together, these tacticians came to a clear and obvious conclusion.

02:29It was the same kind of conclusion that dozens of countries and military forces had arrived in the past, when

02:35having to face a much larger and more formidable opponent.

02:38Ukraine realised that this was not a war it had any chance of winning via conventional means.

02:43It couldn't go toe to toe or tank to tank with Russia.

02:46It simply didn't have the resources for that, and even if it might have been able to hold out for

02:51a certain amount of time,

02:52the sheer weight of the Kremlin's military would eventually prove too great to cope with or contain any longer.

02:58So, Ukraine had to find a way to shift the way the war was fought, to rewrite the rulebook,

03:03to flip the script so that Russia's advantages became liabilities and Ukraine's weaknesses became strengths.

03:09That meant embracing asymmetric warfare, not just here and there, or to a certain degree, but wholeheartedly.

03:16As international relations expert Gonzalo Oliveira writes in a report for the Defense Post,

03:22Ukraine turned asymmetric warfare, historically an option born out of necessity,

03:27into formal state doctrine, upending battlefield logic in the process.

03:31This is what separates Ukraine from so many other countries throughout history

03:35that have been on the receiving end of an attack or invasion by a much larger force.

03:39Many of those countries understood that their only chance of surviving or succeeding was through asymmetric tactics,

03:45but they often resorted to improvising their asymmetric strategies on the fly,

03:50working things out as they went along, which sometimes left gaps in their defenses for their enemy to exploit.

03:56Ukraine didn't do that.

03:57This wasn't a case of disparate groups or military branches working independently on asymmetric tactics to undermine their opponent.

04:05Instead, the whole of the Ukrainian military and its political leadership worked together to build asymmetry into everything they did,

04:12every big decision, every operation, and every military move they made.

04:17As Oliveira continues,

04:18The Ukrainian model of asymmetry is distinctive because of the deep coordination between the state, civil society, private tech actors,

04:27and an open-source intelligence apparatus.

04:29And the result of that coordination is one of the most effective asymmetric warfare campaigns ever fought, incorporating drones, remote

04:37warfare tactics, intelligence dominance,

04:40a decentralized defensive posture, civilian participation, and lightning-fast technological development.

04:47As a consequence, Russia's strength didn't go away, but Ukraine reframed what it was worth.

04:52And without doubt, the biggest contributor to that reframing was drone technology.

04:56Interestingly, it was Russia that made the early headlines for its use of drones,

05:01when it began sending swarms of Iranian shahids and domestically developed unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, over the border

05:08to bombard Ukrainian towns and cities, leaving fires, casualties, and rubble in their wake.

05:13But then Ukraine began to turn this technology against its opponent.

05:18While Russia was spending tens of thousands of dollars on single UAVs,

05:21Ukraine found ways to make its own drones for a fraction of the cost.

05:25And it didn't use them to bombard innocent civilians.

05:28It used them to take out Russia's most high-value assets.

05:31Like tanks, bombers, armored vehicles, missile systems, artillery, and radar.

05:36All of a sudden, Ukraine was using relatively tiny amounts of cash to take out multi-million dollar enemy assets.

05:43This was the ultimate example of Kyiv's forces turning Moscow's strength against it.

05:48The Kremlin rolled confidently into this war,

05:50banking on the incredible amount of heavy-duty vehicles at its disposal.

05:55It thought that its vast tank fleet would easily tear Ukraine apart,

05:58and its commanders happily gave the orders for vast mechanized columns

06:02to attack tiny towns and villages across the Donbas and beyond.

06:06But then Ukraine turned the tables.

06:08It transformed those tanks from powerful death machines into massive metal targets.

06:13And every time it took one out, the Kremlin was forced to foot the bill.

06:17As the weeks and months went by, and Ukraine's drone army only got bigger and better,

06:22with pilots and operating crews gaining experience and proficiency,

06:26Russia's losses continued to multiply,

06:28and it eventually reached the stage where Moscow had no other choice but to go back to the drawing board

06:33and rewrite the doctrines it had relied on for generations.

06:36It stopped deploying tanks and armored vehicles in front-line locations.

06:40Not only that, but after Ukraine also carried out numerous successful drone strikes

06:45against the Kremlin's Black Sea fleet and air bases in places like Crimea and western regions of Russia,

06:51Moscow also made the call to withdraw large parts of its navy

06:54and use its fighter jets and tactical bombers much more sparingly too.

06:58And it was all thanks to some cheap drones,

07:01and Ukraine's remarkable ability to use them in the most strategic and sensible ways.

07:06So, many reports on the war have focused on how Ukraine's drone strikes unfold.

07:11There was much media coverage of the famous Operation Spiderweb strikes for example,

07:16which involved dozens of FPV drones being secretly smuggled across Russia to wreak havoc on airfields around the country.

07:23But it's even more impressive when you zoom out and look at the bigger picture

07:27of how drones allowed Ukraine to change the way the war was fought.

07:30If Russia had its way, it would still be deploying tanks and armored fighting vehicles up and down the front

07:36lines.

07:37It would still be relying on its biggest advantage, brute force strength, in the hope of overwhelming its opponent.

07:43But Ukraine has made that impossible.

07:46It's cancelled out its enemy's primary tactic and forced it to fight on a much more even playing field,

07:52which is arguably the biggest reason why the war is still ongoing to this day,

07:56and why Russia's advances have slowed and even stalled in many locations,

08:00even as its losses of both men and military equipment continue to surge.

08:04But before we look even deeper at how Ukraine shifted the odds in its favour,

08:08this is why we make the military show, to explain how power really moves.

08:12If you're new here, hit subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

08:16Now, Ukraine didn't stop at simply targeting and taking out Russia's most expensive equipment with its drones.

08:23Especially after the Kremlin began treating its tanks and other military vehicles a little more carefully,

08:28Kyiv's drone crews realized that they weren't going to be able to simply keep on taking artillery systems and air

08:34defenses off the map with impunity.

08:36They needed to find other ways to use their UAVs to disrupt the Kremlin's war machine.

08:40Fortunately, that was arguably even easier than taking out the tanks,

08:45because Ukraine's drone pilots realized that they don't even necessarily need to hit a target to cause problems for the

08:51Kremlin's forces.

08:52If they deploy a few drones and force Russia into scrambling its fighters, for example,

08:57or activating its air defenses, or suspending operations at an airport,

09:02or launching interceptor missiles, or repositioning radar stations, all of that matters.

09:07All of that counts as a victory, because it's using up the enemy's resources.

09:12It's distracting them, it's taking manpower and focus away from more important matters,

09:17and putting the Russians on the back foot when they want to be on the front foot.

09:20And this is where another of Russia's advantages, its size, start to become a problem.

09:25At around 6.6 million square miles, 17.1 million square kilometers,

09:31Russia is by far the biggest country on Earth,

09:33and it positively dwarfs Ukraine, being almost 30 times larger overall.

09:38In most cases, that's an obvious advantage.

09:40More space means more resources, and when combined with more people,

09:44it also means more infrastructure, like factories, bases, supply lines, logistic nodes,

09:49and other important elements that any country needs to conduct and sustain a long-term military operation.

09:56Russia's vast size also meant that it could store important assets,

09:59like reserve tanks and air defenses, far out of reach of Ukraine's drones and missiles,

10:05keeping them safe until such time as they were needed.

10:08Plus, it allowed the Kremlin's forces to attack their opponent from multiple directions,

10:12opening several axes of attack and forcing Ukraine to adapt accordingly.

10:16At the same time, size isn't always an advantage in times of war.

10:21It can be much more costly to have to guard, defend, and monitor long borders and broader areas of land,

10:27for example,

10:27and it takes more time, and money, to move troops and supplies across vast distances.

10:33There are also logistical complexities involved when maintaining a war for several years,

10:37when you also have such a large population to provide for, and so much ground and infrastructure to maintain.

10:43Ukraine realized that.

10:44And the longer the war went on, the more it understood that its best chance of winning

10:48was never going to be defeating the Russian army or pushing the enemy all the way back out of Ukraine.

10:54It was by making the conflict as costly as possible for Russia,

10:58in the hope that the Kremlin would eventually reach a point

11:01where it accepts that it would be better off bringing its troops home and agreeing to a ceasefire deal.

11:06Drones could make that happen.

11:07Ukraine could use the $5,000 UAV to force Russia to spend 10 times that amount, if not more, in

11:14preventative or retaliatory actions.

11:17It was the perfect embodiment of asymmetric warfare, and if Kyiv could repeat that process enough times,

11:23if it could give Russia an almost impossibly big bill to pay, it had a chance of getting the result

11:28it wanted.

11:29Not an outright victory, but a strategic one.

11:31And so, Ukraine went all in on drone warfare.

11:35It became the first country in the world to have an entire separate branch of its military dedicated to UAVs,

11:41the unmanned systems forces, and it gave that branch the power and resources it needed to wreak havoc for Russia,

11:47not just in the occupied territories, but far beyond.

11:50And so, we come to Ukraine's next incredibly intelligent and influential move,

11:55fast-tracking its defense industry.

11:58Usually, even in military superpowers, it can take many years for new weapons and military systems to be developed,

12:04prototyped, tested, fine-tuned, and finally introduced for real-world service.

12:09Ukraine didn't have that kind of time, and it had no intention of wasting a single moment of its war

12:14with Russia,

12:15because it didn't want to give its enemy any opportunity to gain any sort of advantage that could have otherwise

12:20been avoided.

12:21So, it slashed red tape, it dismantled bureaucracy, it cut out the middlemen,

12:26and it made the process of designing, developing, and using new weapons and systems faster than almost anywhere else on

12:32Earth.

12:33As Defense CEO Dr. Robert Bruhl notes in his own report for the Defense Post,

12:38Ukrainian drone manufacturers, some of them engineers barely out of school,

12:42are designing, building, deploying, and improving drones at breathtaking speed.

12:47Ukrainian engineers told me they were baffled by their Western counterparts' six-month testing schedules.

12:52Testing in Ukraine takes a day. The enemy isn't going to wait for a certification process.

12:57Bruhl also notes how Ukraine's defense contractors aren't separate entities

13:02from the soldiers fighting on the front lines. Instead, there's almost total integration between the two.

13:08Troops regularly communicate with engineers to fine-tune designs.

13:12Drone pilots provide feedback to Kyiv's firms about their needs and challenges,

13:16and those same firms build solutions.

13:18There's a constant dialogue between the two sides, a continuous back-and-forth

13:22that helps to dramatically reduce the amount of wasted time and resources,

13:26as well as the risks of needless mistakes being made,

13:28while also ensuring that the Ukrainian armed forces get the ideal equipment they need to achieve their objectives.

13:35And that equipment doesn't have to be world-beating or incredibly expensive.

13:39It simply has to be designed with a clear goal in mind.

13:42As Bruhl says,

13:43What's impressive about these drones isn't that they're high-tech, it's that they're not.

13:48The Ukrainians I spoke to were blunt.

13:50Western systems are over-engineered, beautifully specified, expensively tested,

13:55and much too slow to improve once circumstances change.

13:58The same logic can apply to large parts of Russia's military equipment, too.

14:03The Kremlin has, for decades, poured billions of dollars into high-end military innovations.

14:08It's shown off its latest and greatest tanks and hypersonic missile systems at Moscow parades,

14:14and attempted to wow the world with its latest generation jets, bombers, and air defenses.

14:19Even in the drone space, it hasn't really focused on cheap and basic models,

14:23opting instead for larger, more complex systems with greater-than-average price tags.

14:28Ukraine's equipment, meanwhile, may be more rudimentary overall,

14:32but that's not necessarily a downside.

14:35Rudimentary equipment can still be immensely effective,

14:38and it's far cheaper to make basic drones in massive quantities,

14:41or to repurpose old Soviet tanks and decades-old Western systems

14:45in ways that make them relevant for modern combat conditions

14:48than it is to create whole new tanks or air defenses from scratch.

14:52As Bruhl explains,

14:53Ukraine also uses quite simplistic production techniques for many of its systems,

14:58such as 3D printing,

14:59which means that parts can be redesigned with almost no delay,

15:02and weapons can be made in almost any location.

15:05There's no need for Kyiv to build huge production plants and giant drone factories,

15:10like Russia does,

15:11which will simply turn into huge shiny targets for Moscow's missiles.

15:14It can simply make the equipment it needs wherever and whenever it wants.

15:18The commitment to getting cheap but effective assets off production lines

15:23and into the hands of frontline defenders

15:25has enormously helped Ukraine to even the odds with Russia.

15:28And even though the Kremlin can count on far larger production plants and far greater funds,

15:33Ukraine can get new weapons designed, perfected, and into the field more quickly.

15:37And in a war like this,

15:39which revolves so heavily around fast-moving technologies,

15:42like drones and electronic warfare systems,

15:45that sort of speed is an invaluable advantage.

15:47Even the fact that Russia has more people than Ukraine has been turned against it.

15:52With a population of more than 140 million people,

15:55Russia's population is around 3.5 times larger than Ukraine's.

15:59On paper, that means that the Kremlin can more easily recruit the enormous amounts of active-duty personnel it requires

16:05to overwhelm its opponent.

16:07And Moscow has certainly done that over the course of the war, resorting to a range of tactics,

16:12including mobilizations, aggressive recruitment campaigns, blackmail,

16:17and even dragging convicts from their prison cells to send them to the front lines.

16:21However, the fact that the Kremlin has so many people to call on has also made it somewhat complacent.

16:26Even Russian military bloggers have criticized their country's so-called meat-grinder tactics

16:31and tendencies to treat troops like disposable livestock rather than valuable assets.

16:36This, in turn, has led to devastating losses on the Russian side,

16:40with Moscow's army suffering close to 1.5 million casualties according to the most recent counts.

16:46Ukraine has also lost a lot of people,

16:48but it understood from day one that it needed to treat its troops with much more care

16:52if it were to have any hope of competing with Russia.

16:55So, while the Kremlin's commanders coldly order assault squads to march into minefields

17:00and needlessly lay down their lives in poorly planned operations and suicidal strategies,

17:05their Ukrainian counterparts have been much more prudent with the people under their command.

17:09Rather than asking soldiers to carry out every dangerous task imaginable,

17:14Ukraine has increasingly looked to prioritize unmanned autonomous systems wherever possible,

17:19using them for everything from reconnaissance and intelligence gathering

17:22to strike missions and frontline patrols.

17:25As Dr. Bruhl concludes,

17:26Autonomy is the answer to a specific question.

17:29How do you fight a war when you're running out of people to fight it?

17:33This, too, gives Ukraine an edge over Russia that simply wouldn't have seemed possible back in 2022.

17:38It means that the longer the war continues with current casualty rates,

17:42the harder it will become for the Kremlin to keep recruiting and deploying the troops it needs to get things

17:47done.

17:48Ukraine, meanwhile, despite also suffering casualties of its own,

17:51Ukraine will only become more dependent on its increasingly diverse and adaptable array of unmanned systems to fight the war

17:57for it.

17:58There's much that the Western world and other countries can learn from Ukraine's astonishing example.

18:03But perhaps the most important takeaway is this.

18:06Just as David didn't need to grow to Goliath's size to defeat him,

18:10Ukraine has demonstrated that it didn't need to match Russia in every area to win this war.

18:14It simply had to find a way of fighting that turned its enemies' advantages against it.

18:19And you can learn more about how Ukraine has done just that in this video,

18:23which explains how one Ukrainian brigade converted a Cold War-era troop carrier into an autonomous mine clearer that Russia

18:30has no answer for.

18:32Alternatively, watch this video to get the full lowdown on Russia's summer of hell.

18:36And finally, make sure to subscribe to the channel so you don't miss our latest uploads

18:41and consider becoming a member for even more exclusive content.

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