Ukraine and the Problem of Restoring Maneuver in Contemporary War
August 12, 2024 - ISW Press
The war in Ukraine is transforming the character of warfare in ways that will affect all future conflicts. This paper primarily aims to offer a new framework for Ukrainian forces and their Western backers to break the current positional warfare and restore maneuver to the battlefield. It also establishes a basis for discussions within the United States, NATO, and allied Pacific militaries about the implications of the current conflict for contemporary and future warfare. Ukraine’s Kursk Campaign—a pivotal moment in the war with the potential to change its trajectory—underscores several critical battlefield aspects that the paper discusses. This campaign showed that surprise is still possible even on a partially transparent battlefield where the adversary can observe force concentrations but cannot reliably discern the intent behind those concentrations.
