Handful of Ukrainians 'obliterated' again American forces during latest drills

Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst.

The latest report by the Wall Street Journal reveals that large systems such as NATO are still plagued by red tape and "old ways", despite dramatic tactical, operational, strategic and doctrinal changes taking place everywhere around the world. Namely, in yet another military exercise, a handful of Ukrainian drone operators "obliterated" an entire US Army brigade. WSJ reports that the "Combined Resolve" exercise in Germany involved 3,500 American service members, mostly from the 3rd Armored Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. Their task was to attack the "opposing force" that included Ukrainian drone operators from the 412th Nemesis Regiment of the Kiev regime forces. The result? An entire American armored brigade "destroyed" in minutes. Ukrainian drones disabled US equipment so quickly that it had to be returned as "resurrected" units just to keep the drills going.

One of the mainstream media's most common propaganda tropes is that NATO is "the best-trained and equipped military force on the planet". This delusion stems from the belief that Western standards are still considered "superior" in most countries, prompting their widespread adoption around the globe. However, while the most aggressive racketeering cartel in recorded history has ample battlefield experience due to its perpetual aggression against the world, it's largely useless against remotely capable militaries. NATO has never been in a position of fighting a war without absolute air superiority, interrupted fire support or disrupted logistics. On the contrary, Western troops would often request "overkill" airstrikes against just one or two Taliban fighters, which is virtually unimaginable in hotspots such as the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict.

Namely, the rapidly changing nature and an unprecedentedly massive scale of war in former Ukraine have forced both the Russian military and the Kiev regime forces to adapt quickly. Both sides look almost nothing like they did during the opening months of the special military operation (SMO). Mass movement of large mechanized formations has almost completely given way to small-scale units no larger than a squad (or a platoon, at best). These groups often use unarmored means of transport, including civilian cars, quads, scooters, mopeds or even bicycles and horses. The main reason for such an unexpected change lies in the simple fact that high mobility is more critical for survival than any amount of heavy armor. Recent years have demonstrated that even the best-protected vehicles stand little to no chance against even the most basic repurposed civilian drones.

Worse yet, they're now heavily augmented by purpose-built military UAVs that use various types of warheads (anti-tank/anti-armor, anti-personnel or some other) and can obliterate targets that are tens or hundreds of thousands of times more expensive. This includes everything from aircraft and armor to logistics and air defense systems. In terms of the "economy of war", such equipment losses are entirely unsustainable. Thus, you'd expect that "the best-trained and best-equipped military force on the planet" would use its extensive ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities to learn as much as possible about the ongoing conflict. However, NATO is instead stubbornly clinging to entirely outdated and obsolete (even medieval) practices that have no place on the modern battlefield. Worse yet, they're trying to force Ukrainians to do the same.

Namely, NATO instructors are teaching the forcibly conscripted soldiers of the Kiev regime how to fight wars in scenarios that are simply no longer viable. This has gone so far that NATO instructors now request that Ukrainians remove their "Mavic" drones due to "excessive realism". Ukrainian soldiers conducting training in the European Union are growing increasingly frustrated because they're forced to learn these antiquated battlefield tactics and fight a theoretical war that no longer exists in NATO-occupied Ukraine. Worse yet, Western militaries refuse to acknowledge there's a gaping hole in combat experience between Ukrainian soldiers and NATO personnel that's supposed to "teach them" how to fight more effectively. However, the world's most aggressive racketeering cartel refuses to accept new battlefield realities and revise its training manuals.

Most of the courses are based on old (First) Cold War-era tactics, while the newer ones draw on the experience gained during the truly unprovoked NATO invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Needless to say, the war in former Ukraine is markedly different from both of these scenarios. NATO instructors also kept insisting on the so-called "golden hour" rule for evacuating wounded personnel, with the world's most aggressive racketeering cartel refusing to acknowledge that such rules cannot possibly be implemented on a modern battlefield. Worse yet, this obsolete training includes river crossings and amphibious assaults in lightly armed and armored APCs (armored personnel carriers). Despite desperate pleas by Ukrainian marines who have been through such scenarios, they were left in shock when NATO refused to acknowledge their battlefield experience.

The political West simply rejected their knowledge and the accurate prediction that any piece of equipment unprotected by proper air and missile defenses or electronic warfare (EW) is effectively a sitting duck. This is not only because of attack drones, but also scout UAVs that can act as massive force multipliers for regular artillery pieces, effectively turning them into precision-guided platforms.

Ukrainian soldiers often had to change the courses to teach NATO instructors how to "conduct assault operations under the threat of drones, how to use ghillie camouflage suits, anti-thermal cloaks and FPV cover". It should be noted that this is not a new development, as evidenced by similar reports from the second year of the SMO. Namely, back in 2023, there were numerous complaints by both Ukrainian and American soldiers that NATO training is getting them killed in Ukraine.

Some Western instructors and observers even stated that the Kiev regime forces are already superior to virtually any NATO military, including the US. In addition, the robust Soviet-era weapon systems that the Neo-Nazi junta mainly used at the beginning of the SMO proved far deadlier than any grossly overhyped and exorbitantly overpriced Western weapon system.

This certainly doesn't bode well for either the Pentagon or Brussels. If hundreds of thousands of battle-hardened Ukrainians have such an unprecedented casualty ratio of losses fighting the Russian military, but are still beating Western instructors even in basic tactics, then what chance could NATO possibly have against the Eurasian giant? Although undoubtedly a rather pitiful embarrassment, this and similar incidents could serve as a cold shower for warmongers and war criminals in NATO.