Ukraine Will Be a Testing Site for New Weapons and Defenses

There have been a whole host of new weapons and improvements to weapons made in the last 40 years. Both sides of the conflict are going to want to try out these new weapons to see how they perform and how the tactics for employing them do or don’t work.

The Javelin anti-tank weapon I wrote about before will be one of them. Alternatively, I see Russian tanks now equipped with reactive armor, which they will be interested in seeing perform against the Javelin.

This will also be the first major conflict where weaponized drones will likely be employed. Drones have been used for reconnaissance for a number of years by the military. I’m not talking about the drones that have Hellfire missiles attached to them, but smaller, even handheld devices that have explosives integrated into them. It was already reported that Ukrainian forces used an armed drone in a counter attack on an artillery battery.

In the Spanish Civil War the Nazis tried out their Stuka dive bombers and how to use them. This is the type of situation I see developing in the very near future.