U.S. Army Helping Ukrainian Forces Via Zoom
An article came across my news feed this morning from Popular Mechanics that really got my attention. It is about how U.S. Army troops are helping the Ukrainian troops maintain the high-tech weapons that we are sending them to fight the Russian invaders in real-time. It was an “aha” moment for me but probably not for the current generation of military personnel who grew up in this wired, instant, social media world.
What am I talking about here? It seems that U.S. troops based in various NATO countries in Europe and their Ukrainian counterparts in the field fighting the Russians are “facetiming” each other regularly. U.S. troops and their Ukrainian counterparts are using these modern social media technologies to “telemaintain” the modern, technologically advanced howitzers and rocket launchers that we and NATO nations are supplying to the Ukrainians. They are able to keep these weapons operating as they were intended to operate, that is, consistently, effectively, and smoothly. This seems a brilliant strategy to me, as it gets around the fact that U.S. military personnel are not allowed by current policy to enter Ukraine in any physical way.
The U.S. has sent billions of dollars worth of modern weapons systems like M777-towed howitzers, M142 HIMARS rocket systems, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Javelin anti-tank missiles, Switchblade 300 and 600 drones, and more to the Ukrainian forces. These are not the simple technologies of the past but are in many cases very complex systems. These weapons have proven to be very instrumental and effective in countering the Russian invasion and are showing their value even more in the current Ukrainian counteroffensive that is finding some dramatic successes at the present time.
These weapons systems are quite different from the typical weapons that the Ukrainian military has been armed with in the past. Many of their weapons are from the time of the old Soviet Union period. They did not have the technological elements like GPS-guidance systems that are common now to many of the U.S. and NATO weapon systems of today.
While the U.S. and NATO countries have been providing such weapon systems to their Ukrainian counterparts, they are not permitted to be in Ukraine to teach and help service those weapons systems. So how do you rectify the problem of distance? This may be one of the unexpected purposeful things that came out of our recent Covid pandemic experiences, when we were forced to experiment with the vagaries of what became known as “distance learning.” While it proved to be very problematic for many of our students, it, like so many other things, has possible positive capabilities as well. This is one of those examples.
Though U.S. and NATO troops cannot be there in the field physically, they are, through the technologies of Zoom and Facetime, etc., able to help their Ukrainian counterparts in real-time, with visual as well as oral communications. When the inevitable mechanical or technological issues come up with weapons in the field, U.S. troops are able to take Ukrainian weapons technicians through the maintenance issues they are encountering step-by-step with accuracy and clarity. I think you can see that this is profoundly useful for the current situation that the Ukrainians find themselves in at this difficult time.
The world is in awe at how effective the Ukrainian military has been against their huge and very powerful neighbor. This is, in part, because of U.S. and NATO aid in the forms of both weapons and training. I wrote an article earlier this year about how U.S., Canadian, and NATO military advisors have been training Ukrainian military units in Western tactical skills and military warfighting philosophies. The Ukrainians had been trained in the Russian military style of “top-down” battlefield leadership. They now are using the Western style of battlefield tactics that uses smaller units and enables battlefield decision-making at the unit level, which makes them tactically more flexible and adaptable in the immediacy of active battlefield realities.
The Ukrainians are on the right side morally in this war. They are fighting a defensive battle against this unprovoked war and unjust invasion. They are fighting to defend their homes, their families, and their freedom as a nation against an aggressor that desires to take their democratic freedoms away from them. But they are fighting an enemy with much larger resources, personnel, etc.
This is why this Popular Mechanics article got my attention. We are living in an era where, because of the communication technologies that exist today, we are able to help the Ukrainians in direct ways, in real-time, even though we cannot be there side-by-side with them in their efforts against the unjust and immoral invasion by their Russian neighbor. We can at least help them with these very complex and very important mechanical and technological issues that arise on the battlefield. We can provide the weapons aid that they need and we can provide the necessary instructions for maintaining those weapons so that they can remain in the field and be effective against the invading forces.
We all hope and pray that this unjust war will come to an end soon. Though we have little to no control over the mindset of the Russian leadership, we can at least try to help the Ukrainians with the means that are available to us at this time. This Popular Mechanics article shows that today’s social media technologies enable us, in a unique way, to help the Ukrainians in this difficult time.
