NATO’s top general said that he believes allied forces could survive on a battlefield like the one in Ukraine, saturated with drones, electronic warfare, and constant surveillance.
“I think the answer is we’re ready for that,” US Air Force Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told Business Insider at the Farnborough International Airshow in England this week, offering fresh reassurance at a time when warfare is changing rapidly.
Grynkewich, one of NATO’s two strategic commanders, oversees the alliance’s military operations. He said that forces across Europe are training to operate in environments like the one in Ukraine.
“We are learning every single day from the Ukrainians — how they’re dealing with this,” Grynkewich said.
“And the technology and tactics are, frankly, evolving really fast. So it’s kind of persistent contact that we have to have with those on the front line, so we can understand,” he added.
The front line stretching across southern and eastern Ukraine has evolved into what soldiers and officials describe as a wide “kill zone” that extends 10 to 20 kilometers from the line of contact, sometimes farther in certain places.
The zone is heavily saturated with drones constantly monitoring the battlefield below, capable of targeting both soldiers and vehicles. Any movement can trigger a deadly, pinpoint strike.
Ukrainian special forces operating inside the kill zone regularly carry pump-action shotguns to destroy Russian drones controlled by fiber-optic cables; these types of drones are able to resist the signal jamming that can incapacitate radio-frequency systems.
Within the kill zone, which Ukrainian officials and soldiers say is expanding, troops often dismount and leave their vehicles behind to hike for miles, disperse to put distance between troops to avoid creating large targets, and increasingly rely on uncrewed tools like ground robots for logistics and casualty evacuation.
The overwhelming presence of new military technology inside the kill zone underscores how much the conflict has changed since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Ukraine’s defense ministry said earlier this month that drones now account for roughly 90% of all strikes, a dramatic shift in a war that was once primarily a grinding artillery battle.
NATO, facing what military leadership has described as a worsening Russian threat, is increasingly looking to Ukraine for lessons on how to fight on a modern battlefield, one where small explosive-laden quadcopters hunt front-line infantry and drone boats engage combat air patrols.
Grynkewich pointed out that NATO runs “a number of exercises where we’ll even have Ukrainians come out and be opposition forces for us.” He said that’s helped sharpen NATO’s ability to fight the wars of the future.
“When they do that, day-one performance might not be so great, but by day six or seven, the soldiers of the alliance are right up on top on speed, and learning exactly what they need to learn,” he said.
In March, for example, a Ukrainian-led opposition team used drones to defeat a NATO force in a naval combat drill off the coast of Portugal. The scenario fell under a larger exercise, which NATO said helped it train to use and defend against the threat of uncrewed surface vessels.
French Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, said such exercises are a net positive for the alliance. “I think we achieved something great there, because now that has triggered a sort of awakening,” he told Business Insider.
Vandier, NATO’s other strategic commander, oversees alliance modernization efforts. He said he believes Ukraine’s participation makes the alliance a better fighting force.
NATO forces have incorporated similar lessons from Ukraine into their training and doctrine, and in some cases, fielded battlefield-proven weapons such as the Merops counter-drone system, which the US rushed to the Middle East at the start of the Iran war.
NATO officials are also absorbing war lessons through other initiatives, such as the Joint Analysis Training and Education Centre, JATEC, a program that uses real-time data from the conflict in Ukraine to inform allied defense planning.
Military officials directly involved in JATEC told Business Insider last year that the program is mutually beneficial; NATO helps Ukraine address some of the war’s most pressing issues, while Kyiv shares its battlefield experience with allies.
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