The modern Russian offensive operation is organized around continuous pressure exerted by small assault groups of four to eight personnel on a wide front, rather than around armored breakthroughs. The first wave of each attack functionally serves as reconnaissance by fire and is expected to take heavy losses.
First-person view (FPV) drones account for over 90 percent of all unmanned systems used in the active combat zone. The introduction of fiber-optic-controlled drones (exceeding 20 percent of FPV employment by mid-2025), and the deployment of machine-vision target-acquisition algorithms have rendered classical electronic-warfare countermeasures only partially effective.
Ukrainian forces have built a dense maneuver group of electronic warfare (up to ten EW and SIGINT maneuver groups per operational direction, fielding the Bukovel-AD, Anklav, Nota, Tuman, and Khmara jamming stations together with the Plastun-RP SIGINT complex), capable of blocking command and navigation channels of Russian unmanned aerial vehicles to a depth of approximately 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) behind the enemy’s battle order.
Russian self-reflection on the tactical level — visible in published compilations of combat experience and across the pro-war Russian Telegram analytical segment — independently confirms that the classical Russian table-of-organization has degraded and that motorized rifle squads have ceased to function as battle-order elements. Positional defense beyond a single day on unprepared positions leads to greater losses than active assault action.
The Baltic states have a limited window for adaptation. Priority directions include national mass production of FPV drones, dense saturation of forces with tactical-level electronic warfare, layered air defense against small targets (including dual-use of national meteorological radar for low-altitude UAV detection), advance engineering preparation of defensive lines, the construction of full-scale mock-ups of likely contested settlements for cyclic training, and the formation of organic counter-UAV platoons at the company–battalion echelon.
by Hlib Parfonov/Jamestown Foundation Lessons Learned From Russia’s War Against Ukraine: Russian Military Adaptation and Defense Implications for Baltic States
