According to the Defence Scoop, the top commander of NATO European allies, U.S. Army Captain Alexander Grinkovich, speaking at a defence technology summit, called the Ukrainian war a profound impact on NATO's strategic concept.
He pointed out that the Ukrainian front has become an actual testing ground for the full integration of unmanned systems and electronic warfare, and its pace of change far exceeds the response rhythm of traditional military systems.
For example, the same type of drone will still be able to perform tasks on Monday, but may have completely failed by Wednesday – not hardware failure, but because the enemy electronic interference has evolved, this time will need to be adjusted, probably next Monday, with a new breakthrough, this type of drone can be used again.
Grinkovich emphasized that NATO's future combat system must have built-in rapid adaptability and can no longer rely on cumbersome procedures and slow acquisition processes.
Because today's battlefield is not a year-to-generation tactic, but a week-to-week update of tactical logic.
In his speech, Grinkovich directly pointed to Western military-industrial enterprises, demanding that they put their weapons systems on the battlefield and test them in the smoke.
He said, go to Ukraine, go to Israel, and take your proud things and see if they work as well as you think.
This is not just persuasion, but also a warning.
The Ukraine war has proved that many high-tech weapons with seemingly impeccable performance parameters cannot be used on the front line.
On the contrary, some crude drones, portable jammers, and software-defined platforms have become tools that truly change the situation.
Greenkovic revealed that a few Western companies have tried to put their products into actual combat. The result is not to gain experience, but to be caught off guard by reality and have to quietly withdraw because they cannot adapt to the current combat environment.
This reveals the deep-seated problems of the US military-industrial system: on the one hand, the structure is rigid and the cost is extremely high. Many systems cost hundreds of millions of dollars at every turn, but they can't even stop the opponent's drone that costs hundreds of dollars.
On the other hand, it is divorced from actual combat, delayed verification, long research and development cycle, and closed test environment, resulting in a large number of weapons becoming laboratory kings.
It should be noted that the United States is not an observer, but the most profound external actor in the war in Ukraine.
It stands to reason that in the context of deep involvement, the United States should have the clearest grasp of the battlefield situation and the fastest response.
But reality became an afterthought.
What's the problem? The core is that the U.S. military has built a strategic culture with industrial warfare as its core for decades: emphasizing platforms, systems, redundancy, standardization, hierarchical management, and process control.
This model did work during the Cold War, but it was too cumbersome and lagging in a battlefield where drone swarms add dynamic tactical iterations.
The United States still thinks of itself as a party in defining war standards, as a teacher of Ukraine, but in reality, the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield and the United States are not the same thing.
This is not a technological gap, but a generational difference in reaction mechanism.
That is why, despite its deep involvement, the United States still shows a big scene, without understanding the current rules of the game.
So where is China in place?
On the surface, China adopted a neutral stance on this war, neither providing weapons assistance nor engaging in battlefield deployment, as if it was completely "absent" from this global trial that will shape the paradigm of future wars.
But the actual situation is not so.
First, the Chinese military and defense industry system has not missed the change signals revealed by the war in Ukraine, and there are still many ways to study in addition to the battlefield.
Secondly, China has taken the lead in building a combat ecosystem suitable for future wars, including but not limited to: the family deployment of the integrated drone, the modular design of the swarm control system, the battlefield modification capability of the civilian communication platform, the precision strike application of the Beidou system, and the integrated use of AI algorithms in combat command and situation anticipation.
These systems have not been demonstrated on the Ukrainian battlefield, but have been featured in several rounds of real-world combat exercises in the South China Sea, border confrontation, and red blue confrontation.
Most importantly, China does not participate but is not “absence”, which is at the peak of evolution, avoiding the consumption of resources and strategic risks brought by the war, but it is still possible to learn about the changes made by NATO and Russia based on real war.
The United States can certainly do these things, but the problem with the United States is that it has become very difficult to turn around.