Open-Source Warfare: What the Ukraine War shows us about the changing character of war

In military circles, a clear distinction is often drawn between the nature of war and character of warfare—often by disciples of the 19th century theorist, Carl von Clausewitz.

In short, the nature of war is a clash of actively opposed wills comprised by violence, chance, and ration. War also possesses an escalatory nature. Think of two school-yard bullies that start by calling each other names, which leads to a bit of a pushing match, which leads to one of the bullies swinging a fist. If a teacher intervenes, however, that escalation can be halted. The same thing happens with war. Limited war has an escalatory nature that could grow to absolute war, if not checked by norms, international intervention, or other measures.

The character of warfare—how we fight wars—changes regularly. Small technological changes can greatly influence how warfare is fought. The adoption of the stirrup by the Franks in 732AD is often credited for the spread of mounted knights and the creation of feudal society. More recently, the?advent of time-fused artillery shells changed warfare?from a 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional challenge.

Technology is not the only thing that can change warfare. International agreements, norms, and mores can all change its character. For example, the shared suffering from chemical weapons by both the allied and central powers in World War I led to the adoption of the?Geneva Protocol of 1925. While the Protocol was an imperfect document, it still reduced the use of chemical weapons in warfare—changing its character.

In other words, adaptation in and to warfare changes its character and is important to success for any military. Studying adaptations in how the Russians and Ukrainians are fighting will be illuminating to understanding the likely changes in the character of warfare for future conflicts. These adaptations include open source warfare; inexpensive and mass-produced, weaponized drones; and a shift to distributed operations.

Warfare has come to TikTok

The first adaptation is the rise of open source warfare. I’m using this term in differently than how John Robb used it when he?coined it during conversations of 5th Generation Warfare, a decade ago. Then, we talked about open source warfare meaning a style where lots of independent groups would temporarily align interests and work together briefly before refracturing to pursue their own aims. Instead, I’m talking about the fact that warfare is represented on open source or publicly available platforms.

In other words,?warfare has come to TikTok.

The amount of publicly available data is overwhelming, but can be aggregated to great effect. Think back to the early stages of the Ukraine War, when?Google had to turn off the traffic feature?to protect non-combatants and prevent Russian targeting.

Or consider several instances where Russian troops?posted pictures to the Russian social media?site VKontakte. Unfortunately, for these Russians, they forgot to strip the geotagged data from their photos, which?Ukrainian targeteers were able to use. Even when a fighter remembers to strip the geotags, pictures can be georeferenced painstakingly. Open source intelligence (OSINT) and investigative journalism group, Bellingcat, has demonstrated this expertly, when they?georeferenced a simple group picture of a Russian missile program?that wreaked havoc on Ukraine.

A decade ago, I worked for a joint task force conducting counter-terrorism operations. I was initially confused at how large the public affairs section was—until I learned that they were monitoring PAI that could feed intelligence and operations cycles. This realization shifted my understanding of how we fight and win wars. Later, while supervising special operations across 28 countries, I had more OSINT and PAI tools available to me, and at least one of them was always “turned on.”

These examples are all fairly basic and there are far more techniques to gather and exploit this sort of publicly available information (PAI) and OSINT.

Publicly available information and OSINT will be cornerstones of targeting cycles in future warfare, equally important to (if not more so than) the other “-INTs,” such as signals, measurement and signature, electronic, communications, and human intelligences.

Massing effects vs. Massing forces

Napoleon created a shift in the character of warfare when he created a system of independent yet interdependent corps. By advance along independent lines of operations, these corps could move more quickly. Then they could converge for a battle, massing their forces to overwhelm enemies.

Through the 20th century, this trend towards mutually supporting, independent units has continued, resulting in platoons and companies conducting combat patrols in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

OSINT and PAI along with other intelligence capabilities and the?proliferation of sensors?make it increasingly untenable for units to aggregate for operations. Too many ducks sitting together creates a rather attractive target for an enemy strike. As such, we’ve seen a shift towards increasingly decentralized, disaggregated, and distributed operations. It seems likely, then that as Russia and Ukraine have both spread out their headquarters and command posts, hardened them, and move them periodically, we can expect to see a continuation of this trend.

In other words, it will be increasingly difficult for a military to mass its forces.

Of course, there are theorists who suggest the unlikely but possible effect that these capabilities will actually drive increased aggregation. These theorists point for proof to World War I and the U-boat campaign that is seen as driving the creation of aggregated groups of ships based originally around a battleship and later around aircraft carriers. While we can’t completely dismiss the possibility that increased lethality will lead to greater aggregation of forces, it does seem very unlikely.

Instead, I suspect we’ll continue to see smaller units operating independently with greater dispersion. But, in order to achieve this, militaries must continue to find ways to mass their effects even as they avoid massing their forces.

Inexpensive, autonomous systems are a critical capability that supports the ability to mass effects from distributed locations.

Imagine a conflict in an island archipelago. Companies and platoons are dispersed across individual islands. In an attempt to displace an enemy from yet another island, these small units launch a large-scale attack of uncrewed aerial and surface systems that are capable of one-way attack. Hundreds or thousands of armed drones, flying from dozens of islands, simultaneously converge at their objective, an enemy command post, striking air defense, communications, and electronic warfare targets all at once.

In this scenario, inexpensive systems are necessary to achieve mass and density required to penetrate enemy counter-drone defenses.

Only through the adoption of inexpensive, mass produced capabilities with sufficient range, endurance, and payload will be able to operate in the distributed manner that we will require for the future.

Conclusion

Former Australian General,?Mick Ryan,?released a SubStack?this weekend about adaptation in warfare. He covered some of the adaptations that both the Ukrainians and Russians have made, particularly in how they operate in an increasingly distributed manner. (He also kindly provides a suggested reading list on the topic of adaptation in warfare).

The reality is that the character of warfare is changing.

Technology and societal pressure forces adaptation.

We must prepare to fight in a manner that empowers smaller units to operate in a distributed and disaggregated way, that leverages publicly available information as much as classified intelligences, and that can converge systems to mass effects while protecting forces.

Keep building!

Andrew