Ukraine’s Wake-up Call for America

by Newt Gingrich

Ukraine’s drone assault on the Russian Air Force was an astonishing success – and an enormous wake-up call the President, Congress, and the national security system need to take seriously.

In some ways, the drone attack reminded me of Israel’s complex pager and cell phone attack which crippled Hezbollah’s organization in Lebanon.

We are in a new world, with new dangers. Artificial intelligence, robotics, low-cost manufacturing, and long-range planning are going to destroy all our traditional assumptions about warfare.

China is, no doubt, studying all of this. It is the largest drone maker in the world and has 90 percent of the commercial drone market. It is estimated that China could produce 500,000 to 700,000 drones a month. Ukraine produced about 1.4 million drones in all of 2024.

Further, the Ukrainian attack inside Russia involved only 117 drones. A whole new pattern of warfare is clearly emerging.

We need to completely re-examine the consequences of the Chinese balloons that hovered over American military bases in 2023. In light of the Ukrainian operation, consider how much targeting information China potentially gathered thanks to the Biden administration’s timidity and incompetence.

We must also think in wide time frames. The Ukrainian and Israeli operations both occurred over long periods of time – and their battle-hardened opponents were none the wiser.

Ukraine drove trucks all over Russia in a coordinated schedule. It was never picked up by the Russian dictatorship – even in the middle of a war. That project supposedly took a year and a half to plan and implement. It never leaked to anyone, including Ukraine’s allies.

Similarly, Israel replaced all the pagers and cellphones Hezbollah was using without anything leaking – or Hezbollah’s paranoid security team picking up on it. That effort apparently took seven years. They had to build a whole new generation of pagers and cellphones and get them into Hezbollah’s hands before the operation could be activated.

If a wartime Russian dictatorship and a paranoid terrorist organization could be surprised, why should we think we aren’t being set up for a massive strategic assault? The reality is, America, too, could be crippled and left unable to fight in an instant.

Without assuming a catastrophic event, simply consider how artificial intelligence, robotics, 3D printing, and rapid manufacturing could drown the old order of sophisticated equipment that is slow to field and expensive to build and maintain.

The United States Navy has a long tradition of building massive, exquisite ships in small numbers. The aircraft carrier has been the dominant ship at sea for 85 years. America has only 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Over the years, carriers have grown bigger, more complicated, and much more expensive. The Gerald Ford cost $13.3 billion and has a crew of 4,500 seamen. It is an extraordinary warship, but it may represent a world which is being replaced.

How many merchant ships could carry a few drones that, each and collectively, represent an enormous amount of combat power? The Chinese currently have more than 29,000 merchant ships. They could potentially swarm traditional naval vessels in ways we have never contemplated. Our exquisite defensive systems would run out of missiles long before the Chinese ran out of drones or ships.

Last year alone, 1,309 Chinese merchant ships made 7,186 calls in American ports. You can easily imagine a seaborne version of the Ukrainian project designed to cripple America in one decisive surprise attack.

Defenders of the old order may claim that the huge, expensive naval systems can withstand the rising tide of drones, artificial intelligence and robotics. Ask them to explain how Ukraine used two anti-ship missiles costing $1.5 million each to sink Russia’s $750 million Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva. Then ask how Ukrainian submersibles and airborne drones forced the Russian Navy to flee East out of the Baltic Sea. It was a warning of what was to come.

As Admiral Nelson reportedly said 15 days before his decisive victory at Trafalgar, “Numbers can only annihilate.”

The greatest hurdles in responding to this revolution in warfare are attitude and brainpower.

The national security system needs bold, radical, new thinking far more than it needs money. The systems and structures in which we currently invest are simply going to fail.

The Ukrainian and Israeli innovations are signals that the world of effective power is changing rapidly. We need a tough-minded, clear-eyed approach to understanding these changes, testing them, developing effective responses, and quickly adapting. Left to its own devices, the defense system will focus on preserving the old and hiding from reality.

From small groups, like the Houthis, to great powers like China, India, and Russia, change is coming. The nations that embrace change will survive. The countries that ignore it will be defeated.

This is the real lesson of the brilliant Ukrainian drone attack.

For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.

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