Ukraine's Wooden Ships

By LTC Mitchell A. Payne

Article published on: April 22, 2025 in the Armor Spring 2025 Edition

Read Time: < 14 mins

In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine to prevent what Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed was the bullying and genocide of ethnic Russians and to act against Ukraine’s alleged growing aggression. ¹ The U.S. Army and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies observed and supported the valiant efforts of the Ukrainian people to stand against the overwhelming tide of the Russian military. Observing patterns in the fog of war, however, can be difficult. While patterns repeat themselves, the continuously changing character of war can make it difficult for patterns to repeat themselves. It has been said, however, that while history may not repeat itself, it does rhyme. ² Applying this to Ukraine shows a powerful rhyme from the past that resonates today.

Wooden Ships in Gallipoli

Early in World War I, Britain, France, and Russia suffered tremendous losses from Germany and its allies. Trench warfare bogged down the West, and the British were desperate to keep their Russian allies well-supplied to pressure Germany’s eastern front. ³ Churchill’s solution was to invade Turkey through Gallipoli by forcing a passage through the Dardanelles Straits to seize Istanbul and compel the Ottoman government to surrender. ⁴ Despite sea mines and fortifications in the Dardanelles, ⁵ a bold attack could bring a decisive strategic victory. Hinging on speed and audacity, Churchill’s plan was a high-stakes gamble that could have turned the tide of the war. ⁶

During this same time, a military revolution awakened the world to the realities of industrialized warfare. ⁷ This revolution introduced the better-equipped Dreadnaught-class battleship. ⁸ Dreadnaughts could move faster and shoot further than their wooden counterparts, making those ships obsolete. ⁹ Churchill planned to use those obsolete ships to clear the mines in the Dardanelles, allowing the Dreadnaughts to advance rapidly towards Istanbul. ¹⁰ Admiral Fisher, the most experienced British naval commander, voiced his concerns with this plan, arguing that “even if the old battleships were expendable, their experienced crews were not.” ¹¹

Despite these objections, on March 18, 1915, an Allied fleet of 12 wooden battleships ¹² and four British dreadnoughts attacked the Dardanelles. ¹³ The fleet withdrew seven hours later, losing three wooden battleships and damaging one dreadnaught and two other wooden ships, while the Ottomans held their positions. ¹⁴ Admiral De Robek, the fleet commander, did not press the attack, ¹⁵ calling instead for an amphibious landing four days later. The Gallipoli campaign became hopelessly mired, eventually costing 220,000+ British casualties while achieving none of its strategic objectives. ¹⁶

Analyzing failure at Gallipoli

But how does a strategic failure in World War I relate to Ukraine today? The answer is leadership. Parker notes, “Whatever the strategic merits, the operational and tactical execution ... was abysmal.” ¹⁷ The British admiral’s inability to adjust his thinking divorced the operational planning from the tactical execution. While Churchill envisioned a decisive victory at the cost of a few obsolete ships, the naval officers executing the plan could not endure the loss of those ships or crews to gain a strategic victory.

Before the advent of the Dreadnaught, those wooden ships were the pride of the British Navy. Naval officers spent most of their adult lives and military careers on those wooden ships, ¹⁸ intimately knowing every splinter, rope, and nail. Those wooden ships were their home and a source of great pride. “To sailors of De Robek’s generation, it was an appalling thing to lose battleships, no matter how old and out of date they were.” ¹⁹

The cautious initial attack is, therefore, understandable. All three wooden battleships lost in the initial attack were due to be scrapped, ²⁰ but to lose them (and their crews) in battle was different. British naval tradition held that “the ship was more important than the man: no matter what the cost in lives the captain must always try to save his ship.” ²¹ However noble, those were costly naval traditions. Rather than relying on speed and audacity, the naval leaders moved slowly to preserve their beloved wooden ships. The initial attack fizzled, and the failure at the Dardanelles blossomed into a colossal and deadly strategic blunder for Gallipoli.

The Army’s Wooden Ships

As the Army shifts from fighting the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) to near-peer threats in large-scale combat operations (LSCO), Gallipoli’s lessons should cause Army leaders to pause and reflect. What patterns of thought, actions, or traditions do Army leaders hold on to so tightly that they risk losing the next war? If the character of war constantly changes, what outmoded ways of thinking exist in the Army? What are the Army’s wooden ships? From tactical upwards, observations from Ukraine suggest at least five areas to consider.

1. Towed Artillery

Artillery dominates LSCO. Estimates from Ukraine indicate that in the first three months of the war, artillery caused 80-90 percent of the casualties. ²² Surviving an artillery-dominated environment requires artillery units to shoot and move quickly to avoid enemy counterfire. ²³ Ukraine has shown that Russian towed artillery units lack the ability to displace rapidly. Open-source satellite imagery comparisons from May 2020 and March 2024 indicate that Russia has pulled roughly 60 percent of its towed artillery systems out of storage. ²⁴ While this can signal many things, it strongly implies significant losses to those systems.

Towed artillery is highly mobile and necessary for joint forcible entry operations. Army leaders must balance those benefits with the potential costs in the lives of Soldiers operating those systems during enemy counterfire. The Chinese PLZ-05 can range targets out to 100km, ²⁵ significantly outranging the U.S. Army’s current towed artillery systems. While the Army is developing wheeled howitzers to potentially address this problem in the future, ²⁶ towed artillery, as it currently stands in LSCO, could be a costly wooden ship.

2. Casualty Planning and Treatment

LSCO changes the paradigm for casualty planning and treatment – another wooden ship. On May 5, 2024, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported more than 50,000 Russian soldiers killed. ²⁷ Other NATO estimates indicate 150,000+ Russian deaths and 350,000-400,000 casualties. ²⁸ Russia’s “human wave” tactics may contribute to those casualties, ²⁹ but the harsh realities of LSCO against the U.S. Army’s acute and pacing threats – China and Russia ³⁰ - implies a need to prepare for casualty levels not seen in the last 50 years. ³¹ Throughout the GWOT, the U.S. military sustained 7,085 fatalities. ³² Those same numbers could occur in hours or days in LSCO against Russia or China, implying at least three things.

First, leaders must re-examine medical triage. The GWOT taught leaders to treat the worst patients first. Choosing between sucking chest wounds and broken ankles was relatively simple. Access to higher medical care in the GWOT meant critical casualties treated in the “golden hour” would likely survive. Ukraine tells a different story – battlefield care in LSCO must return as much combat power as quickly as possible back to the front. A broken ankle may take precedence over urgent casualties because that broken ankle can get back into the fight sooner.

A second implication is the importance of echeloned casualty planning. At the individual level, self-aid and buddy-aid will likely be the difference between life and death. Front-line units should never expect to receive medical evacuation flights. Companies and battalions must have well-rehearsed plans for casualty collection and ambulance exchange points. In LSCO, every combat operation is likely to be a mass-casualty event; units must practice non-standard casualty evacuation to maximize access to care.

Finally, a third implication is that the U.S. military lacks the infrastructure (refrigeration or transportation assets) to process, store, and move the anticipated fatalities that LSCO will bring. Russia solved this problem with mobile crematoriums in 2015 ³³ and during the current conflict. ³⁴ Mass cremation is untenable for the U.S. military; LSCO casualty planning will likely involve battlefield cemeteries and burials until mortuary operations can recover the bodies after the war. ³⁵

3. Consolidating Forces

On June 14, 2023, members of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army gathered by the front lines, remaining stationary for two hours as their general inspired them with a speech. The inspiration was short-lived when Ukrainian High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) rockets struck their open-air position, killing an estimated 100+ Russian soldiers. ³⁶ Six months earlier, 63 Russian soldiers were killed, and hundreds were wounded in a New Year’s Eve attack as they assembled to watch a televised speech from Putin. ³⁷

Unfortunately for Russian families, this is a repeat lesson. On Feb. 20, 2024, Russian soldiers from the 367th Guards Motorized Rifle Brigade were waiting for the arrival of MG Oleg Moiseyev when a Ukrainian artillery strike killed more than 60 of them. ³⁸ On May 1, 2024, a single artillery rocket killed 100+ Russian soldiers as they waited for a visiting general. ³⁹ Massing hundreds of people in open areas for several hours is a disastrous invitation for catastrophic artillery strikes.

Rehearsals. Brigade or division-level combined arms rehearsals (CARs) can mass hundreds of people in open areas for several hours as they analyze terrain models. Despite doctrinal warnings, ⁴⁰ CARs often devolve into overly scripted productions with questionable returns. Leveraging existing technology to execute dispersed CARs is one way to prevent catastrophe. ⁴¹ With this in mind, leaders should practice dispersed rehearsals to minimize unnecessary consolidation.

Command Posts. The prevalence of drones and electronic warfare (EW) in LSCO has rendered large command posts (CPs) a risky proposition. According to U.S. Army doctrine, CPs are “extremely vulnerable to detection from air and space, as well as in the electromagnetic spectrum. Army forces must ensure their CPs are difficult to detect and dispersed to prevent a single strike from destroying more than one node.” ⁴² When combined with the increase in AI and EW capabilities in the nation’s acute and pacing threats, the Ukraine war “makes it clear that the electromagnetic signature emitted from the command posts of the past 20 years cannot survive against the pace and precision of an adversary who possesses sensor-based technologies, EW, and unmanned aerial systems.” ⁴³

The slow displacement of large CP tent amalgamations and their attractiveness as enemy targets make them a liability in modern warfare. Large CPs are used because they promote collaborative planning associated with the military decision-making process (MDMP). Experience suggests that collaboration is significantly more complicated if staff personnel are dodging artillery. Dispersing CPs among existing structures/buildings increases concealment and can potentially mask electromagnetic signatures. Dispersal may degrade collaboration, but so will enemy artillery fire.

4. Laborious Planning Processes

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began with a three-axis attack, serves as a stark reminder of the critical need for rapid reaction to emergent changes in military planning. The successful eastern attack and subsequent Ukrainian counterattacks forced changes in Russian planning assumptions, ⁴⁴ revealing gaps in the Russian military’s command-and-control (C2) processes at multiple levels. ⁴⁵ The absence of well-defined higher C2 structures left the subordinate units unable to react rapidly to emergent changes, underscoring the importance of such structures in ensuring rapid and effective responses.

This implies another wooden ship for the Army - laborious MDMP planning. The MDMP is a collaborative process among staff and between echelons, ⁴⁶ and it’s the backbone of the U.S. Army planning processes from battalion to division levels. It plays a crucial role in professionalizing junior Army officers, as evidenced by the significant instructional time dedicated to teaching the MDMP in the captain’s career course and at the Command and General Staff College. ⁴⁷

The MDMP is, therefore, necessary and beneficial due to its collaborative nature. As organizations face more complex problems, they are provided additional assets that require additional collaboration and synchronization to deliver the maximum combat power at a decisive place and time. Synchronizing these assets is necessary to achieve convergence in multi-domain operations, ⁴⁸ but it often involves deliberation that slows the planning process at all echelons. When effective, the MDMP can be a thing of beauty – but wooden ships are also beautiful. The MDMP’s downside – however collaborative - is that it is often unable to keep pace with rapidly changing situations.

The situation in Ukraine is a stark reminder that conditions in LSCO can change rapidly and significantly. This aligns with observations from the Army’s warfighting exercises (WFXs)and combat training centers (CTCs). Key observations from recent WFXs indicate that when actions are directed in fragmentary orders that are desynchronized and inconsistent with the current enemy or friendly situation, tempo stalls and units fail to achieve their tactical objectives. ⁴⁹ This underscores the critical need for organizational planning to remain agile, as failure to do so can lead to defeat. CTC trends show that subordinate battalions often receive their orders from their higher brigades within 24 hours or less before execution, ⁵⁰ further highlighting the need for rapid and agile planning.

Army CTCs, WFXs, and analysis from Ukraine indicate that Army organizations cannot publish rapid and synchronized guidance to their subordinates in a way that keeps pace with LSCO. The gap in planning processes from the battalion to the division level has been consistent during the last 10 years. This begs the question: What is the root cause of this problem? Is there a gap in officer education, or is the process too laborious to be done effectively in a time-constrained fashion?

Another approach is the rapid decision-making and synchronization process (RDSP), a better alternative for time-constrained environments. The RDSP mirrors the MDMP, ⁵¹ but is truncated to meet the constantly changing demands of LSCO. If the MDMP is collaborative (i.e., meeting/briefing-focused), then the RDSP is a product-focused process. The RDSP focuses on producing the minimal necessary fighting products as rapidly as possible to give subordinates coherent and synchronized guidance. ⁵²

While the MDMP provides a foundation for Army planning, units must practice with RDSP to become more agile and adaptive in LSCO. Commanders must train their staff personnel to assess changing situations and produce coherent, synchronized orders in a timely fashion and with minimal products to maximize their subordinates’ planning time. ⁵³ Due to the fast-paced nature of LSCO, the decisions made within a brigade or division targeting decision board may be outdated by the time the meeting ends. Staff personnel must be experts with RDSP to remain agile and effective in LSCO; such expertise can only come through relentless training.

5. Complex Technology

The war in Ukraine has shown significant issues with the performance of Russian equipment. Poor maintenance led to Russian equipment failure, with some munitions and equipment reporting a daily failure rate of up to 60 percent. ⁵⁴ While systemic maintenance discipline is itself challenging, more complicated technology adds seemingly exponential strain to maintenance and logistical systems. ⁵⁵

The Army loves the wooden ship of complex technology. The Army’s continued march towards modernization often involves implementing the newest technological advances on its existing platforms. Each addition becomes reminiscent of the fictional Dr. Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” ⁵⁶ Each addition of complex technology or equipment offers Soldiers a new capability – something new they “can” do. When those systems are fully mission-capable, they are incredible. However, every field training exercise has shown that Soldiers must accomplish their missions in less-than-optimal conditions and with equipment that may or may not work. The more complex the technology, the harder it is to fix, especially in the field. The M1A2SEPV3 Abrams tank and the command post computing environment (CPCE) are two examples of this wooden ship.

Abrams tank. The M1A2SEPV3 Abrams tank has thermal sights and a low-profile common remotely operated weapon station (CROWS) to fire the tank commander’s M2 machine gun. The CROWS works excellently if the turret has power and is operational. If the CROWS is down or the turret power is out, the tank commander must open the hatch, pull pins, and fire the machine gun manually from a significantly exposed position. Additionally, fixing a CROWS requires specific electronic parts and a crane to lift it, inhibiting field-expedient repairs.

Contrast this with an earlier version of the Abrams tank. The M1A1 had a commander’s weapon station that could easily be switched to manual mode, allowing the tank commander to engage the machine gun from a closed hatch position, even if all electrical systems went down. While that system did not have any thermal or limited visibility sight systems, the simplicity of the earlier system allowed the tank commander to engage targets from a closed hatch position using manual cranks, significantly reducing the risk from sniper fire or drone-dropped munitions, as evidenced in Ukraine. ⁵⁷

With the push towards even smaller crews and greater automation on the next generation of tanks, the wooden ship of complicated technology introduces even more risk. The greater integration of artificial intelligence (AI) sensors and automation, coupled with the proposed reduction to the basic tank crew from four to three personnel, ⁵⁸ have significant implications for crew stability, degraded operations, crew situational awareness, and basic vehicle maintenance. In an ideal scenario, integrating this technology would enhance crew capabilities, but what happens when a two- or three-person crew throws track? With the potential for no turret position, ⁵⁹ how will the crew maintain situational awareness when onboard AI sensors fail due to enemy jamming? Such technological advances may provide incredible capabilities but may prove liabilities in less-than-optimal conditions.

Command post computing environment (CPCE). The CPCE is a cloud-based collaborative program and the current system of record for brigade and above CPs to facilitate briefings and real-time information-sharing. With unlimited bandwidth, this is a powerful collaborative tool. Unfortunately, bandwidth management is a challenge that significantly diminishes the CPCE’s capabilities. ⁶⁰ This forces many division commanders during WFXs to return to low-tech solutions such as paper maps with acetate overlays to visualize the battlefield and communicate their intent more clearly.

While maps and overlays may represent a different type of wooden ship to some leaders, collaborative planning technology is not meant to merely help a leader understand or visualize the problem. It’s also meant to describe and direct that vision once they have understood the battlefield. The Army’s overreliance on complex technology may hinder a leader’s ability to understand, visualize, and describe as staff gets so focused on using the technology to direct subordinates.

The addiction to the wooden ship of complex technological solutions should cause leaders to ask several questions. Does this complex technological solution add actual combat power to our formations? Leaders should not be averse to incorporating new technologies, but those advances must be intuitive to use and either a) simple to fix in the field, or b) cheap and easy to replace quickly. Each new piece of complex technology is intended to add greater capability to units, but it cannot be so complex that it defies a field expedient fix.

Conclusion

The evidence from Ukraine suggests several areas that should challenge how Army leaders think about the next war. Artillery will dominate LSCO, with implications for towed artillery and casualty planning. Drones and EW in the next fight mean leaders must disperse their CPs and their forces. The pace of LSCO will necessitate rapid planning approaches and a need for simplified sustainment processes.

No one person can accurately predict all of what the next war will bring and the associated wooden ships that will warrant future examination. Predictive limitations aside, however, Army leaders can still anticipate some things. Those who fail to ask self-critical questions will be trapped in cognitive processes that may not work in the next war. Army leaders must examine the wooden ships that have served them faithfully in the past lest they lose tomorrow’s war by holding on to yesterday’s successes.

Notes