Why modern technology hasn’t rendered trench warfare useless in Ukraine
World War I tactics still work in 2022
BY NICHOLAS SLAYTON | PUBLISHED NOV 30, 2022 4:39 PM
After months of fighting, the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut looks like hell. Images from the past week show an apocalyptic landscape of torn up earth, ruined trees and soldiers standing in pools of water in muddy trenches. The sights have been compared to some of the worst parts of trench warfare from the First World War. Bakhmut lies along the front lines southeast of where Ukraine successfully recaptured swathes of territory in September. The majority of the town’s 70,000 person population has fled and soldiers from both sides have dug in for a war of attrition.
Of course, it’s 2022, not 1918, and trench warfare has evolved. Both sides have access to advanced technologies — such as “loitering munitions” like Switchblade drones that can serve as both reconnaissance systems and lethal tools — that give them a wider picture and greater striking ability than conflicts in the past. But like the rest of the war in Ukraine, it’s less a modern war but a mishmash of traditional large-scale combat, high-tech targeting and limited capabilities.
Trenches in the Donbas aren’t new. Since fighting between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists started in 2014, both sides dug in along dozens of miles of the front line. That fighting never stopped, but since the full war broke out between the two nations, it escalated as both countries poured more fighters and weapons into the conflict. Now the wider war has reached those lines. Worse, winter is coming. There’s already snow starting to pile up next to knee-high pools of ice-cold water.
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