The NATO style of fighting, so heavily reliant on controlling the skies, has only been tested in recent years in arenas where the alliance had air superiority. “No living member of NATO armed forces has experienced combat close to what Ukrainians have experienced over the past 18 months,” Davis H. Ellison, a strategic analyst with the HCSS, told Newsweek.
“The NATO way of land warfare has never been seriously tested against a major state adversary, despite decades of investment and training,” he added. In cases such as Iraq and the 1991 Gulf War, the “U.S. and Western forces were able to quickly establish massive air superiority,” HCSS senior strategic analyst Paul van Hooft added.
“It is unsurprising that Ukrainians have given up on some of the Western training as their experience and adaptation under fire trumps Western peacetime concepts,” Ellison agreed. “If anything, we have a lot more to learn from the Ukrainians than they can learn from us.”
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