A Turkish defense strategist warns that Ukraine’s battlefield innovations are forcing NATO to rethink training and technology priorities.
Ukraine outlines a new vector of changes in combat operations, personnel training, and the development of defense technologies, setting benchmarks for NATO.
In Turkey, a well-known expert and strategist in defense technologies, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity, Alper Ozbilen, shared his views in one interview.
Ukraine has started and is setting the direction of these changes (the conduct of combat operations, military training, and the development of defense technologies – editor’s note). I consider the wars in Ukraine to be the most important NATO process of military “training” in the last 30 years
– Alper Ozbilen
According to him, for the first time in conditions of high-intensity war, traditional arms, artificial intelligence, unmanned systems, commercial space technologies, electronic warfare tools, and open-source reconnaissance (OSINT) are being used simultaneously and on such a scale.
Already today, many NATO countries are revising training programs for service members, approaches to planning ammunition stocks, developing capabilities in electronic warfare, the architecture of air defense, and the doctrine of the use of unmanned systems, relying on the practical experience gained by Ukraine on the battlefield
– Alper Ozbilen
Key Takeaways from the Interview
Among the most notable, the expert named speed of learning as the main asset: no military doctrine can remain unchanged for long, and adaptation has become a continuous process of competitive struggle.
In this context, Ozbilen stressed that the war in Ukraine demonstrated the advantage of the army’s speed of adaptation over its numbers.
According to him, valuable lessons from the battlefield can rewrite and revise standards for training and the development of defense technologies within the alliance, guided by Ukraine’s practical battlefield experience.
Overall, the expert emphasized that modern challenges require dynamic approaches to ammunition planning, integration of electronic warfare capabilities, and active use of unmanned systems and open-source intelligence.
Thus, Ozbilen’s conclusions underscore the need for NATO to review its training programs and strategies to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving, contested environment.