By Zvika Haimovich

Russia’s war against Ukraine has shaken up the entire world and countries, particularly in Europe, are busy drawing conclusions from this geopolitical earthquake.

Germany has decided to invest 100 billion euros in defense, a commitment that includes a decision to purchase Israel’s Arrow missile defense system. This was made possible following American approval (the United States is part of the Arrow development program).

The Netherlands recently approved a new defense budget totaling 5 billion euros – most of which is going to air defense systems that will be operated by the army, navy, and air force. The Dutch roadmap lays out increased defense spending until 2035. NATO as a whole is working to build new detection components and defensive capabilities to deal with Russian aggression.

These developments are all the product of a quintessentially human quality: We only take action when dangers are painfully close and there is no other choice. The world however is finally waking up to the new aerial threats, and the changing nature of military warfare. The war in Ukraine was not the first global wake-up call. In 2020, the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh made clear that air defenses and their absence were crucial factors in determining victory and defeat.

Now, the Ukraine war wages close to western Europe, creating alarm among several countries that, truth be told, had grown comfortable ignoring the threat, only to realize late in the game that they are not immune from it.

Israel, for its part, has spent the past three decades learning about the essential need for air defenses, as adversaries (first from Iraq) in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria threaten its home front with arsenals of projectiles.

While Russia’s approach to warfare is not new – its doctrine has for decades been based on bombardment, attrition, and destruction of morale, as seen in Syria, Chechnya, and Ukraine – what is new is that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is playing out to a significant degree in the air.

Despite claims to the contrary, the Russians are not engaged in a ground maneuver in Ukraine, but rather, are moving convoys in an administrative manner for tens or hundreds of kilometers to their destination. There is no armor-on-armor land clash or classic maneuvering taking place, but rather, the movement of ground forces to take over territory or shell it into submission.

We are also seeing new warfare phenomena: unmanned aerial vehicles, quadcopters, cruise missiles, and new types of surface-to-surface projectiles. All of these represent a highly significant aspect of the war.

With Russia firing cruise missiles at cities in Ukraine, 300 kilometers away from its territory, there is no longer any significance to the concept of a military front. Cities are now the main front. State assets, government facilities, and strategic civilian sites have become the primary targets. Power stations, train stations, road intersections, and airports are key targets in Russian eyes, as hitting them disrupts Ukraine’s ability to function continuously. The targets are not mainly military posts or armored formations, but rather, the Ukrainian home front.

The Ukrainians were not ready for this. They relied on old, limited Russian-made air defenses. The need to defend city centers and ensure that key sites like airports are covered by air defenses was not internalized in time.

But the penny has dropped in the halls of power in other European countries, as they scramble to build new air defenses.

Meanwhile, the Russians too have neglected the centrality of air defenses – for their ground forces. The lengthy Russian convoys were highly vulnerable to Ukrainian drone attacks, which led to the sudden stranding of 40-kilometer lines that entered Ukraine without any accompanying air defenses.

If Ukraine had received more unmanned aerial systems, it could have inflicted far more significant damage on Russian forces and could have stopped them in the east of the country as well.

There is a critical lesson here for Israel too: The IDF must not give up building air defenses for future maneuvers into enemy territory. Unfortunately, it appears as if the IDF has given up on this, choosing instead to rely on air defense batteries in Israel itself to provide an ‘umbrella’ over forces.

This assumption rests on completely false foundations. Israeli military forces will be highly exposed to enemy unmanned aerial systems and rockets. Forces that move in the depth of enemy activity and which are highly visible like the Russian convoys were, but lack their own air defenses, are unacceptably at risk.

An additional lesson that the war in Europe produces is the need to develop a regional integration of sensors, in a manner that can optimize early alerts and in which countries can help each other realize air threats in time. 

For example, an east European country can detect a missile launch in Russia and send the alert to Britain, giving it an early alert. Similarly, Israel and Gulf Sunni Arab countries can set up the same kind of system against Iranian threats, with forward sensors that can detect UAV and missile launches in time.

Finally, any integrated air defense network must feature an advanced combined command and control network, for the production of a full sky picture. Such a system can tell users what threat is approaching them, where it is, and where the enemy that launched it is.

The Ukrainians, sadly, were not able to set up such a system before the war broke out. NATO is now looking to create just such a command and control system now, for a holistic sky picture that provides comprehensive coverage. Europe and moderate Middle Eastern states still have a long way to go in setting up such a system successfully. 

Zvika Haimovich served as Commander of the Israel Air Defense Forces from 2015-2018. He was Active Defense Wing Commander during Operation Pillar of Defense (2012) and Operation Protective Edge (2014). Read full bio here.