Learn Or Die: Ukraine's Trench Warfare Tactics Evolve

Drones and minefields have completely changed the nature of trench warfare. Increasingly accurate smart munitions are another threat. 

All of this means that concealment when holding a trench is essential while speed, drone usage and small teams are crucial for clearing enemy trenches. JL 

Jeff Schogol reports in Task and Purpose:

Trench warfare is much more difficult than  close-quarters battle. Trenches are very difficult to demolish. It’s much easier for enemy forces to hide in trenches, which have a lot of fortifications that need to be overcome. When assaulting, enemy trenches have numerous shooting positions to envelop an attacking force. And a major component of modern-day trench warfare is avoiding being detected by enemy drones. "Most of the enemy we’re fighting at five meters or less distance. The only way you can get everyone out of the trench is by going into the trench, utilizing small unit tactics and smaller movements to break the lines.”

U.S. Army veteran Ryan O’Leary, has spent so much time assaulting Russian trenches in Ukraine that he’s made it his handle on Twitter, now X: @IhateTrenches.

“Your CQB [close-quarters battle] is violent, but nothing compares to trench warfare,” O’Leary told Task & Purpose. “Most of the enemy we’re fighting at like five meters or less distance. The only way you can get everyone out of the trench is by going into the trench.”

O’Leary leads foreign volunteers in “Chosen Company,” which is attached to Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade. Although the unit has shown it is good at clearing enemy trenches, it is a miserable experience to defend trenches, especially during Ukraine’s cold winters, he explained

 

During the past 11 months, members of the company have used their military training to adapt to the conditions on the ground in Ukraine, O’Leary said. Task & Purpose spoke and texted with O’Leary, who is still in Ukraine, via the Signal app. Mastering the art of trench warfare requires getting your reps in, he said.

“You have to practice it a lot, get good at it,” O’Leary said. “Otherwise, you’re going to die really quick.”

The lessons that O’Leary has learned about trench warfare could help American service members if they are ever called upon to fight against an adversary with extensive trench lines and other fixed defensive positions.

 

A key lesson has been that trench warfare is much more difficult than the type of close-quarters battle that U.S. troops have engaged in over the past 20 years, he said.

In close-quarters battle, U.S. troops can fire a rocket into a building to kill the people inside, O’Leary told Task & Purpose. Trenches are very difficult to demolish. Artillery strikes must land directly inside the trenches to be effective, and that does not happen often.

It’s also much easier for enemy forces to hide in trenches, which have a lot of fortifications that need to be overcome, he said. With CQB, the attacking force can isolate a building or city block. That is not possible when assaulting enemy trenches, which have numerous shooting positions to envelop an attacking force.

U.S. Army veteran Ryan O’Leary leads foreign volunteers in “Chosen Company,” which is attached to Ukraine’s 59th Motorized Brigade. (Photo courtesy of Ryan O’Leary)

 

“So, it’s more of utilizing small unit tactics and smaller movements to break the lines of areas,” O’Leary said. “Once you break a line, that’s when you can really push.”

When O’Leary joined the Army in 2004, he learned the basics about digging a shooting position and clearing a trench or bunker, but trench warfare has evolved since then with the advent of commercially available drones, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown, he said.

“There’s always eyes in the sky,” O’Leary said. “Someone is always seeing stuff.”

The Russians have also used drones to drop grenades into Ukrainian trenches, underscoring why it’s important for troops who fight in trenches to use camouflage netting and other means of concealment to avoid being detected and targeted, he said.

“Your routine in the trenches has to be done differently,” O’Leary said. “You can’t just have people sitting up, watching the front lines. They’ll just get hit. If you sit in an uncovered position — or even a covered position that they’ve seen you walk into — you’re just going to get smashed.”

However, the methods of keeping Ukrainian troops undetected by drones vary depending on where they are on the front line because Russians use different types of drones in different sectors, O’Leary said.

“There’s no one singular fix to protecting yourself from drones,” O’Leary said. “You’ve basically got to learn on the fly.”

4 A Ukrainian serviceman walks along a snow-covered trench on the frontline with the Russia-backed separatists near Verkhnetoretskoye village, in the Donetsk region on February 1, 2022. (Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Since most of the drones being used in Ukraine are made in China, the Chinese military is likely learning lessons for future wars based on which of the unmanned aircraft being used by the Russians are most effective, O’Leary said.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of U.S. Army Europe, also emphasized that a major component of modern-day trench warfare is avoiding being detected by enemy drones.

“A combination of concealment from visual detection and thermal imaging is important for surviving in these trenches,” Hodges told Task & Purpose.  

Hodges noted that he has been struck by how much garbage and discarded equipment are typically seen in or near Russian trenches, indicating that the Russian troops are not disciplined, nor are they prepared for fighting.

Hodges also said the U.S. has stockpiles of many of the weapons that appear to be most effective in trench fighting, including drones, artillery, hand grenades, and small arms 

But he also sees areas the Russians have developed in which the U.S. would need to improve or develop new weapons or tactics if U.S. troops were to ever find themselves opposed to Russian forces.

“The Russians have done a good job protecting their trenches with minefields,” Hodges said. “We’ll have to deal with them as well one day. They’ve also invested enormously in artillery to support their trenches. So that means an effective counter-fire effort will be necessary to suppress the Russian trenches and their supporting artillery to enable our own assaults to get into the trenches to clear them.”

 

Learning trench warfare

Even though the United States has provided Ukraine with nearly $45 billion in military assistance since February 2022 — including M1 Abrams tanks and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS — the conflict has bogged down into trench warfare.

With Ukraine and Russia essentially evenly matched technologically, neither side has been able to make much progress in recent offensives, said George Barros, a Russia analyst and Geospatial Intelligence Team Lead with the Study of War think tank in Washington, D.C.

Ukrainian soldiers keep their position in a trench on the front line with Russian troops in Lugansk region on April 11, 2022. (Anatolii Stepanov//AFP via Getty Images)

 

The Russians have supersaturated the front lines with land mines, and Ukraine has found it needs more tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, tactical air defense systems, and other weapons from the West to breach Russia’s defenses, Barros told Task & Purpose.

And given the pre-modern conditions, many experts wonder if the U.S. would fare any better in a similar conflict.

U.S. service members already receive some training on trench warfare. For example, soldiers train to attack trenches and bunkers protected by land mines, wire, and other obstacles as part of their rotations to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, said Army Brig. Gen. Curtis D. Taylor, commander of the training center.

“To successfully breach these obstacles, units must employ the full combined arms team to set conditions, obscure the enemy, and reduce the obstacle while under direct and indirect fire,” Taylor told Task & Purpose

Army units also train how to pause offensive operations to defend trenches and other survivability positions, Taylor said.

“While units are defending, the opposing force will almost always attack with a combination of artillery and enemy drone swarms in order to set the conditions for ground maneuver,” Taylor said. “This forces rotational units to disperse, to dig in, and to be constantly vigilant of enemy attacks from the air.”