• Mechanized assaults have been rare in Ukraine, but amid a major offensive, its forces pulled off two.
• The Ukrainian commander behind the operation doubted the assaults would succeed.
• He said using armored vehicles now needs extensive planning and support, much like a special operation.

A massive Ukrainian operation retaking territory from Russian forces has shown that assaults with tanks and armored vehicles are still possible in a drone-heavy war, but far more support and planning are now necessary to execute them.

Tanks and other armored vehicles have faced serious challenges on battlefields dominated by drones, mines, and artillery, prompting both sides to move away, tactically speaking, from large-scale mechanized assaults. Those decisions have led observers to question whether tanks still have a role in modern warfare.

Those discussions have taken a new turn in the wake of recent Ukrainian combat operations.

Ukrainian forces involved in Operation Vivaldi, a counteroffensive that has so far taken back 277 square kilometers of territory, carried out two successful mechanized assaults behind Russian lines this week, Brigadier General Andrii Biletskyi, the commander of Ukraine's Third Army Corps, the unit conducting the operation, told the Ukrainian outlet Militarnyi.

George Barros, the director of innovation at the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, told Business Insider that this appears to be "the first successful mechanized tactical level breakthrough in a drone-dominated battlefield."

Sharing details of the operation, Biletskyi said he had been skeptical it could be done, remaining unsure until the last minute whether armored vehicles could be used successfully, but he decided to allow brigade commanders to try.

The assaults required extensive preparation and coordination. "Today, the use of armored vehicles is effectively a special operation. It requires extremely detailed planning and the coordination of a huge number of assets," Biletskyi told Militarnyi, a Ukrainian military news site.

Barros said that while the assault's territorial gains were limited, he believes it is the most consequential and meaningful offensive in theater and in military science observed so far.

"It's a really big deal," he said. "It decisively proves that it is possible to achieve mechanized maneuver at the tactical level in a drone-dominated battlefield."

The mission planning involved separate training for vehicle crews and infantry, fitting vehicles with additional equipment, and extensive support to shield the advance. Biletskyi did not specify the equipment used, but electronic warfare, additional armor, and supporting drones and robots are among the kinds of tools that can help protect assault forces.

"The big lesson here is that the tank isn't dead, and the tank isn't obsolete," Barros said, "but rather the prerequisites to make the tank useful have become lengthy and extensive and very difficult to achieve, but all the same important and critical for success on the battlefield."

The challenge is replicating that success. Such assaults require more resources and preparation time than some units can reasonably dedicate to the mission. Barros noted that very few Ukrainian units are as well trained and well equipped as the Third Army Corps, Vivaldi's lead unit.

But if Ukraine is successful in proliferating these lessons and tactics into other elements of its armed forces, "then we will have a Ukrainian military that is extremely capable and able to roll back the Russians, whereas the Russians still lag potentially years behind the Ukrainians in terms of being able to conduct these kinds of maneuvers," he said.

The recent Vivaldi assaults build on a broader effort to bring armored vehicles back into bigger offensive breakthrough operations.

ISW observed in May that Ukraine, for the first time since 2023, was beginning to carry out more frequent mechanized counterattacks, including using armored vehicles in front-line attacks.

In August, ISW assessed that Ukraine had been able to reintroduce limited mechanized maneuver through improved planning, suppression of Russian air defenses, and an emerging drone advantage. And by October, the think tank had detected an edge for Ukraine in these kinds of renewed operations.

Biletskyi said this week that the mechanized assault allowed his forces to achieve the partial encircling of the settlement of Nove and the deployment of infantry behind Russian lines to attack drone operators concealed in wooded areas.

He said the attacks degraded Russia's ability to conduct drone operations and gather battlefield intelligence, setting conditions for a tactical breakthrough.

Eliminating drone operators is key, Barros said, because it allows Ukrainian forces to push forward. It's something he said Ukraine has become better at over the course of the year, which was why Ukrainian vehicles were able to advance further. Vivaldi's leaders have emphasized the importance of shaping the battlefield by weakening the enemy first, including through the use of artillery, drones, and robots.

The war's dense networks of drones, land mines, and artillery have made large armored assaults difficult and dangerous. Inexpensive drones, in particular, make it hard to concentrate forces and complicate maneuvers. Both sides have added protective armor while decreasing tank activity, often keeping them farther from the front.

Vivaldi shows they're not out of the fight, though.

Western partners are still betting on tanks and buying new ones, but they foresee changes in how they are supported and deployed. Officials say tanks still have a place, but their role may shift. They will need to work alongside assets like drones.

Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said in May that "legacy platforms are not obsolete" but "the decisive question is the force mix: how can we combine ships, aircraft, tanks and high-end systems with robotics, drones, sensors, software and new effectors to increase lethality and better protect our soldiers?"

• Ukraine's drone pilots want masses of cheap, simple drones, a soldier and analyst said.
• Western manufacturers overcomplicate them and "get it so wrong," he added.
• Operators want drones they can tweak near the front and send out in large numbers.

Ukrainian drone operators need masses of relatively simple drones without a bunch of flashy features, a soldier with firsthand experience explained, cautioning the West against making them too complicated as it readies for future drone fights.

Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion is a grinding war of attrition that is consuming weaponry so fast that combatants need affordable weapons in huge numbers, and battlefield technology becomes obsolete so quickly that soldiers need systems they can update easily to keep them relevant in battle.

Dmytro "Liber" Zhluktenko, a former drone operator who is now a lessons learned analyst in Ukraine's 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment "RAID," told Business Insider that "we need something that works great but doesn't have superfluous features."

"That is something that most of the Western defense technology manufacturers, they get it so wrong," he said. Consider first-person-view attack drones, "we need something that is really basic."

"We are yet to find Western manufacturers that are able to produce, let's say 500,000 FPV drones, simple ones that just work, that are fine-tuned without any extra autonomy or extra navigation or any features like that," he added, describing what Ukraine needs most as something pilots can easily take straight into combat.

Western-made drone tech, he said, is often "too complicated, often detached from the battlefield, and much more expensive than Ukrainian options doing the same job. Therefore, most of the drones used at Ukraine's battlefield are Ukrainian-made."

His assessment of the situations draws on both his experience as a drone operator and his role as an analyst, where he looks at battlefield trends, interviews operators, meets with foreign defense manufacturers, prepares briefs for higher command, and organizes the sharing of information between Ukrainian units.

Simple drones give soldiers more flexibility

Part of the appeal of simpler drones is that Ukrainian operators can adapt them themselves.

Near the front, soldiers routinely modify weapons to keep them useful as the battlefield changes, and some units even have their own R&D centers.

They often want drones and other combat systems that are basic, generic platforms they can rework, upgrade, or configure for different missions, much like ground robots that can be assembled with different weapons or components like Lego sets.

Ukrainian companies and foreign companies that work with units know this is happening, work with unit engineers to help keep products updated, and are often surprised by the ways soldiers modify their gear. Companies are increasingly making their products modular, both so they can upgrade the products more easily and so soldiers can make their own changes near the front.

Zhluktenko said Ukraine's operators want products they can "tune ourselves, we would change the components or whatever as we need, because that's the normal process. But something like the basic platform that it could build upon."

He said it's "bonkers" that, despite the West's "significant industrial capacities," they aren't seeing anyone produce something simple and effective at scale.

Zhluktenko said that many Western manufacturers are still "stuck in this doctrine of building tools in small quantities that maybe yes, they do have some extra features, but that's not something that is way too relevant for Ukraine's combat."

The case for cheaper drones in greater numbers

Zhluktenko's comments echo warnings from Western and Ukrainian officials that this war has shown the West the limits of relying on smaller numbers of exquisite, highly advanced weapons.

Modern, large-scale warfare, as the situation in Ukraine has demonstrated, may also require much larger numbers of cheaper, less capable gear.

Ukraine is still buying and building advanced drone technology with cutting-edge features like autonomy, which can be critical for warfighting tasks such as intercepting Russia's attack drones or executing long-range strikes that need to break through the enemy's electronic warfare.

Zhluktenko said that it's about "balance," arguing that simpler drones remain essential and are often needed in far greater numbers. Ukrainian companies like SkyFall and General Cherry are producing these kinds of drones at scale, he said.

A representative for Ukrainian drone and technology company TechEx told Business Insider that Western manufacturers often have to deal with heavier, peacetime regulations.

They may have "levels of additional software and hardware that's put on top of it instead of making it a bare, functional, ready to go system here and now," she said.

That can "overcomplicate the operation of the system," she added. It can also make the manufacturing process more complex, so it's harder to produce the large volumes that some Ukrainian manufacturers can.

She described it as the contrast between "wartime operations and the peacetime operations." She said Western companies might have different processes and priorities if they needed to work faster and on a bigger scale.

Western officials say the war shows that allies need much larger volumes of cheap weapons, with leaders like Danish defense minister Troels Lund Poulsen previously telling Business Insider that "one of the lessons" from Ukraine is that the West needs far greater quantities of inexpensive weaponry.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said last year that "speed is of the essence, not perfection."

Drones are central to Ukraine's fight, and it says they now cause as much as 95% of Russia's front-line losses. But using drones effectively can require deploying large numbers of them, knowing that many will never reach their targets. That means making systems that are cheap and workable is key.

Zhluktenko said that when it comes to drones, the mindset should be about "spending thousands of dollars, not hundreds of thousands."

• Ukraine's access to military-grade Starlink services was suddenly disrupted this week.
• Kyiv said the disruption affected critical Ukrainian drone operations.
• Ukrainians say the incident exposes the risks of relying so heavily on a single communications platform.

The sudden disruption to Ukraine's access to military-grade Starlink services this week shows the risks of overly relying on any single platform, particularly one beyond Kyiv's control, for mission-critical battlefield communications, Ukrainian soldiers, officials, and defense companies told Business Insider.

With those risks front of mind, Ukrainians are working to diversify military-related communications platforms beyond Starlink.

Ukrainian officials and soldiers were surprised on Wednesday by an unexpected disruption to Starshield, SpaceX's dedicated satellite network for military services. Defense ministry sources said speeds were restricted above 100 miles per hour, though some units experienced a loss of connectivity at speeds as low as 45 mph.

Services appeared to have been at least partially restored by Thursday. The full extent of the disruption remains unclear, but the incident has left some Ukrainians feeling uneasy.

Yehor Cherniev, deputy chairman of the Ukrainian parliament's national security, defense, and intelligence committee, told Business Insider that the disruption underscores the risks of relying on a single communications platform. He said Kyiv is working to diversify its sources, but declined to specify how.

Yuriy, an officer with Ukraine's National Guard, told Business Insider that his units use Starshield to support drone operations, and several missions were spoiled during the disruption. He asked to be identified only by his first name for security purposes.

Yuriy said that while Starlink services are useful, the disruption exposes their unreliability. He said he would try to find alternate communications systems.

Alternatives to Starlink could be hard to find, though. Eutelsat, a large French satellite operator, saw its shares surge after this week's disruption, but Ukrainians say there is nothing else quite like what SpaceX offers.

"There is no working alternative to Starlink," said Dimko Zhluktenko, a soldier with Ukraine's 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment, calling it "an outstanding product."

"No direct competitor comes close," he told Business Insider, adding that "Europe has nothing comparable at this level of battlefield readiness."

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider this week.

Ukraine relies on Starlink for battlefield communications and drone warfare, a dependence that was underscored by the disruption. Defense ministry sources said the disruption complicated important drone operations, including mid-range strikes, air defense intercepts, and front-line logistics.

Ukraine uses both Starshield and Starlink, SpaceX's commercial satellite internet service, to extend the reach of its drones, maintain stable communications in electronically contested environments, and conduct remote operations far beyond the front lines.

Satellite connections allow operators to control drones and receive live video without relying on traditional radio links, which have limited ranges and are much more vulnerable to electronic warfare interference.

The tech has been integrated into systems such as Perennial Autonomy's Hornet drones, as well as Ukrainian naval drones used to strike Russian targets in the Black Sea, among others.

Many Ukrainian defense companies have integrated Starlink services into their broader infrastructure, even if their products don't necessarily depend on it for operations.

Some firms, such as SkyFall, maker of the widely used P1-SUN interceptor drone, told Business Insider that they have developed their own communication methods or use alternative systems to avoid scenarios where a single technology outside Ukrainian control could become a significant point of failure, as it did this week.

"Depending on a single solution is very risky. Especially if you don't have full control over it," a spokesperson for Wild Hornets, the firm behind the popular Sting interceptor drone, told Business Insider. "Especially when it comes to something as critical on the battlefield as communications."

The spokesperson said this is "exactly why our ecosystem is built around our own communications technology and is open to various solutions when it comes to internet connectivity."

For anyone working with technologies that are dominated by a single provider, the risks are clear, said the head of hardware research and development at BlueBird Tech, a defense firm that makes drones and robots. They told Business Insider that Starlink has virtually no competitors because of its coverage, cost, availability, and ease of use.

BlueBird Tech uses Starlink services but is trying to avoid tying its products completely to any single technology. "We're actively exploring ways to introduce redundancy and potentially replace these components in the future," they said, speaking anonymously due to security concerns.

They said that potential workarounds include LTE or 5G technology, mesh networks with relay points, and laser communications. "Research teams around the world are working on these technologies," they said, "although none of them should be seen as a universal replacement for Starlink across every operational scenario."

When the disruption first occurred on Wednesday, some Ukrainian and foreign officials initially blamed SpaceX, led by Elon Musk. However, the world's richest man said on X on Wednesday that because Starshield is operated by the US government, any limits on speed would be a decision for the Pentagon or President Donald Trump.

A senior US official told Business Insider on Thursday that "no such request was ever made by" Trump. Reuters reported that the order came from inside the White House.

Starlink has delivered Kyiv an important battlefield advantage, especially since SpaceX cracked down on Moscow's ability to use the terminals earlier this year. The system, however, does not work in Russia, so Ukraine is limited to using its services over its own territory and Russian-occupied lands.

Ukraine has been unable to use Starlink for its long-range drone strikes that have wreaked havoc on Russian energy sites. Trump has pushed Kyiv to stop its attacks as he attempts to use Russian oil to lower gas prices.

Ukraine has found itself facing mounting pressure from the US, once a top supporter, as it continues to grapple with Russian missile and drone strikes amid severe shortages of critical air defense interceptors. The Starlink outage has only compounded Kyiv's anxieties as it anticipates yet another tough winter.

"Starlink is a major card on the battlefield," Zhluktenko said. "You can fight without it — even successfully — as the Russians show, but less effectively, at higher cost, and with constant communication headaches, above all for unmanned systems."