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This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on April 10, 2025. Watch the full video here.
Krista Auchenbach: The war in Ukraine has demonstrated significant strides in data technology and the integration of new capabilities in commercial services in war fighting. Today we examine the role of space and data capabilities in the changing character of war. Welcome to the Space and Data Domain of our series, Conflict in Focus: Lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War.
(Music plays.)
Ms. Auchenbach: I am Krista Auchenbach, a visiting fellow from the Office of the Secretary of Defense at CSIS. I am joined today by Mr. Aaron Jaffe, a senior vice president at Palantir, Dr. David Gauthier, the chief strategy officer at GXO Incorporated, and a senior associate with the CSIS Aerospace Security Project, and Giorgi Tskhakaia, advisor to Ukraine’s deputy minister and the minister of digital transformation and innovations, who is joining us virtually. Thank you for being here.
While militaries around the world have been thinking through how to integrate emerging capabilities, data, and information technologies into war fighting at speed and scale, Ukraine has applied the theory to practice, with impressive results. In this conflict, we’re witnessing fundamental changes in the character of war and an evolution in how data, technology, and commercial services can support militaries and, frankly, nonstate actors’ ability to wage war and pursue violence. Ukraine’s resilience and proficiency against the 2022 Russia invasion is a demonstration of Ukrainian resolve, ingenuity, and talent.
One national strength in particular is that of Ukraine’s workforce, which has a large portion of IT specialists and entrepreneurs, and a government culture that has both the need and the desire to embrace the tools of governance. The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation and Innovations was established to create a government on a smartphone, and was able to quickly adapt and leverage digital tools to manage the national response to Russia’s invasion. So I’d like to start with you, Giorgi, to begin by telling us more about the ministry.
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Minister Giorgi Tskhakaia: Yes. Thank you, first of all, for inviting me. I would like to say that these are very challenging times. And in terms of the technology, we all understand that there is no more the conventional war that we remember from the past times. It’s a very different one. And you need to be very well prepared technologically for this type of work. You mentioned very correctly that the Ministry of Digital Transformation was – one of the major goals was to create this, like, the government in the smartphone. And it has been achieved. And more than 22 million people are using the main application called Diia.
And when the war started, the people, even, you know, that we have in Ukraine the first online passport. So the people who were out of their flats were not able to even get their passports, so they were having some troubles and problems. But with the help of Diia, they could achieve any type of – and also, on the borders many of our ally countries to say so, starting to admit these passports as a real proof of the document. So they could even cross the border in this regard. So there were so many examples how the technologies helped the militaries as well.
For example, the e-enemy application that was created in – like, in several days. And thousands of people were, with the helping of a chatbot, sending in information and intelligence information, and very valuable one, to the military directly. At that time there was not as much the culture of the drones and ISR capabilities. And at those times it was a very valuable time that was, like, given by this application. There are some other major aspects of the Ministry of Digital Transformation to understand that Russians had Ukraine not only on the ground and from the air but cyber forces we are working 24/7 for killing all the infrastructure, and as you see the resilience of the Ukraine and still we can communicate and say how, like, it’s because of many aspects but one of them is the right policy and the right people.
And also from the beginning of the war, right, a huge movement of the ethical hackers who we are supporting and helping government in terms of protecting all the information, like, security infrastructure and also they were, like, hundreds of normal people and thousands of people who were ready to be a part of the cyber army of Ukraine and it happened really.
So, and still today there are many challenges always, but I think that the technological things that – the Ministry of Digital Transformation together with the government has achieved a lot of things, and also on this basis a new project has grown. For example, the army of drones project became one of the backbones of this war because that we started the technological. We understood that if we are not going to be changing things we are not going to win this war and they have – like, Russia has all type of superiority in a conventional war.
Yeah, and when the war started the electronic warfare, I think, was one of the best in the world. They have more ISR capabilities. They have more drones. They have more artillery. And there was no domain where they were not superior to Ukraine.
So there was the only one domain which is a very important one that we had the moral superiority that we were defending our country and they had not this moral superiority, obviously, because they were attacking the peaceful people and they were killing them, and so on and so forth. I don’t want to go into those details.
But, again, like, militarily we understood that it was not the possibility. Of course, with the help of allies but to remember I think that we have fought one-and-a-half years without Patriots and we have succeeded doing so. The first international our allied president was the U.K. prime minister or the president who came on the 66th day of the war.
So it was a very challenging time that time. But anyway, we succeeded because we started using nonconventional ways of war, which was extremely surprising for the Russians and, of course, His Majesty, the Ukrainian people, who stood up and said no to the oppressor and said that we are not going to surrender.
So all this together with the technological things helped us to still when the Russians were hoping to, like, end this operation in three days after the three years. The operation is still ongoing and not always with success for them.
Thank you.
Ms. Auchenbach: Thank you, Giorgi.
At the beginning of the war there were assumptions that cyber operations would play a greater role than, perhaps, they have been able to, based upon the effort of the Ukrainian cyber army.
But it also led to some interesting partnerships with the private sector here in the United States in terms of helping with cybersecurity and the resilience of government services and operations and so, certainly, Microsoft’s partnering with moving official records to cloud storage and some other support from tech companies.
One of the things that has been notable in this war is also the access to Starlink and the role that that has played in some of the support to military operations in a variety of ways, and so this aspect of getting information and intelligence, communication, and targeting data to the Ukrainian military has been a key area of collaboration and support from the United States and the government and private sector.
But as you all know better than I it has not been an easy process, despite the willingness of that partnership both in the private sector and the government on both sides. So I’d like to hear from each of you your perspectives on some of the challenges that you faced in getting the support to Ukraine, what recommendations you have for policy makers or policy changes and regulatory changes that might enable governments, military, and industry leaders to respond more quickly to future conflicts and other scenarios.
So with this I’d actually like to start with David, who led much of the U.S. overhead imagery support to Ukraine during his time in government at the National Geospatial Agency.
So, David?
David Gauthier: Yes, thank you.
I think the first challenge that I faced when Russia invaded Ukraine three-plus years ago – I was the director of commercial operations at NGA, like you said, and satellite imagery from commercial companies was well understood, well used. And we had a tool, and I wanted to use that tool to help Ukraine prosecute their defense in the war. And first I had to – I had to figure out, how was NGA going to organize itself to support Ukraine in this effort? And to their credit they organized very quickly, but I was disheartened to realize they were lacking imagination in the use of satellite imagery from private companies.
And so once we realized that, you know, we had those capabilities, the NGA analysts certainly wanted to integrate that with classified sources and provide some level of reporting through NATO to Ukraine, but they were not imagining the direct delivery of raw imagery to Ukrainian forces in real time. And so I was able to organize sort of an alternative dissemination path through private industry companies directly to forces in Ukraine for the satellite imagery that we were buying.
And it started with optical imagery, but then on I believe it was early March of that year Vice Prime Minister Fedorov actually appealed to the satellite, you know, companies and asked for radar imagery as well. And at first the reaction of NGA was radar imagery is difficult to interpret; maybe we shouldn’t give it to them. But I had contracts where commercial companies were collecting this radar imagery. And, you know, personally, it’s pretty obvious to see a Russian convoy of vehicles in a radar image. So with the weather being, you know, cloudy often in the springtime in Ukraine, and Russian troop movements at night, radar imagery was perfect to provide that insight day, night, and all weather on, you know, Russian troop movements and vehicle movements in Ukraine. And so we also organized a path for that imagery to flow directly to Ukrainian forces, and they made good use of it.
And so I was very happy to overcome some of these bureaucratic challenges, cultural challenges. But also at the end of the day the private companies themselves used their architecture to enable this delivery directly to forces in Ukraine and see the tactical use of commercial imagery on the battlefield.
Ms. Auchenbach: Excellent. Thanks, David.
Let’s turn to Giorgi from the Ukrainian perspective.
Min. Tskhaskaia: Yeah. First of all, I would like to say that the bureaucracy is always the biggest problem. And when war started starting, everything should be changed. So I think that any country should be prepared for such kind of challenges, and the bureaucracy should reduce drastically directly.
I would like to say a few words regarding the private companies and the government organizations. I would like to thank all of them, because what we saw was a tremendous support, and from all the agencies. And here the representative of Palantir is speaking, and I would like to thank him as well because his technology was a gamechanger at that time when they started sharing with Ukraine. And today, all these AI features and the computing power that we get from the Palantir was, like, very, very valuable for us. Also the same regarding Amazon, Google, Oracle. I don’t want to miss someone else, but I think that there are tens and maybe hundreds of different companies who were involved and were looking of ways how to help Ukraine, which is very cool and we appreciate that a lot.
In general, what we see is that the private companies always are, like, more flexible. I would like not – well, not mentioning the Starlink is not right. We are extremely thankful to when Vice Prime Minister Fedorov asked to Musk – Elon Musk regarding the Starlinks he responded directly. And it has changed the war in reality. So it was a really gamechanger. Until today we have one of the – if we can say that we have some of the superiority regarding the oppressor, one of them is our communication; we have Starlink. So of course we have some other features that I don’t want to mention, but one of them is Starlink, obviously.
So how – it is very easily understandable that the private sector is more flexible, more agile, and they are taking decisions better than the government sector. But anyway, the government sector is becoming way better every year. So when we started – when war started, it was not an easy path. Today, things are way easier than it was three years ago. Yeah, thank you.
Ms. Auchenbach: Excellent.
Aaron, Palantir has been there almost from the get-go in a variety of roles. Do you want to help us understand, from your perspective?
Aaron Jaffe: Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for inviting us into the discussion.
I think, building on what Giorgi said, I think flexibility and the ability to iterate and evolve incredibly quickly through software is absolutely cornerstone, for whether it’s the U.S. or any partner, to be able to prosecute this conflict. I think over the course of us supporting the U.S. and other partners, including Ukraine, we’ve learned that we’ve had to evolve incredibly, incredibly quickly to support the changing on-the-ground conditions, whether that’s fusing all the information that’s required to build a meaningful common operating picture, being able to move at the speed of decisions that are required in a changing sort of intel and operational environment, or being able to really rapidly incorporate different veins of automation or AI, whether that be in an imagery context, or as a tool for automation in sustainment and logistics, to be able to meet the speed of decisions that are ultimately needed to operate within this environment.
I think as we take a step back and look at, you know, what we’ve learned about U.S. systems, you know, throughout the scope of the conflict so far, is many of the assumptions that we have of working in a U.S.-only or in a joint context have not necessarily been valid when we’re working in a contested environment like Ukraine. And it’s required us, I think, through the lens of software, and I think to your point on the NGA front, really rapidly depart from some of our historic assumptions and be able to use the tools available to us to rapidly evolve to ultimately meet, I think, the key currency here, which is how do we help our own forces make better and faster decisions at higher volume, to be able to meet the need on the battlefield?
I think a few learnings on our end of what that’s meant for us as we’ve tried to continue to evolve our capabilities and software to ultimately, you know, provide to our customers and partners, is, one, it’s incredibly important to think about how we support not as a set of individual stovepipe functions, but one common platform for how we can support the warfighter. And that requires seamlessly, I think, integrating, whether it be intel, operations, plans, logistics, into one common landscape that can ultimately move in a consistent and integrated manner.
Second, it has to be user-centric. I think one of the things that’s been a learning for us is we’re having to work in environments and with user groups that we never initially anticipated we’d have to support. And that means that technology has to sort of evolve from being, you know, complex, or, you know, effectively accounting systems that might be really hard to grapple with, to things that can be on a phone that users can pick up, instantly use with little to no training, and can be intuitive against the needs of the mission, whether that be in the intelligence domain, the operations domain, or sustainment domain.
And I think the final piece, you know, I think we wanted to surface here, sort of what we’ve learned sort of in our – in our efforts supporting here, is we need to view technology as an enabler. Not something that constrains how individuals, you know, work in whatever vein they’re supporting within operations for the conflict, but something that can help complement their skills, enable them to move faster, and iterate at the speed at which they’re changing their own patterns for how they need to operate and support their operations.
Ms. Auchenbach: Yeah, we had a group here recently that was from the Ukraine tech community. And the emphasis on the end user and going to the unit that’s going to use it was certainly emphasized from their perspective as well. I’d like to dig a little bit more into some of the tactical details of how this war has transpired and the implications therein. There’s a – there’s a change in in military advantage in terms of this being a very transparent battlefield. So the shift from hiders to finders is one that is certainly impactful in this war. And there have been some interesting cross-domain implications of that for space warfare, including also the very dynamic electronic warfare environment. Things like the Viasat cyberattack, in terms of the cross-domain space, and then also Ukraine’s kinetic strike against Russian early warning radar in May of 2024.
So, David, from a space systems perspective, what capabilities have proven most effective? And how are you seeing the space and counterspace competition evolving, and the countermeasures that both Russia and Ukraine are using in this war?
Mr. Gauthier: Great question. So, from a commercial space perspective, this has been very interesting to watch. A very innovative force on the field, you know, change tactics on almost real time to sort of flip the advantage over and over again against the more powerful, superior, you know, military. And so I think commercial space has played a huge role in that in terms of the tactics on the battlefield. And in the past, one might have used satellite imagery more of an intelligence support role, where you’re spending a lot of time strategically understanding your adversary to maybe anticipate their moves on the battlefield and understand their technical capabilities. And it was left to aerial imagery or drone imagery to really be real time battlefield tactics and support combat.
In this engagement, we saw the Ukrainian forces actually use satellite imagery in a more tactical sense. And that could be because, for the first time, commercial satellite imagery is more timely than it used to be, and could be delivered very quickly over the internet, or a web browser, or to a smartphone, or a device. And so we really saw that shift happen on the battlefield. There’s also – I keep talking about imagery, but there’s also RF collection. And so especially in a dynamic electronic warfare environment, it was very interesting to see a company like HawkEye 360 be able to map out GPS interference on the battlefield in near real time. And then we could pass those maps directly to Ukrainian forces so they could see where the interference was occurring in the electromagnetic spectrum. And that was sort of a precursor to other military activities and really helped in their planning both defensively and offensively.
You mentioned the, you know, counterspace capabilities that Russia brought into the equation. And so, you know, one might typically think of those as being state-on-state or against national systems, but Russia went and attacked commercial and private systems as well. Both the Viasat cyberattacks, the attempts to stop Starlink, but we also saw that in remote sensing. We saw attempts to deny and attack the remote sensing systems as well. And ultimately, what’s amazing is that private industry found a way, right? They found a way to persevere, to be resilient, to overcome these things. And so the benefit of that resilience, not only having your national capabilities but also a set of commercial capabilities that could be resilient and adaptive on the battlefield, was very powerful.
Ms. Auchenbach: Yeah, and that adaptation on the battlefield is one that, of course, pushes this importance of logistics, providing an important basis for warfighting capability and potential. And so, Aaron, from the logistics standpoint, one of the tools that Palantir has been helping the Ukrainians with is being able to understand the logistics systems. But then also, the process of getting the software into theater is also an interesting dynamic as well. And so could you talk to us a bit about the perspective from a logistical standpoint in how you’re learning about, you know, supporting the system of warfare, and then also this new aspect and component of it?
Mr. Jaffe: Yeah. I think from a commercial perspective, the conflict in Ukraine has been one of the first contested environments that I, you know, think we’ve had to figure out how to field technologies to support the U.S. and, you know, partners that are engaged in the conflict. I think the thing that’s been one of the greatest learnings for us is that it really hits home that sustainment and logistics systems are war fighting systems. They’re not business systems or accounting systems that sit on their own island, divorced from the ability to effectively operate. They’re exceptionally integral and constraining for the operations and plans that you can ultimately support in a given environment.
And I think one of the key learnings when we talk about evolution through the course of the conflict has been, we need to be able to evolve our sustainment and logistics technologies to match the pace of plans and operations and intelligence functions. I think, to break that apart a little bit, what that’s meant for us is, one, there are tremendous network challenges, I think, that we have to overcome. In the same way, whether you’re looking at a targeting and fires function or intelligence function where there’s been tremendous investment, whether it be in Europe or in other theaters, to be able to build the backbone of common networks that can ultimately enable interoperability across a network, much of that – even though most sustainment and logistics data is unclassified, there are still massive challenges to overcome to enable a base level of interoperability.
I think there have been multiple times where, you know, we’ve been at one of the commands and, you know, you sort of see this juxtaposition of, on one side, incredibly exquisite intelligence capability or software that’s doing things that it’s almost hard to imagine with sensors, and the ability to work on incredibly fast decision cycles. And on the other side, you know, you can’t print a basic sustainment laydown because, you know, two partner nations printers can’t, you know, get them to talk across the network to ultimately create the artifact that’s needed for a commander to see.
And I think this sort of, you know, hits the point that as we look, as the U.S., at concepts like JADC2 and being able to have a common warfighting capability. We view it’s absolutely integral that we have to look at sustainment as sort of a first-order concern of, how do we integrate both when we look at operations, understanding of the targeting and fires process, of how do available munitions constrain ultimately what you plan and how you operate? How can we understand in a contested environment automating sort of the midstream of that logistics tail to be able to move to a push model as opposed to a pull model? I think some of the technology that we’ve seen fielded in support of Ukraine has been, I think, some of the most advanced instantiations of that we’ve seen anywhere globally. And finally, how do we look at the broader sustainment tail all the way back to the industrial base as one integrated picture as opposed to taking months, if not years, for that signal to propagate from expenditure back to production?
And so I think we’re incredibly hopeful that, you know, the work that’s being fielded in Ukraine can sort of help continue to propel both the U.S. and partners for how we can rapidly evolve and advance in these capabilities, but I also sort of think it lays bare the challenge of how far we have to go to make rapid progress here.
Ms. Auchenbach: Yeah. So, Giorgi, I’d like to turn to you from – for your perspective in terms of what you’re seeing on – in the battlespace. But then, also, how does that help inform the new opportunities and challenges that you see from the Ministry of – or, Ministry of Digital Transformation’s perspective, and how you’re thinking about the future, and how to build upon the successes and learning that has been done to date?
Min. Tskhakaia: So first of all we need to say that the war is very dynamic and it is changing drastically. Every six months there is some new thing is happening which is totally different.
For example, when the first, like, supported or, like, the technical assistance drones from different countries came to Ukraine, none of them were able to fly because of the electronic warfare system of Russians. In that time, no one was ready for such kind of war. But then they – unfortunately, Ukraine is a testing field, yeah? So because of very good feedback for their systems to take these drones back, to improve them, and to get it back then, and afterwards is working. And I think that the valuation of those companies went very high because of the success they have achieved here in Ukraine.
The same situation in what we see, for example, from the Palantir in terms of situational awareness. It was the product they are constantly improving, and this is an added value that the foreign companies can get from Ukraine as well. So what we see is that, for example, the NGA, the work that was done is still living, and I would like to thank you for what has been done, the both of you. Personally, you and your companies made a huge input into the war that we are today, and thank you for that.
But again, there are several things that we need to think upfront. We need to understand how the war is going to be in a year from today. And we are constantly working on that because we understand this lifespan of this war is, like, every six months some gamechanger is appearing on the battlefield which is changing drastically the situation. And you need to think about the countermeasures or you need to think something that you will be superior in that period of time.
And this is the war of technologies, of the minds. Of course, there is the war of the old conventional way of war, and this is like everyday routine. But if we are really looking forward to go and to have success in these times, we need to be more innovative. So we are working on that. We have hundreds of different projects and programs working and so on.
For example, you mentioned regarding the imagery of satellites that people started using it for tactical level. This has a very good explanation because we did not have anything to strike over the tactical field. So the only usage of this was – like, 97 percent of the usage of this imageries were on the tactical level. Fortunately, these possibilities also increased, and Ukrainian production as well as the technical assistance from our allies gave us additional tools to strike more so to plan war. So this is how things has been changed.
When, for example, the Javelin was a gamechanger, then FPV drones substituted Javelin. Today, FPV drone – which costs, I think, less – is going to – in general will be more effective than the Javelin. That does not mean the Javelin is bad. This is one of the best technologies in the world, for example. When the HIMARS came to Ukraine, it was a gamechanger. It changed drastically the situation in Ukraine and so on and so forth. So every time something new is appearing and the Russians are not ready for that it’s a gamechanger.
But after a certain amount of time, for example, what is an efficiency of HIMARS three – like, two years ago and what is today? It’s two different things. So we need to think what type of such gamechangers we will have next to distract the Russians and to have the superiority on the combat line.
So our job is also to open the market. So, for example, I would like to say several figures. When the war started there was only seven companies who were producing drones. From them about three were really operational. Others were nearly close. Now it’s more than 500 different companies who are producing drones, UGVs, all kind of ammunition, rockets, and so on and so forth.
So it’s – how we did that we reduced the red tape. We opened the market. We said – we made a tax haven for the producers of the drones and all kind of military equipment. So – and we have increased the margin of profit. It was only 1 percent. Now it’s 25 percent.
Like, the average NATO countries is about 17 percent so we made even more because the risk is higher. So – and we said that we understand that you are going to be risking, like, starting the production of the drones but we are covering it with the margin.
So and based on that today in Ukraine you will find such interesting technologies that you will not meet anywhere in the world, and also the R&D price. Anywhere in the world the R&D costs hundreds of millions for rockets. You can find the companies who are doing with couple of millions something like that because it’s easy to do something than testing a real live battlefield and then to get the feedback and to do that again.
So we are inviting always the international companies and the startups as well to use such kind of opportunity, which is a very unfortunate opportunity for Ukraine but this is how it is. So we are ready of giving such kind of platform to the people to come to Ukraine and test their technologies which then will be used by us.
So there are many things in domain of innovation and we are very happy to have such kind of allies who are constantly helping us. To be honest, help is never enough and we are always keen to get more. But something that we get we are extremely thankful for that, starting from the Elon Musk and the Starlink, from the Palantir, for all the government and nongovernment organizations and the people.
We don’t need to forget that people were sending their own drones from home directly to Ukraine. For U.S. citizens, we are just bringing it to the post and sending it, so we cannot believe that. Like, we cannot not believe what – we cannot forget that. This is a huge support from all the citizens that we admire, and thank you for that.
Ms. Auchenbach: Thank you, Giorgi. The pace of research, development, and fielding has been impressive and I think mostly upends the way that DOD thinks about it here in the United States.
I’d like to go back to Aaron in terms of how has that learning dynamic and the feedback loop worked on the software side, trying to pull in together all of these different capabilities and systems, different standards and protocols. You know, what has been the learning that Palantir has done on the integration of these various technologies and how – as you have learned and supported Ukraine since 2022 what has Ukraine asked for that you weren’t prepared for? How are the needs evolving and the support evolving in terms of how that partnership is going?
Mr. Jaffe: Yeah. I think – to hearken back to something earlier in the discussion, I think our North Star is often the primacy of decisions, whether that be in an intelligence function, an operations function or a sustainment function, and I think, you know, what’s guided us, whether it be working with U.S. partners or in support of our Ukrainian partners, has been having the North Star of what specific decision or function you’re trying to improve or integration you’re trying to accomplish, and that then allows us to push our resources to work on incredibly tight time cycles and iterate and evolve incredibly quickly.
I think this is one of the virtues of, you know, when you’re bringing software into the battlefield you can have multiple releases and improvement in the capability on a daily basis and have that fuse both with digital as well as hardware-based systems. And so, from our perspective, we’ve been incredibly impressed to see the partners that we’re working with, how they’ve driven and ultimately what are they trying to accomplish, what does that need to do in the physical world. And that’s allowed us to effectively do what we do well, which as a data and software company to be able to evolve at the pace of the requirement.
Ms. Auchenbach: Excellent.
Well, with that, I’d like to ask each of you, beginning with David, you know, what would be some of the three takeaways that you want us to have in terms of where this conflict is going. What are the lessons that we have learned? Where do you see the changes in warfare evolving from your field of view? And what should we learn today?
Mr. Gauthier: OK. Well, I think one of the main takeaways – and everybody has talked about it a little bit here – is this idea of information advantage and speed of decision-making on the battlefield. And when you’re able to bring multiple constellations of satellite imagery providers together, along with multiple providers of, you know, drones – how many drone companies – and other things, you get this ability to have an incredibly tight decision cycle. And if – anyone in the Defense Department in the U.S. has probably heard of the OODA loop, which is observe, orient, decide, and act. And the faster you can prosecute that loop ahead of your adversary, the more information advantage you have, the better decisions you can make. That has been accelerated by commercial imagery and algorithmic warfare to a point where we saw an underdog militarily, you know, be able to fight toe-to-toe and push back very aggressively against a superior military force that was relying upon doctrine and mass, right? And so this innovative use of – and fast decision-making is incredibly helpful.
I guess a second takeaway – and this is really, you know, one personally learned as I observed the way that we gave commercial imagery to Ukrainian forces directly, and then watched them and how they and private industry around them found innovative new ways to use that imagery as a tool on the battlefield. And so I think a classic intelligence support approach would have said, well, we’ll look at that imagery and we’ll tell you what you need to know, right, almost curate the solution for you, a top-down approach; whereas the IT systems and the Starlink particularly bringing broadband to the frontlines, we could deliver the imagery directly to those people who are pulling triggers and they could decide for themselves how to integrate that into their tactics. And so that was a – that was a big lesson to see the innovative use on the frontlines of the battlefield and amongst even companies supporting the forces in Ukraine.
And then maybe a third takeaway, if there is one, is that it was incredibly illustrative to see how Ukraine – and Giorgi mentioned having the moral high ground – was able to actually illustrate using drone and satellite imagery on the nightly news in – you know, to the world the atrocities being committed by Russia. And it really brought it home for a lot of people in America in particular, into their living rooms to see what was happening and to feel that desire to support. And so I think this idea of telling the narrative through the transparency on the battlefield that you mentioned, and then garnering international support for someone who is being victimized, you know, in that way is really powerful. So this idea of using international support and technology together in a symbiotic way was really interesting.
Ms. Auchenbach: Excellent. Were there any surprises that you had?
Mr. Gauthier: I think some of the biggest surprises were that radar imagery was very new to a lot of the – I guess the combatants and to the companies. But companies were very innovative in how they used radar imagery.
So one company, Ursa Space, was receiving radar imagery from the U.S. government to support Ukraine, and they in particular used it to continuously check for evacuation routes and road clearance, and also to map out the electric grid in Ukraine and see where there was damage to high-power transmission lines. And they could actually help the Ukrainians themselves restore their electric power in key areas without having to go out and do surveys, which would be incredibly dangerous on a battlefield. So this idea that it could support logistics, and energy infrastructure, and all these other things not related to kinetic warfare, but critical to the power of being able to defend yourself, that was also a surprise. And I thought that was great.
Ms. Auchenbach: Excellent.
Aaron, what about you?
Mr. Jaffe: I think, to echo David’s comments about the OODA loop, I think from our perspective, you know, this environment has highlighted the primacy of decisions, and not just in a DOD context of being able to move 20 percent faster, or 30 percent faster, but be able to move one, two, three orders of magnitude faster, both with the volume and the quality of decisions that you have to make, integrated across warfighting functions. And I think one of the things we spend a lot of time thinking about is what’s the role of software and technology, ultimately, on how do you effectively allow that OODA loop that drives intelligence, operations, sustainment functions to move much faster, and have the quality of the decisions coming out of it be better and more impactful to the mission that you’re trying to achieve?
And I think there’s sort of two themes, if we were to break that apart, where we’ve put a lot of investment and have seen very rapid evolution. And I think the first broad theme is integration. And I mean that broadly, of integration of networks, integration of war fighting functions, integration of supply chains, where I think we find often the largest barrier to closing that OODA loop is you can’t get the relevant set of stakeholders, information, or components together to actually be in the same technology or system to be able to evaluate and make decisions at the speed of relevance.
I think the second – and, again, this is – I’m not trying to steal David’s thunder here – is the incorporation of new technologies, particularly AI, into those decision-making processes. I think in the imagery space a lot of the veins of technology is to improve detections, be able to incorporate that into intelligence and operations processes as something that we’ve seen multiple step changes over the last few years, both within U.S. capability and in partner capability, of how quickly you can evaluate and make decisions in those domains.
And I think this also spans with some of the newer veins of generative AI, particularly in the logistics and sustainment functions and ultimately how do we look at supply chains as one large automation challenge that has to stretch all the way from the operator back to the American industrial base, where you can start to look and use AI as an agent to ultimately much more rapidly integrate and transmit signal across that chain, as opposed to sort of waiting for paper to be passed through different stovepiped functions.
So, you know, from our – from our perspective to, you know, bring it all back together, you know, we’ve seen incredibly rapid evolution in the pace of technology. But ultimately, you know, we’ve only found it valuable to the extent that it’s actually supporting the quality of the decision that we can – we can make for the operator.
Ms. Auchenbach: Could I pull a little bit on that third point that you made, in terms of as we look to the future one of the challenges in being able to really leverage the potential of all of this is, one, having the data, having access to the data, and then having it structured in a way that’s useful. How do you see that problem getting easier with some of the generative AI and other tools that are coming to market?
Mr. Jaffe: Yeah. I mean, I think those hurdles that you’re describing, I think we often use that as an excuse or an artificial hurdle to actually be able to block getting after these problems. And I think one of the things that the conflict in Ukraine has forced us to do is to say, we need to be able to meet the data information in the current state it is in, wherever it’s being generated. Whether that, from an intelligence standpoint, might be it’s coming from an open-source channel. It might be from commercial imagery. From a sustainment perspective it might not live nicely in an existing ERP system. You might have to pull shards of it from multiple places or enable data entry across a broad range of partners.
I think this is where the North Star of what’s the decision or the specific workflow that you’re trying to enable for an end organization or user is very, very clarifying. Because I think as soon as you can put your finger on that, it helps you have a perspective on, well, what information is actually useful in service of that decision, allows you to really quickly use the tools that you have disposal. Which, to your point, you know, whether it be some of the new veins of AI that can help with curation, summarization, really rapid cleaning of information can be radically useful, but I don’t think they’re deterministic in being able to make rapid strides in our ability to meet the end decision maker where they are.
Ms. Auchenbach: Yes. So, Giorgi, I’m going to turn to you in a second, but I want to – I want to pull together a couple of the points that David and Aaron have made here in terms of the technology is there, the data is there, the tools are there. It comes to being clear-eyed about the problem that’s trying to be solved and really the culture to support the problem solving and the solutions that are available, at speed and time. So those are important takeaways, certainly for a U.S. audience.
But I would really like to hear from Giorgi, who’s very close to this problem, and where the cultural challenge is not there because of the necessity of success in this war. And so, from your perspective, Giorgi, what are – what are your takeaways? What have you learned? And what do you think is necessary as we look to the future and the implications, not only for Ukraine and its security but also for the future of warfare?
Min. Tskhakaia: So I think that the first one is that the technology and innovation is the key factor. And there is not much – like, the countries that have many tanks or a bigger infantry don’t have any more as much advantage as they had 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And if you are not innovating constantly, you are going to be losing anyway. This is the first one.
The second one is the lifespan of the innovation. I think that this will show that this is from six months to 12 months in general. Of course, there are some other cases. But from six months to 12 months before you will be replicated, or you will lose your efficiency based on the work that another part is doing also. So you are doing the same, and they have some sort of innovative thing, and you need to fight it. There are the cases where you cannot do that easily. For example, the gliding bombs. We have the problems more than six months, yeah, for example. And they have the problem with the FPV drones or with the HIMARS is more than six months. But in general, it is six months to 12 months you need to be ready if you need to have something extra, something more.
And the third one is an AI, and in all domains in decision-making process – in data analytics, in logistics, in anything – is it looks like the way more efficient and effective way of doing business in general and also doing the work. So if you have a superiority in the data, then you have a huge advantage. So all the features that can help you, and all the solutions that can help you in that, is very valuable and important. And also not only on the software side, which is an extremely important part, but also on the hardware side where I think that if we will meet in a year or so we will see that the drones are flying purely on the AI. And there are certain rockets which are doing very strange things because of an AI. And there are decisions made that we have never heard about based on an AI. So it’s already the future, and who is investing in this future is going to win. This is the comment.
Ms. Auchenbach: Well, thank you very much, Giorgi.
Thank you for joining the Space and Data Domain panel of our series, Conflict in Focus: Lessons from Russia-Ukraine War. I would like to take a special thanks for our three guests today and the rich discussion on this topic. Please refer to the CSIS website for other episodes and additional resources. Thank you for joining us today.
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