VILNIUS—The war in Ukraine has reinforced an enduring truth: While the character of war is evolving, its fundamental nature has not changed. Conventional forces remain central to deterrence. Armor, airpower, and integrated air and missile defense are still required to hold terrain, reinforce forward positions, and credibly deny or punish aggression. At the same time, how these capabilities are employed is changing. Despite the precision of many advanced weapon systems, battlefield outcomes continue to be overwhelmingly shaped by artillery volume, the availability of munitions, and the ability to sustain operations over time.
The importance of these factors in modern warfare highlights gaps in European defense posture. Russia, operating on a wartime footing, is producing weapons at a rate that significantly exceeds the output of much of Europe. In some cases, Russia can make more artillery rounds in a week than some European nations can produce in a year. Here in Lithuania, which borders both the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus, the speed and scale of Moscow’s rearmament is a first-order concern.
Across European NATO allies, there are gaps in both capability (what allied militaries can muster) and capacity (their ability to produce, sustain, and operate at scale). European countries are investing in advanced systems, but not at the scale required to produce them in meaningful numbers. Allies are fielding high-end platforms, but slow production cycles constrain their ability to sustain high-intensity operations.
This should not be interpreted as a failure of Western strategy; NATO’s institutional model remains indispensable. But coordinating thirty-two nations is fundamentally different from an adversary operating under a centralized, wartime model. The challenge is no longer diagnosing a well-recognized problem. It is acting fast enough to solve it before it is too late.
The changing character of war
Russia’s war on Ukraine has accelerated a shift in modern warfare. The most important change is that the cost barrier to generating strategic effects has dropped dramatically. What once required nation-state-level effort—stealth aircraft, coordinated strike packages, and significant resources—can now be achieved with relatively simple, low-cost systems. And increasingly, by individuals or small groups.
The implications are clear. Technologies once reserved for advanced militaries are now widely accessible. With the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), commercial systems, and open-source tools, the ability to generate strategic disruption is no longer limited to nation-states. Actors operating below the threshold of conventional conflict, including proxy forces and sleeper cells, can now generate strategic effects that were previously out of reach.
At the same time, the battlefield has become increasingly transparent, making it easier to observe, track, and target enemy forces. Persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), commercial satellites, and drones have created an environment in which it is extremely difficult to hide movement or mass forces. Importantly, the connection between sensing and strike—the “sensor to shooter” chain, where detection and strike can occur in near real time—has tightened significantly.
At the 2026 Baltic Military Conference in Vilnius last month, a Ukrainian speaker noted that this change reflects a “revolution in military affairs.” Crucially, it has been driven not just by advanced systems, but by rapid, bottom-up adaptation. Ukrainian forces are modifying systems in real time, building what they describe as “Frankenstein” capabilities that can survive in a dense electronic warfare environment. Systems that do not work are immediately adapted. Those that do are scaled quickly.
As a result, the human role in military decision-making is changing. Targeting and ISR processes are accelerating and incorporating AI-enabled tools. Humans are shifting toward validating and authorizing actions rather than originating them, raising new challenges for escalation control and the laws of war.
Taken together, these dynamics show that speed, adaptability, and scale now matter as much as, if not more than, the sophistication of military systems.
The way forward
These shifts carry important implications for NATO.
- First, NATO should prioritize closing the gap between sensing and response by integrating ISR, command-and-control, and strike capabilities across allies to enable faster action as timelines compress. Explicitly establishing guardrails for escalation control from the outset is crucial.
- Second, air and missile defense must be layered, scalable, and sustainable. The challenge is no longer limited engagements. It is defending against sustained mass attacks. Deterrence will depend not only on intercepting the first salvo, but on the ability to endure and continue operating under repeated strikes.
- Third, counter-drone capabilities must be affordable, adaptable, and fieldable at scale. High-end interceptors alone cannot solve a low-cost, high-volume problem like drone swarms. Unless the cost curve is reversed, adversaries will retain a structural advantage by overwhelming defenses with cheaper systems.
- Fourth, NATO’s conventional long-range strike capabilities should be strengthened. Deterrence is about denial and punishment. The ability to hold adversary systems at risk changes the capacity to dominate escalation. Without credible conventional punishment options, NATO risks being confined to absorbing attacks or being pushed to resort too quickly to nuclear signaling.
- Fifth, the defense industrial base should shift toward sustained, scaled production. Stockpiles, replenishment rates, and supply chains are no longer secondary considerations. They are central to deterrence credibility. In a prolonged conflict, production capacity becomes as decisive as strategic battlefield genius.
- Sixth, deterrence ultimately depends on political will, unity, and decision-making speed. Even the most capable military force will fail if it cannot act in time with clear purpose.