Ukraine and Gaza: Two R&D Laboratories of Future Warfare

War is not only the clash of opposing human groups on a battlefield. It is also a trial by fire for new weapons, strategic and material innovations, and the adaptation of logistics and operational methods.

Thus, in Ukraine and Gaza, part of the outlines of future conflicts are unfolding before our eyes. These combat zones can be seen as two R&D (Research & Development) laboratories of future warfare. This warfare may present a significant characteristic, currently being tested in the most burning news of our time: the fusion of archaism and high technology.

Missiles, satellites… and horses

Ukraine is the scene of a positional war that, in many respects, resembles the First World War. From it, the Ukrainian conflict has inherited trenches and high-intensity artillery shelling. It has added drones and the use of ultra-light means of transport, to the detriment of tanks and other armored vehicles. We are also witnessing the emergence of “Mad Max”-style operations, where much of the equipment comes from civilian life: quad bikes, motorcycles, hunting rifles, recreational drones fitted with explosives. Even horses, like an image from a distant past, have made their return.

Shared by both belligerents, this artisanal, rustic approach—what might be described as “low tech”—coexists with the most advanced technologies in terms of weapons (missiles, drones), but also intelligence and information (cyber technologies, satellites, etc.).

The way of fighting has also changed. Verdun, the Battle of the Somme, as well as Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk, were the scenes of major offensives mobilizing hundreds of thousands of soldiers and causing tens of thousands of deaths in a single day, for totals exceeding one million in just a few months. The Donbass, by contrast, is the theater of a succession of micro-offensives involving a handful of men for objectives that are limited each time. Overall, however, over a period exceeding three years, the victims of the conflict remain nonetheless significant.

From fog to jamming

In Gaza, associated with high technology, another form of archaism prevails: the total lockdown of information by the Israeli government. A war without images and without witnesses, in which the possession and management of data are crucial—whether information in the journalistic sense or data in the cybernetic sense.

The “fog of war,” dear to Clausewitz, has thus been shifted from the military theater of operations to the realm of information. In a Gaza isolated from the rest of the world, Israel has generated a fog—or rather a jamming—by banning access to journalists, and even eliminating those who might venture onto the ground.

The asymmetry of power and equipment between the forces involved is compounded by an asymmetry of information: Israel possesses it entirely with regard to the Palestinians (Israeli intelligence deeply infiltrated on the ground, satellites, AI-based tracking, etc.), while the fighters of the Islamist Hamas movement have virtually none.

Here too, archaism—obscurantism linked to the deprivation of information—is closely associated with high technology. This dimension is manifested through the use of sophisticated artificial intelligence tools (“Habsora,” “Gospel,” “Lavender,” or “Where’s Daddy?”), capable of identifying, selecting, and recommending hundreds of additional targets in record time. AI-driven warfare has enabled the IDF to sustain an unprecedented pace of human (essentially civilian) and material destruction (primarily housing and civilian infrastructure). In a chilling assessment, the UN highlighted the grim effectiveness of these tools:
“More than 15,000 deaths were recorded during the six weeks following October 7, when artificial intelligence systems appear to have been massively used for target selection (…) After six months of military offensive, the percentage of housing and civilian infrastructure destroyed in Gaza is the highest ever recorded in a conflict.”

Thus, in the warfare of the future, everything can and must mix: “high tech” with “low tech,” military with non-military (hybrid warfare). We have broken away from the idea of linear progress. Wars of the past each saw the emergence of innovations in terms of equipment and strategy. Here, innovation still exists, but it is mixed with regressive elements.

Europe is very poorly prepared for this new reality. Looking at certain orientations of the new military programming law, one may even wonder whether these developments have all been fully understood. We speak of the tanks and aircraft of the future, when it would probably be wiser to speak of the future of tanks and aircraft.

©2026 – IMPACT EUROPEAN

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