British Veteran Says Western Armies Better Be Learning From Ukraine’s Battlefield Playbook

Andrew Fox, who previously served with The Royal Welsh and later the Parachute Regiment, shared his assessment in an interview with BFBS Forces News on March 9.

Fox, now an academic researcher and defense commentator, has visited Ukraine multiple times to observe combat zones, including the heavily contested area around Pokrovsk.

According to Fox, Ukrainian troops are blending traditional infantry skills with rapid improvisation as they fight along some of the most dangerous frontlines of the war.

Small squads dominate urban fighting

Combat in eastern Ukraine often involves close-quarters urban warfare, where troops must clear damaged buildings while enemy fighters hide in basements, underground spaces or fortified positions.

Instead of large-scale assaults using battalions, Ukrainian units frequently operate in small squads, a tactic designed to reduce vulnerability to artillery strikes and drone attacks.

“In the open if you have battalions going forward, they get wiped out,” Fox said. “So what we’re seeing here is small squads going forward.”

Despite the new technologies shaping the battlefield, Fox emphasized that the fundamentals of infantry combat remain essential. Soldiers continue to rely on coordinated movement, covering fire and strong situational awareness.

“You need to be able to stay flexible, but you also need to make sure you are doing your skills and drills properly,” he said.

Fox pointed to helmet-camera footage from Ukrainian troops as an example of disciplined battlefield awareness.

“You can see [from the helmet cameras], he’s keeping his arcs covered he’s going left, he’s going right, he’s not getting fixated on the target, he’s keeping his situational awareness.”

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Drones change the battlefield

Fox noted that the main battlefield threat has shifted dramatically compared to previous conflicts such as Afghanistan.

While improvised explosive devices were a major danger during his deployments there, he said the situation in Ukraine is different.

“In Afghanistan the big threat was IEDs,” he said. “In Ukraine the IEDs are flying.”

First-person-view drones are now widely used to track and attack individual soldiers or vehicles, forcing troops to constantly adjust their tactics and movement.

According to Fox, the pace of innovation surrounding drones has created a technological arms race between both sides.

“Essentially you need to control your drone like a tech startup,” he said.

He argued that drone units need the freedom to experiment and innovate quickly in order to keep up with the rapidly changing battlefield.

“Because the pace of change is so big at the moment, if you have a formal staffed up lessons learned process, it just takes too long … There’s a lot of trust needed,” he explained.

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Western militaries are taking note

Fox also suggested that Western armed forces may ultimately find themselves learning from Ukraine’s experience on the battlefield.

While Ukrainian troops have benefited from Western training programs such as Operation Interflex, he believes the flow of knowledge may increasingly go the other way.

“They’ve clearly taken a lot from Interflex and a lot from the training, but there will, of course, always come a tipping point where actually the master has become the student,” he said.

“We’re going to have to go to them and say ‘can you show us how you did X, Y, Z’ because we are way behind them in terms of stuff like procurement.”

Fox added that Western militaries would be wise to study Ukraine’s battlefield experience closely.

“We’d be insane not to speak to our friends and learn the lessons that they learned the hard way.”

Earlier, reports emerged that Ukrainian service members with frontline combat experience were expected to begin training soldiers of Germany’s armed forces in the near future, focusing on drone operations, counter-drone tactics, and battlefield coordination systems.

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