Forget the blitz spirit – Nato is missing something crucial as it prepares for war

While Moscow displays its nuclear weapons in public exercises designed to intimidate Ukraine and rattle Kyiv’s allies, Nato’s response is to scuttle underground and thumb its nose at the Russian bear.

The scenes of a British-led headquarters for the alliance’s attack dog, the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, setting up beside the Jubilee line at Charing Cross station to wargame blasting Russian forces as they stampede into the Baltics – by attacking Moscow’s forces and jamming their electronic communications systems – are fictional.

So too, for now, is the notion that Nato actually has the equipment it needs to fight off a Russian invasion.

By the admission of defence sources involved in Operation Arrcade Strike, Nato and the UK do not have enough drones to match what the Russians could, in theory, send into battle.

The command and control system being tested underground – safe from possible Russian air attacks – is intended to lead the effort to break the back of Russia in a hypothetical situation wherein it invades Estonia.

The idea is to use AI to speed up the “kill chain”, and to blunt and then reverse a Russian advance – much in the way Ukraine has done over the last four years.

The British Ministry of Defence says: “Personnel were able to receive large volumes of data in real time, visualise that data in new and novel ways, and enable commanders to make decisions faster than an adversary can respond.

“While the scenario is fictional, the capabilities being tested are real, and are being rehearsed to ensure Nato forces can respond rapidly, cohesively and effectively.”

But nowhere in Europe, or among Nato member states, is there anything to match what Ukraine has already developed to meet the growing threat and use of Russian drones on the battlefield.

In Nato nations, as Britain’s glacial development of the Ajax armoured reconnaissance vehicle has shown, the process from contract to deployment can take more than a decade.

Compare that with Fire Point in Ukraine – one of dozens of Ukrainian companies that have gone from zero to producing cruise missile equivalents, long-range drones, and tiny interceptors to take down Russian weapons, in the space of a couple of years.

General Cherry, another drone outfit, produces thousands of drones a day. And almost all of Ukraine’s startup arms manufacturers take real-time feeds from frontline operators and adapt their weapons to the changes on the battlefield in minutes and seconds. In Nato, such adaptations would take years.

Ukraine used to produce vast quantities of tanks, artillery and rockets for the Soviet Union when it was under Moscow’s control. Following independence, it allowed its weapons industry to atrophy.

Modern warfare has shown that the kind of heavy armour used by Russia, and by its rivals in Nato, is vulnerable to cheap, fast, remotely piloted “first-person view” missiles based on commercial drones, which were first developed by frontline infantry out of desperation.

Battlefields are now much deeper, more often subjected to intense surveillance, and require an entirely different approach to tactics on a grand scale that Nato generals have no experience of – and they know it.

“The rapid evolution of unmanned systems, real-time battlefield software updates, and data-driven targeting has compressed kill chains, and rewards those who learn and adapt the fastest,” said Alexis G Grynkewich, a US general and Nato’s supreme allied commander for Europe.

Simultaneously, there are deep concerns within Nato that the UK is failing to meet its operational commitments to the alliance, and is falling behind in defence spending, in spite of claims by the government that it is committing more money to fighting a hybrid war with Russia that has already begun.

Russia has brandished its short-range nuclear arsenal in exercises in Belarus this week, and continues to spy on Europe’s undersea communications cables as well as its onshore installations. It continues to carry out assassinations and sabotage operations, for instance with arson attacks on supplies intended for Ukraine.

Its soft-power operations include undermining democracy and the concept of truth itself, especially via social media.

As a result, experts are calling on the UK government to organise a wider national resilience effort to counter the attacks it is already enduring, and those that may come.

Dr Fiona Hill, a former adviser to the White House on Russia, recently told The Independent: “In the UK, our systems are not designed to cope with major disruptions. It is up to the leadership to come up with a plan, because, at the moment, what is there is not fit for purpose.”

A recent poll conducted by Glasgow University showed that only a third of people aged between 16 and 29 would be prepared to take up arms to protect Europe. Nato clearly hopes that reminding Britons that they survived the blitz by sheltering in the Tube system may revive a martial spirit that has so faded.

But volunteers will need to know they have enough of the right weapons. At the moment, Nato does not.