US military needs ‘urgent revolutionary institutional change’ to prepare for modern war, Petraeus says

Unmanned systems now inflict more than 90% of Russia’s casualties on the front lines in Ukraine, yet no NATO military, including America’s, has begun the overhaul that kind of war demands, Ret. Army Gen. David Petraeus said Oct. 16, weeks after the Pentagon announced a new command for autonomous warfare.

The extent of the drone war is underestimated, with Ukraine and Russia each using roughly 10,000 drones a day, the former CIA director and onetime commander of U.S. Central Command said, speaking at an American Primary Aluminum Association event in Washington.

“This is an unmanned systems war,” Petraeus said . “Tanks aren’t survivable there anymore.”

For Ukraine, drones and unmanned weapons have become central to how the country has leveraged a smaller, outgunned force against a much larger, better-financed adversary for almost five years.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered the creation of a new Unmanned Systems Forces military branch in 2024, and the Defense Ministry has said time and again that developing more autonomous weapons is a top priority.

But for the rest of the world, Petraeus said, the fighting in Ukraine is a window into the future and a warning about the dangers of being underprepared for the battles to come.

“Really, no NATO country and not even the United States is undertaking yet the urgent revolutionary institutional change that should be taken based on what we see in Ukraine, which is the future of war,” he said.

The U.S. needs a new concept of warfare that runs through force structure, training, procurement, personnel policy and bases, the general said, replacing much of the legacy, heavily manned equipment with unmanned systems that are cheaper and far more numerous.

“What’s going to happen is we’ll see the introduction of autonomous systems really for the first time in warfare,” Petraeus said.

Washington is making “some commendable steps” toward developing these weapons, according to Petraeus, including establishing a new Autonomous Warfare Command that requires each military branch to stand up its own component command.

“But my hope is that they will not just create an unmanned systems force in terms of force structure, but that they will also spur the initiation of true institutional change,” Petraeus said.

That includes how the U.S. buys weapons, Petraeus said, calling for “very, very substantial manufacturing capacity but not necessarily producing all the time.”

“You want it to be able to make software changes every week, hardware changes every few weeks, which is what’s going on in Ukraine because the enemy continues to evolve and Russia’s been innovating very substantially as well,” he said.

Ukraine will produce as many as 20 million unmanned systems this year, Zelenskyy said in a July speech , with a shortage of trained operators and the acquisition of some weapons components — including optics, gimbals, brushless motors and fiber-optic cable — becoming the domestic industry’s production bottleneck.

The general also rejected the idea that the U.S. war with Iran has hurt Washington’s ability to help Kyiv, though he acknowledged the U.S. has used “a fair number of missile interceptors,” which “makes it more difficult to share those with others around the world.”

The war has consumed between one-half and two-thirds of the U.S. inventory of certain missile-defense interceptors, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released in September.

“We can help the Ukrainians in any way in which we decide to assist them,” Petraeus said. “These are policy decisions.”

Katie Livingstone is the Ukraine correspondent for Defense News and Military Times. Based in Kyiv, she has covered Russia's full-scale invasion since its first days. She is a former Fulbright fellow whose award-winning work has appeared in outlets across Europe and the U.S.

10月16日，退役陆军上将戴维·彼得雷乌斯表示，在五角大楼宣布成立新的自主作战司令部几周后，包括美国在内的任何北约军队都没有开始进行这种战争所需的全面改革。目前，无人系统在乌克兰前线造成了俄罗斯90%以上的伤亡。

前中央情报局局长、前美国中央司令部司令在华盛顿举行的美国原铝协会活动上表示，无人机战争的规模被低估了，乌克兰和俄罗斯每天各自使用大约 10,000 架无人机。

“这是一场无人系统战争，”彼得雷乌斯说。“坦克在这种战场上已经无法生存了。”

对于乌克兰而言，无人机和无人武器已成为该国在过去近五年中利用规模较小、火力较弱的部队对抗规模更大、资金更雄厚的对手的核心手段。

乌克兰总统泽连斯基下令在 2024 年成立新的无人系统部队，国防部也一再表示，研发更多自主武器是首要任务。

但彼得雷乌斯表示，对于世界其他地区而言，乌克兰的战斗是通往未来的窗口，也是对未来战斗准备不足的危险的警告。

他说：“实际上，没有一个北约国家，甚至连美国，都还没有进行根据我们在乌克兰看到的情况（即战争的未来）而应该进行的紧急的革命性制度变革。”

这位将军表示，美国需要一种新的战争理念，贯穿部队结构、训练、采购、人事政策和基地，用更便宜、数量更多的无人系统取代许多传统的、人员密集的装备。

“接下来我们将看到自主系统真正首次应用于战争中，”彼得雷乌斯说。

据彼得雷乌斯称，华盛顿在发展这些武器方面正在采取“一些值得称赞的措施”，包括建立一个新的自主作战司令部，要求每个军种都建立自己的组成司令部。

“但我希望他们不仅能在部队结构上建立一支无人系统部队，而且还能推动真正的制度变革，”彼得雷乌斯说。

彼得雷乌斯表示，这其中也包括美国如何购买武器，他呼吁“拥有非常非常强大的制造能力，但不一定需要一直生产”。

他说：“你希望它能够每周进行软件更新，每隔几周进行硬件更新，而这正是乌克兰正在发生的事情，因为敌人不断演变，俄罗斯也一直在进行大量的创新。”

泽连斯基在7月份的一次讲话中表示，乌克兰今年将生产多达2000万套无人系统，但训练有素的操作人员短缺以及一些武器部件（包括光学器件、万向节、无刷电机和光纤电缆）的采购成为国内工业生产的瓶颈。

这位将军还驳斥了美国与伊朗的战争损害了华盛顿帮助基辅的能力的说法，尽管他承认美国已经使用了“相当数量的导弹拦截器”，这“使得与世界其他国家分享这些拦截器变得更加困难”。

根据国会预算办公室 9 月份发布的估计，这场战争消耗了美国某些导弹防御拦截器库存的一半到三分之二。

“我们可以用任何我们决定的方式帮助乌克兰人，”彼得雷乌斯说。“这些都是政策决定。”

凯蒂·利文斯通是《防务新闻》和《军事时报》的乌克兰特派记者。她常驻基辅，自俄罗斯全面入侵乌克兰之初便开始报道此事。她曾是富布赖特学者，其获奖作品发表于欧洲和美国的多家媒体。