Just like NATO, the enemies of the USA are learning from the Ukraine war

• NATO countries, including the United States, are collecting a lot of useful intelligence information on the Ukraine war.
• But Russia’s biggest supporters, such as Iran, China and North Korea, are also learning from the fight.
• Among the lessons they will learn is a deeper understanding of Western equipment, warned a leading Russia expert.

NATO is closely monitoring Russian military actions in Ukraine and gathering valuable intelligence on a wide range of topics, from Moscow’s tactics and battlefield procedures to some of its more advanced weapons systems.

But NATO is not the only country benefiting from the information gained from the war. Moscow’s backers – some of whom are bitter opponents of the US – are also learning from the war and deepening their understanding of Western weapons, a leading Russia expert warned earlier this month.

During a panel discussion on rebuilding Russia’s armed forces on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington, moderator Dara Massicot, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, asked to assess which side has learned the most from the conflict.

“From a strategic intelligence level, I think Ukraine and NATO have the advantage by far,” Massicot commented at the July 10 event alongside Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže. “That advantage, like all intelligence work, is not guaranteed,” she continued. “You have to fight to maintain it. You have to fight for that access.”

She stated that Ukraine and Russia are learning a lot from each other from a tactical perspective and that cycles of adaptation and countermeasures in response are rapidly shortening. US officials have made similar comments, particularly regarding both sides’ electronic warfare capabilities.

But “just as we as NATO benefit from what Ukraine shows and teaches us, we must also think about the other side,” Massicot said. “Russia’s allies and their partners learn from them, and that is now a currency that Russia must offer to Iran, China and North Korea – learning about our equipment.”

Aid from abroad fuels the fight

Since the war began, NATO countries have provided tens of billions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine, with the United States alone contributing more than $53 billion. This military aid includes everything from smaller items such as ammunition and artillery shells to larger items of equipment such as armored vehicles and air defense systems.

But Ukraine is not the only party to the conflict receiving support from abroad.

Iran, China and North Korea have provided Russia with varying degrees of military and economic assistance throughout the war, and the increasingly tense ties between these countries and Moscow have raised alarm bells in the United States and its NATO allies.

Iran and North Korea have jointly supplied Russia with a range of deadly weapons, including missiles, artillery shells and drones. In fact, Tehran’s Shahed-136 loitering munitions have proven to be one of the most notorious weapons used by Moscow, frequently used in attacks on Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure.

China’s support for Russia in the war in Ukraine was more discreet. Rather than providing direct lethal aid, Beijing instead supplied technology and equipment to help Moscow expand its military-industrial base and produce weapons.

The weapons Russians have received from abroad cannot compete with Western-made alternatives and are often of much poorer quality. Still, experts point out that this support has kept Moscow’s arsenal afloat in times of uncertainty and helped the military maintain its tempo on the battlefield.

Relations between China, Iran, North Korea and Russia are not a one-way street. Moscow is increasingly supporting Tehran, Pyongyang and Beijing through defense cooperation and assistance.

Learning from the war

Stronger ties between Russia and countries that are often in opposition to the West, such as Iran, China and North Korea, increase the risk that Moscow will grant these outside actors unprecedented access to Western arms supplies to Ukraine. There are signs that this is already happening.

For example, CNN reported last year that Russia was supplying Iran with Western-made weapons captured on the battlefield in Ukraine. Tehran could then replicate these weapons to advance its own interests in the Middle East, which would be of great importance to the United States and its regional allies who use these weapons.

Russia has announced that it has seized intact European-made Storm Shadow missiles and components of the US Army’s tactical missile system (ATACMS). Western armored vehicles have also fallen into the country’s hands.

Moreover, the war in Ukraine has given Russia useful information about how to defeat the kind of precision weapons that the West relies heavily on. Using electronic warfare, Russia has been able to defeat a wide range of weapons. This knowledge, which it passes on to Western enemies, could create new headaches for the West in a possible future fight.

External actors can also collect data on the performance of their weapons on the battlefield. One example was in April, when Iran launched a massive airstrike on Israel, using missiles and drones, including those used by Russia in Ukraine.

“There is no doubt in my mind that in the same way that we learn how our weapons work on the modern battlefield – because we give them to Ukraine – the Iranians are undoubtedly learning what works and what doesn’t through the use of their drones in Ukraine,” Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Hill in April.

Experts and government officials have also said that North Korea probably wants to learn how its weapons perform in real combat conditions. In Ukraine, the performance of North Korean weapons was rather mixed, with some systems exploding in flight and others showing unexpected things.

Experts say Iran’s attacks in mid-April were similar to some Russian attacks in Ukraine. The lessons learned from this experience could pave the way for future performance improvements.

“The package of attacks was modeled on those that the Russians have repeatedly used with great success against Ukraine,” wrote conflict analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank after the Iranian attack in mid-April.

They said: “The Iranians will learn from this attack and work over time to improve their ability to penetrate Israeli defenses, just as the Russians have done in repeated series of attacks against Ukraine.”