A key lesson for the West from Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion is that speed of innovation and adaptation in warfare can be decisive on the battlefield, a German military official said.
Locked in an existential fight for its survival, Ukraine is having to develop and test weapons, bring them into combat, and make battlefield decisions at a rapid pace.
Partners want to learn as much as possible from this war as they prepare for a potential large-scale modern conflict. As NATO questions its longtime emphasis on making top-quality weapons, Heico Hübner, vice chief of the German Army, said the speed at which weapons are developed could mean the difference between victory and defeat.
“The war in Ukraine has, to my mind, confirmed one central lesson beyond any doubt,” Hübner said, “and that is that the speed of military innovation has itself become a decisive factor of military power.”
“The question is no longer simply who develops the better technology,” he said, speaking at a drone summit in Latvia. “The key question is who can scale innovation more rapidly and, more importantly, technically integrate it into the force faster.”
“Deterrence today is no longer based on mass alone; it depends on the speed,” Hübner said. “It depends on connectivity, and more importantly, on adaptability or possibly the armed forces that translate innovation into military effects the fastest will hold a decisive advantage.”
Faster battlefield detection and decisions
Hübner said the war is transforming how quickly forces can detect and engage targets.
“We are witnessing a fundamental transformation of land warfare, battlefields becoming increasingly transparent. Sensors, drones, electromagnetic surveillance, and AI-enabled data processing are reducing the time between detection and engagement from previously hours to minutes, sometimes even seconds.”
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He said the fight shows that “success in warfare depends on who can process information faster, turn it into decisions quicker and act more rapidly or, more generally speaking, translate innovation into operational capability faster than the opponent.”
Ukraine has taken a series of steps to speed up its battlefield detection, decision-making, and strikes, including through its Delta system. The platform fuses intelligence from satellites, combat units, and drone feeds, linking battlefield sensors, drones, commanders, and weapons to reduce delays between finding a target, making a decision, and attacking it.
Other militaries are increasingly recognizing the growing importance of battlefield speed.
US Army Capt. Paul Dolan, a battalion intelligence trainer at the National Training Center, wrote last year that “Ukraine has demonstrated the deadly efficiency of modern battlefield targeting,” with rapid sensor-to-shooter integration shortening kill chains “to the point where detection often leads to immediate engagement.” Within those faster timelines, rapid decision-making is key.
The UK is among the countries that has already begun applying these lessons from Ukraine. Last year, its defense ministry announced a partnership with US data giant Palantir to develop AI-powered capabilities tested in Ukraine and “speed up decision making, military planning and targeting.”
The UK’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review carried that lesson further, emphasizing faster battlefield decision-making and arguing that autonomous systems and artificial intelligence are needed to ensure military systems operate “at machine-speed.”
Innovating, adapting, and fielding at greater speeds
Andris Sprūds, Latvia’s former defense minister and now a member of parliament, said at the summit that “the mindset of startup, mindset of innovation, the mindset of ambition” is a key lesson allies need to take from Ukraine.”
“The process is as important as actually the outcome, the product itself,” he said. “So the speeding process, speeding mindset on different levels, is absolutely crucial.”
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Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation, said earlier this year that “technology matters. But what makes the difference today is not sophistication alone. It is the speed of integration, the speed of adaptation, and the ability to turn innovation rapidly into operational effect.”
Ukraine has been able to test, build, and modify weapons faster than what many Western militaries are used to.
“Ukraine has demonstrated how rapidly innovation cycles evolve today,” Hübner said. “Adaptation no longer happens over years as in the past. Today, in many cases, it happens within weeks.”
He said “this is to my mind the real strategic challenge for both Europe and the United States.”
It’s a concern echoed across NATO: that the war is showing the West that the way it develops, tests, buys, distributes, and updates weapons isn’t fast enough.
Sir John Stringer, NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, told Business Insider recently that “one of the things you’re seeing in Ukraine is a sheer pace of adoption and adaptation in technology. It is measured in weeks.”
He said that Ukraine’s front lines don’t just have drone operators, “you have tech, you have sort of industrial sense, which feeds an incredibly important and rich lessons picture where lessons are genuinely applied rather than admired.” The West needs to learn from that, he said.
Ukraine’s industrial base has “scaled phenomenally,” going from making thousands of drones in 2022 to millions in 2026, he said. “Are we as alive to that reality, and then how would we apply it west of Ukraine and the nations of NATO? It’s a very live discussion.”
Speaking in Latvia, Stringer said that a priority for the West needs to be “accelerating capability development, measured in weeks and months, not just years and decades.” He said that weapons need to be “good enough, fast enough in terms of delivery, cheap enough, and just enough.”
