Modern Warfare Tendencies and Implications for the Baltic Region: Adapting to a New Era of Conflict

This article argues that the character of war has shifted toward cheap, smart mass—drones across air, sea, and land—integrated into fast kill-webs that compress detect-decide-deliver cycles. Layered ground-based air defense (guns / lasers / SHORAD / MRAD) and rigorous counter-UAS have displaced assumptions of persistent air dominance and restored affordable protection against swarms and cruise missiles. The electromagnetic spectrum now decides outcomes: forces that train “GPS-degraded by default,” enforce EMCON, and field EW-resilient control (including fiber-optic / tethered links) retain combat effectiveness. Maneuver endures but is conditional—successful advances SEAD, engineer breaching, smoke/ EW screens, deception, and drone overwatch to exploit narrow windows. Industry has re-entered strategy: sustained conflict rewards states that can produce, repair, and reload at scale (from 155 mm and interceptors to FPV kits and USVs/ UGVs). AI is a cross-cutting enabler today—improving C-UAS detection/ classification, target correlation, spectrum sensing, and predictive sustainment—while remaining human-on-the-loop. Evidence from Ukraine and Israel shows fusion in practice: drones to blind and fix; precision deep fires (e.g., ATACMS, Storm Shadow) to shatter high-value targets; and aviation and/ or maneuver to break through and / or finish.