A Janus-faced war: exploring the role of technology in shaping outcomes in the Russia–Ukraine conflict

This paper explores the role played by technology in shaping battlefield outcomes in the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war. Drawing on Stephen Biddle’s theory of military power, I argue that technological innovation alone cannot explain operational and tactical outcomes. Rather, the military effects of drones, satellite-enabled intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, digital command systems and emerging artificial intelligence applications are mediated by force employment, organizational adaptation and the physical and cognitive conditions of battle. The result is not the decisive, information-led manoeuvre anticipated in military theory, but a highly lethal and information-saturated form of attritional warfare in which offensive action remains possible only under narrow and temporary conditions. The combination of these elements has served to create a complex Janus-faced war in which the characteristics of both mass and precision warfare coexist on a battlefield dominated by fortification and attritional firepower operating in a web of dense sensing, digital networking and precision strike. By conceptualizing Ukraine’s battlefields in this way, the article challenges techno-optimist readings of the war and reasserts the continuing relevance of doctrine, force employment and human adaptation in modern conflict.