NATO is learning from Ukraine that a lot of good-enough weapons today beat a few perfect ones that come too late

• The war in Ukraine shows NATO that weapons are needed now, even if they are imperfect.

• Officials say good enough hardware is more important than perfect systems arriving too late.

• The deputy chief of the German Army does not want the “perfect solution in 10 years” but “capabilities that can be used today”.

RIGA, Latvia — Russia’s invasion of Ukraine It showed NATO that it could not afford to wait 10 years for perfect weapons. It is good enough and needs the weapons currently available.

Further fears Russian aggression It pushed the West to absorb many things Lessons from Ukraine’s struggleWestern officials warn that ammunition arsenals are insufficient.

German Army Deputy Chief of Staff Heico Hübner said his country was “following an extremely pragmatic approach” focusing on “capabilities that can be used today, not the perfect solution in 10 years.”

He said time was “a determining factor of military reliability.”

“Ukraine has shown how rapidly innovation cycles are developing today and that adaptation no longer takes place over years, as in the past. Today, in most cases, this happens within weeks,” he said.

Speaking at a drone summit in Latvia, he said the war showed that the real test was no longer who could design the most advanced technology, but who could produce it at scale and get it into the hands of troops quickly enough to matter.

Germany’s defense chief Carsten Breuer made a similar point at the summit, saying the first question regarding arms procurement is whether a system is “ready in time” because Germany believes Russia might be ready. attack NATO By 2029, it means “we should be ready as soon as possible.”

“It’s better to buy it off the shelves than to buy something that needs development and will be here in 2035,” he said. Breuer added that the allies “need the speed advantage because that urgency is important.”

These alarm bells are ringing across the alliance, but they are taking on a new urgency.

Gen. James E. Rainey, then commander of the U.S. Army Futures Command, wrote in 2024 that “perfect is the enemy of good enough,” arguing that in many cases the United States “lets the willing stand in the way of the doable.”

“There are currently technologies that could be useful in our formations but have not yet been fielded because we expect them to do more,” he said.

Tarja Jaakkola, NATO’s deputy secretary-general for defense industry, innovation and armaments, shared at the drone summit in Latvia that the alliance is looking at what capabilities civilian and dual-use companies can provide “faster, on a larger scale, but also cheaper.”

Civilian technology is generally cheaper and readily available. “So we talk a lot about what is good enough.”

Ukraine’s different approach

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte last year makes weapons he must do the very slow and less effective ones so that he can work faster: “Speed ​​is essential, not perfection.”

He said that Ukraine produces, certifies and uses equipment that can score “6 to 7” out of 10, while NATO armies insist on reaching “9 or 10”.

Defense companies both inside and outside Ukraine are taking this into account. Kristian Brost, general manager of the U.S. division of Robin Radar, a Dutch company that produces drone detection radar systems used by Ukraine and U.S. allies in the Middle East, told Business Insider that the war demonstrates an imperfect response “sometimes better now than a perfect solution later.”

He said there was “a lot we can learn” from Ukraine, which is at a point where they sometimes need duct tape and rubber bands.

Finally he said: “I think that’s a lesson in itself: Use what works, use what’s cheap.”

Building faster and cheaper

Russia’s war showed the West that Moscow was willing to use abrasive tactics. chew a pile of gunsIt is a war of a kind that the West has not faced for decades but may face in the future.

A war of attrition is a grinding war that consumes large numbers of soldiers, weapons and ammunition over time. This led to a new way of thinking about weapons in the West, which since the Cold War has focused on having less advanced equipment.

Much of the West now sees the need for cheaper weapons in larger quantities that they can obtain quickly.

NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, Sir John Stringer, said at the latest drone summit that the West needs to move much faster and being “comfortable with procurement cycles that are faster than we’ve grown up with” rather than large programs that take decades.

The West is now “in a race,” he said, “and we need to be in a space where we test, adapt, fail and learn, supply much faster.”

It means “what, how, where and when production will change.”

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