Defense Policy | A major upheaval is taking place in warfare – Engineer Colonel: Few realize how great a change is underway

Finland the armed forces lack a system that could decisively change future warfare. It's about so-called loitering weapons (loitering ammunition), the breakthrough of which has taken place in the war in Ukraine.

“This is a very big issue,” says the Finnish Defense Forces' director of research, an engineer colonel Jyri Kosola.

“They will revolutionize many things.”

At its simplest, a lurking weapon is a quadcopter built for civilian use that drops a grenade on the enemy's neck.

In further development, it is a custom-built aircraft that can circle over the battlefield for a long time before it selects the strike target specified for it.

With the defense forces there are no tailor-made lurking weapons. HS did not get an answer from the General Staff to the question of whether there is a project underway to acquire them.

Instead, for example, the Estonian armed forces have already invested spectacularly in stealthy weapons.

Last spring, Estonia bought airplanes equipped with explosives from the Israeli arms manufacturer IAI (Israel Aerospace Industries). It has been said that the value of the deal was exceptionally high. Estonia also plans to acquire more stealth weapons.

IAI is not a strange company to Finns either: the new Gabriel anti-surface missiles ordered for the Navy and the anti-artillery radars purchased for the Navy come from its production lines.

Engineer colonel According to Kosola, few people realize how big a paradigm shift or fundamental design fundamentals artificial intelligence and robotics bring. He thinks that lurking weapons are now on the procurement list of “quite a few” armed forces.

Kosola says that he cannot comment on what has been or will be acquired in Finland. However, he says that the Defense Forces have evaluated the equipment.

“Yes, the Defense Forces are pretty well on the map of what's going on, but we haven't rushed straight to the store to buy.”

According to Kosola, the conditions in Finland are more demanding for stalking weapons than in many other countries. Visibility here is on average worse and in winter there is frost, which affects the batteries of aircraft equipment.

On the other hand, the lurking weapons have worked in Ukraine and there is a decent winter there too.

Engineer colonel Jyri Kosola has a degree in technology and has completed a general staff officer's degree at the National Defense University. Picture: Mika Ranta / HS

Kosola thinks that we are now on the verge of a similar big leap as just before the Second World War.

“Back then, technology made much more possible than had been realized until then.”

According to him, no investment is made in the development of military technology during the years of peace. Even during the Second World War, even wooden and fabric-upholstered biplanes were still flown.

Three years later, in 1942, the German V2 rocket already flew in space. Less than 20 years later, humanity was in space.

Kosola says that warring countries invest “tremendous amounts” in the development of military technology.

“They are able to realize new kinds of things from the existing technology compared to those who are still in peacetime mode and content with the old.”

He reminds that the Soviet army that attacked the Karelian Peninsula in the summer of 1944 was a different army from the one that attacked Finland in 1939.

“Now you can say that the Russian army in 2024 is completely different from the one that started the war. There is a place for reflection.”

Kosola says that one of the reasons for the “degeneration” of the war in Ukraine into a war of position like the current one is precisely in the lurking weapons.

“Stalking weapons have the potential that no one will bring heavy weaponry to the front line anymore, because lurking weapons will detect them, attack them and destroy them.”

The result is also an increase in the importance of minnows.

“Lingering weapons make traditional systems obsolete in their current form.”

Kosola takes, for example, a battle tank, which must be brought into the enemy's line of sight. According to Kosola, its strength is also its downside, i.e. that “all eggs are in one basket”: protection, mobility and weapons.

“What a stalking weapon does is that it takes eyes and weapons to the sky. It's very difficult to fight it from there.”

A Ukrainian soldier operates a drone near the front line in Bahmut on January 13. Picture: Inna Varenytsia / Reuters

What kind of is the near future of a stalking weapon?

“It is smarter, more autonomous and smaller. This practically means that it will even be team and group level equipment. They will be of different sizes.”

In the medium term, lurking weapons are able to land, wait, and take off again. Battery life is not a critical issue then.

“A few of them can already be seen. Then they are already diabolical.”

Such a weapon can, for example, fly to the roof of a house to wait for a target that it is programmed to destroy.

According to Kosola, an algorithm can already be programmed so that a lurking weapon attacks a target according to the chassis number on the side of a specific vehicle or wagon.

Because of the lurking weapons, the opponent has to remove, for example, their central tracked vehicles from the battlefield.

Kosola says that the miniaturization of electronics leads to convergence, where different features can be programmed into the same electronics.

A stalking weapon, for example, not only sees the opponent with its electro-optical sensor, but is also able to listen to the opponent's radio transmitters on the radio to find out where the enemy is.

A weapon lurking with its own radio can also disrupt the enemy's radio traffic, i.e. blind, deafen or mute its victim.

The victim's self-protection does not work, and it is not able to communicate what is happening.

“Now the potential that stalking weapons have has been realized,” Kosola emphasizes.

“In Ukraine, it has been seen that drones are used to attack Moscow and St. Petersburg. This changes the concept of war significantly in the sense that they are no longer front-line weapons on the battlefield, but may then be encountered on the way home.”

Correction January 19 at 9:45 p.m.: Contrary to what was erroneously stated earlier in the story, humanity was in space just under 20 years later than the 1942 German V2 rocket, not 30 years later.