James Stavridis: Ukraine needs US weapons but it needs intelligence more

Over the past couple of weeks, America’s Ukrainian partners have been riding a roller-coaster of President Donald Trump’s making. The low point was the disastrous blow-up in the Oval Office between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which led to the U.S. cutting off military aid and intelligence sharing until the Ukrainians were “ready for peace.”

In recent days, after U.S.-Ukraine meetings in Saudi Arabia, things may seem better. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz appear to have somewhat mended the relationship and have a ceasefire proposal to present to Moscow. Most importantly for the Ukrainians, this has come with a reopening of the taps on military assistance and, above all, on intelligence.

The problem is that, on issue after issue, Trump changes course on a whim. And given the Kremlin’s apparent insistence that any ceasefire include a halt on U.S. military assistance, the Ukrainians are living under a Sword of Damocles.

You may think the key resource for the Ukrainian military is hardware: artillery shells, tanks, armored personnel carriers, cruise missiles, air-defense missiles. And yes, those are all crucial. But what really put my heart in my throat was the stoppage of intelligence sharing.

Why is that flow so vital? How would stopping it again affect the Ukrainians’ ability to hold off Russia’s more powerful military?

When I was supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2011, we conducted a complex operation in Libya against Moammar Al Qaddafi’s military. The dictator had threatened to massacre rebels in the eastern part of Libya, swearing he would make the streets of Benghazi run with blood. So the UN Security Council requested that NATO institute a no-fly zone over the entire country to negate Qaddafi’s advantage in air power; create a maritime arms embargo so he could not be rearmed from the sea; and conduct airstrikes to prevent him from slaughtering civilians.

This was a major undertaking, and included strikes led by the U.S. with support from 14 NATO countries, Sweden (not then in NATO) and Arab partners: Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Operation Unified Protector lasted nearly eight months, and we launched more than 25,000 combat air missions and dropped some 7,000 bombs and missiles. The key lesson for me as the overall operational commander was simple: There is no underestimating the power of information, intelligence and imagery.

These are really three different but complementary intel resources for a military commander, especially one conducting air operations — as the Ukrainians are doing, despite being so outgunned in the skies over their own territory. They are crucial to not only prevailing in combat, but also to protecting the civilian population when a murderous opponent like Russian President Vladimir Putin violates the laws of war and bombs indiscriminately.

Let’s start with the broadest category: information. In a combat context, this is the ability to tap into open-source data for military advantage. This has always been an important component of war, but with the rise of mass communications in the 20th century — and of course today’s internet and social networks — it has never been more crucial.

An example in Ukraine is the use of artificial intelligence to surveil huge tranches of data from Russian media, Russians’ personal social networks, government announcements and the behavior of Russia’s commercial sector. This helps discern the enemy’s capacity to continue the war, its recruiting trends, civilian morale, the flow of draft dodgers departing the country, and other key indicators. While not classified, such information can be assembled like a mosaic to find valuable insights that can become actionable at the operational and tactical levels.

Next and most obviously is the gathering of intelligence. This involves obtaining the answers to the “known unknowns” on the battlefield. How will the Russians divide their forces between the current offensives in Donbas and Kursk? How many air sorties will Moscow launch over the next week? What are their targets? Where are they storing fuel, ordnance and unmanned aircraft? Where, when and how — in real time — are the Russian bombers, missiles and drones going to be coming against Ukrainian cities.

Intelligence is a difficult and intricate mix of human reporting; data from overhead sensors like long-dwell drones; electronic signal collection (cell phones, UHF radio communications); cyber intrusions to collect the most sensitive information; hyperspectral analysis and a host of other tools. Intelligence is the superpower of the U.S. military: No other NATO ally can come close to matching American capabilities in collection, analysis and dissemination. It has been freely shared with Ukraine, and it has been a major part of keeping it in the fight.

When I commanded U.S. European Command from Stuttgart, Germany, a decade ago, I marveled at the Star Trek-like intelligence fusion center in my headquarters, where enormous technical abilities were combined with brightest analytic human minds. Believe me, when Washington suddenly cut off intelligence, for the Ukrainians it would have been like being in the boxing ring and suddenly having a blindfold put over your eyes.

And finally, there is imagery, generated by overhead sensors. If we know that big shipments of fuel are moving toward a key destination, we can direct the unblinking eye of our satellites to provide photographic images and video. In war, a picture isn’t worth a thousand words — it is worth a million at least. Imagery provides the roadmap to reverse-engineer and destroy your enemy’s campaign plan and logistics.

I’m heartened by the White House’s decision to restart intelligence cooperation with the Ukrainians. It is hard to overstate how damaging cutting it off even for a few days has been, and Ukrainians have died as a result.

Let’s hope the U.S. keeps up the flow of information, intelligence and imagery, despite Putin’s unacceptable conditions for any ceasefire. Getting to a meaningful halt in the fighting and eventual peace deal will require the Ukrainians to keep punching above their weight. They can’t do that with a blindfold on.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO, and vice chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group.

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