After the 2021 collapse of the Afghan military, the value proposition of security force assistance in the twenty-first century was weak, at best. So, when Russia launched its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the impact that US assistance to Ukraine might have on the conflict’s outcome was debated. Three years and nearly $70 billion of military support later, the debate continues. But one consideration is often ignored. While security assistance provided to Ukraine has made a real difference in Ukraine’s defense, there is also significant value from the expenditure of American taxpayers’ dollars, in the form of the insights the US military can gain to prepare for the next conflict in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, or the homeland. This is a return on investment from security force assistance that involves gathering lessons learned and understanding how technology is changing the battlefield. This will pay dividends as the American military transforms, which means this assistance will save American lives if deterrence fails and the nation finds itself in twenty-first-century large-scale combat operations.
There is a real cost to conducting security force assistance. The Afghanistan Security Forces Fund exceeded $82 billion over fifteen years. As the US military withdrew in the summer of 2021, it appeared the return on investment made in building the Afghan military was null as the Taliban quickly overran security forces. Now the Taliban brandish US-made equipment like M4s and HMMWVs left behind.
Only a few months later, the Department of Defense would again be called upon to provide security assistance. The costs to train, equip, and advise the Armed Forces of Ukraine would mount quickly. Training and equipping Ukraine is even more costly than Afghanistan. The amount of security assistance provided to Ukraine in three years approaches the cost of training and equipping the Afghanistan military over fifteen years, largely because Ukraine is using some of America’s most expensive and advanced capabilities, like HIMARS (which has cost a total of $1.1 billion) and ATACMS (the missiles for which cost $1.5 million each). But supporting Ukraine has a return on investment that cannot be easily counted and was not seen in Afghanistan.
To be clear, context matters. The boots-on-the-ground nature of the US involvement in Afghanistan meant an emphasis on partnering and training, whereas discussions about US support to Ukraine have largely focused on weapons and other materiel provided to Ukrainian forces. And there are important definitional distinctions, as well. While security force assistance generally focuses on training and advising of partner forces, security assistance is a broader term that covers a broader set of aid and support activities. Yet the two go hand in hand. When the United States provides Ukraine with weapon systems, it also offers training, not just on how to operate each new system, but how to maintain it, incorporate it into planning processes, and integrate it into a combined arms framework. As a result, providing materiel means sustained contact between dedicated US personnel and Ukrainian forces using US systems in combat—an invaluable learning opportunity.
As the Department of Defense transforms itself from a force that was incrementally optimized for counterinsurgency operations over nearly two decades into a military oriented toward large-scale combat operations, the insights gained from Ukraine will pay dividends. Deployed advisors are able to discover lessons learned from primary sources, on everything from tactics to technology. Thus, assistance provided to Ukraine can help the Department of Defense transform its fighting force and the defense industrial base.
While the US military is larger, more advanced, and at a higher level of readiness than those of its allies and partners, it has not fought a near-peer adversary in decades. For three years, Ukraine has paid the price to show how unprepared the American military would be for modern war. For example, decades of air superiority masked the fact the Department of Defense does not have enough of—or the right mix of—air defense capabilities to defend itself from large-scale drone, glide bomb, cruise missile, and ballistic missile attacks. What the US military can learn from Ukraine—about modern air defense or in a range of subjects—is not just useful in preparing for a similar conflict scenario in Europe, but can be applied to defending the homeland or allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Middle East, as well.
The US defense industrial base has spent billions developing and fielding equipment like main battle tanks, precision-guided munitions, and exquisite air defense systems. However, the Russian military has shown that the Abrams is vulnerable to cheap drones, that GPS-guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems can be jammed, and that the Patriot interceptor requires software updates against evolving Russian missile threats. Ukraine is paying the price in blood and territory to help improve US legacy systems. Using the same air defense example, what Raytheon, the manufacture of Patriot systems, can learn from Russia’s employment of the newly fielded Oreshnik ballistic missile may save American lives in future wars. The defense industrial base can learn how to increase US warfighters’ lethality globally by studying its applications in Ukraine’s security assistance today.
These lessons are only harnessed when American advisors take an active approach to learning how Ukraine is defending itself from Russia’s full-scale invasion. While the security assistance provided to Ukraine is helping defend “freedom, rules, and sovereignty”, there is immeasurable value in gaining insights from this modern war. While the US military is providing advice to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, it is also the Ukrainians who are advising the America of how to wage modern warfare. There is an adage—the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war—that effectively means what we do before a war pays dividends when one breaks out. This is true of security assistance, as well. By delivering it to Ukraine today, we are better prepared to win—and save American lives—on the battlefield tomorrow.
The issue raised by critics, of course, will be that learning the lessons of the war in Ukraine does not inherently require the delivery of billions of dollars in weapons. This is true—there are other methods of learning. The US military has a long history of sending observers to bring back lessons from ongoing conflicts. This criticism, however, misses two fundamental points. First, without US weapons and materiel, Ukraine likely would have struggled to fight as long as it has. If the early expectations of many experts—that Ukraine would be quickly defeated—had been fulfilled, there would not have been much of an opportunity to learn at all, and certainly not learning about how specific US systems perform in this war. And second, because security assistance is a broad framework, it encourages a more holistic appreciation of the many lessons to be learned than ad hoc studies. Moreover, with security assistance organizationally well established within the institutions of the joint force, lessons learned within this framework are more likely to disseminate across the US military and effect organizational adaptation throughout the force. In any case, this is not an argument that learning from the war is sufficient logic to underwrite all security assistance to Ukraine, but rather that it is a return on that investment that is too often ignored.
To maximize this return, the Department of Defense needs to embrace learning as a core function to feed insights back to the fielded force and defense industrial base. The character of warfare is constantly changing. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military had to adapt to insurgents’ innovations in employing roadside bombs, from command-wire, to radio-controlled, to victim-operated, to infrared detonations of improvised explosive devices. Today, it needs to similarly learn and adapt. In drone warfare, for instance, long-range drones now use Starlink for navigation and smaller drones use fiber-optic wire to evade electronic warfare capabilities. As the US military works to integrate drones into its operations even down to the small-unit level, organizations advising Ukraine have an opportunity to improve the way it does so. Establishing deliberate feedback mechanisms into how the force fights and trains is a way of demonstrating security assistance’s return on investment.
The Department of Defense can reinforce this understanding of the value proposition for security force assistance by following three recommendations. First, elevate the value insights can have within an organization. While the US military places emphasis on intelligence and operations for its fielded force, security assistance organizations should place emphasis on its lessons learned, doctrine development, and concepts development. Second, understand the value in technology demonstrations and continuous improvement in fielded equipment. The Russo-Ukrainian War is the ultimate battle lab for developing more lethal capabilities; operators and industry need to be engaged in collecting these insights. Third, include learning as a security force assistance activity to support the joint force. Army doctrine on security cooperation does not discuss insights, but does highlight other activities like building access, presence, and influence. Making learning a part of the way return on investment is understood demonstrates comprehensively the value of security assistance. A down payment in Ukrainian security assistance now and into the future will pay dividends for Americans.
Steven S. Lem is a US Army strategist currently attached to Security Assistance Group–Ukraine in Wiesbaden, Germany as a joint planner. He served as a campaign and contingency planner at US Army Europe and Africa after graduating from the US Army School of Advanced Military Studies.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Airman 1st Class Jared Lovett, US Air Force