UKRAINE'S AMMO CRUNCH INTENSIFIES ⟩ Destroying Russian Motorcycle Swarms on the Battlefield Requires More Ammunition Than Stopping an IFV

While Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on targets in Russia are commendable, they are not enough to decisively destroy Russian army reserves. For that, Ukraine needs a larger supply of missiles, such as ATACMS.

Ukraine has the capability to produce more of its own missiles—like the Neptun, which has a range of 1,000 kilometers—if the West shares its technology. Expanding missile production is expensive and complex. Although the West is not explicitly against sharing technology, decisions are being made painfully slowly for Ukraine.

For example, Ukraine requested modern machine tools from its Western allies a year and a half ago. Only now are they starting to trickle in. The lack of modern machinery is a major obstacle to scaling up Ukraine’s defense production.

A senior officer at one frontline headquarters emphasized that the Russian army has found many simple, cost-effective, and efficient solutions. For instance:

FPV drones with fiber-optic cables that can fly 15–20 kilometers (Madjar has shown footage of some reaching 40 kilometers).

Guided aerial bombs (KABs): The Russians have taken old Soviet-era bombs, added modern guidance modules, and turned them into highly effective contemporary weapons for which Ukraine currently has no adequate countermeasures.

While Russian guided bombs (KABs) can be disrupted by electronic warfare systems (EWS), this method carries serious risks. As one Ukrainian officer explained: “If you use EWS in a city, you risk redirecting the bomb into a civilian building. Are you ready to take that responsibility?” This, he noted, could be one reason why Russian glide bombs sometimes hit residential buildings—Ukrainian EWS interference may cause them to veer off course. In reality, KABs are quite accurate. Otherwise, how could they consistently destroy every pontoon bridge Ukrainians build over the Oskil River? Each time Ukraine constructs a new bridge, the Russians hit it with precision shortly after.

The shock from the total failure of the 2023 counteroffensive still weighs heavily on Ukraine. At the end of 2022, there was a strong belief in Ukraine that the Russian army was fighting incompetently and that defeating them was only a matter of time. By the end of 2023, it became painfully clear that this assumption was wrong, a realization that continues to shape Ukrainian strategy.

A Ukrainian commander expressed his frustration rhetorically: “Are we fighting for the West?” He was referring to the mistakes of the 2023 offensive, which he believed were made under intense Western pressure to produce rapid results after receiving military aid. According to him, Ukraine should have used that time to build strong defensive lines, similar to those Russia had constructed. “Had we done that,” he said, “we would be holding territory now instead of mourning what we lost over the past year.”

Ukrainian losses in 2024 have been higher than in 2023, with the Russian army’s numerical and technological superiority playing a key role. Over half of Ukrainian casualties have been caused by drones. The situation is equally grim for Russian forces—drones have become the deadliest threat on both sides, and their share in causing casualties continues to grow.

Casualties are rising partly because evacuating the wounded has become extremely difficult in the era of drone warfare. The "golden hour" for medical evacuation is a thing of the past. NATO’s standard evacuation protocols no longer apply. The entire system for evacuating the wounded needs to be reevaluated, possibly with the use of robots. Transporting a wounded soldier from the front line to a stabilization point within an hour is virtually impossible—it can take days. Naturally, this increases fatalities, as more soldiers die from their wounds before reaching medical help. Evacuation is only possible during bad weather, with heavy fog being the most favorable condition.

Attacks using motorcycles or ATVs are proving even more dangerous than those involving armored vehicles.

Large-scale armored assaults are rare. The Russian army uses tanks and infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) more like taxis—to drop assault teams about a kilometer from the front lines, leaving them to fight their way to Ukrainian positions on foot.

When IFVs are used for assaults, they usually come in pairs—prime targets for Ukrainian forces. If the Ukrainians hit the vehicle with an anti-tank weapon before the infantry dismounts, the entire unit is effectively wiped out. Survivors, concussed and disoriented, become easy prey for drones or cluster munitions. Similarly, if the IFV hits a mine, everyone inside is doomed.

However, motorcycle attacks are much harder to counter. Ten soldiers on motorcycles can’t be stopped with a single shot, unlike a single IFV carrying the same number of troops. Motorcyclists spread out and approach individually, making them far harder to eliminate before reaching Ukrainian positions.

Destroying a group of motorcyclists requires far more ammunition. A column of four or five tanks can be taken out with 20 artillery shells—a highly efficient engagement. But a swarm of motorcycles and buggies may require 70–80 shells to neutralize—a stark difference in efficiency.

Ukrainians have devised creative countermeasures, such as using large drones to drop nearly invisible razor-wire nets on roads—like a fisherman’s net for motorcycles. When a rider hits the net, the bike gets entangled, and the soldier is trapped, flailing like a fish caught in a net. Another tactic is placing visible obstacles to funnel motorcyclists into predictable routes—leading them straight into hidden minefields.

Despite these traps, Russian soldiers keep coming, fully aware of Ukrainian defenses. As one Ukrainian brigade commander put it: “They just keep pushing. We kill as many as we can, but they never stop coming. It’s terrifying how relentless they are.”

The Ukrainian military is bitterly divided over the value of defending positions in Russia’s Kursk region. Some officers see it as a colossal waste—Ukraine’s best units are deployed there instead of at critical fronts like Pokrovsk in Donetsk Oblast. They argue that Kursk is politically significant for Putin, as the Russian army has failed to dislodge Ukrainian forces even after six months of fighting, but it offers little strategic value for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the brigades holding the line around Donetsk are severely understrength, receiving only 30% of the reinforcements they need because most new troops are sent to Kursk.

“We’re running out of infantry,” said one Ukrainian staff officer. “It’s insane. Back at the start of the war, we took fewer losses on the offensive than we do now defending.”

He explained the brutal logic: “When you’re defending, the enemy knows exactly where you are. They hammer you with everything—shells, mines, bombs, drones. But when you attack correctly—fast and unpredictably—the enemy doesn’t know where you are. You catch them off guard, especially with a sudden push.”

He continued: “Assault and airborne brigades have it easier than regular infantry. They hit hard, break through enemy lines, and then pull back. The infantry moves in to hold the ground, and they’re the ones who get slaughtered. Holding a position under constant fire for 24 hours is already heroic. After a month, those men are spent—they must be rotated out. But we can’t rotate them. There’s no one to replace them.”

The reality is far worse than a one-month rotation. Some frontline positions haven’t been relieved in four months. One brigade commander admitted he was astonished that his men hadn’t deserted, knowing full well that if they walked away, no one would punish them. Another brigade, after two years of continuous fighting, was down to 20% of its original strength. In one company, only 15 soldiers remained—when it should have had at least 100.

“Our battalion commanders fight without sleep for days during enemy assaults,” a senior officer said. “Some don’t take their boots off for two weeks, grabbing sleep in brief, stolen moments. But they fight on. If ordered, they’ll attack—even with just 30% of their men. No sane commander wants to launch an assault at half strength. But it’s not their choice. Orders come from above. And orders are shaped by politics. That’s how it is.”

One theme emerged repeatedly from conversations with Ukrainian officers: Ukraine has the ideas, but Russia executes them faster and on a larger scale.

“We have brilliant concepts but terrible implementation,” one officer remarked bitterly. “They have no imagination. They just take our ideas, copy them, and mass-produce them.”

The officer’s words, echoed by many others, summarized the harsh reality of the war: ‘We’ means Ukraine. ‘They’ means Russia.

There is one area where Ukraine could learn from Russia—how to use financial incentives to recruit soldiers. According to a Ukrainian staff officer, the mobilization process must include clear and immediate financial rewards. "The money should be paid upfront, not only to the family if the soldier dies," he said. Currently, Ukraine pays a death benefit of 15 million hryvnias to the soldier’s family. The officer suggested offering a $20,000 signing bonus for a military contract with a fixed term—such as one year. The first four months would be training, followed by eight months at the front line. After that, soldiers could return home if they chose not to renew their contracts. However, the full $20,000 would only be accessible upon completing the contract. The catch: desertion during that year would mean losing the entire sum.

I spoke to this officer in early February. A week later, news broke that Ukraine would indeed begin offering a similar contract to young men aged 18–25, below the official mobilization age of 25.

In Russia, the financial incentives for joining the military are both immediate and long-term. Volunteers receive an upfront signing bonus of 3–5 million rubles, depending on the region. But what truly entices many is a benefit aimed squarely at debt-ridden families: if a soldier dies in combat, the Russian government cancels all of the family's debts—mortgages, car loans, and other liabilities.

For families in Russia’s heavily indebted provinces, this offer is grimly attractive. Cynical spouses see it as a way out of crushing financial burdens. The calculus is simple: upfront money worth decades of provincial wages, plus a monthly salary four to five times higher than the regional average. If the soldier survives, the family enjoys newfound prosperity. If he dies, the mortgage is paid off or the car loan erased. Some exploit this morbid bargain repeatedly: "Send your husband to war, get a free apartment. If he doesn’t come back—find a new husband, buy a new apartment, and repeat the process."

The strategic importance of Crimea in the war has been effectively neutralized. The Crimean Bridge now holds only symbolic value. No military supplies reach the front by rail from Crimea. Russian warplanes no longer take off from Crimean airfields to bomb Ukraine. The Black Sea Fleet has been driven from its Crimean ports. Crimea’s direct impact on the battlefield has been crushed.

A far more immediate concern for Ukrainian forces is Russian espionage activity in frontline areas—especially in regions that were under Russian occupation in 2022. Russian intelligence agencies left behind a dense network of agents and collaborators. These networks continue to report on Ukrainian troop movements and coordinate artillery strikes.

As one Ukrainian colonel remarked, the danger is old but familiar: "Listen to what Chechen General Dzhokhar Dudayev said back in 1995."

Dudayev, the Chechen leader killed by Russia, had foreseen it all—Russia’s invasions of Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine. He had even warned the Baltic states. According to Dudayev, Russia's ambitions extend far beyond Ukraine. For the Kremlin, Kaliningrad is like a bone stuck in its throat, and securing a land corridor through the Baltic states remains a long-term goal.