A century ago, bright red trousers made soldiers easy targets. Ukraine’s ex-army chief says the West is wearing them again

Former top Ukrainian commander Valerii Zaluzhnyi has warned that modern warfare is not just about technology, but also about the strategies and doctrines that keep pace with it. In a recent column, he argues that Ukraine’s mobilization efforts have failed to adapt to the rapidly evolving drone landscape, and that treating drones as a standalone class is now three years behind the times.

Zaluzhnyi draws a parallel to World War I, where soldiers wore bright red trousers in an attempt to counter repeating rifles, machine guns, and long-range artillery, as well as future tanks and aircraft. He cautions that clinging to outdated security guarantees is akin to blindly trusting those same red trousers on the modern battlefield.

He laments that the current war has become a playground for marketers and opportunists who capitalize on technological progress without any strategy or understanding. The retaking of land using Soviet methods and new weapons has led to a dead end in mobilization, with fewer and fewer people willing to take part.

Zaluzhnyi advocates for treating technology as a new weapon, building tactics around it, and then reshaping the force. This approach, he calls doctrine, which can be built through resource and technological alliances into a strategy for victory. Ukraine and Russia, he notes, have become living laboratories for testing these evolving strategies.