Content1. New war of new future2. Spider's Web and others: Ukraine's unique combat operationsRussia produces 170 Shaheds daily, and in June fired more than 330 missiles and more than 5,000 combat drones at Ukraine. In Putin's mind, this creates the illusion of victory. Is Ukraine capable of making a hyper-leap in strengthening its defense capabilities? The criticality of the moment should push everyone concerned to make a leap - it is associated with completing what has already been created in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. We need to improve the army in such a way that it can wage war simultaneously in all available areas.New war of new futureIt is worth starting with the correct statement of modern military leaders that future warfare involves multidomain operations - the simultaneous and coordinated use of military forces in the air and space, on land and sea, and in cyberspace. The purpose of such operations is to achieve superiority over the enemy by using interaction between different domains and information exchange. This includes the use of psychological influence, which often becomes a factor in imposing decisions, as was the case in the Pakistan-India and Israeli-Iranian conflicts of 2025.Some analysts are convinced that the war of the future may not be fought in all domains at once, but will affect only a few of the most important ones. This is confirmed by the aforementioned Pakistan-India and Israeli-Iranian conflicts, where success was achieved through the dominance of an unprecedentedly large number of combat aircraft in the sky and the infliction of precision strikes amid an incredibly fierce technological competition.Thus, the air battle between fighters (and one drone) on the night of May 7, 2025, involving more than 130 aircraft, proved decisive - due to the ability of Pakistani fighters of Chinese-made Chengdu J-10C to shoot down at least two Indian military aircraft. Later, the Pakistan Air Force claimed with evidence that it had destroyed five Indian aircraft, including as many as three European Rafales and one each of a Russian MiG-29 and Su-30MKI. The de facto use of Chinese long-range air-to-air missiles PL-15 with a range of about 200 km proved that the technology is in hand, that advanced Chinese technology is superior to Russian and, to some extent, Western technology (the European MBDA produces the Meteor air-to-air missile, but it was the Chinese one that was tested in the war).The attacks on Iran have been even more impressive. On June 13 alone, Israel used 200 fighter jets in its attack, dropping more than 330 “various munitions” and striking more than 100 targets across Iran. In addition to nuclear facilities, the large-scale attack effectively neutralized the air defense system in western Iran: dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers were destroyed. At the same time, all the strikes were carried out from a long distance from Israel - about 1000 km to the Iranian border alone, and about 1,500 km to Tehran. Combat aircraft conducted the operation without losses. But, among other things, the precision strikes killed a significant part of the top Iranian military command and nuclear scientists who were under special protection.Reuters, citing its own sources, reported that combat units of the Mossad intelligence agency carried out a series of covert operations deep inside Iranian territory. These included deploying precision weapons in open areas near Iranian air defense systems, using advanced technologies against Iran’s air defense, and establishing a strike drone base near Tehran. Experts note that such operations are multi-layered: they begin with targeting command systems, air and missile defenses, and high-priority threats capable of retaliation.The U.S. joining Israel and conducting the U.S. Operation Midnight Hammer, with the simultaneous use of 120 aircraft and 75 precision-guided munitions, including 14 almost 13.6-ton anti-bunker bombs - GBU-57 penetrating munitions - reinforced the trend of multi-domain operations.It is important to note that the Israeli-Iranian war involved not only the use of combat aircraft, but also the use of space and other types of intelligence, as well as a ground component in the form of covert actions by special forces. Moreover, after the United States used the largest non-nuclear bomb on deeply protected facilities in Iran, experts declared the opening of a new domain of war in the world.Thus, the United States and Israel have demonstrated the conduct of a fast-paced, but multi-level and multi-domain war that can lead to relatively rapid achievement of political goals. At the same time, it is not known for certain how long the military potentials of these countries are designed for. It can be assumed that it is the lack of reserves for a long-term war of this type that has led to the intention to conduct short operations. This can be confirmed by the fact that U.S. intelligence has revealed that Iran's nuclear facilities have not been completely destroyed.In this regard, it is worth paying attention to the modeling of a military conflict between the United States and China. Thus, according to a study by the American think tank RAND, a possible conflict between the United States and China is likely to be fundamentally different from the Russian-Ukrainian war. The main components of hostilities in the Indo-Pacific region will be naval and air operations, air defense, attacks on satellites, cyber strikes, and long-distance logistics. Although the analytical framework envisions a war without a land front, a land component will almost certainly be present, for example, in the form of autonomous marine units, drones, and cruise missiles. Since 2019, the US Marine Corps has been building up and training in this area.However, the truth is that there will be no large-scale land front. Long-range and precision air strikes, satellite reconnaissance competitions, and confrontation in cyberspace and electronic warfare systems will be of the greatest importance.Therefore, simultaneous and rapid actions, as well as the intensity of operations will be the main characteristics of the new war.Spider's Web and others: Ukraine's unique combat operationsThe Russian-Ukrainian war has a contact line of more than 1,000 kilometers, is intense and protracted, and is a war of attrition, with air and sea components. There is also a confrontation of intelligence, including the use of space technologies.Ukraine conducted a number of operations for the first time in the history of warfare.Downed and destroyed a 12-ton helicopter with a 2-kilogram drone;Downed and destroyed a modern Su-30 aircraft in the air with a naval drone with an anti-aircraft missile;Conducted an unprecedented Spider's Web operation deep in the Russian rear to simultaneously hit four Russian military airfields with drones and destroy more than a dozen combat aircraft, including strategic nuclear weapons carriers. According to the United States, a total of 20 aircraft were hit, of which up to 10 were destroyed. This is, of course, not the entire list of Ukraine's Defense Forces' achievements. However, they demonstrate the high level of technology and uniqueness of Ukrainian combat operations. Some of them involved simultaneous presence in several domains. It was Ukraine that became the first country in the world to develop the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to systematic use in the sky, at sea, and on the ground. And the partial blowing up of the Crimean bridge in June 2025 was the mastery of another domain - underwater.Throughout the large-scale war, Ukraine's cheap and mass-produced weapons effectively depleted Russia's expensive and powerful weapons - asymmetric strikes and a mosquito strategy have largely remained a substitute for multidomain operations.Ukraine does have one of the most capable and powerful armies on the continent. No army in Europe will be able to match the Ukrainian Defense Forces in 2025, when the most powerful players in European NATO are showing weakness and openly caving in to Putin's bloody regime.At the same time, there are expert assumptions that one of Putin's motivations for increasing his influence on the Western world has a rather interesting basis: any war in the European theater of operations will take place on the ground, and only Ukraine has powerful infantry in Europe. In other words, the decapitation of Ukraine creates an almost absolute dominance over Europe in the style of Catherine the Great (“not a single cannon in Europe will fire without our permission”).Thus, the land will remain the key domain in the event of a new continental war, and almost three years of continuous missile and drone attacks in the genocidal war against the Ukrainian nation (since October 10, 2022) have not brought the bloody regime in Moscow any strategic political result.A classic episode of the Russian-Ukrainian war in September 2024, when Russia tried to return to attacks using a certain amount of armored vehicles. At the end of the month, paratroopers from the 46th Separate Airmobile Brigade stopped a major mechanized assault by Russians in the Kurakhiv sector. During the assault, the enemy used as many as 52 armored vehicles, which were supported by airpower, making the combat episode illustrative for analysis. In addition, on the eve of the assault, the enemy began shelling the positions of Ukrainian defenders with adjusted aerial bombs (AB), after which a large-scale assault began from several directions. The enemy managed to advance to the paratroopers' positions despite the active destruction of armored vehicles and infantry by FPV drones. At the same time, artillery, a tank company and assault units were also involved in repelling the assault to clear the area of enemy infantry. As a result of the counter-attack, the enemy lost 8 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, 4 armored personnel carriers, one armored personnel carrier and other equipment. In total, the paratroopers reported the destruction of 26 combat vehicles out of 52, as well as the loss of 72 occupants.And yet, a multi-domain operation like the Israeli one in June 2025 is not yet within Ukraine's capabilities. There are no resources available, no such number of weapons, no own space intelligence, no own space group to support the Internet. The situation with the F-16 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force is a vivid illustration: there are carriers, but no radars or long-range missiles (such as AGM-158). Ukraine is critically dependent on its partners for powerful weapons. At the same time, as Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom and former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, rightly noted, the inability to provide itself with the full range of defense capabilities in the absence of high technology otherwise calls into question the ability to sustain long-term resistance in a war of attrition.For Ukraine, the overriding task of the wartime period is the survival and preservation of the nation - in order to come closer to the ability to plan and conduct not only the most complex asymmetric operations, but also multi-domain military campaigns with international support. This ability is a powerful deterrent to the hostile Kremlin in the future.In the end, this exhausting Russian-Ukrainian war is a story about how building a state requires trusting no one and always taking care of the powerful combat capabilities of the national defense potential.The material was prepared in cooperation with the Consortium for Defense Information (CDI), a project that brings together Ukrainian analytical and research organizations and aims to strengthen information support and analytical support in the field of national security, defense, and geopolitics.