Ukrainian drones wipe out entire US tank brigade in live war game
Ukrainian drones wipe out entire US tank brigade in live war game
乌克兰无人机在实战演习中全歼美军坦克旅
Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience. 在今年举行的一场实战演习中，乌克兰无人机团队摧毁了美军的一个坦克和装甲车旅——但幸运的是，美军士兵在吸取经验的同时，获得了“重生”的机会。
The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. 这场名为“联合决心”（Combined Resolve）的半年一度军事演习，让美军亲身体验了现代无人机战争在乌克兰战场上的演变。
The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal. 据美国官员及一名接受《华尔街日报》采访的参与者透露，参与演习的乌克兰无人机操作员能够轻松发现并摧毁美军装甲车，他们通过模拟从高空投弹或近距离发动自杀式袭击的方式进行攻击。
US armored vehicles were being destroyed so quickly that they were “respawned” and sent back into the simulated fray, a US official told The Wall Street Journal. 一位美国官员告诉《华尔街日报》，美军装甲车被摧毁的速度太快，以至于它们不得不被“重置”并重新送回模拟战场。
The US troops who participated in the exercise—held in Germany from April 9 to May 10—were on rotational deployment from Fort Hood, Texas. 参加此次演习的美军部队（于4月9日至5月10日在德国举行）来自德克萨斯州胡德堡的轮换部署部队。
“Using the drones with the Army, it keeps everyone on edge,” according to an unidentified US Army soldier in a promotional video for Combined Resolve. “There is never a safe spot or safe moment in the game anymore.” “在陆军演习中使用无人机，让每个人都时刻保持警惕，”一名未透露姓名的美国陆军士兵在“联合决心”的宣传视频中说道。“在演习中，再也没有安全的地方或安全的时刻了。”
The participating troops hailed from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division, which typically operates armored vehicles, like M1A2 tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. 参演部队来自第1骑兵师第3装甲旅战斗队，该部队通常操作M1A2坦克和布雷德利步兵战车等装甲车辆。
But by repeating the training scenario throughout the two-week exercise, US Army troops got better at figuring out how to disperse and hide from the drones while using countermeasures such as electronic warfare. 但在为期两周的演习中，通过反复进行训练场景，美军士兵逐渐学会了如何分散并躲避无人机，同时利用电子战等反制手段进行应对。
The US military is not alone in learning such lessons from battle-hardened Ukrainian drone operators. Ukrainian drone teams also participated in a Swedish-led military exercise for NATO, called Aurora 26, that was also held in May. 美军并非唯一从久经沙场的乌克兰无人机操作员那里学习经验的军队。乌克兰无人机团队还参加了5月份举行的由瑞典主导的北约“极光26”（Aurora 26）军事演习。
A mock mechanized assault by NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles allowed Ukrainian drones to take out dozens of the attacking armored vehicles, which eventually forced planners to reset the war game, The Kyiv Independent reported. 据《基辅独立报》报道，在北约坦克和步兵战车进行的模拟机械化突击中，乌克兰无人机成功摧毁了数十辆进攻装甲车，最终迫使演习策划者不得不重置战争游戏。
Armor on the brink of extinction?
装甲部队濒临灭绝？
Armored tanks first played a useful role in helping break through entrenched battlefield lines during the final years of World War I more than a century ago. But since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, frontline combat has seen the return of positional warfare centered on fortified networks of trenches. 一个多世纪前，装甲坦克在第一次世界大战末期首次发挥了突破阵地防线的重要作用。但自2022年俄罗斯对乌克兰发动全面入侵以来，前线战斗重现了以坚固战壕网络为核心的阵地战。
That is because the increased lethality of modern drone warfare has largely negated large assaults by armored vehicles and troops in recent years. 这是因为现代无人机战争杀伤力的提升，在很大程度上抵消了近年来装甲车辆和部队的大规模突击效果。
The current lethality of the so-called drone kill zone has forced both sides to rely primarily on infiltration tactics using small groups or even individual soldiers when trying to take or reclaim territory, sometimes riding motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, or horses. 所谓“无人机杀戮区”的致命性，迫使双方在试图夺取或收复领土时，主要依赖小分队甚至单兵的渗透战术，有时甚至骑摩托车、全地形车或马匹。
Russia’s offensives, which are aimed at seizing more Ukrainian territory, have been reduced to bloody attritional operations where soldiers are sent forward on near-suicidal missions in what Russians themselves describe as the “meat grinder.” 俄罗斯旨在夺取更多乌克兰领土的攻势，已沦为血腥的消耗战，士兵们被送往近乎自杀的任务中，俄罗斯人自己将其称为“绞肉机”。
Meanwhile, armored tanks and vehicles have mostly become an endangered species on the frontlines. Russia has lost more than 14,000 tanks and armored vehicles of other types during the war, according to the Dutch open source intelligence tracking project Oryx, which only counted visually verified losses. Ukraine has lost over 6,000 armored combat vehicles. 与此同时，装甲坦克和车辆在很大程度上已成为前线濒临灭绝的物种。据荷兰开源情报追踪项目Oryx统计（仅计算视觉确认的损失），俄罗斯在战争中损失了超过14,000辆坦克及其他类型的装甲车辆。乌克兰则损失了超过6,000辆装甲战斗车辆。
But both Russia and Ukraine are still attempting to use mechanized assaults with vehicles on occasion. In May of this year, Ukraine used armored vehicles in limited counterattacks that penetrated Russian defenses—the result of Ukrainian military experiments with using electronic warfare and targeted strikes on Russian drone pilots to help achieve localized territorial gains. 但俄罗斯和乌克兰双方仍偶尔尝试使用车辆进行机械化突击。今年5月，乌克兰在有限的反击中使用装甲车辆突破了俄罗斯的防御——这是乌克兰军方实验电子战和针对俄罗斯无人机操作员进行精确打击的结果，有助于实现局部的领土收益。
That was a notable feat, given that enabling mechanized vehicles to survive the Russian drone kill zone was “categorically impossible in 2025,” according to the Institute for the Study of War based in Washington, DC. 考虑到华盛顿特区的战争研究所曾指出，让机械化车辆在2025年的俄罗斯无人机杀戮区中生存是“绝对不可能的”，这确实是一项了不起的成就。
In July, Russian forces launched their own mechanized assault with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles in the hotly contested Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine. This attack was apparently repelled, with the Ukrainian military reportedly destroying 80 percent of the Russian vehicles before they even reached the frontlines. 7月，俄罗斯军队在乌克兰东部争夺激烈的顿涅茨克州发动了坦克和步兵战车的机械化突击。这次进攻显然被击退，据报道，乌克兰军队在俄军车辆到达前线之前就摧毁了其中80%。
The Pentagon has requested more than $54 billion for acquiring drone and counterdrone systems in its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal, an amount that exceeds Ukraine’s entire military budget. But as the Combined Resolve exercise showed, the US military must also adapt its unit training and operational practices to the threat of short-range drones if it wants troops to survive on future battlefields. 五角大楼在其2027财年预算提案中申请了超过540亿美元用于采购无人机和反无人机系统，这一金额超过了乌克兰的整个军费预算。但正如“联合决心”演习所表明的那样，如果美军希望士兵在未来的战场上生存，就必须调整其部队训练和作战实践，以应对短程无人机的威胁。