‘Training for a War Without Drones’: Ukrainians Slam Polish Military Courses

Article Summary – Ukrainian soldiers who trained in Poland are openly questioning whether NATO-style courses match the realities of the front. Speaking to BBC-Ukraine, troops describe Polish and Czech instructors teaching river crossings, armored thrusts, and map-and-compass drills as if drones did not exist.

-For Ukrainians who survived Krynki and other battles under constant UAV surveillance, slow amphibious APCs and vehicle-heavy assaults look like a bad idea.

Troopers with 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division firing the 25mm canon on a Bradley fighting vehicle in order to zero the vehicles weapons systems at a range in Poland. Ranges such as these familiarize troopers with the vehicles systems in order to ensure combat readiness. US Army Photo.

-They argue modern combat demands camouflage, thermal cloaks, foot infiltration, and constant drone awareness.

-Warsaw insists it has received no formal complaints, but Ukrainian officers warn that training built on Afghanistan-era manuals will not keep their troops alive in 2025.

Like Sitting Ducks: Ukraine Warns Polish Instructors Don’t Get Drone Warfare

Quoting extensively from a BBC-Ukraine report, the Polish national daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita published a detailed story on Ukrainian soldiers dissatisfied with the quality of combat training they receive from the Polish military.

The central complaint reported by the BBC was that the training is not relevant to current battlefield conditions. Lessons being learned in frontline combat are also not integrated into the program.

“They’re teaching according to textbooks from 1410,” said one of the Ukrainian soldiers who was interviewed by the UK news service.

Since 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been trained at combat education centers in several European nations. Poland is one of them, but many Ukrainian soldiers who completed the Polish training course complain they are being prepared for a “war of the past.”  To be more specific it is “preparation for a war without drones,” writes the BBC.

“This ignores the absolute number one threat to the lives of soldiers on the front lines,” said a former active-duty and now reserve Polish military officer who spoke to National Security Journal.

Like Sitting Ducks

One of the training episodes reported by the BBC recalled a Polish instructor describing a scenario in which four armored personnel carriers (APCs) were about to cross a river by using a bridge. One of the Ukrainian soldiers pointed out that the bridge could be destroyed.

The Polish instructor then proudly replied, “Our armored personnel carriers can float,” meaning they are designed for amphibious operations and can operate in shallow waters.

As the BBC describes, an “awkward silence” then fell over the auditorium. More than half of those in the audience were Ukrainian Marines who had survived a battle in Krynki—an operation that took place in the Kherson Oblast in 2023.

Every one of the Marines who had participated in that engagement knew the properties and performance of these amphibious APCs. They know all too well that these vehicles can indeed operate on water.

But they also realize that when operating on water, their 70 kilometer per hour speed on land drops to a snail’s pace of 10 km/h. “To enemy drones, this makes these vehicles even easier to kill than the proverbial ‘sitting duck,’” said a Ukrainian officer who spoke for the article.

Close to two decades ago, I attended one of the largest land arms shows in Russia at the time, the Russian Expo Arms show in Nizhni-Tagil. That location is also home to the famous UralVagonZavod plant that produces most of the Russian military’s main battle tanks.

This was decades before drone warfare became a daily fact of life on the battlefield, but even then, these vehicles on water were so slow that it was hard to believe they would be survivable in combat. The phrase that Admiral “Bull” Halsey once used about how the U.S. fighter aircraft parked at Hickam Field could be taken out “by a one-eyed monkey with a hand grenade hanging from a ten cent balloon” came to mind.

Training For Non-Existent Conditions

This sample of dialogue between the instructor and the Marines, as the BBC describes, “is only part of a larger picture that includes everything—NATO, manuals and charters, elegant barracks, and experienced buglers—but lacks a key element of modern warfare: drones.”

Instead, the training is being conducted according to NATO scenarios taken from campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, when drones had not yet been used in daily combat. Only in early October of this year, the BBC noted, was the first drone training range, Jomsborg, opened in Poland—it was built with Norwegian funding.

One of the Ukrainian officers, who was identified as “Major Eighteen,” described the course his battalion completed in Poland in 2024. The training was reportedly led by instructors from Poland, the Czech Republic, and Ukraine.

“The Polish and Czech program complies with NATO standards,” he explained in an interview with BBC. But he added that the conditions taught were ones Ukrainian soldiers “wouldn’t see in combat.”

A Ukrainian soldier nicknamed “Knuckles” pointed out that in survival courses, he and his fellow soldiers were taught how to navigate terrain using paper maps. But in more than 3.5 years of combat, he explained, he never had to do this, because all the maps they use are stored on the Ukrainian soldiers’ phones or tablets.

Trench assaults and urban operations are also taught, but in the context of wars from 20 years ago, he said.

“They want to fly [in] tanks and Humvees right under the trench. We told them it doesn’t work that way anymore. They don’t do that anymore. You put on a ‘kikimora’ (camouflage suit) or a thermal cloak to be as invisible as possible, and you go there on foot.”

The Polish Ministry of National Defense, in a response to the BBC News Ukraine report, stated it had not received any comments from the Ukrainian side.

“We would like to inform you that we have not received any signals indicating that the training programs do not meet the needs of the Ukrainian side,” the Polish Ministry of Defense said.

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson 

Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of the Asia Research Centre at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.

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