Branko Ruzic
December 2025. Russian casualties reached approximately 1,200 personnel per day — killed and wounded — according to the Ukrainian General Staff reporting. This wasn’t the result of Russian tactical incompetence. It came despite systematic Russian adaptation to drone warfare throughout 2025: radical dispersion to 4-6 soldier assault groups, spider hole tactics, thermal camouflage, nocturnal movement bounds, and extensive electronic warfare screens.
The Russian General Staff implemented precisely the adaptations that Western tactical manuals would endorse. Every force protection principle suggested that dispersion would reduce vulnerability. Instead, casualties stayed catastrophically high: Ukrainian reporting put Russian losses at approximately 1,200 personnel daily in late December 2025, with drones causing an estimated 70% of casualties. UK Defence Intelligence confirmed rates exceeding 1,000 daily throughout late 2025. The mathematics of force protection appeared to have inverted: dispersed assault teams that should have been harder to detect and engage were dying in record numbers.
This pattern suggests the dispersion paradox: in environments of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled persistent surveillance, the doctrinal benefit of spreading forces may invert — isolation and extended exposure can create more lethal targeting opportunities than concentration. If true, established Western force-protection assumptions require rapid empirical testing and doctrinal revision. The alternative is discovering the answer through operational casualties rather than controlled experimentation.
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