Ukrainian troops were 'stunned' to learn their British trainers don't use anti-drone nets, UK officer says

• Ukrainian troops were 'stunned' to learn the UK didn't use anti-drone nets, a British Army officer said.
• The commanding officer said his forces have learned important lessons from the Ukrainian troops they trained.
• Ukraine puts nets over its positions, roads, vehicles, and weapons to stop Russian drones.

Ukrainian soldiers were shocked to learn that anti-drone nets weren't standard for the British Army when they came over for combat training, a UK officer told Business Insider.

Lt. Col. Ben Irwin-Clark, the commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the UK's Irish Guards — an infantry regiment with a long operational history — said he had never seen nets to stop drones used in his 20 years in the army.

"The Ukrainians were absolutely stunned," he said. For the Ukrainians, he shared, the view is "well, of course you put nets over your positions because that's how you defend yourself."

Drones have become ubiquitous in Ukraine and are behind most battlefield strikes, forcing both sides to protect personnel and weaponry from constant airborne threats.

Defenses include low-cost options like nets, which can snag propellers and prevent drones from reaching their targets, be they soldiers or high-value equipment. Soldiers stretch the counter-drone nets over their fortified positions, weapon systems, and armored vehicles. The Ukrainians have also covered key roadways with netting to protect supply routes.

Ukrainians have been gathering up netting wherever they can find it to meet demand,even from the fishing villages of partner nations.

The Ukrainians told their British trainers they needed to get nets, and the UK military reacted fast, Irwin-Clark said.

"We went 'round every fishing port in the east of England asking for their old fishing nets," the officer shared, "and we've now got hundreds and hundreds of meters of fishing nets, which we drape over positions when we conduct training."

"Are they exactly the right type of drone nets? Dunno," he said. "But in terms of replicating it for training, that's the best we can do. It's entirely free, and it's a lesson we learned entirely from our Ukrainian brothers and sisters."

He said it was "just one example" of how Ukrainian front-line experience has shaped British training, with lessons passed on by soldiers arriving directly from combat and rapidly folded into UK doctrine.

Learning from Ukraine

The Irish Guards gained much of that insight during the deployment toOperation Interflex, the UK-led training program that has supported more than 62,000 Ukrainian soldiers, including both new recruits and combat veterans.

Speaking at a training demo recently attended by Business Insider,Irwin-Clark said that "it's really inspiring working with the Ukrainians and training Ukrainians, and I think what I hadn't anticipated over a year ago when we started our stint on Interflex is how much we would learn."

The Operation Interflex training is meant to share Western and NATO doctrine with Ukrainian forces to help them fend off Russia's invasion. The exchange, however, has increasingly run both ways, with the UK armed forces modifying aspects of its own training based on Ukrainian input.

Ukraine is fighting a large-scale, high-intensity war against a major military power, something the UK and other Western forces have not experienced in decades. As a result, Ukrainian troops often have more recent, firsthand insight into what works, particularly in areas like drone warfare and trench fighting.

British trainers say the dynamic works. Col. Boardman, the commanding officer for Operation Interflex, previously told Business Insider that there is a "really rich mutual understanding going on" and that the training "ends up with the sum being much greater than the parts, which is really valuable for us." He spoke on the requirement that only his rank and last name be used.

Ukrainian soldiers, he said, might explain why a NATO-style tactic is likely to fail under real-world combat conditions and what they do instead. That knowledge is then combined with Western doctrine and used to refine training on both sides. The UK, for instance, adjusted its thinking on how trench battles are fought in response to Ukrainian combat experiences.

"We are learning an awful lot from our engagement with this war," Boardman said.

He said Ukraine places a lot of value on NATO and Western military doctrine because while "they may have the current battle experience," the Ukrainians "know that we have some of the history, some of the hard-won experience of this in the past."

The feedback shared during Operation Interflex also prompted the Irish Guards to make other changes, including investing heavily in drone warfare.

It has since created a new "drone hub," the first of its kind in the British Army, where soldiers can repair drones and develop new ones, and train for drone warfare. It uses tech like 3D printing, a technology adopted on Ukrainian advice.

Irwin-Clark said that out of the 300 people in the battalion, 78 are now pilots or instructors. Speaking at the training demonstration, he described drones as part of "the future of warfare."

Others within the British Army have acknowledged Ukraine's help in developing the UK's drone warfare capabilities. Boardman, for example, highlighted drones as an area where Ukrainian troops have far more direct experience. "They are very good at sharing the understanding with us," he said.

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