Finland is changing how it trains conscripts in response to lessons from Ukraine, with soldiers spending less time in classrooms and increasingly dispersing in the field to reduce their vulnerability to drones. Yle reports that reconnaissance troops now sometimes sleep individually under camouflage nets rather than together in heated tents, whose stoves produce a thermal signature detectable from the air. Trenches are also being covered against drone attacks, while training increasingly emphasises dispersion, mines, battlefield first aid and operating under persistent surveillance.
“Anonymous officers sharply criticised conscript training in Helsingin Sanomat in August.
The officers said that lessons had not been learned from Ukraine. Under existing doctrine, a company of 100–200 soldiers still moves and attacks as a concentrated unit.
One of the officers interviewed gave a stark assessment:
“Troops trained that way have no chance of reaching their positions alive.”
The war in Ukraine has made the concept of the “kill zone” grimly familiar. It can now extend across a strip tens of kilometres wide between the warring parties.
Within the kill zone, it is difficult to move without being detected by drones carrying lethal payloads.
According to the critics, change is being held back by a conservative attitude, problems with drone equipment and the short training period of conscripts.
Brigadier General Sami-Antti Takamaa, the Defence Command’s head of training, considers the criticism justified from the perspective of the anonymous officers.
“They apparently have not been able to talk about these issues within their own units, which is perhaps the most worrying thing here. I don’t know whether they have tried, but that was perhaps something one could read between the lines,” Takamaa says.”
