Every Infantryman Is Half a Sniper | Jackie, 3rd Army Corps, Ukraine

An American assault instructor in Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps says the NATO bases he has visited would be finished in the first eight hours. Jackie — a callsign, not a name — explains why the wedge formation is dead, why every Ukrainian infantryman now carries signals kit, and why Ukraine's doctrine has abolished the ground force commander.More: "They're so abysmally unprepared that I'm afraid for them." That is an American professional soldier describing NATO bases he has trained on, on a podcast whose audience largely works for NATO countries.Jackie is a callsign. He spent eight years in the US Army as a scout, deployed seven times, and crossed into Ukraine at Medyka in March 2022 to join the International Legion. He was badly wounded in Kyiv inside three weeks, went back to fight at Kupiansk and Bakhmut, and now instructs corps staff in Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps.He is precise about what four years changed. Direct-fire security sectors are irrelevant against an enemy with permanent fire superiority, so the wedge formation is gone and everything moves in files. Concealment, not firepower, is the organising principle at every echelon — in his phrase, every Ukrainian infantryman is half a sniper. Signals-intelligence receivers are carried by ordinary riflemen rather than by specialists. And the ground force commander, a position American doctrine treats as indispensable, no longer exists in his corps: jamming would leave that man mute for the whole battle, so the decision sits with a battle captain at a networked command post instead.The hardest reform, he argues, is not tactical at all. It is getting soldiers to tell their commanders the truth.More about Defence Forward Podcast