NATO increasingly sees its soldiers’ phones as a liability

VIKTOR KOVALENKONATO, a Ukrainian conscript defending the eastern city of Debaltseve from pro-Russian forces, once emerged from a shelter and, despite standing instructions not to do it, switched on his phone to call his wife. Soon “shells started exploding around me,” he recalls. Similar attacks killed others in his battalion. The year was 2015, and the enemy was learning to direct artillery fire to transmitting mobiles. Since then, phone use on the front line has sharply fallen but still continues, concedes Captain Volodymyr Fitio of Ukraine’s army.Mobiles pose a dilemma for defence chiefs. A smartphone ban would hurt recruitment and morale. But a single mobile can betray a big operation “like a fire in the dark”, says Lieutenant-Colonel Rouven Habel, a former commander of ’s troops in Lithuania.