"...having something to kill time on while there's almost nothing happening for hours and days on end is one of the main uses of having mobile phones in the tre

"...having something to kill time on while there's almost nothing happening for hours and days on end is one of the main uses of having mobile phones in the trench-lines of Southern Ukraine." That's understandable, but for as long as war has been conducted soldiers' lives have always been long stretches of utter boredom followed by short episodes of horror, death and destruction. It's always been this way, there are many accounts of where waiting in anticipation have seemed worse than the conflict. Managing armies in quiet periods has always occupied commanders' attention, it's why, say, brothels were allowed near the Western Front by high command in WWI despite the risk of VD (which was often a chargeable offense). Also, to almost always keep in touch with the loved ones from back front, I can imagine that that has to be good for morale. Reckon it definitely would be, but from what is being said about consequential deaths one wonders if it's too much of a luxury. There's no doubt that decades ago that a luxury of this type on the battlefield (even if it had been available) would have been unthinkable as commanders would have deemed it a strategic danger—giving away a platoon or battalion's position, etc. I can't see why something as fundamental as weakening strategy would have changed nowadays but then I'm not a commander. (Incidentally, there's any number of references to such strategies but there's two that stand out: Sun Tzu and von Clausewitz, I doubt there's a commander in the world that hasn't studied them—BTW, I'm not suggesting for a moment you read them.) Perhaps, these days, with the abandonment of conscription in many countries, militaries have made a pragmatic decision to allow smartphones as an enticement for people to join the military. I've not followed this recently (as I once would have), if so, then I'd reckon it's a nasty callous tradeoff. Re your last point, it's my understanding that troops in Iraq and Afghanistan also carried phones but I'm unfamiliar with the rules that would have applied.