Eyewitness to war: Drones and implications for America
The rapid evolution of drone technology is reshaping modern warfare, with significant geopolitical and strategic implications.

In a nutshell
- Weaponized drones revolutionize war with unmatched precision and cost
- U.S. defense risks obsolescence amid slow adaptation and outdated systems
- Reforms in procurement and doctrine are vital to retaining superiority
Following his sixth mission to the Ukrainian front, Dr. Paul Schwennesen writes of his eyewitness observations on the hyper-evolution in unmanned/autonomous system (UAS) technology and tactics.
One year ago, the sniper team I convened in Ukraine engaged a Russian machine gun position near Bakhmut. A number of drones in the sector (both Russian and Ukrainian), encouraged a certain discretion on our part, but they played a surveillance role only – while artillery and infantry assault forces fulfilled their traditional roles. Fast forward to today, and such an operation would be effectively impossible – the hyper-advancements in weaponized drone technology would make our vulnerable position untenable. The implications of this shift in tactical realities on the United States’ and allies’ security are only just beginning to fully dawn on the transatlantic defense establishment.
I confess it freely – I was a latecomer to recognizing the enormous implications of drones (or uncrewed autonomous systems – UAS). I’d seen them deployed in Ukraine over nearly three years and believed (and wrote) that while significant, drones represented merely an iteration in a manageable arms race. Like Stacie Pettyjohn and others, I thought that the hype risked overstating the case. Yet, having once again observed firsthand the astonishing evolution of operations in Ukrainian-occupied Kursk, the message has finally hit home: Unmanned systems are not just an iteration, they are indeed a revolution in the application of lethal force.
The U.S. defense establishment does not appear equipped − technically or psychologically − to respond to this emerging threat. I must emphasize in the starkest terms that the comparative advantage in modern weaponry has fundamentally and perhaps permanently shifted toward small, cheap, attritional, evolutionary systems.
Expensive legacy weapons systems, traditional procurement conventions and standard training regimens are becoming increasingly obsolete. The world’s most advanced weapons and tactics are being developed and deployed, at scale, on the Ukraine-Russia front at remarkably low cost and without central direction. These facts hold radical implications for the next major kinetic war between great powers.

Washington is rapidly and unwittingly losing its strategic military advantage in this new technical environment. There can be little doubt that China, North Korea, Iran and other emergent powers are eagerly sending observers and technicians to the frontlines in occupied Ukraine to carefully note the revolution in weapons delivery. These countries aim to incorporate their findings into military strategies designed to counterbalance the advantages held by their larger, better-equipped and more highly trained geopolitical adversaries in the developed world.
Tip of the technological iceberg
Technical advances, particularly in first-person view (FPV) drone deployment, mean that between 100 grams and 50 kilograms of high explosives can be delivered to within 50 centimeters of a target from 10 kilometers away. This precision is feasible practically anywhere on earth, indefinitely and from every direction on the compass, while flying through trees and terrain at high speed or just inches off the ground.
Rapid advances in navigation technologies make frequency jamming, the primary counter to drone deployment, increasingly irrelevant. Artificial Intelligence navigation modules that are capable of navigating to their target by observing the terrain are readily available. Small drones made of radar-transparent composites (even cardboard!) are likewise increasingly available, making drone interdiction an even more difficult prospect.
It is not just the technical advances that got my attention – the tactics of employment are equally striking. Ukrainians are, for instance, landing ambush drones on roads deep in enemy territory that can be activated to attack armored traffic when it appears. They use “carrier drones,” heavy-lift units that will carry four or more FPV drones into the battlespace to be deployed against multiple targets. Kyiv’s frontline units use decoy drones to draw anti-drone fire, and then they hit the source with smaller attack units.
Read more in the ‘Eyewitness to War’ series by Dr. Paul Schwennesen
- Why Chechens fight for Ukraine
- The Russia-Ukraine ammunition gap
- Assessing the Ukrainian capacity to fight
Additionally, they have advanced laser-guided munitions being deployed at altitude and are steadily improving techniques to protect operators from counterfire. Ukrainian forces are dropping explosives, unseen and unheard, from 5,000 feet directly into fighting holes by detecting body heat. There is no longer “blending in with the terrain” – this has become irrelevant. The benefits are clear: The cost of losing a drone is negligible and with zero loss of life.
In short, the rules of the arms race have been fundamentally rewritten to favor small, cheap, easily mastered weapons systems. Still more important is that these disproportionate advantages do not constitute a one-time gain, but amplify in a positive feedback loop through each iteration cycle. New tech gets better exponentially faster and is deployed far more quickly than legacy countermeasures.
IT, technicians and economists now on the frontlines of war
In Ukraine, the source of this immense innovation reservoir is the highly adaptable, diffuse engineering base of Ukrainian technicians. Uncountable tech workers routinely work full days in their civilian capacity, then leave their jobs to work at pop-up military tech facilities until late at night. They have created an ecosystem of invention, a web only loosely coordinated through the ministry of defense’s newly minted Unmanned Systems Service (an independent branch of the Ukrainian military).
The advances in hardware and software they produce are channeled into a robust system of decentralized training facilities, which operate on state-managed “polygon” ranges and private testing installations. In less than three weeks, an FPV drone operator can be mission-ready: Operators with no previous battlefield experience have been credited with as many as 15 hundred confirmed kills. Again, the disproportionality is vast.
The U.S. and NATO allies have a narrow window of opportunity to address this growing shift in comparative advantage.
And this is perhaps the main takeaway in a total-war, peer-to-peer scenario: Such wars are heavily defined by economic considerations. The side that produces more materiel while absorbing material losses ultimately prevails. Training, esprit de corps, fighting spirit – all are dependent on the products of a functional economy. Look no further than the Confederate States Army or the German Wehrmacht – each of their legendary fighting spirits ultimately collapsed under the sheer mass of the other side’s more efficient war machine.
Suppose a technology allows one side of a conflict to impose extraordinary damage on the exquisite, expensive, difficult-to-master weapons systems of their adversary, and they can do so at a fraction of the cost expended by their enemy. It does not require a scholar to see where such a case leads.
The U.S. and its NATO allies have a very narrow window of opportunity to address this critical and growing shift in comparative advantage. Current operations in Ukraine have shown what a scrappy, innovative force can do to a large, hidebound military machine.
Scenarios
Less likely: Washington takes note and swiftly embraces technological change
The U.S. Department of Defense will quickly integrate UAS technology and training from Ukraine into its mainstream, operational-level, frontline units. This requires an unprecedented level of commitment from all levels of the command structure and an extraordinary degree of political cooperation to shift the status quo.
More likely: The U.S. falls behind in military technology deployment
The U.S. will fall farther and farther behind the leading edge of UAS deployment and will only begin to respond in the aftermath of a crisis. My discussions with Capitol Hill legislators, frontline military leaders, defense analysts and doctrine scholars lead invariably to the same conclusion: The American defense procurement system is too vast and the regulatory frameworks too inscrutable to meaningfully adopt UAS capabilities into existing defense doctrine or practice in a timeframe that matters.
An event akin to Pearl Harbor or 9/11, with the physical destruction of tens of billions of dollars worth of hardware and a substantial loss of life, will be required to jumpstart the innovation cycle and break down the thickets of red tape, which make change next to impossible.
Possible: Allies allow threats to highlight vulnerabilities and force change
The scenario of failure to act can be avoided through a well-managed demonstration. Historical examples, such as the famous sinking of the Ostfriesland which demonstrated to Pentagon brass the effectiveness of aerial bombardment, show that it is sometimes possible to break entrenched paradigms by publicly demonstrating a current system’s vulnerabilities. When witnessed and understood by the right audiences, demonstrations can shift doctrine development and tactical training in new and constructive ways – preferably before the lessons are learned the hard way.
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