Drones transform warfare but not strategic outcomes
Unmanned systems reshape modern combat, driving innovation and countermeasures, yet still fall short of decisive battlefield victories.
In a nutshell
- The war in Ukraine shows drones dominate tactics, not outcomes
- NATO and the EU are adapting, accelerating drone partnerships
- The counter-drone race is intensifying with AI lasers and new technologies
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This is part two of a GIS series on drones. Part one is available here.
To what extent have drones changed modern warfare? While the answer is still being debated, what is certain is that unmanned aerial devices have altered the way wars are fought and turned Ukraine into the world’s leading military research and development laboratory. Drones are used for precision strikes, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The consequences are being felt far beyond Ukraine.
NATO is adapting its defense plans, while the European Union is promoting new drone projects through industrial partnerships between Ukrainian and European companies. Governments in Europe and now throughout the Middle East, the Gulf region and the Caucasus are seeking cooperation with Ukraine to strengthen their defenses. Yet, Iran and Russia are also developing and mass-producing drones. The question remains whether counter-drone systems will ultimately be able to neutralize the drone threat.
Do drones change everything?
Drones are widely regarded as a significant step forward in defense technologies. They have indeed fundamentally transformed warfare, but so far, they have not proven capable of forcing operational or strategic breakthroughs on the battlefield. Nevertheless, they are revolutionizing how conflict takes place and economizing offense.
This is evident from the evolution of the war in Ukraine since February 24, 2022, when Moscow began its invasion with a classical Russian offensive employing maneuver units where speed and surprise were central. After Ukraine managed to drive the heavy, manned Russian forces out of the north and parts of the southern front, by the end of 2022, the war turned into a static conflict. Minefields and trenches made maneuver warfare virtually impossible, forcing both parties into positional warfare.
In 2023, despite the introduction of increasingly advanced drones, such as first-person-view (FPV) drones, the battlelines remained frozen. For Ukraine, drones became a way to compensate for the shortage of soldiers and ammunition.
Yet by the end of 2024, a revolution had taken place when Ukraine began to conduct counter-electronic warfare (EW) operations by using un-jammable fiber-optic spool-fed drones and artificial intelligence (AI) enabled drones to independently identify and strike targets.
Russia did the same. In August 2024, Russia established the Rubicon Center for Advanced Unmanned Technologies to catch up with Ukraine technologically and doctrinally.
In February 2025, Ukraine launched the Drone Line Initiative, bringing together its five most effective drone assault units. Consequently, drone innovation cycles have accelerated, and tactics have had to be continuously adapted. The war has progressed from classical positional warfare into adaptive warfare.
Positional warfare evolved from minefields and trenches into kill zones 10 to 20 kilometers wide, where anything visible and moving can be destroyed, and military forces can only survive if they are concealed. Small-scale infiltrations by a few soldiers are possible, but they are too limited to translate tactical successes into operational or strategic gains sufficient to achieve broader war objectives.
In 2025, 85 percent of Russian targets at the front were reportedly neutralized by drones and roughly 70 to 80 percent of all Russian dead and wounded are estimated to have come from drone strikes. As a result, attention shifted toward battlefield air interdiction − disrupting the opponent’s logistics. At the same time, Russia increasingly deployed FPV drones against population centers near the battlefield. At the end of February 2025, a fiber-optic drone was used for the first time near the outskirts of Kharkiv. The primary objective was to undermine morale, but this effort failed.
Simultaneously, both Ukraine and Russia deployed long-range weapons against targets on each other’s territory. Russia used drones in combination with ballistic and cruise missiles against the Defense-Industrial Base (DIB), energy infrastructure and civilian targets. At the beginning of 2026, Russia was equipping its Shahed drones with cluster munitions and mines to inflict greater damage on civilian targets and Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, yet it has failed to break public morale. The DIB is proving resilient in the face of sustained attacks. Here too, drones changed the face of war, but have not proved decisive.
Consequences for NATO and the EU
By the end of 2024, drones dominated the battlefield, and both NATO and the EU began to recognize that they represented a true revolution in warfare. Hedgehog 2025, a major exercise in Estonia involving 16,000 troops from 12 NATO countries, was designed in part to assess whether NATO forces were prepared for these new forms of warfare. They were not.
Unlike the static front in Ukraine, the alliance exercise assumed a limited maneuver war scenario. The opposing force consisted of approximately 10 Ukrainians equipped with their advanced Delta system, which provided a comprehensive picture of the battlefield and allowed them to direct their units effectively.
When British and Estonian units began maneuvering, they were immediately destroyed by Ukrainian drone specialists, some of whom had actual combat experience. The conclusion was sobering. Alliance military units had little understanding of the modern battlefield. The troops made insufficient use of concealment and ignored the key lesson from Ukraine − that anything visible will be destroyed.
Drones, combined with border fortifications and minefields, make it possible to force Russia into a static war.
Although NATO forces were confronted harshly with this reality, the new battlefield environment also offers opportunities for defense against potential Russian aggression. New technology favors the defender. Drones, combined with border fortifications and minefields, make it possible to force Russia into a static war.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are jointly developing the Baltic Defense Line, fortifications along their borders with Russia and Belarus designed to delay and disrupt potential incursions. This is crucial for buying time to bring in NATO reinforcements. While it strengthens deterrence by denial, it also reduces reliance on deterrence by punishment, including the potential use of nuclear weapons.
This is particularly significant at a time when United States President Donald Trump’s administration has cast doubt on its commitment to the collective defense clause enshrined in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump has indicated he is open to withdrawing his predecessor’s pledge not to station long-range U.S. weapons – such as cruise missiles, essential for striking deeper into Russia – in Europe.
Yet Ukraine’s drone revolution has demonstrated to Europeans that such capabilities can be jointly developed, manufactured or procured in cooperation with Ukraine, should Washington remain at a distance. The development of the Flamingo, a rocket-drone with a range of 3,000 kilometers, is one example. The Delta system, used in combination with European satellite networks such as Eutelsat/OneWeb, could also provide an alternative to heavy dependence on U.S. Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems.
The West is waking up
In 2025, the debate over the drone threat accelerated. In 10 countries, drones were observed flying over critical infrastructure, including airports. A major airspace violation in Poland in September 2025 led to NATO’s Operation Eastern Sentry, aimed at countering the Russian air threat and harmonizing member states’ responses. At the same time, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented the idea of Eastern Flank Watch, under which the EU − unlike NATO − could link financing directly to concrete projects.
Ms. von der Leyen proposed a “drone wall” built on the EU Drone Strategy 2.0 of November 2022, which envisaged a layered network of detection and interception systems. In October 2025, the European Defense Readiness Roadmap 2030 was presented, highlighting key initiatives such as Eastern Flank Watch, the renamed European Drone Defense Initiative (formerly the drone wall), the European Air Shield and the European Space Shield.
In February 2026, the European Commission introduced a new drone action plan focused on detection, protection against incoming units and the safeguarding of critical infrastructure. Member states were asked to test their 5G networks for early drone warnings and to integrate AI into warning systems. In this way, a network of more than 350,000 5G base stations could function as a vast radar system.
The goal is to take joint action with member states and, through targeted investments, build an independent European drone industry. These plans are to be further developed in close coordination with NATO.
Start-ups specializing in drone and counter-drone systems are now being established at high speed, many receiving EU subsidies. Ukraine’s vast experience has been extensively used. Most drones used by Ukraine are domestically produced. After the outbreak of the war, the number of companies in this sector rose from 41 in 2022 to 132 in 2023 and 183 in 2024. In 2025, an estimated 4.5 million drones were produced in Ukraine, more than 2 million of which were FPV drones. Remarkably, production has grown to such an extent that Ukraine has cautiously begun exporting drones. Export centers are being established in Europe for this purpose.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced in June 2025 that Ukraine was pursuing joint weapons production agreements with Canada, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Norway and the United Kingdom. In Denmark, a factory is being built to produce solid fuel for Ukraine’s long-range Flamingo cruise missile, in cooperation with its manufacturer, Fire Point.
In December 2025, the first joint venture, Quantum Frontline Industries, was established, bringing together the German drone producer Quantum Systems and the Ukrainian company Frontline Robotics. The collaboration focuses on the Linza strike and reconnaissance drone and the Zoom surveillance platform, both of which are already deployed at the front.
In February 2026, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the UK announced the Low-Cost Effectors & Autonomous Platforms initiative (LEAP), aimed at jointly manufacturing low-cost air defense systems and autonomous drones using Ukrainian expertise. This initiative is intended to strengthen NATO’s protective capabilities. That same month, it was also announced that under the Build with Ukraine initiative, four Ukrainian companies had signed an 800 million-euro joint venture with manufacturers in Denmark and Lithuania to jointly produce, among other things, drones. In addition, a Ukrainian company opened its first drone production facility in the UK.
Several European companies manufacture drones that are exported to Ukraine and subsequently deployed against targets inside Russia. One example is Destinus, a European conglomerate that builds drones for Ukraine in a factory in the Netherlands. This development was apparently so threatening to Russia that the Ministry of Defence published a list in April 2026 of drone manufacturers and facilities in Europe considered legitimate targets. Moreover, this action made it clear that the protection of those companies by EU and NATO member states against hybrid attacks such as sabotage must not be ignored.
The future: Counter-drone technologies
A race is underway between drones and counter-drone systems. There are various ways to detect and neutralize drones. This also includes relatively simple protective measures, such as placing nets over streets and objects, encasing armored vehicles and tanks in metal cages or equipping vehicles with electronic warfare systems. Additional counter-drone systems use radars, radio frequency analyzers, cameras or optical sensors, microphones or acoustic sensors, the jamming of radio frequencies and GPS spoofers.
Partly due to the success of the un-jammable fiber-optic spool-fed drones, significant attention is being given to the use of lasers. Problems, however, stem from elements beyond control − the lasers cannot be used in all weather conditions and they generate insufficient energy, only illuminating a target for less than a second. Miniaturization remains a major challenge as well. Despite these issues, progress has been made.
U.S.-based Raytheon Technologies developed the H4. It incorporates a 10-kilowatt high-energy laser (HEL) weapon system that protects against short-range aerial threats, and tracks and eliminates small- and medium-sized drone swarms. The U.S. Air Force will use it. The U.S. Army is using HEL for land forces, applying Raytheon’s technology for the Directed Energy Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD), a system currently being tested. The UK is developing the DragonFire laser-based system, which could enter service in 2027.
Read more on modern defense systems
- Rapid advancements in military tech
- Drones and asymmetric warfare in Ukraine and Israel
- Eyewitness to War: Ukraine’s tech hubs and digital Darwinism
AI plays an increasingly important role in all technological solutions, automatically identifying and destroying targets and deploying drone swarms. However, the large-scale introduction of AI also creates the possibility of unintended escalation. At the same time, extensive experimentation is taking place with mothership drones, in which large drones are equipped with multiple smaller drones. This significantly increases the range of FPV drones from 10-20 kilometers to much greater distances.
Drones represent a revolution in modern warfare, comparable to the introduction of the machine gun and the tank. In this sense, drones are once again a product of an industrial revolution − this time driven by data processing based on fast data connections, advanced microprocessors, 3D printing and robotization.
Yet, the devices have limited strategic value because, so far, their deployment has not been sufficient to achieve war objectives. By early 2026, the war in Ukraine remained largely static, but adaptation and endurance had become increasingly defining characteristics. For that reason, the drone revolution offers NATO and the EU good opportunities to repair their defenses relatively quickly, even without American support, through quick fixes.
Drones will play a dominant role on the battlefield until anti-drone systems become effective. The development of high-energy lasers is seen as one of the decisive developments in this regard.
Scenarios
Likely: Just-in-time drone manufacturing based on continual development
Governments, companies and research institutes will organize production capacity and research and development (R&D) in such a way as to account for the extremely short innovation cycles of drones (a matter of weeks), without which large-scale mass production would be pointless. This means that, in peacetime, production and R&D are structured so that in times of crisis or war, they can switch to mass production using the latest technology and insights.
Likely: Nearshoring and startups become defining traits in drone procurement
Governments favor start-ups in drone development and manufacturing because, unlike large established companies, they are often better positioned to rapidly develop and implement innovative solutions. A nearshoring solution is found to reduce dependence on China: Approximately 80 percent of the global supply chains for critical drone electronics are still Chinese.
Less likely: Alliance successfully manages transition to modern warfare
The armed forces of EU and NATO member states adapt their doctrines and training methods quickly and adequately to new technological developments. But Exercise Hedgehog 2025 demonstrated how difficult this is. Western military organizations often believe they can force an adversary to fight according to their preferred method of warfare through superior firepower and maneuver. Military conservatism often runs counter to the demands of the current era.
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