Russian drones entered Polish airspace early on Wednesday, leading NATO aircraft to shoot them down. This incident was the first time that NATO forces had to directly engage Russian aircraft in the organization’s history.
The Ukraine war has seen the widespread adoption of drones from both sides. Russian drones have been hammering Ukrainian cities for years. Ukraine has fought back with its own drone forces in strikes such as Operation Spider Web in June, when Ukrainian drones entered deep into Russia and struck vital military installations in their enemy’s heartland.
Outside of the flashy operations that splash the headlines of Western media occasionally, the day-to-day tactical use of drones has also dramatically increased. In 2024 alone, the Ukrainian military deployed over 1.5 million drones. Meanwhile, Russia utilized 4 million drones in the same period.
Drone combat in the war in Ukraine has accelerated an international drone arms race. Samuel Bendett, a Russian defense technology expert at the Center for Naval Analyses, told the Washington Examiner, “A lot of what we see in Ukraine will be seen in practice in other conflicts as well.”
Ukraine’s Drone War Revolution
The most significant change in the use of combat drones in Ukraine has been in the scale and cost of each system. Before the war began, the leading militaries focused on larger, expensive, medium to long-range models. The United States’ MQ-1 Predator drone is one example of this class of equipment.
Preceding the outbreak of hostilities, both Ukraine and Russia obtained these types of drones. Ukraine purchased the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone system, developed for use against Kurdish militias in Iraq and Syria. Russia purchased Iranian Shahed “kamikaze drones” and developed its own systems, like the Kronshtadt Orion.
In the opening months of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Bayraktar TB2 drone system enabled the Ukrainian military to destroy large Russian columns of equipment. Its fame led to it becoming a viral meme among Ukrainians and their supporters abroad.
By the summer of 2022, systems like the Bayraktar TB2 became less effective as air defenses increased and commanders began spreading their forces apart. Both sides began to use small commercial drones at the small-unit level, as troops purchased their own equipment.
At first, drones were used to scout and drop makeshift bombs onto enemy troops’ heads. Soon, these initial ad hoc systems became more formalized as commercial drone systems proved themselves able to be combat-effective.
Samuel Bendett told the Washington Examiner, “Commercial technology has enabled even simple, cheap drones to have sophisticated cameras, sophisticated sensors, sophisticated onboard computers like Raspberry Pi.”
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First-person view drones began to be widely used, allowing their pilots to use VR goggles to fly as if they were in the drone. These FPV drones enable high-speed precision strikes. As counter-UAV technology has developed, drones using fiber-optic cables have also been deployed to prevent jamming.
Now, drones are ubiquitous on the front lines. Experts estimate that drones cause anywhere from 70 to 80% of casualties in the Ukraine war. The proven battlefield effectiveness of small, cheap, short-range systems in Ukraine has reverberated across the globe.
Drones on the international stage
The world’s two premier military powers, the United States and China, have taken notice of the drone-dominated front lines of Ukraine. Chinese drone technology has been involved in the conflict since Day One.
China is the world’s leading drone manufacturer. One firm, DJI, controls over 90% of the global commercial market, according to experts at MIT. As a consequence, both Ukrainian and Russian forces have relied on Chinese drones and parts for their troops.
But China has not been a neutral player in the conflict. In May, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy announced that the People’s Republic had stopped selling DJI’s Mavic drones to Kyiv and other European countries, while continuing the product’s sale to Russia. Mavic drones are used for reconnaissance in Ukraine’s battlefields.
Ukraine’s intelligence services estimate that 80% of critical electronics for Russian drones comes from China. Moreover, Chinese military officers have been touring the Russian front lines to study the war for themselves.
China is aware of the importance of drones in any future military conflicts. The United States, meanwhile, is unprepared, according to a recent report by the Center for a New American Security.
The report reads, “Without deep magazines of substantially enhanced counter-drone capabilities, the United States risks having its distributed warfighting strategies overwhelmed by massed Chinese drone attacks, and the United States could lose a war over Taiwan.”
The Pentagon is aware of these issues and is working to close the gap. The Department of War created a new task force in August to accelerate counter-drone development.
Congress has also taken note of the gap between Chinese and American drone capabilities. Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) introduced the SkyFoundry Act to establish a facility capable of developing and producing one million drones annually.
His office told the Washington Examiner, “Russia and China are producing millions of [drones], while the United States has no capacity to build at scale. China alone poured nearly $30 billion into drone production last year and can field $1000 drones that neutralize multimillion-dollar assets. That cost imbalance is unsustainable.”
While cheap and easily manufactured drones are key to military dominance, artificial intelligence is also beginning to play a major role in drone technology. Already, AI-enabled drone swarms have entered the Ukrainian battlefield.
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AI could also prove vital for drone-to-drone interception and in the use of combat collaborative aircraft. The American defense company Anduril, founded by the creator of the Oculus VR headset, announced the Fury unmanned fighter jet in May. The aircraft would operate in a swarm directed by a manned fighter jet working as a “quarterback,” according to 60 Minutes.
For the time being, the United States is lagging behind China in drone development and manufacturing. The war in Ukraine shows how critical that gap could be.