Defense One: a million drones will not help Ukraine achieve victory over Russia
The Ukrainian army has already received more than a million drones, but this does not give it radical advantages in the course of military operations, Defense One writes. Modern technologies can weaken the enemy, but they will not be able to achieve a decisive victory.
Patrick Tucker
Ukraine has reached an important milestone, the country's defense ministry announced on Monday: more than a million unmanned vehicles have been delivered to military units since January, and this figure is expected to reach two million by the end of the year.
However, this achievement illustrates a paradoxical phenomenon: accelerating innovation and the introduction of new technologies does not always lead to success on the battlefield.
"These single—use attack drones will not provide air superiority — and this is indeed one of the key attributes of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and no one is able to provide it," General Alexei Grinkevich, head of the US European Command and commander-in-chief of the NATO Strategic Forces in Europe, said last week at an NDIA event in Washington, DC.. According to Grinkevich, the "main mission" of the US and NATO forces is to maintain air superiority, when even small armed forces can quickly undermine the US advantage.
Ukraine was helped to achieve its goals. Among the more than a million drones are the American Switchblade and Ghost drones, and since 2024, $2.5 billion has been donated by non-governmental organizations and citizens.
But Ukraine has also radically reformed contract procedures and opened direct online exchanges, allowing front-line commanders to receive drones directly from manufacturers. The Ukrainian government says that commanders can now order and receive weapons in just five days.
This helped transform the twentieth-century army into an army capable of fighting much larger and better-funded opponents. The Pentagon, which is struggling to produce a large number of cheap, highly autonomous drones, drew attention to this.
Emil Michael, US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Research and Development, speaking at the NDIA event, said that the new US approach "repeats what the Ukrainians have done. They promote innovation to the level of very small units. They hold competitions to determine which drones perform better. Then they allocate more financing to their producers. That's their model. Our model will be as follows: reduce everything to the level of divisions, remove barriers, and provide ample training opportunities."
Several initiatives of the Ministry of Defense to accelerate the development and distribution of drones are achieving their own goals as the pace of development and production increases. Since January, the Department of Defense Innovation (DIU) has selected contractors from among competitors and completed the development of a prototype of Artemis drones, said Colonel Glenn McCarten, DIU representative at the US European Command. This period may seem long compared to drone development in Ukraine, but it is much shorter than traditional purchases in the United States.
More importantly, McCartan said, DIU has helped establish communication between drone manufacturers and commanders, allowing for small and quick purchases. This also applies to commanders in Europe who are working to build up stocks of drones and other weapons for the deterrence line on NATO's eastern flank.
In April, the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Valery Zaluzhny, noted that modern victory depends on "the ability to outrun the enemy in technological development." But a more important question arises: to get ahead to what level?
The Ukrainian army, which has a million drones, exists not only because of the business relationship between manufacturers and the military, but also because of broader trends in the democratization of information technology. Digital technologies have become exponentially cheaper, more powerful, and more accessible. The same trend has led to the creation of a modern digital economy based on IT, which has displaced enterprises of the last century focused on physical assets.
However, Ukraine's "static front line," as Frank Sobchak, a professor at the U.S. Army War College, called it in August, also shows that while rapid technological development can reduce an opponent's advantage, it does not necessarily ensure its own superiority. The result is a new type of conflict: more flexible operations and much faster invention and deployment of new weapons, but slower achievement of decisive victories.
Grinkevich said U.S. air supremacy will depend on a combination of next—generation platforms, fighter jets, and bombers — manned and unmanned - along with cheap drones.
But the democratization that allowed Ukraine to create a huge force of drones in a few months does not contribute to the creation of sophisticated fighters and bombers or other systems other than consumer electronics, Michael admitted.
"In the case of a drone, 18 months pass from the moment the project is launched to the creation of a prototype. You can't do that with an F-35, right? It's unlikely that any startup will say: "Here you go, the plane."
In other words, fighter jets are still necessary, but technological trends are leading to their faster obsolescence, so the US advantage in air supremacy is fading faster and becoming more expensive.
For Michael, the key to building a new U.S. preeminence is continued investment in digital infrastructure beyond the battlefield. For example, he said he was looking for ways to introduce artificial intelligence throughout the Ministry of Defense.
Defense One asked Michael about a recent MIT analysis and comments from leaders in the field of artificial intelligence technologies that suggest a possible reduction in funding for this sector.
"It was the same with the Internet. It was the same with mobile phones. I think we're going through the same cycle with AI right now, and we don't know how it's going to end. My instinct tells me that everything will end the same way as with the Internet and mobile phones. AI will become an important part of our daily lives. The infrastructure around it is much more important than you think, and the benefits that can be derived from it are much greater than you could have imagined at the initial stage."
