The West isn’t cranking out drones like Ukraine and Russia, but that may be the right call.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made drones a defining weapon of modern war, but analysts warn the West shouldn’t rush to copy Kyiv and Moscow’s all-in approach.
In Ukraine, low-cost drones have upended the battlefield — spotting enemy troops, foiling maneuvers, and wrecking tanks with gear sometimes worth just a few hundred dollars.
Russia and Ukraine are both betting big on this inexpensive technology. Ukraine said that it made 2.2 million drones last year and aims to make 4 million this year, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said in April that Russia made more than 1.5 million drones last year. And there are plans to expand that.
The West is watching closely. NATO militaries are implementing drone warfare training, and defense firms are designing new systems modeled on Ukraine’s battlefield successes. But warfare experts caution that simply copying what the armies fighting the Ukraine war are doing would be shortsighted.
Rapid shifts in drone technology and the swift emergence of countermeasures might make the drones of today obsolete tomorrow. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that drones will play the same role in the future. Waiting before cranking out millions is perhaps the better choice for Western militaries, analysts say.Drone technology is moving fast
Front-line soldiers and Western companies that have gear in Ukraine have observed that drone tech quickly becomes worthless as new counter-drone tech hits the battlefield.
A 10-year-old iPhone « can still do the basic stuff », Mauro Gilli, a senior researcher in military technology at ETH Zurich, told Business Insider, but a drone that can be easily neutralized by enemy forces has little value.
Mass-producing drone technology too soon risks leaving militaries with stockpiles of gear that quickly lose value as technology and countermeasures evolve. Refitting outdated systems often creates more problems than starting fresh.
Problems « cascade, and then you end up having more problems than if you had waited and created something from scratch », Gilli explained.
Ulrike Franke, a drone expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Western militaries may be tempted to copy Ukraine by stockpiling drones, but she cautioned that drones are different from traditional weapons, noting that their usefulness can vanish almost overnight.
