The Ukraine War is the Great Drone War No One Expected

Ukraine is Ahead of Russia in the Drone War: On April 16, Maj. Gen. Peter Boysen, Denmark’s commander in chief, said that the country is planning to send some of its soldiers to Ukraine so they can learn from Ukraine’s experience fighting Russia, reported Danish news services.

In response, Moscow has said that even though these Danish soldiers would be unarmed, they would still be legitimate military targets for Russian missile attacks.

“Facilities, including headquarters, training and education centers, as well as locations of military personnel and military equipment, both deep inside Ukrainian territory and on the front line, are a legitimate target for the Russian Armed Forces,” said the Russian Ambassador in Copenhagen, Vladimir Barbin. Moscow’s envoy to Denmark called Boysen’s decision a provocation and warned it would “drag Denmark deeper and deeper into the conflict in Ukraine.”

Boysen explained to state broadcaster TV 2 that the chief objective for sending unarmed Danish troops was to learn drone warfare.

“We’re sending some teams down to see what experiences the Ukrainians have had—first-hand,” Boysen said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Kyiv Independent.

Several NATO countries have trained Ukrainian forces abroad, but to date, there have been no official reports confirming the presence of foreign troops inside Ukraine for training purposes. The lessons-learned program is expected to begin as early as this summer, will be conducted at training centers in western Ukraine, and will not involve direct combat.

Drone War Rising in Ukraine

The Ukraine war is becoming increasingly pivotal because of the importance of long-range, deep-strike, and tactical battlefield drones.

“In the 42 years I have been in the Armed Forces, I have not experienced things moving as fast as they are right now,” Boysen said, referring to advances made in unmanned systems and the evolving combat tactics, all of which are being driven by Ukraine’s experience with drone warfare.

As a recent article in the New York Times details, “Drones now kill more soldiers and destroy more armored vehicles in Ukraine than all traditional weapons of war combined, including sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers and mortars, Ukrainian commanders and officials say.”

In the early days of the conflict, the number one killer on the battlefield was an artillery strike. As the Times points out, “The artillery gave soldiers a sense of impersonal danger—the dread that you could die any moment from the bad luck of a direct hit … The conflict now bears little resemblance to the war’s early battles, when Russian columns lumbered into towns and small bands of Ukrainian infantry moved quickly, using hit-and-run tactics to slow the larger enemy.

“But today most soldiers die or lose limbs to remote-controlled aircraft rigged with explosives, many of them lightly modified hobby models. Drone pilots, in the safety of bunkers or hidden positions in tree lines, attack with joysticks and video screens, often miles from the fighting.

“Speeding cars or trucks no longer provide protection from faster-flying drones. Soldiers hike for miles, ducking into cover, through drone-infested territory too dangerous for jeeps, armored personnel carriers or tanks. Soldiers say it has become strangely personal, as buzzing robots hunt specific cars or even individual soldiers.

“It is, they say, a feeling of a thousand snipers in the sky.”

Drones have also been responsible for massive losses of vehicles and other equipment. Of the 31 M1 Abrams tanks supplied to Ukraine from the US, 19 have been damaged, destroyed, or captured, and most of those occurrences were the result of drone strikes.

Transforming Modern Warfare

A growing number of military leaders are concluding that drones’ increasing importance—some would say dominance—in this conflict is changing the nature of modern warfare. Their significance goes far beyond the current conflict.

A survey of the military literature from those nations that are America’s most implacable enemies shows that those adversaries, including Iran, North Korea, and China, will emulate the battlefield tactics seen in Ukraine.

“The war is a mix of World War I and World War III—what could be a future war,” said NATO’s supreme allied commander for transformation, Adm. Pierre Vandier of France.

Just recently, NATO opened a joint training center with Ukrainian soldiers to develop new warfighting strategies utilizing AI, advanced analytics, and other machine-learning systems.

Admiral Vandier said understanding the impact of these new technologies is vital not just for the current war but also to understanding how what occurs on the battlefields in Ukraine can prepare NATO for future conflicts.

“A war is a learning process, and so NATO needs to learn from the war,” he added.

About the Author:

Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design.  Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.

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