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Ukraine – Winning The Drone War
Who is winning the drone war in Ukraine?
Some say Ukraine:
- Elon Musk’s Starlink helping Ukraine to win the drone war – Telegraph, Mar 18 2022
- Ukraine Is Beating Russia in the Drone War – Newsweek, Aug 22 2023
- Ukraine's underdogs are outfoxing archaic Russia with drone warfare – Sky News, Sep 22 2023
- More Russian ships sunk: The West and Ukraine are winning the missile-and-drone war – Telegraph, May 21 2024
- Shoddy Russian workmanship is letting Ukraine win the drone war – Telegraph, Jul 6 2024
- Ukrainian Drone War Shakes Up Russian Society – Jamestown, Oct 16 2024
- Ukraine is winning the drone start-up war (archived) – Financial Times, Apr 10 2025
- Ukraine: Putin humiliated as Ukrainian drone attacks shut down Moscow airports – Express, May 21 2025
- Russia Accuses Ukraine of Massive Drone Attacks Amid Peace Talks – Dev Discourse, May 23 2024
- Ukraine’s drones disrupt Russia with airport closures, internet blackouts (archived) – Washington Post, May 24 2025
Others say Russia:
I earlier had agreed with Eric Schmidt's piece in Foreign Affairs linked above. Russia was set to out-innovate and outproduce Ukraine and its supporters in the drone war by a large margin. It has now done so.
In response to Kiza@21,
The most effective option in Ukraine’s drone strategy, imo, has been to set up mobile drone centers in Russia itself — a van, a few computer terminals, civilian drone components, explosive precursors and small cells of willing operators. There is a limit to how much internal security can be strengthened before it creates discomfort for the population and an argument could be made that with such a large territory and target rich environment as Russia has, comprehensively counteracting this internal drone terrorism is unrealistic. Turning the civilian technological components required for the creation of mobile launch centers into a strictly controlled substance might seem an attractive option to some, but as with any controlled substance, I would expect black markets to emerge that in theory could be even harder to control. At the end of the day, although the strategy itself continues to be effective, its impact both politically as well as on the conflict itself is seen as negligible, to where overreacting in trying to resolve it is treated as potentially more detrimental, perhaps playing into enemy hands. My reason for brainstorming about this, is that I would expect drone terrorism to become the norm well outside the Ukrainian conflict, and would assume that these and similar discussions about strategies to counteract it will take place in the future in other parts of the world, potentially leading to draconian laws regarding what we currently view as harmless civilian tech.
When it comes to drones launched from Ukraine or elsewhere, as well as Ukrainian use of drones as weapons on the line of contact, from what I can tell, their effectiveness has only steadily decreased and continues to do so. Once a cross-border launch vector has been exploited, the Russians have been adept at plugging the gap with AA, and in a sense, these cross-border raids are helping the Russians map the weak spots in their air defenses. That isn’t to say Russia has infinite AA systems just sitting in storage, able but unwilling to fully protect their airspace, but as their stocks of air defenses are not being depleted but are instead growing, and as they continue to perfect their technology now also with drones in mind, if a chunk of a hostile Ukrainian state does remain, from which drone swarms continue to get launched at Russia, I would not expect it to be a significant headache at least in that respect, not to mention that this territory would double up as a perpetually burning testing ground for Russian retaliatory strikes.
While on the front, drones seem to have found their niche as more of a battlefield utility tool. They don’t hold a candle to long-range artillery in preparing the ground for an attack, and drones alone are incapable of carrying out a defense of a position. Their primarily utility is in attriting supply-lines, troops and vehicles on the move, fortified positions, as well as mopping up uncertain casualties, troops and equipment that’s otherwise out of reach, which if left untouched may or may not return to combat in the future. Naturally, they are also indispensable as battlefield scouts and surveillance, confirming kills, selecting targets and providing real-time tactical information. While effective drone integration would raise the combat effectiveness of any military, drones alone do not make an effective fighting force and over-reliance on this technology, as it currently stands, would make a military weaker in the fields and operations where drones, for objective reasons, underperform over conventional systems and will continue to do so.
We’re also seeing a handful of other autonomous combat platforms being utilized, that one could include in the drone category — remote-controlled, semi- or fully-autonomous land and sea vehicles — whose primarily utility is in performing the function of a human operated vehicle without placing the operator in danger and, potentially, greater ease of deployment and force multiplication. While we’re not quite there yet, I’d argue that an increasing prevalence of such systems in conflict zones would put additional emphasis on industrial production and the validity of industrial warfare as a cornerstone of modern warfighting doctrine. If we take such hypothetical future developments into the calculation of “winning a drone war” we’re talking about an industrial victory, which isn’t just a matter of tech, but also of cheap and plentiful energy and resources, as well as an economics policy that supports their effective utilization. In the case of Ukraine and its Western sponsors, they don’t strike me as being well-situated to exploit such a strategy, unless they are somehow able to find the support of a sufficient number of ROW countries whose industrial and resource base hasn’t been depleted, and who’re willing to risk having their labor be used against them in the future. Else, it’s a tricky pivot to make at this stage of global development.
Posted by: Skiffer | May 24 2025 20:05 utc | 49
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