Drones Are Powerful, but They Can't Single-Handedly Defend Europe

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Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Her new book, “ The Undersea War ,” is out later this year.

Credit where credit is due: Ukraine is slowly changing the course of the war following Russia’s 2022 invasion.

It’s doing this in many ways, but what has generated the most excitement is its clever and extensive use of drones. In fact, it has created so much admiration for its approach that in some quarters, drones are now being touted as Wunderwaffen for Europe’s NATO nations — the kind of weapon that can single-handedly transform a country’s defense.

They are not. But nor are they mere bit players.

The enthusiasm for drones is understandable. According to the Kyiv Post , on July 9 alone “Ukraine said it struck 14 Russian vessels overnight in the Sea of Azov, including 12 tankers allegedly belonging to Moscow’s sanctioned ‘shadow fleet.’ Ukraine’s drone commander said a total of 35 ships had been hit over the previous 96 hours, while Ukrainian forces also targeted 45 military sites in occupied Crimea and southern Ukraine.”

It’s as if Ukrainian drones are everywhere. And not only is Ukraine using them to hit Russian targets without causing devastating losses to human life the way, say, missiles would; it’s also able to do so at enormous distances.

Drones hit Russian shadow vessels in the Black Sea. They hit Russian shadow vessels in the Mediterranean. They hit Russia’s oil refineries. They hit Russia’s Baltic Sea oil terminals. They’re causing constant problems for the Russian military, and have hit Russia itself. Earlier this month they even struck an oil refinery in Siberia.

In fact, Ukraine’s drones have become such a success that they’re triggering increasingly loud demands for NATO’s European members to shift their focus to these mostly small and cheap weapons. Look at how drones have helped Ukraine shift the course of the war! Look at how much you can achieve at relatively small expense! Drones are the future! Our governments are behind the curve! That’s how the argument goes.

But while drones are indisputably part of the future of warfare, they’re also still experimental and lack clear rules of engagement.

What’s more, Russia also uses drones, which sometimes violate NATO airspace. Russian forces regularly sabotage the flight of Ukrainian drones, causing them to stray into NATO territory.

Of course, NATO members have drones too — and they plan to buy more. “Ukraine has really accelerated our technological development,” Vice Admiral Ewa Skoog Haslum, Sweden’s chief of joint operations, told me. “It has also made the public at large aware of drones. The Swedish armed forces, like armed forces elsewhere in NATO, are constantly exercising with and against drones. But sometimes a large or urgent situation has to occur for things to happen and develop rapidly. That’s what we’re seeing now.”

But these humble-yet-fierce weapons are not a Wunderwaffe .

“We should remember that what Ukraine has succeeded in doing … [is] to push the Russian Black Sea Fleet away from the western part of the Black Sea, which means that the Ukrainians can maintain their civilian maritime traffic,” noted Hans Granlund, a just-retired Swedish naval officer who served as defense attaché in Ukraine during the war’s early stages. “However, the Ukrainians have not managed to take control of the Black Sea themselves because they don’t have their own fleet.”

Most airborne drones resemble mosquitoes: They are small, they sting, they are disposable and easily replaceable, and they move in swarms. But stinging and crippling the other side is not the only duty of the armed forces.

Drones certainly don’t remove the need for ships, for example. In the Baltic Sea, NATO countries must be able to do more than just inflict damage on Russian vessels — they also have to transport troops and supplies to the Baltic countries and Finland. And that’s just in the maritime domain. Imagine fighting off a land invader primarily with drones. Sure, you might inflict painful damage on the aggressor, but drones alone won’t deliver victory.

To be sure, drones aren’t just attack weapons; they can perform logistical tasks as well. But they need to be part of a nation’s mix of weaponry — which is precisely why Ukraine uses a range of other weapons and keeps asking its allies for more. At the NATO summit in Ankara earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even got U.S. President Donald Trump to agree to allow Ukraine to manufacture U.S. Patriot missiles on license.

This month, the debate over what constitutes the right amount of drone use took a dramatic turn in Ukraine itself, when Zelenskyy dismissed popular Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, reportedly because he was at loggerheads with Ukraine’s Army Commander Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi. Fedorov had championed a highly extensive use of drones, while Syrskyi favors decidedly traditional warfare. It’s a sign of the times that a few days later, Zelenskyy dismissed Syrskyi too.

For most countries, the best solution will lie somewhere between Fedorov and Syrskyi. They also have to bear in mind that for every new weapon invented, the adversary develops one that can outperform it.

“New technology will come all the time; it’s going faster and faster,” explained Skoog Haslum. “A future in which we’re not seeing countermeasures against drones emerging on a larger scale is completely unthinkable. [High-Power Microwave weapons] and laser weapons that ‘only’ need energy as a charge are likely to be one of the more effective countermeasures. This is why, for example, frigates are indispensable in the naval domain. You can’t charge high-energy weapons just anywhere. Ships are absolutely excellent for this.”

But the growing belief in drones among some commentators and the wider public also creates a very real dilemma for policymakers and the armed forces, as they’re faced with a narrative that goes something like this: Ukraine has been able change its fortunes in this war by using drones that it made at home and on a shoestring budget to boot. Spending money on more traditional weaponry is therefore old-fashioned and a waste of taxpayer money.

That’s a dangerous narrative.

Military weaponry is growing more sophisticated and more interconnected by the day. Drones are an extremely useful part of the mix, but they too can be outflanked as technology continues to develop.

“Drones must be a natural part of our entire military system — as sensors, as weapons carriers, and as logistics systems,” said Skoog Haslum. “The more connectivity, digitalization and [artificial intelligence] are introduced, the more the systems can be shared. But we can’t mass-produce drones and put them in storage; then they will be obsolete when they need to be used. That’s the rapid development of technology.”

Good stewardship of taxpayer money should always be a public official’s first commandment. But if we create a debate in which exaggerated faith in drones makes policymakers reluctant to justify legitimate defense needs, there’s only one winner: Russia.