“Slovyansk, Ukraine -- Europe is on edge after a series of unsettling drone incidents in the airspace of North Atlantic Treaty Organization members. Last weekend drones spied on a Belgian military base, Defense Minister Theo Francken said. Drones have also disrupted air traffic or been spotted near military sites and critical infrastructure in Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Estonia and the Czech Republic -- in addition to the Russian long-range drones that violated Poland's airspace in September.
Europe's response hasn't inspired confidence. Belgium's attempts to jam and shoot down the drones were ineffective. Britain and Germany realized a lack of legal authority could hinder the military or police from taking drones down. In Poland allies used missiles that cost $1 million or more against drones that cost around $10,000.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, drone warfare is evolving with astonishing speed and lethality. During my recent trip to the Donetsk region, drone makers, operators and experts repeatedly warned me that the West isn't adapting fast enough. These are the drone lessons they wish the West would learn:
-- Drones make battlefields nearly transparent. Ukrainians and Russians alike now assume they can be seen any time they cross the battlefield -- which also means they can be attacked.
Operationally, it's harder to catch the enemy by surprise. It's easier to interdict and harder to preserve the logistics that support troops at the front. Ground and aerial drones are part but not all of the solution, as they struggle to deliver heavy supplies like artillery and fuel. The drone threat can delay evacuations of the wounded, so combat medicine must evolve too.
-- Drones collect huge amounts of battlefield information, but the West needs better tools to analyze that data. Ukraine relies on a platform known as Delta, which functions like a military Google Maps: It gives everyone from ground-level units to top generals a real-time battlefield picture, including the locations of enemy and friendly troops, drones and other weapons.
This shared digital map facilitates rapid strikes on enemy targets. In Ukraine, it has "reduced targeting times from days to hours and minutes," says Isaac Flanagan, a cofounder of Zero Line, a nonprofit that works with international donors to support Ukrainian defense innovation. Precision strikes have become more than twice as lethal.
The West's process for identifying a target, assigning someone to go after it, and carrying out the strike is too centralized and too slow for the drone era, says Maria Lemberg, a member of the supervisory board of Aerorozvidka, the nonprofit that supported Delta's development.
-- The front is no longer a line. Drones have turned it into a "kill zone" of about 25 miles. Because forces can't move safely in big groups or vehicles, troops now move in small numbers.
Several soldiers sketched in my notebook a new geography of the battlefield, marking dots to represent Ukrainian and Russian positions intermingled within the kill zone. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute has dubbed this a "pointillist" battlefield.
Such warfare "is dispersed beyond anything that our forces were built to deal with," Mr. Kagan says. If the Russians invaded the Baltics, they'd be unlikely to send a huge column of tanks, which would be vulnerable to aerial attack, so instead they may send small clusters of infantry as they're doing in Ukraine. For the West, "even just identifying these targets is going to be a major challenge without having the kind of drone-reconnaissance complex" that Ukraine has built, Mr. Kagan says.
-- Training can't be one and done. Drone technology and tactics can become obsolete in months or weeks, so preparedness requires constant learning.
-- Cost is king. Ukrainians worry Western procurement doesn't yet reflect how the math favors plentiful cheap weapons over scarce and costly ones -- as the Poland example illustrates.
-- Tanks and armored vehicles need better protection. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has found an optimal way to protect tanks and armored vehicles from drones. They're erecting nets over roads or attaching metal cages to vehicles to imperfectly shield them. The side that figures out a reliable kinetic counter-drone defense will gain a big advantage: the ability to advance fast.
-- Don't rely on a "drone wall" for air defense. That's how Europeans describe their air-defense aspirations after Russia's drone incursion into Poland. It suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the threat.
Russia now regularly launches hundreds of long-range drones as it targets Ukrainian military industrial complex. Ukraine's air defense, layered over distance and altitude, includes a wide range of kinetic and electronic countermeasures. The idea is that if one defense fails, the next may succeed.
Now is the time to study how war is changing. British intelligence recently reported that North Korean soldiers are operating reconnaissance drones to support Russian attacks in Ukraine. Recent Russian and Chinese joint exercises have included drone and counter-drone elements. Russia is making Iranian-style long-range drones deadlier. If the West doesn't learn the lessons of drone warfare from Ukraine now, it may have to learn them the hard way later.
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Ms. Melchior is a London-based member of the Journal's editorial board.” [1]
1. The Lessons of Ukraine's Drone Warfare. Melchior, Jillian Kay. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 06 Nov 2025: A17.
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