The modern battlefield is being reshaped by the rise of drone swarms — coordinated groups of unmanned aerial vehicles that can overwhelm defenses, strike with precision, and change the balance of power in modern conflicts, evidenced in the Russia-Ukraine war.
“The war has reached another inflection point in how drones are being used, both at the front line and in the strike campaigns being conducted by Russia and Ukraine,” Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The New York Times.
What was once a futuristic concept is now an urgent reality in Ukraine, where cutting-edge software and mass production are fueling an arms race in the skies — and Ukraine is struggling to keep up with Russia’s new-age blitzkrieg.
“They started from maybe hundreds a month, then 2,000 to 3,000 a month in the first quarter of this year, now with 5,000 to 6,000 a month,” Ukraine’s government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies analyst Mykola Bielieskov told the Times.
“For sure, more of them are going to get through our air defenses.
“So they fly higher. They fly in waves or in packs; it depends how they are programmed. So basically it’s about the scale. It’s about changes in Russian tactics. It’s about changes in guidance.”
The “drone swarm strike engine” has brought about a “very big moment” in world history, Lorenz Meier, CEO of vehicle software company Auterion, told the Financial Times.
Global militaries “know that it will saturate their defenses,” according to Meier, who added they were “all talking about swarming; they are all wary of swarming.”
Not only are drone swarms a potentially overwhelming force multiplier, but also they can come with just a “single human” at the controls.
“The whole idea of swarms is that you are force multiplying,” Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of tech security company Helsing, told FT. “You’re leveraging the single human.”
On the front lines of Ukraine, swarming tactics are already in action at a massive scale. When Russia introduced Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones in 2022, its largest strike involved 43 launched in a single night. Three years later, that number has multiplied nearly twentyfold. Earlier this month, Moscow unleashed more than 800 exploding drones and decoys in a single assault.
The leap is the result of a Kremlin-backed surge in production. Under orders from President Vladimir Putin, Russia has established two major facilities dedicated to assembling attack drones domestically, while enlisting regional governments, factories, and even high school students to boost output. Smaller tactical drones — vital for frontline reconnaissance and targeting — are also being manufactured in huge numbers.
Ukraine’s early advantage in drone warfare “had diminished in recent months,” when Kyiv successfully deployed nimble commercial drones and Western-supplied systems to blunt Russian advances, according to Kofman. Now, Ukrainian defenses face waves of low-cost, expendable drones designed to saturate air defense systems and expose vulnerabilities.
The strategic implications are profound. Swarm technology lets militaries mount coordinated assaults with relatively cheap hardware, potentially overwhelming expensive missile-defense systems. As the cost curve shifts, analysts warn that the side able to produce drones fastest — and coordinate them most effectively — could seize a decisive edge.
For Ukraine, that means confronting a new phase of the war, one defined not just by artillery and tanks, but also by aerial swarms of machines guided by algorithms. For the rest of the world, the conflict offers a stark preview of how warfare may unfold in future theaters, from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.
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