How drones change everything, and nothing Meduza’s in-depth examination of Russian–Ukrainian unmanned warfare and where it’s leading this bloody conflict
Ukraine’s recent sabotage operations against Russian long-range and strategic aviation bases, known as Operation Spiderweb, have renewed international focus on the capabilities of small kamikaze drones. In fact, the attacks on distant Russian airfields demonstrate what is already well-known on Ukraine’s battlefields, where drones long ago emerged as principal combat assets. The mass deployment of these weapons has not only generated new tactical doctrines but also fundamentally altered the strategic paradigm of this war of attrition. Both sides now rely less on artillery — likely hoarding scarce shells, especially Ukraine — and use fewer armored vehicles. This is particularly significant, considering that vehicle deficits previously plagued both Russia and Ukraine.
Today, both armies are devising methods and tactics that enable them to conserve manpower more efficiently while expending drones without hesitation. Yet drones have not altered the fundamental dynamics of combat operations. Rapid troop advances remain as impossible as ever, and penetrating enemy defenses deeply has become far more difficult. Instead, UAVs and hopes for their game-changing power could prolong the war in Ukraine for years to come, grinding on in stalemate.
Part 1: How advances in UAV technology led to drones’ dominance at the front lines
- The ‘Mavics’ and ‘Orlans’ phase
- The FPV drones, ‘Baga Yaga’ multicopterers, and guided bombs phase
- The ‘fiber optics’ and ‘Drone Line’ phase
Part 2: Drone countermeasures, mounting attacks behind enemy lines, and UAV endgame scenarios
- How do you fight against drones? Passive methods and active methods
- The war behind enemy lines: ‘Gerans’ versus ‘Liutyis’
- Is Ukraine losing the drone war?
How advances in UAV technology led to drones’ dominance at the front lines
At the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, both sides viewed drones as an important but auxiliary tool for reconnaissance and strikes behind enemy lines. When the conflict proved protracted and prewar weapons doctrines failed, both Russian and Ukrainian forces — often at the grassroots level rather than the high command — simultaneously reached several conclusions:
- Forces needed massive, low-cost, and easily scalable reconnaissance and strike capabilities for forward units. When configured for offensive operations, these tools had to be highly accurate. The problem was that old concepts proved poorly applicable in real warfare. Without proper reconnaissance and target designation, artillery ammunition (initially the armies’ primary means of striking targets) was expended at rates exceeding global manufacturing capacity. Ukraine’s battlefields from 2022 are covered with craters from thousands of shells, most of which inflicted no enemy damage.
- Using the new weapons also demanded freedom from extended command chains where senior leaders have ultimate authorization. The war’s opening months demonstrated that slow-moving approval chains precluded strikes against mobile targets.
- Military planners sought cost-effective, mass-producible precision strike systems that could hit targets not only at the front but also behind enemy lines at typical artillery ranges of 10–25 kilometers (roughly 6–15 miles).
- These systems required operators who could be trained rapidly and then deployed in ways that concealed them from enemy strikes more effectively than artillery crews.
- These weapons also needed flexibility to overcome typical countermeasures.
- Military planners soon realized they needed another weapon class: cost-effective cruise missile equivalents for deep strikes behind enemy lines. Ukraine lacked cruise missiles from the start of the war, and Russia quickly grasped that its stockpiles and production capabilities would be insufficient to sustain prolonged, systematic attacks.
Solutions to these challenges show parallels to biological evolutionary processes: almost all technologies currently in use predate Russia’s full-scale invasion. Some of these weapons had already demonstrated their usefulness in other wars, from Azerbaijan’s offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh to ISIS’s survival efforts under airstrikes by the international coalition.
When Russia and Ukraine found themselves evenly matched, “environmental pressures” reached their apex and triggered a focused and unforgiving race to find the cheap and easy weapons described above.
The pressure affected the Russian army most in the opening months of the war, when Moscow lost its numerical advantage to a rapidly mobilized Ukraine and to troop losses that included soldiers terminating their service contracts.
Russia also quickly lost what experts assumed would be its main trump card: air supremacy. Despite destroying a significant portion of Ukraine’s air defense systems in its initial strikes, the Russian Aerospace Forces lost nearly a dozen modern fighters and bombers in the invasion’s first two weeks. At this rate, the Air Force would have lost its combat effectiveness within a year. As a result, Russian warplanes stopped flying beyond the front line. By the year’s end, they avoided the front entirely.
Ukraine has also been forced to reassess its views on military technology. The first weapons to go were large strike drones like the Turkish Bayraktar (and their Russian equivalents), which failed in conditions of saturated medium-range air defenses. In the war’s first months, Ukraine lost almost all its Turkish-supplied Bayraktars.
Where Russia and Ukraine found promising military concepts, their development sparked rapid evolution in equipment and tactics that changed the course of the war. To enable this transformation, Russia had to restructure aspects of its military. Before the invasion, the development of new equipment was bogged down in bureaucracy. Defense manufacturers complained about unrealistic technical requirements and the Defense Ministry’s relentless demands for modifications to prototypes. However, during the war in Ukraine, military leaders proved ready to adopt even clearly unfinished models (especially with drones) and upgrade them in the field. This has enabled the Russian army to outpace Ukraine’s forces in several key technical areas. However, inherent problems of bureaucracy and corruption still mar Russia’s efforts to evolve militarily.
In their arms race, both Russia and Ukraine are dependent on China, the world’s undisputed leader in drone production. Officially, Beijing has banned the sale of weapons to both countries, along with any components that could be used for weapons production. In reality, Moscow and Kyiv use Chinese parts to build millions of drones, affording Beijing the theoretical power to shape the war’s outcome, which it might already be exercising.
The ‘Mavics’ and ‘Orlans’ phase
After Russian proxy forces seized part of the Donbas in 2014, Ukrainian soldiers actively used commercial Chinese-made quadcopters (particularly DJI’s “Mavic” series). The Moscow-backed “people’s militias” in Donetsk and Luhansk employed the same technology. Both sides used the drones mainly for reconnaissance.
Meanwhile, Russia was developing its own doctrine for patrol drones coordinated with air power and artillery through combat testing in Syria. At the time, Russia’s primary military drones were the “Orlan” series. The operational framework was fundamentally different from Ukraine’s approach: Russian drones had greater range and flight duration. But drone operators answered only to high command and artillery officers, while operators in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and Donbas “people’s militias” could deploy their quadcopters to support front-line units directly. Target data collected by these reconnaissance units reached artillery crews quickly through electronic command systems developed both domestically and in the West.
These earlier drone approaches had drawbacks. Mavics are expensive and sensitive to electronic warfare systems. Parts of their control systems rely on civilian satellite receivers, making them relatively easy to jam. Similar vulnerabilities exist with Mavics’ radio control on manufacturer-locked frequencies. Additionally, DJI equips its drones with position-tracking features (Drone Remote ID) that compromise military operations.
Russian technical teams were the first to resolve this vulnerability, developing “firmware 1001” to modify most DJI drones. The update enables changes to the radio frequency, cancels manufacturer-locked no-fly zones, enhances GPS-free flight capabilities, and disables Drone Remote ID. The Ukrainian Armed Forces quickly replicated the firmware. Throughout the first year of the war, the number of commercial quadcopters used by both sides grew rapidly, mainly thanks to assistance from volunteers.
Control of Russia's long-range “Orlan-10” and “Orlan-30” reconnaissance drones was bottlenecked in senior command structures. This arrangement existed because of earlier UAV doctrine and Russia’s relatively small arsenal. Additionally, poor optics (some drones were outfitted with cheap Canon DSLR cameras) hampered effective surveillance, and the large, relatively scarce Orlans were vulnerable to enemy air defenses.
In 2022, the Russian military was unable to monitor the entire battlefront and all its adjacent rear areas. The lack of intelligence data allowed Ukraine to mass forces in the Kharkiv region and launch a surprise counteroffensive that drove Russian troops from northeastern Ukraine, albeit at a heavy cost to Kyiv. Similarly, gaps in Ukraine’s intelligence about troop movements behind enemy lines caused the army to miss Russia’s withdrawal from the western bank of the Dnipro in November 2022 and Wagner Group’s massive buildup near Bakhmut in early winter.
The proliferation of unmanned systems — both frontline quadcopters and long-range fixed-wing UAVs with upgraded capabilities — gradually rendered front-line positions and adjacent areas completely visible to reconnaissance operations. Additionally, linking drones to strike weapons in integrated systems dramatically shortened the time between target acquisition and attack, altering the course of the war. It is no longer possible to mass forces for major offensives or establish large defensive strongholds. Since mid-2023 (barring a few notable successes and failures), both sides have used relatively small infantry groups at the front, backed by artillery and drone operators positioned well behind the lines.
The typical distance between opposing forces has grown dramatically. For example, in 2022, the Ukrainian military regularly attacked Russian armored vehicles with anti-tank missile systems from distances of a couple of kilometers or less. Today, however, a “gray zone” of five kilometers (about three miles) or more separates the two sides. Successful attacks require crossing this area under enemy fire. Under these conditions, in early 2023, Wagner Group mercenaries pioneered tactics using small and ultra-small infantry assault teams. Their main task was to approach enemy positions in stealth, usually at dawn, dusk, or in bad weather, when UAV visual and thermal cameras struggle. This tactic then gradually spread to both armies.
Pairing reconnaissance drones with artillery proved effective, especially with expensive precision-guided rounds. By 2023, however, both sides began experiencing ordnance shortages, necessitating another rapid evolution: armies increasingly integrated strike capabilities into UAV systems.
Arming drones was not new when the tactic became conventional in the Russia–Ukraine war. ISIS fighters dropped small bombs from drones in the mid-2010s. Years before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Ukrainian military and militia forces in the Donbas also experimented with such attacks. But in 2023, relying largely on modified Mavics, Moscow and Kyiv adopted widespread use of bomb-carrying UAVs. Dropping grenades worked well against infantry (including small assault teams like those Wagner Group threw at Bakhmut) but proved less effective against armored vehicles. Mavics armed with grenades mainly targeted already-disabled armor, finishing it off to prevent enemy recovery and repair.
Russian forces also began a large-scale deployment of “Lancet” loitering munitions against enemy armor and artillery. This followed Azerbaijan’s successful drone strikes in the 2020 Karabakh war using Israeli-made IAI Harop UAVs. While Russia adopted the Lancet in the late 2010s and tested it in Syria, mass production began only after February 2022.
In Ukraine, these weapons were first limited to select airborne and special forces units, though other units received them by late 2023. Russia relied significantly on Lancets to repel Ukraine’s summer 2023 counteroffensive.
The main drawbacks of attack drones were their relative scarcity and inconsistent accuracy, especially when operated at long ranges. Radio-controlled drone guidance is only possible when there is a direct line of sight to the antenna; the higher a drone flies, the farther it can maintain contact. During the final approach to ground targets, maintaining control becomes difficult. These guidance obstacles would shape the next phase of the drone war in Ukraine.
The FPV drones, ‘Baba Yaga’ multicopterers, and guided bombs phase
Homemade first-person-view drones (the same ones civilians use for sports and racing) were used sporadically in multiple conflicts throughout the 2010s. ISIS deployed them against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — now Syria’s ruling faction — struck Russia’s Khmeimim base with improvised UAVs as early as 2017. By early 2023, Russia and Ukraine had developed their own kamikaze drone models, thanks largely to enthusiasts’ efforts. Within a few months, these weapons had become the dominant strike tool across almost every battlefield role at the front and in nearby areas. Today, these same drones are used in attacks on strategic targets thousands of miles behind enemy lines.
The key advantage of FPV drones over industrially produced military loitering munitions is their exceptional cost-effectiveness and design flexibility. Using off-the-shelf components (mostly sourced from China), operators can build drones with varying ranges, payloads, and control systems for just a few hundred dollars. Munitions for these systems are also exceptionally cheap and readily available. Operators typically use different kinds of powerful grenades (shaped-charge for armor, fragmentation for personnel, and thermobaric for fortifications) designed for the multi-use RPG-7 anti-tank weapon system.
Low costs and readily available parts have enabled the dramatic scaling up of production, allowing both Russia and Ukraine to launch more than a million drones per year.
The main drawback of FPV drones compared to commercial quadcopters is that most lack built-in flight assistance systems and are much harder to operate. They also become difficult to control near the ground at long ranges, where they lose contact with the transmitting antenna, just like military loitering munitions.
Over-simplified, cost-reduced drone models are vulnerable to electronic warfare countermeasures — sometimes as little as a small handheld jammer. Cheaper drones are also detectable by radio frequency scanners, alerting enemy troops and giving them time to take cover. In other words, cutting costs and simplifying designs to enable mass production can backfire, giving the enemy an advantage. Soldiers using Russia’s most mass-produced FPV drone — the VT-40, manufactured under a large Defense Ministry contract — have complained through milbloggers that the system can’t switch radio frequencies when being jammed, despite the manufacturer’s claims that it can. Operators also report design flaws in the detonators that risk explosions before the drone even launches.
Nevertheless, the technology is flexible and keeps advancing, preventing the emergence of dependable countermeasures against kamikaze drones. While front-line reports from both sides indicate that drone effectiveness sometimes falters (due to quality issues in specific batches or the introduction of new jamming systems), these systems prevail through sheer numbers, rapid innovation, and tactical refinements.
These developments have undermined the safety of men and materiel not only at the front but also miles behind the lines. Both Russian and Ukrainian soldiers often must cover the last few miles to the front (and back) on foot, braving potential drone strikes. This has made offensive operations incredibly costly, and similar challenges confront defensive strongholds. A few dozen drones can now destroy even a fortified, dug-in position, and armies must sometimes turn to cargo drones for resupply.
Both sides also acquired powerful air-launched weapons that can be deployed without entering the range of most air defenses. Since 2023, Russian warplanes have increasingly employed glide bombs of varying sizes, equipped with guidance kits. These munitions are released tens of kilometers from targets, with ranges steadily increasing. This has rendered obsolete many of the fortifications Ukrainian troops built against FPV drones. This combination of kamikaze drones, glide bombs, and drone-guided artillery enables Russian forces to maintain their advance despite sustaining losses from Ukrainian UAV attacks.
Ukraine’s Air Force also utilizes precision-guided glide munitions, which it receives from Western allies; however, it uses far fewer than Russia, as it lacks both the necessary bombs and the planes to deliver them.
However, the Ukrainian Armed Forces maintain an edge in heavy multicopter drones. Their primary model, the “Valkyrie” (Russian soldiers call it “Baba Yaga”), is based on a Chinese-made farming drone. Ukrainian soldiers and supporting volunteers have experimented with these systems since the late 2010s.
These drones originally served two main purposes: hauling supplies and dropping large numbers of grenades. Today, Valkyries are a cornerstone of Ukraine’s drone warfare capabilities. They bomb fortifications with heavy munitions (anti-tank mines), resupply surrounded units, plant mines deep behind enemy lines, and even operate at night. But the most important capability is their use in boosting signals and carrying smaller kamikaze drones. This radically extends their range and eliminates communication blackouts on final approach to targets.
Russian engineers found their own solution to this problem. Along with advances in relay systems, this breakthrough marked the beginning of the next phase in drone warfare.
The ‘fiber optics’ and ‘Drone Line’ phase
Russia has implemented and rapidly deployed drones linked to operators through thin fiber-optic cables unwinding from a spool — an existing technology that Ukrainian experts initially rejected. The fiber-optic cable reel is mounted directly on the drone, preventing it from getting tangled in branches or other obstacles. The advantages are obvious: such drones are largely immune to electronic warfare systems and invisible to radio scanners. Additionally, the connection is stable at ground level, enabling precision strikes even through openings in buildings and armored vehicles. The primary drawback is that fiber optic cables are relatively brittle and prone to breaking, which reduces the drones’ maneuverability.
The number of strikes in Ukraine using fiber-optic drones has surged since the summer of 2024. A single “laboratory” in Veliky Novgorod provides these weapons: the Ushkuynik Research and Production Center, headed by former Kremlin political consultant Alexey Chadaev. Ukrainian specialists, citing Russian sources, say the fiber-optic drones are actually manufactured in China. Chadaev, for his part, does not deny that foreign components are used in the production process.
The proliferation of this technology has led to new tactics: drones can now ambush vehicles along roads 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) or more behind front lines. The combination of flying signal repeaters and fiber-optic drones led military minds on both sides to realize that these weapons could be deployed en masse against enemy supply lines throughout their entire area of operations. With sufficient drone concentration, forces can completely disrupt enemy logistics and command structures along major stretches of the front.
Ukraine’s newly established UAV forces have dubbed this concept the “Drone Line,” and military leaders hope it will halt Russia’s creeping advance. To execute these operations, the Ukrainian Armed Forces created two dedicated drone brigades.
One of these brigades, working alongside other units, launched an operation in early 2025 south and west of Pokrovsk in the central Donbas, where a major Russian force was advancing. Ukrainian ground troops began mounting counterattacks in coordination with drone operators.
On February 2, Vladimir Putin acknowledged that his General Staff had briefed him on “a difficult situation in one sector involving unmanned aerial vehicles.” Meanwhile, Russian troops lost ground in the towns of Udachne and Kotlyne west of Pokrovsk, and in the villages of Solone, Shevchenko, and Lysivka south of the city. A Russian brigade operating near Udachne suffered heavy losses.
But Ukraine failed to build on these gains, and Russia countered with its own drone deployment, sending a new major UAV unit to the Pokrovsk area: the 7th Independent Reconnaissance-Strike Regiment, which reports directly to the Central Military District command. Russian forces recaptured some lost positions, advanced on Pokrovsk from the south, and threatened to cut off the city from the east, strangling Ukrainian supply lines. Russian drones reportedly flew as far as 35 kilometers (almost 22 miles) north of the city.
While Ukraine tried to turn the tide in Pokrovsk, Russian forces launched their own counteroffensive near Sudzha. Using drones, including fiber-optic models, they effectively cut off Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region from their supply lines, precipitating the rapid collapse of Ukrainian defenses around Sudzha and forcing a chaotic retreat.
At the same time, Russia’s successful drone attacks against Ukrainian logistics south of Sudzha relied on favorable conditions secured through months of brutal battles to reach the Sudzha-Sumy highway. The stranglehold on Ukrainian supply lines only materialized once Russian forces had fought their way to within five to seven kilometers (about four miles) of the highway. The operation also deployed ground forces that vastly outnumbered Ukrainian troops, along with aircraft dropping guided bombs.
While the fighting in Pokrovsk and Sudzha demonstrates the evolving role drones play in the war, it is too early to judge the capability of these weapons to conduct independent operations (or even to spearhead larger attacks). But the capacity of drones to disrupt and complicate enemy offensive operations is now clear.
The side that develops effective countermeasures against the enemy’s drones could gain a vital technological edge in this war. However, any such advantage will likely be short-lived, given how quickly Russia and Ukraine have copied each other’s innovations.
Drone countermeasures, mounting attacks behind enemy lines, and UAV endgame scenarios
How do you fight against drones?
The Russian and Ukrainian armies have tested various methods of passive and active counter-drone warfare. So far, even their combined effectiveness leaves much to be desired.
Passive methods
Camouflage and decoy targets: This was a common tactic back in the days of Mavic and Lancet drones, though it is less effective now. Camouflaging equipment often worked against early surveillance drones with poor optics. The strategy of deploying equipment decoys was to fool the enemy into wasting costly drone strikes on cheap dummy targets. Today, it is often cheaper to make FPV drones than fake equipment, and fiber-optic UAVs provide operators with enough visual resolution to identify and avoid decoys altogether.
Physical equipment protection: The FPV drone age spawned monstrosities as soldiers covered their vehicles with nets and chains. Tanks with powerful engines were fitted with entire metal superstructures — tsar-mangaly (tsar-barbecues) — and equipped with electronic warfare systems. However, this extra armor comes at the cost of mobility, and tsar-mangaly defenses are less effective against drones with reliable ground-level communications. Skilled operators can target weak spots and strike repeatedly. Still, these measures can minimize strike damage and reduce the odds of a critical hit.
Anti-drone nets over roads: These measures also offer minimal protection. On social media, numerous videos show fiber-optic drones flying inside protected corridors and conducting attacks.
Dispersal: Scattering battle formations forces the enemy to use more drones than it would against armored vehicles packed with soldiers, but it is typically more of a problem than a solution for armies. Both Russia and Ukraine have lost the ability to punch through enemy lines, and any dreams of crushing the opponent have given way to hopes that the other side will succumb to attrition. At the same time, armies must develop new tactics that can succeed despite shortages of armored vehicles and artillery at the front lines. One of these adaptations is the growing use of motorcycles by both sides for supply missions and crossing open ground before an assault.
The logic is simple: the enemy needs more drones against motorcycle targets than against infantry fighting vehicles, and it is harder to hit a nimble motorcycle. Other weapons that threaten motorcyclists can be hunted down by friendly drones. And as a bonus, you minimize the attrition of increasingly scarce armored vehicles. In the first five months of 2025, Russia’s confirmed armored vehicle losses were 50 percent lower than the same period in 2024. Meanwhile, the search for better tactical solutions continues.
Active methods
Small arms: Shotguns appear to be the most reliable means of self-defense for frontline troops. Military units are increasingly equipping soldiers with these weapons, though troops also fire at drones with standard assault rifles. However, individual soldiers still face long odds when confronting drone attacks alone.
GPS and radio control signal suppression and interception: Jamming systems can disrupt drone operations by targeting GPS and radio communications, but no truly reliable defense against all types of drones has yet emerged. Russia and Ukraine are locked in an arms race reminiscent of trying to contain a fast-mutating pathogen. For every effective defense that emerges, drone makers develop a workaround. Meanwhile, Moscow and Kyiv are engaged in a separate battle over the satellite navigation systems that guide bombs, drones, and missiles.
Both sides periodically report malfunctioning GPS-guided weapons, where even minor targeting errors of a few dozen yards can cause drones to miss their targets entirely. Military analysts say enemy jamming is a likely culprit, though a competing theory shifts the blame to the units’ own defensive electronic warfare systems. The solution typically involves upgrading to more advanced antenna designs. In fact, such anti-jamming technology emerged even before the first global satellite navigation system, Navstar (the military predecessor of civilian GPS), came online in the early 1990s. A sophisticated antenna built with this anti-jamming technology was recently discovered in the debris of a downed Russian “Shahed/Geran” long-range drone.
Interceptor drones: This represents the fastest-growing area of drone warfare. Both sides now release dozens of videos each week showing large surveillance drones being shot down by smaller FPV attack drones. For every successful strike captured on camera, there are probably dozens or even hundreds of failed attempts that never make it to the Internet. Large Baba Yaga multicopter drones are shot down just as often. The trend poses serious problems for both armies’ reconnaissance and strike operations, since larger, long-endurance drones not only search for targets and identify enemy positions, but also function as signal repeaters for FPV drones and loitering munitions.
Drone-versus-drone combat presents a tougher challenge when FPV drones face off. Social media is filled with videos of “drone dogfights.” To win these aerial skirmishes, drones are outfitted with various weapons, from cables and nets to grappling hooks and shotguns (despite recoil issues). Operators even resort to ramming attacks when they can line up at the right angle. Yet, on the scale of the entire front, where thousands of drones are launched daily, these dogfight intercepts do not play a significant role.
More recently, pro-invasion war correspondents in Russia have actively promoted a new defensive system called the “Yolka” — a short-range kinetic interceptor, billed as the successor to shotgun-based defenses. The system is essentially a short-range drone without explosives, designed to ram into enemy FPV drones and other aircraft to destroy them. Questions remain about the effectiveness of these systems, as they have only been tested under controlled conditions. Even bigger concerns surround the economics of “trading” expensive interceptors to stop attacks by cheap, easily assembled FPV drones.
Striking drone operator positions: Like traditional counter-battery warfare, where artillery units hunt enemy artillery positions, drone operators target each other. To avoid detection, operators use remote-control antennas, sometimes positioned hundreds of yards from their actual location. To find fiber-optic drone launch sites, operators follow the reflected sunlight in the fiber strands the drones drop en route to their targets.
The most effective tactic has been extended aerial surveillance to track enemy operators’ movements, observing where they deploy drones, identifying their living quarters, and mapping their daily routines. For now, this tactic plays a key role in specific areas of fighting, but not along the entire front, and a massive knockout blow against these enemy “airfields” remains impossible.
Automatic gun turrets and active defense systems: Likely the most promising approach to countering small kamikaze drones — and the most technically challenging. With operationally effective active defense systems, equipment mounted on armored assets intercepts incoming enemy ordnance. Today, the only country manufacturing these systems is Israel, which sells them to partners in Europe and the United States.
After enemies started using kamikaze drones against Israeli tanks in Gaza and near the Lebanese border, Israel began upgrading its active defense systems to counter this new threat. The technical hurdles are substantial, as kamikaze drones strike from unusual angles, particularly from overhead. These challenges necessitated corresponding modifications to both sensors and the interceptor systems. Another complication is that active defense systems typically identify threats based on speed, raising concerns that automatic countermeasures against slower-moving drones could trigger false alarms, potentially putting friendly troops at risk.
Israeli manufacturers say they have adapted the “Iron Fist” active defense system for drone threats, though the modification remains untested in actual combat. Meanwhile, Russia has repeatedly claimed to have developed active defense systems that can counter attacks from any direction, but such equipment has never appeared on battlefields in Ukraine.
Automated anti-drone defense systems that combine detection sensors with machine gun or cannon turrets have yet to be deployed in combat anywhere in the world. Such technology will likely prove crucial for countering small drones in future conflicts, but it is unlikely that these systems will be developed in Russia or Ukraine anytime soon.
The war behind enemy lines: ‘Gerans’ versus ‘Liutyis’
While troops on the front lines seek countermeasures against drone strikes and ways to use UAVs for their own operational and strategic objectives, a different kind of war is being waged deeper in enemy territory. For three years now, Russian and Ukrainian forces have pounded each other’s military bases and critical economic infrastructure. These strikes (more frequently but not exclusively by Russia) also kill and injure civilians.
Neither side has been able to cripple the other’s economy or break its will to keep fighting. Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries have successfully reduced Russian fuel production and exports, while Russian attacks have repeatedly caused severe energy crises in Ukraine. But the impact of these attacks has been nowhere near enough to change how most people see the war. Daily life in Russia remains largely unaffected, while most of Ukrainian society still supports continuing the war until victory.
However, neither side shows any intention of scaling back strikes on enemy territory, and both Moscow and Kyiv remain committed to maintaining heightened escalation levels. Russia has expanded production to avoid completely halting such strikes, but it still faces limits on its cruise and ballistic missile capabilities and has shifted much of the workload to drones acquired from Iran.
Today, these attack drones bear little resemblance to their Iranian “Shahed” predecessors. Assembled at a factory in Yelabuga in Tatarstan, the systems have undergone extensive modifications and now serve as partial substitutes for Russia’s limited cruise missile inventory. However, despite upgrades to their explosive payloads, the latest Geran UAVs remain effective only against “soft,” poorly defended targets. Russia’s most devastating attacks rely on coordinated mass strikes involving hundreds of drones alongside dozens of missiles that overwhelm Ukrainian air defense systems.
Ukraine has hit back with dozens of different long-range drones (though Kyiv still lacks the ability to supplement these attacks with long-range missiles). The best-known and most commonly used is the fixed-wing “Liutyi” drone.
Months of long-range strikes have failed to destroy Russia’s energy and defense industries, but Ukraine’s campaign continues out of political necessity: the enemy’s attacks cannot go unanswered. Similarly, Russia has been unable to plunge Ukraine into darkness by wiping out its power grid, despite three years of targeted attacks.
The ongoing exchange of strikes has sparked localized technological advances, with both sides incorporating visual guidance systems using video cameras and mobile Internet into their long-range drones to supplement unreliable satellite navigation. Engineers establish network connectivity through cellular modems and local SIM cards — technology that was later adapted to guide Ukrainian FPV drones in strikes against Russian strategic aviation facilities on June 1, 2025.
Is Ukraine losing the drone war?
Recent Western media coverage suggests that Ukraine is facing a critical shortage of drones, and President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Beijing of restricting Kyiv’s access to UAV supplies. “Chinese Mavic is open for Russians but is closed for Ukrainians,” he said in late May 2025, claiming that “there are production lines on Russian territory where there are Chinese representatives.” Ukrainian officers responsible for drone warfare operations have echoed these supply concerns.
China holds a virtual monopoly on low-cost drone components. While the U.S. has provided Ukraine with American-made systems (military-grade “Switchblades” in two variants and “Phoenix Ghost” drones from a little-known manufacturer), their battlefield effectiveness remains unclear, and quantities delivered (tens of thousands) fall well short of Ukrainian military demands.
At the same time, Beijing has not been caught openly leveraging its monopoly to influence the war’s outcome. Instead, Chinese officials have looked the other way as FPV drone parts are shipped to both Russia and Ukraine.
The current “drone shortage” narrative looks more like an attempt to cover up organizational failures in how resources were allocated during Ukraine’s inaugural “Drone Line” operation, where the army concentrated its unmanned forces but still couldn’t dislodge Russian troops from Pokrovsk. Russian forces have gained the upper hand on other fronts, possibly explaining why Ukraine recently ousted drone commander Vadym Sukharevskyi, who created the branch, in favor of Robert Brovdi (commonly known by his call sign “Madyar”).
The years between the two world wars demonstrate that the success of military innovations relies on organizational overhaul and devising new ways for different military branches to coordinate effectively. This synthesis of tanks, mobile artillery, air power, and assault infantry (all concepts developed during World War I) gave Germany’s Wehrmacht its early edge in World War II.
In today’s war in Ukraine, neither Moscow nor Kyiv seems to expect such a strategic breakthrough. The Kremlin is trying to use drones and other means to convince Ukraine that Russian forces will keep grinding forward in the coming years until Russia gets all the territory it demands in negotiations. The main goal is to break Ukraine’s will to keep fighting. Meanwhile, Kyiv believes its “Drone Line” initiative will halt Russian advances and convince Moscow that further offensive operations are futile.
Report by Meduza’s analysis team
Translation by Kevin Rothrock