The West isn’t deep in the all-out drone race. That could be a good thing.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made drones a defining weapon of modern war, but analysts warn the West shouldn’t rush to copy Kyiv and Moscow’s all-in approach.

In Ukraine, low-cost drones have upended the battlefield — spotting enemy troops, foiling maneuvers, and wrecking tanks with gear sometimes worth just a few hundred dollars.

Russia and Ukraine are both betting big on this inexpensive technology. Ukraine said that it made 2.2 million drones last year and aims to make 4 million this year, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said in April that Russia made more than 1.5 million drones last year. And there are plans to expand that.

The West is watching closely. NATO militaries are implementing drone warfare training, and defense firms are designing new systems modeled on Ukraine’s battlefield successes. But warfare experts caution that simply copying what the armies fighting the Ukraine war are doing would be shortsighted.

Rapid shifts in drone technology and the swift emergence of countermeasures might make the drones of today obsolete tomorrow. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that drones will play the same role in the future. Waiting before cranking out millions is perhaps the better choice for Western militaries, analysts say.

Drone technology is moving fast

Front-line soldiers and Western companies that have gear in Ukraine have observed that drone tech quickly becomes worthless as new counter-drone tech hits the battlefield.

A 10-year-old iPhone “can still do the basic stuff,” Mauro Gilli, a senior researcher in military technology at ETH Zurich, told Business Insider, but a drone that can be easily neutralized by enemy forces has little value.

Mass-producing drone technology too soon risks leaving militaries with stockpiles of gear that quickly lose value as technology and countermeasures evolve. Refitting outdated systems often creates more problems than starting fresh.

Problems “cascade, and then you end up having more problems than if you had waited and created something from scratch,” Gilli explained.

Ulrike Franke, a drone expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that Western militaries may be tempted to copy Ukraine by stockpiling drones, but she cautioned that drones are different from traditional weapons, noting that their usefulness can vanish almost overnight.

“Drones require a different approach,” she said.

The quick innovation cycles mean that “had European nations procured some 100,000 quadcopter drones in 2023—an approach that seemed sensible at the time—it is very likely that these systems would now be largely useless.”

Warfare experts say that the priority isn’t churning out drones now, but rather building the capacity to scale up quickly if a conflict demands it.

Actually doing this remains a major challenge for the West. Western defense industries face equipment shortages and production backlogs, and officials have acknowledged output needs to speed up. By contrast, Russia has shifted to a war footing, and China has expanded its defense manufacturing — including drone production.

Zachary Kallenborn, a drone warfare expert at King’s College London, told Business Insider there should be “a focus on: ‘Okay, what are the capacities we might need’ and continuing to innovate and learn lessons and make sure that we can scale if needed. But actually doing so does seem quite premature.”

Analysts stress that learning from Ukraine means recognizing which lessons not to take. In this case, stockpiling millions of drones might not be the right call.

Learning from Ukraine

The Ukraine war looks nothing like the conflicts that Western forces have fought in recent decades. This is a grinding, high-casualty conflict marked by a lack of air superiority, more than a million casualties, new combat technology, and the return of trench warfare on a scale not seen in Europe since the World Wars.

NATO militaries are studying what works against Russia, but experts warn they must avoid drawing the wrong lessons.

Many of Ukraine’s tactics have resulted from its disadvantaged position: It has far fewer soldiers than Russia, it does not have a big air force, and it has repeatedly suffered shortages of Western-supplied equipment.

Ukraine has turned to drones to fill roles typically done by snipers, air defense systems, aircraft, and other types of soldiers and weaponry.

They’re also one of the few weapons Ukraine can produce domestically, instead of depending on outside stockpiles already stretched thin.

But many of these limits don’t apply to NATO, with its large populations, militaries, air forces, and decades of investments in advanced, highly capable equipment. There is a certain value in cheap, attritable mass, but not at the expense of the sophisticated, combat systems. Different fights and missions come with substantially different demands.

Not all wars are the same. “Ukraine could also just be a peak moment for drone warfare,” Franke said. “The factors that made drones relevant in Ukraine might look different in future wars.”

Drones matter, but the West has other strengths

Analysts warn that while drones are central to Ukraine’s fight, they are not a substitute for the West’s traditional military advantages. Justin Bronk, an airpower expert at the Royal United Services Institute, recently argued that relying heavily on drones would play to Russia’s strengths. Moscow has more experience integrating them, while NATO countries start from a far lower base and lack Ukraine’s capacity to scale production.

But perhaps more importantly, drones aren’t winning the war.

A reason “why betting heavily on massed UAS for lethality is a dangerous strategy for NATO nations is that Ukraine is still taking heavy casualties and slowly losing ground to Russian assaults despite being a world leader in developing, using, and innovating with military UAS,” Bronk said.

Ultimately, he said, the West is unlikely to be able to use drones against Russia in a transformative way “by procuring several tens or even hundreds of thousands of similar drones more slowly and with less practical experience.”

Drones have not been a silver bullet on the battlefield. As James Patton Rogers, a drone expert at the Cornell Brooks Tech Policy Institute, told Business Insider, they “haven’t brought victory for either side.” Ukraine produces millions of these things but still pleads for artillery and long-range weapons. Drones are “what they have to fight with. It’s not what they want to fight with,” he said.

That doesn’t mean the West can ignore drones. Foes like Russia, China, Iran, and others are investing heavily, and NATO forces must be able to counter cheap, uncrewed combat systems. Drone technology also offers the ability to deliver cheap mass at a time when Western arsenals are stretched, but experts caution against seeing them as replacements.

Franke warned that assuming small, cheap drones will dominate future wars could be a “dangerous miscalculation.” Rogers added that advanced militaries should not put all their eggs into one drone basket at the expense of more enduring, effective, and deterrent weapons.

The post The West isn’t deep in the all-out drone race. That could be a good thing. appeared first on Business Insider.