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.