In a potentially decisive campaign that began this spring, Ukraine’s enormous and growing drone force pivoted to medium-range strikes targeting what is arguably Russia’s biggest weak spot: its supply lines connecting Russia proper to the forward bases of its field armies, a few tens of kilometers behind the gray zone threading north to south along the breadth of eastern Ukraine.
Prior to this spring, the Ukrainians operated a mix of very-short-range first-person-view (FPV) drones and very-long-range one-way attack drones. The FPVs hunted Russian infantry in the gray zone. The one-way attack drones plucked at refineries, factories, and air bases inside Russia itself.
But that neglected a critical middle ground. A logistical zone stretching around 200 km (about 125 miles) behind the gray zone. It’s here that the Russian military’s vast logistical system lies exposed.
A coordinated campaign of drone strikes targeting Russian air defenses that began last summer has left vast swathes of Russian-occupied Ukraine all but undefended from aerial attack. The current counter-logistics campaign is the obvious corollary to that targeting air defenses, but there’s just one problem for Ukrainian planners.
Yes, Russia’s kinetic air defenses (radar- and infrared-cued mobile and static missile launchers) are depleted. But electronic warfare defenses are largely intact. Radio jammers have turned the electromagnetic spectrum over occupied Ukraine into hostile territory for remote-controlled drones.
Anticipating this problem, Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (the world’s first independent drone branch) inducted an array of new AI-assisted drones that can spot and home in on specific targets even when they lose radio connections to their faraway minders.
Working with domestic and foreign suppliers, including ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Swift Beat drone firm, the Ukrainian USF taught its new middle-strike drones to strike Russian cargo trucks and vans.
It worked, and by late May, the Ukrainian general staff in Kyiv was reporting daily truck strikes exceeding 300, on average. That’s a fivefold increase over the average daily hits on Russian trucks since Russia widened its war on Ukraine in February 2022.
Russia has tens of thousands of trucks to spare, additional thousands in production, and many thousands more in long-term storage. But no army, not even the vehicle-heavy Russian army, can sustain the loss of 300 trucks a day over the long term. By June, desperate Russian logisticians were rerouting convoys away from the most heavily patrolled highways, fuel was running short in Crimea, and Ukraine said it planned to step things up.
Even that wasn’t enough, however, so commanders also began mixing gun-armed utility vehicles among the cargo trucks of some convoys. Russia has too few mobile missile launchers to protect the hundreds of convoys that motor back and forth across the logistical zone every day, but it still has plenty of utility vehicles and an abundance of soldiers with rifles who can shoot at incoming drones.
Whether the gun trucks will blunt the drone raids remains to be seen, but the Russians are trying to adapt.
The problem for European armies is twofold. They’re not only unprepared to mount the kind of offensive AI drone campaign the Ukrainians are mounting, but they’re also unprepared to defend against that kind of campaign. The Russians are behind when it comes to AI-assisted drones, but only by a few months. AI-assisted versions of the Russians’ main Geran one-way attack drone (a copy of the Iranian Shahed)appeared last year.
Ukrainian forces fully expect Russian forces to hit back with AI drones of their own. It’s not for no reason the Ukrainians are rushing to field AI-assisted interceptor drones that can autonomously ram into incoming Gerans.
The Ukrainians and Russians are introducing entirely new generations of drones and anti-drone defenses every few months, and deploying them at scale. The side that speeds up this development cycle, even briefly, can gain a temporary edge that can translate into real battlefield gains. But both sides know they can’t rest.
The Europeans simply aren’t keeping pace. No one should expect, say, the German army to stockpile millions of offensive and defensive drones that it doesn’t currently need, and which would be obsolete in six months.
But the German army and other European armies should be buying or borrowing the latest drone technology from Ukraine at the same rate these new technologies appear, producing small batches for testing and training and preparing to mass produce whatever tech is current at the moment a wider war breaks out.
It would be eye-wateringly expensive. But it would also be much cheaper than losing a war for want of the latest AI attack drones or AI interceptor drones. Or for want of whatever inevitably comes after today’s AI drones.
David Axe is a journalist, author, and filmmaker in South Carolina. For 20 years, he has covered war for Forbes, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vice, The Village Voice, Voice of America, and others. He has reported from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. His current focus is on covering Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
