Drone warfare: General Valerii Zaluzhnyi sees the West lagging behind in the drone revolution

General Valerii Zaluzhnyi warns the West not to underestimate drone warfare in a new commentary on defenseone.com . Zaluzhnyi was Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and is now Ukraine's ambassador to the United Kingdom.

Should the West face an adversary today that deploys large numbers of attrition-optimised autonomous weapons, it could suffer the same fate as the victims of the German Blitzkrieg in the Second World War, Zaluzhnyi warns.

How drone warfare is freezing the front

For decades, offensive manoeuvres became ever faster; the Russia-Ukraine war, by contrast, is now marked by a pattern of attrition characteristic of the First World War, Zaluzhnyi writes. Both sides can detect even the smallest movement and strike without warning.

At the front, activity is limited to expanding concealed defensive positions. Even troop rotations and medical evacuations have become dangerous. Unarmed drones therefore take on logistics and medical evacuation tasks around the clock.

Because drones consist largely of commercial off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software, attrition warfare has become effective and affordable even on a large scale. According to Zaluzhnyi, the drone revolution has created a hardened, unyielding environment.

At the same time, wired communication methods such as fibre-optic cables are returning: they offer more bandwidth, reliability and communications security.

Fortunately, the West possesses an invaluable gift, Zaluzhnyi believes – the expertise Ukraine has gained the hard way in its bitter struggle for survival.

Zaluzhnyi concludes his commentary: if the West wants to survive, it must understand these lessons quickly and comprehensively and apply them sensibly.