By Mark Episkopos, Managing Editor, Center for Military Modernization
How Russia Closed the Drone Gap in Ukraine
Ukraine’s mastery of drone tactics in the face of a larger and better-resourced opponent is all the more impressive in light of Moscow’s considerable head start in drone technology, squandered over the past eight years by a tired Russian military bureaucracy that refused to adapt to the changing face of war.
Drone technology plays to Ukraine’s strengths on and off the battlefield. Commercial drones are cheap and can be sourced through private channels, which is particularly vital to a war effort sustained by external funding. Ukrainian state initiative UNITED24 has fundraised hundreds of millions of dollars, part of which has gone toward the acquisition of just under 4,000 drones. Numerous Ukraine-affiliated organizations have successfully organized similar drone crowdfunding projects. Though in no way a substitute for the tanks, IFV’s, missile systems, howitzers, and other purpose-built military hardware being supplied to Ukraine in historically unprecedented numbers by Western governments, commercial drones at least offer an alternative acquisition pathway that can be fulfilled from beginning to end by private actors.
But Kyiv’s early advantage did not last. There are clear indications that the Russians have learned from their costly mistakes, taking steps to drastically ramp up drone production even as they develop increasingly sophisticated countermeasures against Ukrainian drone tactics. Russian forces have started to effectively employ electronic countermeasures (ECM) against many of the commercial drones, including Chinese-built DJI models, that are widely used by the Ukrainian military. “So actually, I believe like in three, four months, DJI will not be usable,” a Ukrainian drone operator told The Guardian earlier this year. The UK’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) estimated in May that Ukraine is losing 10,000 drones per month, or 300 per day, to Russian electronic warfare. For a sense of scale, consider that the US military operates about 11,000 drones according to Pentagon estimates. Ukrainians have had to turn to much more expensive purpose-built military drones in order to mitigate Russian jamming of commercial UAV’s, but these machines are difficult to procure and deploy in the same numbers as their commercial counterparts.
Meanwhile, Russia has done in war what it could not bring itself to do in peacetime. Though estimates vary, there is clear evidence that Russia has substantially increased its production of Lancet-3, Orlan-10, and Orlan-30 drones. Iran, which earlier provided Russia with large quantities of cheap but effective Shahed drones, is reportedly helping Moscow build a drone manufacturing plant that US officials say could become operational as early as next year.
These developments are having a tangible battlefield impact: Ukraine’s much-anticipated summer counter-offensive has been accompanied by a flood of footage of Ukrainian military hardware, including expensive western-supplied armor, being struck by Lancet drones. Eighteen months into the war, the gap in drone technology, acquisition, and tactics that partially enabled Ukraine’s breakaway success in March and April 2022 is gone. Indeed, the past few months have shown there is a serious risk that the long-term dynamics are now working against Ukraine.
Moscow’s progress in closing the drone gap with Ukraine illustrates a broader, alarming trend: despite their abysmal performance in the war’s opening phase and the many serious operational problems still plaguing the Russian military, Russian forces have demonstrated that they are not incapable of learning from their failures, adapting to Ukrainian tactics, and refining their overall strategy in ways that play to Russia’s inherent advantages.
From the Great Northern War of 1700 and Winter War of 1939 to the invasions of Napoleon and Hitler and, more recently, the Chechen Wars, retrenching and redoubling after a disastrous opening is a well-documented part of the Russian military experience. Kyiv and the West should consider this precedent and its implications as they plan next steps in what has become a costly, grinding war of attrition without clear prospects for a breakthrough by either side.
When Azerbaijan routed Armenia in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, Western military planners took notice. One of the war’s unmistakable lessons was the decisive battlefield impact of drone technology. Azerbaijani forces employed Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones and Israeli loitering munitions to devastating effect against Armenian armor, air defense units, and logistics assets. Baku’s robust unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) arsenal translated to an insurmountable advantage in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and long-range strike capabilities, enabling Azerbaijani forces to cut off, degrade, and overrun Armenian defensive positions.
No one was in a better position to observe these lessons in real time than Russia. The Kremlin, Armenia’s military ally but also a close partner with Azerbaijan, followed the war since its inception and played a leading role in brokering the negotiated ceasefire that brought it to an end.
Prominent Russian war correspondents and military bloggers who covered the conflict on the ground warned that drones are shaping the battlespace in ways that the Russian high command has not fully grasped, making it easier and cheaper than ever to target, track, and destroy enemy troops and critical infrastructure. But the Russian Defense Ministry, mired in bureaucratic inertia and top-heaviness, did not act on these vital developments in time. Russia’s defense industry showcased highly advanced UAV’s, notably including the Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik-B heavy combat drone, with much aplomb in Russia’s flagship military expos, but such displays turned out to be a Potemkin village concealing chronic underinvestment in UAV technology research and development and serial production.
The Kremlin paid a steep price for its negligence in the 2022 Ukraine war’s opening stages. The invading Russian forces possessed a relatively modest inventory of over 1,000 Orlan-10 reconnaissance drones. It appears that the Russians did not, in keeping with their own military doctrine, effectively use these drones for ISR purposes, leading to heavy losses for the poorly-organized Russian troops on the invasion’s northern axis. Ukrainian troops, by contrast, demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for UAV operations. Ukrainian drone operators successfully attacked scores of Russian missile systems and armor in the Kyiv region, using hit-and-run tactics and other tools of asymmetric warfare to hobble the massive Russian convoy headed for Ukraine’s capital. Surprisingly, it is Ukraine– not Russia– that demonstrated a high degree of proficiency in using ISR drones to track and target enemy forces.
Mark Episkopos is the new Managing Editor of the Center for Military Modernization. Episkopos is a journalist, researcher, and analyst writing on national security and international relations issues. He is also a Ph.D. candidate in history at American University.
