Evolve or Die: How drones are reshaping conventional assessments of military power

PHOTO: A Russian military plane struck by a Ukrainian drone, Security Service of Ukraine on Wikimedia Commons

On April 13^th this year, the Office of the President of Ukraine released a video for Defense Industry Worker’s Day, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivering a congratulatory speech to Ukraine’s defense industry workers. 

In this address, Zelenskyy claimed that for the first time in history, Ukraine had re-taken an enemy position and captured prisoners of war (POWs) entirely through the use of unmanned drones and ground robots. The operation is believed to have been carried out by the NC13 unit of Ukraine’s Third Separate Assault Brigade, a recently established unit specialising in “eliminating the enemy with ground robots”.

President Zelenskyy’s congratulatory address to the workers of Ukraine’s defense-industrial complex. pic.twitter.com/uLFlt3o8Ig

— Office of the President of Ukraine (@APUkraine) April 13, 2026

Recent reports like this have illuminated the unprecedented humanitarian disconnect in the  nature of conflict in Ukraine. Images and videos of operators conducting fatal drone strikes with nothing but VR goggles and video game controllers have been particularly shocking to global audiences, inspiring discussion about the gamification of warfare. However, drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have arguably been in use in conflict since the 1950s. 

Why has it taken until now to see this drastic change?

PHOTO: Ukraine’s 153rd Mechanised Brigade, 153 окрема механізована бригада on Wikimedia Commons

A brief history of drones in conflict

Although pilotless aircraft were developed as early as World War One, they were first deployed on scale during the Vietnam War. Primarily for reconnaissance and image gathering, small radio-controlled spy planes were given cameras and flown over North Vietnam and China. However, these aircraft were more of a proof of concept, proving too expensive and situational to see widespread use.

The first major breakthrough in drone usage came with the development of the MQ-1 Predator by the United States, seeing combat use first in the NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995. Predators were capable of remaining in the air for more than 24 hours and transmitting back live footage, which proved highly valuable in locating Serbian military forces.

The MQ-1 Predator was the proof to global militaries of the value in unmanned reconnaissance drones, but its successor, the MQ-9 Reaper, proved to be the figurehead for UAV programs for the 20 years following. Development began in 2001 and Reapers were being employed by the US Air Force by the late 2000s. The MQ-9 Reaper was a large evolution over the Predator due in part to its payload capacity of over 1500 kilograms, an over 500% increase, allowing it to carry up to eight laser-guided Hellfire missiles and a 500-pound GBU-12 laser-guided bomb.

The MQ-9 Reaper quickly became an integral part of the US’ foreign counterterrorism strategy, conducting thousands of airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and against the Taliban in Afghanistan, with the US operating over 300 Reapers in 2021.

Success begets complacency

The dominance of the MQ-9 Reaper and other UAVs has had an unintended consequence; complacency. Despite its overwhelming starting advantage, two decades later, the world’s largest military has fallen far behind on drone warfare, during a period of great importance. This has been evidenced by both its enemies and its allies, with Iran and Ukraine demonstrating the beginnings of a new military paradigm.

The liabilities of the MQ-9 Reaper and US drone industry do not concern their nearly unmatched reconnaissance and destructive potential, but their fragility and cost. In the last year, the US has lost at least seven Reaper drones to Houthi militants in Yemen, and 24 in its recent war with Iran. At $30 million USD ($42 million AUD) a drone to produce, this marks nearly one billion dollars in losses in a year, equivalent to over 10% of Iran’s entire reported annual military budget.

Low-cost alternatives

For the last two months of the US-Israel war on Iran, the media has been flooded with images and videos of Iran’s domestically developed unmanned Shahed-136 kamikaze drones, and headlines alleging the US has been forced to intercept them with missiles costing over a million dollars. While 90% of Iranian drones have been successfully intercepted, it has proved simply a matter of numbers. Shahed drones have been estimated to cost between $20,000-50,000, but these figures have been based on Russian-produced Shahed drones (called Geran drones), as Iran has licensed them the design. Iran has deliberately not reported on its cost, and other estimates of their production cost place it closer to $7,000.

PHOTO: Amin Ahouei on Wikimedia Commons

Although Iran is heavily sanctioned and restricted on what they can import, the Shahed is designed to be made primarily with commercially available electronics. 80% of the drone is built from American-made components often used in agriculture and machinery, which are then often routed through Chinese distributors and shell companies before reaching Iran.

This has allowed Iran to build up an enormous stockpile of drones, with pre-war estimates as high as 80,000 and the ability to produce 10,000 a month, although this has likely dropped significantly due to the current conflict. Thousands of drones were launched just in the first week of the war, targeting US military bases and weaponry in their allied countries such as the UAE. While sophisticated interceptor missile defense systems mitigated much of the immediate damage, Iran’s drone barrages have accomplished two primary objectives.

Bridging the power gap

First, the US has been forced into a severely disadvantageous economic trade, allowing Iran to contend above its traditionally-assessed strength with the near $1 trillion US military budget. 

The US has exhausted nearly half of the inventories of some critical defense missiles, adding to a real cost estimate for the war of up to $50 billion, greater than the entire GDP of over 100 countries. Stockpiles have not depleted enough to create an immediate risk against Iran, but it calls into question the readiness of the US military if they were ever to face conflict against a larger enemy such as Russia or China.

Secondly, although Iran’s total drone strikes have decreased significantly since the start of the war, they have proven an ability to sustain daily strikes despite significant damage to military facilities by US-Israel bombings. With strikes becoming increasingly more precise, attacks have hampered US tactics and prolonged the conflict. The destruction of large amounts of critical energy infrastructure and the looming threat over the Strait of Hormuz has also given Iran a unique chokehold on the region, despite the clear dominance by the US military.

While the Shahed has proven particularly destructive and easy to mass-produce, catching the US military off-guard, it is ultimately just one weapon. The US has already reverse-engineered and deployed a clone of the Shahed against Iran, the Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) drone. Instead, what has proven to be revolutionary is the evolution in warfare itself, shifting to an increasingly human-detached conflict; one focused on cheap mass-produced destruction rather than tactics, human expertise and expensive technology. Nothing has demonstrated this more than the Ukrainian defense to Russia’s invasion, which despite entering its fifth year, continues to see military innovation at an unprecedented rate.

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die”

For centuries, we have known as a society that conflict catalyses great technological and intellectual innovation, both positively and negatively. 

World War Two proves a fitting example. In order to support the American and British war effort, scientists discovered how to produce Penicillin on a mass-scale, which has saved an estimated 500 million lives since its creation. However, it also created the atomic bomb, speeding up its development from a theoretical possibility to a weapon that killed hundreds of thousands in just 3 years.

The war in Ukraine has proven no different. Despite a claim in 2014 by Putin that Russia could take Kiev in only two weeks, the war has now continued into its fifth year. However, the rate of technological evolution has shown no signs of slowing. In 2022, battlefield technologies lasted about seven months before being superseded. By 2025, this was down to just four to six weeks. Despite fielding less than 2,000 drones before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine produced a staggering 4.5 million in 2025.

Slow and Unsteady

At the beginning of its invasion, Russia held a significant military advantage over Ukraine, with a larger combat force, significantly more armoured vehicles and combat aircraft, and plenty of ammunition. However, after failing to capture Kyiv in its initial blitz offensive, and Ukraine’s subsequent recapture of territory, this advantage has proven close to nil. The map below shows both Russia’s controlled territory in August 2023 vs April 2026. If the images look near identical, that’s because they are. Since 2024, Russian forces have only advanced at an average rate of 15-70 metres daily.

PHOTO: Comparative maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine between August 2023 and April 2026, created by Huxley Williamson using maps from Viewsridge on Wikimedia Commons

However, this does not mean that Ukraine is winning the war. While initially caught out by Ukraine’s quick adoption of drones, Russia has learnt from Ukraine and adapted quickly, pivoting to mass-production of particular drone models. Their model of Iran’s Shahed, the Geran-2, has wreaked massive destruction on Ukraine’s infrastructure. 

Supply, demand, and competition in Ukraine’s war industry

To counter Russia’s immense industrial and manpower advantage in producing drones and training operators, Ukraine has relied on a decentralised system of drone production and procurement.

Designed to provide a quicker method of procuring what weaponry is actually needed on the front lines, the “Army of Drones Bonus” system has become highly popular within the Ukrainian military. The system rewards individual drone units with virtual points for carrying out successful strikes, including killing enemy soldiers. These points can then be redeemed through an online marketplace (pictured below) for hundreds of different drones and autonomous vehicles not unlike online shopping sites like Amazon.

PHOTO: Screenshot of Brave1 Online Store, approved for use by Brave1 Market

Competition is reportedly high between units. In the words of Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defence, “the more infantry you kill, the more drones you get to kill more infantry”. To add to this gamification of the war, the Unmanned Systems Forces branch of the Ukrainian military (the first of its kind globally), runs an online ‘killboard’ (pictured below) with real-time combat results from its thirteen drone units, tracking statistics like killed enemy personnel, destroyed drones, and more.

Stats in English pic.twitter.com/YSCFP8xPgL

— 414 Magyar's Birds (@414magyarbirds) March 2, 2026

POST: December 2025 – February 2026 strike statistics for the USF Grouping

Shifting military priorities

Ukrainian battlefield innovations have already responded to Russia’s waves of Geran-2 drones (the Shahed clones), developing cheap interceptor drones with an interception success rate of over 60%, while costing as little as $2500 to produce. Despite President Trump publicly rejecting needing Ukraine’s help in its war with Iran, stating “We know more about drones than anybody. We have the best drones in the world actually”, the US military has already bought tens of thousands of Ukrainian interceptor drones in order to defend against Iranian Shahed’s. 

Ukraine has also begun opening up weapons exports to allied countries through its “Drone Deals”. Ukraine has signed security agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE on a backbone of drone exports, and recently has signed defense deals with Germany, Norway, and the Netherlands, with many other nations in talks. 

The world has watched as great military powers Russia and the USA were caught out by the effectiveness of low-cost, mass-produced drones, eroding much of their advantage over traditionally weaker military powers. The race to develop this technology reveals much of the fear held by other nations of being caught similarly unprepared.

All Quiet Again on the Western Front

Does drone warfare in Ukraine and Iran mark the start of a new era in conflict, or is it simply history repeating with upgraded technology?

While the Ukraine and Iran wars have their own unique contexts, they both present a striking revelation on the asymmetrical nature of modern warfare. Despite an absolute advantage of the Russian and US armies over their respective foes, in both manpower and economic output, Iran and Ukraine’s drone programs have been able to effectively counter opposing military goals. When soldiers can be taught to be effective drone pilots in just 60 hours, and tens of thousands of cheap but deadly drones can be mass-produced daily, the value of trained soldiers and established armies diminish sharply. 

Drone conflict looks in some ways strikingly similar to the trench-warfare of the First World War. Despite a seemingly unbalanced battle, with the Allied Powers possessing a total population 5.2 times greater than the Central Powers in 1914, and spending more than two times the amount on the war, the deployment of modern machine guns forced the war into a brutal stalemate. Many have argued that the main achievement of drones, despite their capacity for destruction and death, has been to once again bring infantry mobility to a standstill. By creating an omnipresent threat to any soldier or vehicle that dares to be out in the open, it has given rise to a slow-paced conflict, where overall strategy is more about logistics and technological innovation than military tactics. With nearly two million combined casualties in the Ukraine war so far, battling not over kilometres of territory but metres, it feels reminiscent of the Western Front.

An Uncertain Future

Bringing our minds back to this article’s initial example, the capture of Russian POWs with nothing but drones and autonomous ground vehicles, it is important to consider how far this evolution will continue. As autonomous systems and weapons are integrated further into militaries around the globe, how will war be fought in ten years, or fifty? Will conflicts continue along the current path demonstrated in Ukraine and Iran, becoming increasingly industrialised and autonomous while the value of human lives decreases? 

Drones have dramatically reshaped modern warfare, but is this just part of a never-ending cycle of weaponry becoming deadlier and deadlier? It is likely that on the ground, any discourse on the future is a distant debate. Hiding in an abandoned house, the buzz of a kamikaze drone overhead, the only thing that matters to a soldier is that the enemy is dead. There is no should we do this, only we must. Will the drone innovation in the Ukraine and Iran wars birth any positive developments in technology, or just further dehumanize warfare and devalue human lives? Time shall tell.