How the U.S. Is Drawing Lessons from Ukraine's Drone War

How the U.S. Is Drawing Lessons from Ukraine's Drone War

The character of the Russia-Ukraine war has changed dramatically since it began. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in early 2022, and again during Ukraine's counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, the conflict took the form of maneuver warfare. Today it has evolved into a war of attrition in which drones are responsible for the majority of battlefield casualties. Unmanned systems have become the defining feature of the conflict, employed by both sides across tactical, deep, and rear operational layers. Facing an adversary with overwhelming advantages in manpower and materiel, Ukraine was forced to innovate rapidly within its own defense industry — and in doing so has pioneered a form of 21st-century warfare built around drones.

The United States has been closely monitoring the evolution of the war and working to extract applicable lessons for future conflicts. Recognizing that a revolution in military affairs is underway, the U.S. is actively expanding its drone capabilities to prepare its forces for the conflicts ahead.

Ukrainian Tactics: The Tactical Layer

At the tactical level, Ukrainian forces employ small attack drones — commonly known as first-person-view (FPV) drones — to strike tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, mortars, artillery pieces, and individual soldiers. These drones maintain a persistent presence over the front lines, making maneuver warfare extraordinarily difficult. Armored formations are frequently tracked and destroyed by FPV drones before they can even close with the enemy; artillery systems and multiple-launch rocket systems positioned slightly behind the front are equally vulnerable. Because any exposed asset is easily spotted, the "shoot-and-scoot" tactics that made systems such as the M142 HIMARS so effective in the early stages of the war are no longer viable — forces have had to shift toward relying on camouflage and hardened shelters to survive the drone threat.

Ukraine employs a modular drone approach, configuring different drone types — kamikaze drones, bomb-dropping drones, reconnaissance drones, multi-role drones, and cargo drones — to match the mission at hand. This modularity allows Ukrainian forces to adapt in real time. When attacking Russian troops in trenches, for example, they may first deploy bomb-dropping drones against personnel without overhead cover, and then reconfigure to kamikaze drones to attack the same troops once they have retreated into shelters. This flexible approach has neutralized a wide variety of targets and significantly slowed Russian advances.

In February 2026, Ukrainian forces established tactical drone superiority in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, enabling a counterattack that pushed Russian forces back from the critical logistics hub of Pokrovsk — a clear demonstration of how tactical drone dominance can enable offensive as well as defensive operations.

Emerging Ukrainian Tactics: Deep and Rear Layers

At the deep layer, Ukraine has shifted emphasis toward medium-range strikes targeting Russian logistics, ground lines of communication, and railway infrastructure. Ukrainian forces have prioritized neutralizing Russian air defense and radar systems in temporarily occupied territories, opening corridors for deeper strikes and creating conditions for the use of newly developed precision-guided aerial bombs that allow aircraft to release munitions closer to the front.

Using Hornet and FP-1 drones, Ukraine has struck Russian communications and logistics networks across occupied Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea — with particular focus on interdicting Russian truck convoys along the E-58 highway from Rostov through Mariupol to Melitopol, and along the H-20 highway from Donetsk to Mariupol. This effort forms part of a broader "logistics blockade" strategy aimed at severing southern supply lines.

Every night, long-range drones such as the FP-1 strike deep inside Russian territory, targeting fuel depots, airfields, and other dual-use infrastructure. The goal is to impose economic costs on Russia's war machine while denying it a safe sanctuary in its own rear areas.

Ukraine's Drone Production Capacity

The success of Ukraine's drone tactics is inseparable from the rapid scaling of its domestic defense industry. Ukraine produced 4 million military drones in 2025 and plans to increase that figure to 7 million in 2026. Production has been expanded through a competitive contracting model in which private companies bid for government and military contracts, supplemented by financing from European allies. Direct investment from foreign private capital has also played a significant role — Axon Enterprise's $10.4 million investment in Buntar Aerospace is one notable example. Allied funding and technology have flowed into the domestic industry, enabling Ukraine to dramatically expand its drone production capacity even in wartime.

U.S. Integration and Training

The United States is actively working to incorporate the lessons of Ukraine's evolving drone warfare into its own force structure. At Marine Corps Base Quantico, Marines under the command of Colonel Scott Cuomo are intensifying training in FPV drone operation and strike employment. The 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines — the landing force of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit — became the first Marine Corps combat unit to achieve attack drone capability after training with the Nero Archer FPV drone system.

To address urgent training requirements, the Marine Corps has produced the doctrinal manual Attack Drone Employment, which aims to "develop and standardize small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) procedures for use across infantry, fires, reconnaissance, and aviation units" — ensuring that U.S. forces are prepared for drone-age warfare.

U.S. Drone Production Capacity

Recognizing the urgency of the revolution in military affairs, U.S. armed forces are increasingly treating FPV drones as a core element of future combat power. The Drone Dominance initiative plans to invest $1 billion over two years in FPV drone procurement, with a target of acquiring more than 200,000 drones by 2027. As of May 2026, the Marine Corps had already fielded 3,500 FPV drones. Colonel Cuomo noted: "Think back to October of last year — the United States had zero FPV attack drones. Now we have over 3,500." While this remains negligible compared to a single Ukrainian brigade's weekly consumption, it represents a meaningful starting point.

In the deep-strike domain, the U.S. has deployed Hornet strike drones to multiple European training installations in Lithuania, Poland, and Germany. Having witnessed the drone's devastating effect on Russian communications and logistics in Ukraine, the system is being rapidly fielded across U.S. Army Europe. The U.S. has also developed the LUCAS (Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Aerial System) loitering munition — America's answer to Iran's Shahed-136 — at a unit cost of just $35,000, compared with $2.5 million for a Tomahawk cruise missile, and capable of flying autonomously for hundreds of miles to engage targets.

Conclusion: The Dawn of a New Era

The proliferation of drones has fundamentally transformed warfare in the 21st century, enabling effects across tactical, deep, and rear layers simultaneously. Ukraine's drone combat experience offers the United States a powerful template: unmanned systems have proven to be a force multiplier capable of delivering devastating effects at low cost across all three operational layers — killing infantry and armor at the tactical level, degrading air defense and logistics in the deep battle, and destroying fuel depots and ammunition factories in the enemy's rear.

To avoid falling behind in this competition, the United States must substantially increase drone production, expand investment, and — as Ukraine has done — harness the innovation capacity of the commercial sector. It must also accelerate the integration of drones into its force structure to ensure effective employment across all three layers. Substituting cheap, effective unmanned systems for costly munitions or human casualties to achieve equivalent operational results is the defining logic of 21st-century warfare. The United States must move faster and fully embrace this new era of conflict.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not represent the official position of the U.S. Army War College or the United States Army.

This article was first published in the Small Wars Journal at Arizona State University.

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