Europe is dangerously behind in the drone war, and Ukraine is showing Nato how to catch up

It was meant to belittle Ukraine’s approach to warfare; in fact, it simply shows how badly much of Europe’s defence establishment still misunderstands the conflict. Cheap drones built rapidly and improved constantly do not reflect a lack of sophistication or weakness. They are one of the main reasons Ukraine has managed to hold off a far larger military power for more than three years.

But necessity is the mother of invention. Last month, in Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine, I experienced attack after attack. Air raid sirens sounded every few hours, often through the night. Some restaurants, cafés and meeting spaces now operate underground so people can continue daily life with some sense of safety. The Ukrainians strive not to allow the attacks to disturb ordinary life because if they were to do so, then ‘Russia has already won’. They work and live through the difficulties.

Nearer the front, conditions are different. What struck me most was the speed of innovation. Ukrainian drone manufacturers are working to timelines almost unknown in Western defence procurement. Engineers and soldiers remain in constant contact, with feedback from the front leading directly to design changes and new production runs. In some cases, drone designs are altered several times within a single week. Adaptation is the name of the game.

It follows from this that modern warfare has become a competition between who can learn and apply what they learn the fastest. Ukraine introduces a new drone; Russia responds with countermeasures; Ukraine modifies the drone to overcome them. And on it goes. In this kind of environment, a system that takes ten years to develop risks becoming obsolete before it’s even deployed.

The defence establishment may sneer at 3D printing, but it’s become central to Ukraine’s model because it allows for quick iteration. Parts can be redesigned, printed and tested almost immediately, and production lines no longer have to be fixed for years at a time. Small printers can be installed flexibly in any building while large injection moulding machines, for example, need factory floors and infrastructure, making them a much easier target to hit. Manufacturing thus becomes flexible.

Ukrainian companies know that many systems will work only briefly before needing to be changed. They’re not perfectionistic or romantic about those systems. This mindset is very different from the traditional Western one, which still believes in building a small number of highly expensive platforms designed to last decades.

What makes this worse is that defence procurement is still geared towards a relatively small number of prime contractors and long industrial cycles. Big companies have the established political connections, the lobbying power and the familiarity with procurement to benefit. Smaller firms, in contrast, often struggle just to gain access to the inner circle of defence procurement, even when they innovate more quickly.

The system, bizarrely, rewards predictability and scale rather than speed and experimentation – despite what the Ukrainian experience has made crystal clear to all who have paid attention.

What are the consequences? They’re plain to see. Many European militaries still lack any real protection against low-cost drone assaults. Their armoured vehicles remain vulnerable. Their procurement processes are painfully slow. Eye-wateringly expensive missile systems are routinely used to intercept threats that cost only a fraction as much to build.

This month alone, large numbers of relatively cheap drones and missiles in the Middle East forced the United States and its allies to consume costly interceptor stocks at an alarming rate. The economics just don’t make sense.

Ukraine has illuminated the path forward for those of us who would proudly call its friends. It has shown how to build cheap interceptor drones and layered defensive systems, and developed, at gunpoint, a wartime innovation culture that links frontline troops directly with engineers and manufacturers, producing a cycle of rapid design, manufacture, deployment that is largely responsible for its ability to hold off the Russian Bear, and turn what could have been a week-long war into a three-year David-and-Goliath conflict, and, according to the New York Times columnist David French, transformed President Volodymyr Zelensky into ‘the leader of the free world’: ‘By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence,’ he writes.

Europe should stop treating Ukraine solely as a recipient of military aid, and stop looking down on its courageous and inventive men and women. It should see Ukraine as it is: as the world’s most advanced lab for modern warfare, and as a shining example of how the Western values of liberty, openness, and scientific inquiry – values it is defending – can be applied effectively in conflict.

In short, NATO countries need to learn from Ukraine. We need budgets specifically for innovation in Ukraine, and a situation whereby the NATO states pay young companies to iterate quickly. The big grants are good; but there must be room for trial and error for newer entrants. Innovation and adaptation, in short, must win out.

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Dr Robert Brüll is the Founder and CEO of FibreCoat, a leading developer of advanced materials enabling the next generation of space and defence systems.

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