Ukraine’s ‘drone wall’ expanding across Europe to repel Putin ...Middle East

Britain’s military is ill-equipped to fight a future war against Russia requiring “walls” of mass-produced drones to fend-off the sort of high-casualty assaults favoured by Moscow in Ukraine, experts have warned.

Such is the level of alarm in Nato circles at the advances made by both Ukraine and Russia in battlefield tactics that Ukrainian troops have started training British commanders in how to flood frontlines with thousands of drones to beat back so-called “meat-grinder” attacks used by the Kremlin to gain ground.

Kyiv’s creation of a “drone wall” – the layering of a battlefield with surveillance and attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) ahead of frontline troops at such density that Russian assaults can be halted without exposing Ukrainian forces to similar levels of attrition – has sparked a race by some European countries to build their own equivalent.

Germany is leading an initiative by six Nato members, including Norway, Finland and the Baltic States, to establish their own state-of-the-art defensive line using drones on the alliance’s eastern border to counter a future Kremlin incursion and its growing use of unconventional warfare tactics.

In Britain, the expected publication next week of the Government’s long-awaited Strategic Defence Review is set to include a £1bn budget to develop technology to speed up battlefield decisions with tools including drones, amid apparent acceptance from ministers that the mass-deployment of UAVs has become a necessity of warfare.

In Ukraine, mass-produced, expendable drones now account for 80 per cent of casualties inflicted on Russian forces, many of them caused by so-called first-person view or FPV drones directed by a remote operator to a target.

According to one estimate, Kyiv destroyed 5,100 Russian tanks and armoured vehicles last year using FPV drones and is currently producing about 200,000 of the devices every month. In turn, Moscow has developed its own industrial-scale drone capacity and is currently regarded to have a technological edge over Ukraine in drones which use fibre-optic cables to defeat jamming technologies and reach their targets. Both sides are also fielding drones with rising levels of autonomy, rendering them capable of seeking out and even attacking targets without direct human control.

But there is increasing concern that Britain and its allies have been slow to respond and lack the capacity to design and manufacture the millions of drones needed to confront the Kremlin if Russian president Vladimir Putin turns his attentions to NATO.

Bob Tollast, a land warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), told The i Paper: “We need to rapidly scale up training and integration of drones in our forces, as well as securing enough of the systems and components from trusted allied countries and our own production. Unfortunately, this is a very long way off.”

He added that compared to the current production levels Ukraine and Russia, the drone output of European countries, the US and Asian allies “isn’t nearly enough for modern war, even if combined”.

One former UK military commander, who was consulted as part of the defence review, said: “Russia is operating a war economy and has an ability to reconstitute its forces far, far quicker than Nato at present. At the same time Putin has shown he is willing to accept horrific casualty rates. When you then add in drones, the game has changed dramatically.

“There is an urgent need to achieve the sort of scale in drones and other materiel that is going to give the Kremlin pause as far as meddling with Nato. As we speak, that is not happening.”

It is unlikely that phalanxes of aerial drones would ever be needed to confront Russian attacks on British soil, although the UK is developing naval submarine drones designed to thwart Moscow’s attempts to interfere with underwater infrastructure such as data cables. Instead, British forces equipped with a drone capability would be likely to form a major part of NATO forces deployed to its eastern flank to guard against Russian attempts to provoke a confrontation or test the commitment to Article Five – the alliance’s pledge to come to the aid of another member under attack.

A leading think-tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), warned earlier this month that Russia could be in a position to pose a “significant military challenge” to Nato, particularly in the Baltic states, as early as 2027. 

The result is growing concern in military circles that Britain and other Western militaries have only a narrow window in which to reshape forces and develop their own “drone wall”, alongside associated technologies such as the AI software needed to manage thousands of UAVs at a time and enhanced electronic warfare (EW) or jamming abilities to disrupt enemy surveillance and attacks.

Several experts pointed to the fact that Ukrainian forces sent for training in the UK are now instructing their British counterparts in how to mount drone operations as stark proof that when it comes to the art of war, Nato increasingly needs to learn from Ukraine.

Professor Jahara Matisek, a national security expert at the US Naval War College, said: “The reversal of expertise highlights how battlefield experience is reshaping Western military thinking. It’s a vivid reminder that war forges doctrine faster than peacetime planning.”

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The former commander, who was speaking to in a personal capacity, said progress is “too slow” and the UK’s defence sector, in common with other European countries, lacks the “agility” to scale up drone production.  

He said: “The ‘drone wall’ is not just a tactical tool but a strategic necessity. The UK and its allies must move decisively to harness drones’ disruptive potential, integrating EW countermeasures and innovations like fibre-optic drones, before Russia exploits the gap. Ukraine’s lessons are clear: adapt swiftly or risk being outmanoeuvered.”

The i Paper asked the Ministry of Defence whether it sees Ukraine’s “drone wall” as a model for UK forces, but it did not respond.

Others argue that caution should be applied to any dash towards a drone-dominated future. Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, a former senior British Army officer, said a mixture of capabilities, including heavy armour, will still be needed to dominate any battlefield. He said: “We do need a rebalance but the principles of war still hold and we need to be careful of getting rid of say tanks just because so many have been destroyed by cheap drones.” 

At the heart of the “drone wall” concept lies the idea that a frontline, or border, can be permanently patrolled at a depth of anywhere from 5km to 50km by an array of different UAV technologies, ranging from higher-altitude surveillance drones to off-the-shelf attack drones which are often modified using bespoke software and weapon delivery systems produced on 3D printers. The highly-detailed surveillance abilities of the drones can then be used to call in strikes from artillery, aircraft or other UAVs.

Such is the density of drones on the battlefields of Ukraine at present that both sides are often largely pinned down, only able to move troops at night or during bad weather. Supplies are increasingly moved in by individual soldiers rather than by vehicle and soldiers report having to remain in their disguised bunkers for longer periods of time – up to three months in extreme cases – before they can be relieved.

Yet the “drone wall” concept is particularly attractive to Western militaries not only because mass-produced UAVs offer low-cost lethality compared to expensive missiles and multi-million pound armour but also because they dramatically expand the area or “frontage” over which a body of troops can effectively confront an enemy.

Mr Tollast explains that in 1990 an entire division of the British Army, consisting of some 11,500 soldiers, would have been expected to have a “frontage” of about 30km when deployed in Europe. In Ukraine, a drone-equipped brigade of fewer than 4,000 men can hold up to 27km of ground.

He said: “Drones help by massively expanding an area under surveillance and then swarming drones and massing artillery fire in an area as an enemy tries to attack. In theory, you can defend very large areas with drones and fewer soldiers.”

David Kirichenko, a military strategy specialist at the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, argues that rather than Britain committing itself to a homegrown drone system, it may well make sense to source UAVs proven in the frontlines of the Donbas.

He said: “I think the UK would benefit from continuing to invest into Ukrainian production lines and working with Ukraine to help export some of these drones and technologies. I don’t think the UK by itself is ready to produce the drones needed for warfare, but it can be done in closer partnership with Ukraine.”

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