In addition, Russia also uses drones, which sometimes to violate NATO air force. Russian forces regularly destroy Ukrainian drones, causing them to stray into NATO territory.
Of course, NATO members have drones too – and plan to buy more. “Ukraine has accelerated our technological development,” Vice Admiral Ewa Skoog Haslum, Sweden’s head of joint operations, told me. “It has also informed the general public about drones. The Swedish armed forces, like the armed forces elsewhere in NATO, regularly train with drones. But sometimes a big or urgent situation has to happen for things to happen and develop quickly. That’s what we’re seeing now.”
But these humble-yet-fierce weapons are not a A miracle weapon.
“We have to remember that what Ukraine has succeeded in doing … (is) pushing the Russian Black Sea Fleet away from the western part of the Black Sea, which means that the Ukrainians can maintain their civilian maritime transport,” noted Hans Granlund, a recently retired Swedish naval officer who served as Ukraine’s defense partner during the early stages of the war. “However, the Ukrainians have not been able to take control of the Black Sea themselves because they do not have their own ships.”
Most aerial drones are like mosquitoes: They’re small, they bite, they can be thrown and manipulated easily, and they move in swarms. But hurting and crippling the other side is not the only responsibility of the armed forces.
Drones certainly don’t eliminate the need for ships, for example. In the Baltic Sea, NATO countries must be able to do more than destroy Russian ships – they must also transport troops and equipment to the Baltic countries and Finland. And that is in the field of the sea. Imagine fighting a ground invader especially with drones. Sure, you can inflict pain on an attacker, but drones alone won’t bring victory.
