The arrival of Ukrainian experts in drone technology shows that they and their allies are keen to make the most of the experience from the 4-year-old, where drones first dominated military conflicts.
Teams of Ukrainians are being asked to help coordinate air defenses in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, as well as work with Americans to protect American bases in Jordan.
In the first weeks of the war, the Iranians have carried out swarm attacks with drones, which try to saturate the conventional air defenses of the states in the region. The Iranian strategy is to financially exhaust their adversaries, as interceptor missiles are much more expensive than the drones they intercept.
How Ukrainians deal with drones
And here the contribution of the Ukrainians is important: in the 4-year war against Russia they managed to invent a multitude of ways to deal with enemy drones with an emphasis on low cost and long-term sustainability. These means include cheap interceptor drones, electronic warfare equipment for interference (jamming) and deception (spoofing), surveillance systems with artificial intelligence, but also the use of combat helicopters.
By contrast, in the Middle East the US is currently defending itself with Patriot missiles, THAAD anti-missile systems, and AWACS Airborne Warning and Control Systems. These are systems that are expensive and difficult to replenish.
The Ukrainians, on the other hand, use cheap interceptor drones that at first were nicknamed “Shahed killers”, and until recently were guided by operators who monitor their movements on a screen or wear “First Person View goggles”, that is, glasses that allow you to see in real time from a drone’s camera as if you were seeing through the eyes of the device. Ukraine produces thousands of similar drones every month, with the latest models also using artificial intelligence to track their targets. As a rule, their speed exceeds 300 kilometers per hour.
Drone diplomacy is changing the image of Ukraine
The transmission of Ukraine’s experience will not be limited to the Middle East, but will be extended to Romania and Germany. In this way, Ukraine is changing its international image from a country that was considered dependent on the West to a country that is at the cutting edge of military technology, participating through its experts even in confrontations that do not directly concern it.
Thanks to drone diplomacy, President Volodymyr Zelensky is turning from debtor to benefactor of the West. Iran respectively draws conclusions from the war in Ukraine and seems to share relevant know-how with Russia, but possibly also with China and North Korea.
Drones are turning modern warfare into slow wars of attrition
Ukraine began experimenting with drone technology as early as the first phase of military operations in 2014. But as of 2022, mass production of cheap drones is a matter of life and death in order to counter an adversary like Russia with superior firepower. In 2026, domestic production is expected to reach seven million drones.
Mainly thanks to drones, Ukraine has managed to pin down Russian expansion, as a “wall of drones” is created that can inflict heavy losses on the attacker at a depth of ten kilometers from the front line. In this way, modern warfare is evolving into a war of attrition, reminiscent of the trench warfare of World War I with the difference that the modern equivalent is aerial.
It is estimated that three-quarters of recent Russian casualties are due to Ukrainian drones. At the same time, Ukrainian naval drones have neutralized a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet and allowed a relative lifting of the blockade of Ukrainian ports. Some models of drones used by the Ukrainian navy carry anti-aircraft missiles, while others carry smaller drones that can be detached for attacks. At the same time, Ukrainian drones can carry out deep strikes at a distance of up to a thousand kilometers from the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Economically strong imitate weaker
Russia has made its own leaps and bounds in drone technology, initially relying on the Iranian Shahed, which it improved as the Geran-2. In the current war in Iran, even the US has been influenced by Iranian methods, producing and using its own cheap drones, LUCAS, which stands for Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Aerial System.
The lesson of the 4-year war in Ukraine is that the economically stronger are forced to follow the methods of the economically weaker, of course with improvements, because the key is long-term economic sustainability in forms of warfare where cheap weapons can destroy expensive ones. For comparison, a LUCAS costs $35,000, while a Tomahawk missile costs $2.5 million.
At stake in the Middle East right now for the US and allies is intercepting Iranian drones with cheap interceptor drones, rather than expensive missiles. What Iran has been doing so far is sending swarms of drones and ballistic missiles. Sometimes the saturation of air defense systems by drones meant that ballistic missiles had a better chance of penetrating the saturated defense system.
The US and Israel cannot afford to use Patriot missiles and fighter jets forever to intercept drones in particular, as the more expensive means of interception should only be aimed at ballistic missiles. It seems that elements of the multifaceted Ukrainian low-cost methodology need to be adopted, such as the combination of cheap interceptor drones, electronic warfare with interference (jamming) and deception (spoofing), surveillance systems with artificial intelligence, etc., with an emphasis on multi-layered defense.
What the US is after
The bet for the US is not to drive its stocks of interceptor missiles to a critically low level in the Middle East, and even the transfer of defense systems from elsewhere, e.g. THAAD from South Korea, affects the overall security architecture. In this way, Ukrainians operating in the Middle East now also benefit their homeland, as every Patriot spent there is a Patriot who will not be able to help Ukraine in the future.
Prolongation of the war in Iran may cause a serious problem in the Ukrainian air defense. Ukraine, therefore, is also intervening out of a deep existential need not to decimate its stockpile of Patriot missiles. Besides, a quick US victory in the Middle East is of existential importance for Ukraine, and for the reason that Russia’s economy is favored by the rise in the price of oil or the temporary lifting of some of the sanctions against it due to the energy crisis.
