During the four years of the war, it dramatically evolved its mode of defense, abandoning what remnants remained of the centralized Soviet system and moving towards more flexible and adaptive methods by adopting the protocols of .
A challenge was the need to quickly train soldiers, often under Russian strikes at training centers to lower morale. Emphasis was placed on extensive simulations and the cultivation of mental resilience. Many developments will be taught in history books as changes in the way war is conducted in general.
The most important is the emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles – drones (UAVs) – as the fundamental means of warfare. The progress of their use has been rapid and they are the main reason why progress is so slow on the battlefields.
From reconnaissance tools, drones have evolved into complex systems coordinated in part with artificial intelligence. They signaled a dramatic rise in electronic warfare, while from 2024 the use of fiber optic technology is being consolidated. From 2025, the coordination of multiple systems through artificial intelligence is critical, potentially playing a role in decision-making in the field.
The use of Artificial Intelligence
At present, it is not widely used as an autonomous decision maker but as a means of speeding up data management, target recognition and orientation in the field with course correction, in cooperation with human intentional action.
The question is whether in the future artificial intelligence will replace human decision-making. Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) deal with mines, assist in resupply and conduct strikes. Ukraine’s unmanned surface vessels (USVs) have delivered decisive blows to the Russian fleet. Now using a full operating system has deterrent power against a much larger fleet and prevents naval blockade. Henceforth, countries without a strong fleet will be able to ensure denial of the use of the sea against stronger adversaries.
In 2026, however, a major risk for NATO is that Russia (and allies) are massively collecting battlefield data to train AI weapons. The wars of the future may be decided by low-cost systems that attack in swarming fashion to saturate the adversary. The main military virtue is the constant adaptability to new technological data in the field and less strategic planning from the start.
In dealing with drones, concentrated air defense methods using missile systems that defended against few and large enemy drones, but are saturated against mass swarms, are becoming obsolete. More important is a flexible defense architecture that utilizes natural and improvised strongpoints, as well as friendly drone interceptors.
Economic viability is crucial, as interceptor missiles are more expensive than attack drones. That is why cheap interceptor drones are used in cooperation with the human factor. This means that economic resilience is as important to the outcome of wars as the possession of expensive cutting-edge weapons.
There is talk of defense “ecosystems” with multispectral detection with sound, heat and radar sensors, coordination of artificial intelligence and human actors. The reason is that fiber optics and autonomous drone technology have rendered centralized interference (which blinded unmanned aerial vehicles) ineffective, bringing back the importance of local decentralized action involving a combination of humans and machines.
In four years, electronic warfare has transformed from an individual aspect to a universal coordination and combination capability of great importance to artillery. The importance of “spoofing”, i.e. sending false coordinates to deceive, against “jamming”, i.e. electronic interference, has increased.
Drones with fiber optic and computer vision technology can be used as an antidote. Systems using information from drones and satellites can deal with electronic interference. Today, the most effective is the collaboration on a small scale of artificial intelligence and human discretion in decisions.
Space Technologies
The importance of hybridity also applies to the use of Space technologies. Space-based observation systems and the “battle internet” are integral to command and control, as well as precision targeting. However, the fact that these systems are vulnerable to electronic warfare means that hybrid systems with receiving information from Space and Earth are necessary, considering loss of connectivity as the rule rather than the exception.
What is needed are architectures of flexibility that allow the battle to continue amid temporary loss of connectivity. Decisive for the evolution of conflicts is now the speed of filtering and managing the volume of data in conditions of information saturation, but also of electronic interference.
The logic of the software evolved from the priority of the “panoramic” view of the battlefield to that of decentralized decision-making after rapid utilization of information from multiple sensors.
In 2025, Ukrainian deep strikes with an emphasis on repetition and range of strikes, which wear down the opponent, were also decisive.
In modern wars of attrition, the original strategic combinations become obsolete, while the secret of success is technological adaptability (Moscow and Kiev are developing their warfare methods “in parallel”) and the decentralized hybridity of humans and machines.
