The 2022-2026 drone war: the complete panorama

A battlefield redrawn in three years

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the military drone had already existed for decades, but it remained a surveillance tool or a niche weapon reserved for powers that could afford a Reaper costing tens of millions of euros. Three years later, that same object has become the weapon that kills the most Russian soldiers on the front line, the one that sent part of the Russian fleet to the bottom of the Black Sea without Ukraine possessing anything resembling a navy, and the one that made it possible to strike strategic bombers more than 4,000 kilometres from the Ukrainian border. I work in delivery management, and I've long observed how an industrial constraint forces the complete reorganisation of a system. The drone war in Ukraine is the most spectacular case study of this, and it deserves a structural analysis rather than the excitement of breaking news.

This article opens an eight-part series. Here I lay out the broad lines of the 2022-2026 evolution; the following instalments will each dig into a sub-system: aerial weapon, naval warfare, military reorganisation, electronic countermeasures, the French industry, the Eurodrone programme, and the international race.

This is, of course, an analytical exercise that opens a discussion more than it draws conclusions. I'm not an expert on these topics, I don't work in the sector, I simply keep a close, ongoing watch on them.

2022-2023: the shortage that invented a weapon

The turning point didn't come from a military research lab but from a brutal logistical constraint. Facing the artillery shell shortage that hit the Ukrainian army from 2023 onward, front-line units turned to a civilian object repurposed for war: the FPV (first person view) drone, originally designed for hobbyist racing. Piloted with immersive vision goggles and fitted with an improvised explosive charge, this small quadcopter costs a few hundred euros and becomes a disposable precision munition capable of destroying an armoured vehicle worth millions.

Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council (RNBO) sums it up in its defense industry report: FPVs emerged in 2023 "in response to the challenge of the artillery ammunition shortage," before becoming "a large-scale, cost-effective solution." This shift from a supply problem to a doctrine of use is, in my view, the key to reading the whole series: every technical evolution starts from a concrete constraint, not a staff-officer concept.

2024-2026: the industrial shift

What stands out next is the speed of the ramp-up. Kyiv targets one million drones produced in 2024, a goal exceeded as early as the third quarter according to Volodymyr Zelensky's own announcements, before claiming a production capacity of 4 million units a year in early 2025. The country receives around 3 million FPV drones in 2025 alone, according to Ukraine's Ministry of Defense as cited by the Kyiv Independent. The RNBO states that by 2026, Ukraine's defense industry capacity exceeds 8 million FPVs a year, driven by more than 160 companies of all sizes.

This industrialisation shifts the balance of power on the ground. The same RNBO report states that 60% of Russian army losses are now inflicted by FPV drones. A separate report, cited by Forbes and drawing on Royal United Services Institute data, puts the share of targeted Russian equipment destroyed by drones at around two-thirds, more than all other Ukrainian weapons systems combined. These are two different metrics, human losses for one, destroyed equipment for the other, that shouldn't be merged into a single figure: that methodological caution is precisely what distinguishes a structural analysis from a communications argument. The detail of this aerial weapon (Shahed, Lancet, FPV) will be the subject of the second instalment.

The Black Sea without a navy

The most visible paradox of this conflict is naval. Ukraine has no surface fleet capable of rivalling the Russian navy, and yet it inflicts losses on it that few analysts would have anticipated in 2022. The Magura V5 and Sea Baby naval drones, developed by Ukrainian services, have claimed the destruction or damage of several major vessels: the patrol ship Sergey Kotov, the landing ship Tsezar Kunikov, and the missile carrier Ivanovets for the Magura, along with the Crimean Bridge and the landing ship Olenegorsky Gornyak for the Sea Baby, according to the summary published by RBC-Ukraine. The third instalment of this series will look in detail at this campaign and what it says about the future of classic surface fleets.

An army reorganising around the object that's winning it the war

A technology that becomes central always ends up redrawing the organisation that wields it. Ukraine offers an unprecedented demonstration of this: in 2024 it creates an Unmanned Systems Forces, a fully-fledged military branch dedicated to drones, distinct from the army, air force, or navy. According to CSIS analysis, Volodymyr Zelensky announces the creation of this force in February 2024, a law formalises it in September, and Colonel Vadym Sukharevsky, who has been flying drones in the Donbas since 2016, takes command. In late 2025, this force merges with the "Drone Line," the grouping of the country's best-performing drone units, under a single command, as reported by the Kyiv Independent. It's the first time a modern army has elevated the drone to the rank of a fully-fledged staff-level weapon. The fourth instalment will detail this reorganisation and what it means for military doctrine.

Striking far: Operation Spiderweb

On 1 June 2025, Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) carries out Operation "Spiderweb": FPV drones, hidden inside wooden structures mounted on trucks and smuggled into Russian territory, are released remotely to strike several air bases simultaneously, some located nearly 4,300 kilometres from Ukraine, such as the Belaya base in eastern Siberia. The SBU claims the destruction or damage of 41 aircraft, including Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 strategic bombers as well as A-50 radar planes, for an estimated $7 billion in damage, according to the detailed account by the Moscow Times. That figure remains a Ukrainian estimate: independent confirmation of the exact number of aircraft destroyed is lacking. The operation nonetheless demonstrates that a drone costing a few hundred dollars can threaten a strategic bomber worth several hundred million, thousands of kilometres from the front line.

The Russian response: saturation by Shahed

Russia hasn't remained a bystander to this dynamic. It has industrialised its own strike campaign with the Iranian Shahed-136, produced under licence as the Geran-2, targeting Ukrainian infrastructure and cities in massive waves. According to analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security, Russia launched 54,538 Shahed-type drones at Ukraine in 2025, of which around 32,200 were actual attack drones, the rest being decoys meant to saturate air defenses. This race to saturate, where numbers matter as much as precision, will be covered in the second instalment of the series.

The countermeasure: shooting down a drone that costs less than a missile

Every mass weapon produces its countermeasure. Launching a surface-to-air missile costing several hundred thousand euros to shoot down a Shahed worth a fraction of that isn't sustainable over time, which has pushed Ukrainians and their allies to develop interceptor drones and electronic warfare tools built around that cost-effectiveness ratio. I'll leave the detail of this defensive race, radars, jamming, drone-versus-drone, to the fifth instalment.

France enters the industrial race

This global shift hasn't spared France's defense industrial and technological base. Alta Ares is developing counter-drone systems inspired by lessons learned from Ukraine: its "tactical protection dome," combining Thales and Echodyne radars, artificial intelligence, and Ukrainian-designed interceptor drones, was validated by NATO following trials conducted at the DGA site in Biscarrosse, according to Opex360. The same company tested its Black Bird turbojet interceptor in extreme cold in Estonia, fitted with an engine from Alsatian subcontractor ALM Méca, reaching 450 km/h at -17°C at ground level, again according to Opex360. The sixth instalment will cover this nascent French industry, its players, and its industrial limits.

The European programme led by France, Germany, Italy, and Spain is following a much slower path. The Eurodrone, whose €7.1 billion contract for twenty systems was signed in 2022, initially targeted entry into service in 2025. A further one-year delay, confirmed in autumn 2025, pushes that date beyond 2030, against a backdrop of industrial tensions between Airbus and Dassault Aviation over workshare, according to Meta-Defense. The seventh instalment will revisit this programme and what it reveals about the difficulties of European defense cooperation in the face of Ukraine's urgency.

What comes next

This first instalment was only a panorama. The seven that follow will each dig into a sub-system of this transformation:

Episode 2: the aerial drone war (Shahed, Lancet, FPV)
Episode 3: how Ukrainian naval drones destroyed the Russian Black Sea fleet
Episode 4: the reorganisation of the Ukrainian army around the drone
Episode 5: electronic counter-warfare, how you shoot down a drone in 2026
Episode 6: France's drone defense industry (Alta Ares, ALM Méca, Renault)
Episode 7: the Eurodrone programme and its delays
Episode 8: the international race for military drones (China, Russia, Turkey, the United States, NATO doctrine)

Frequently asked questions

Since when has the FPV drone been used at scale in Ukraine?

The FPV establishes itself as a mass weapon from 2023 onward, in direct response to the artillery ammunition shortage affecting the Ukrainian army, according to Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.

What share of Russian losses is attributed to drones?

Ukraine's RNBO states that 60% of the Russian army's human losses are inflicted by FPV drones. A separate report cited by Forbes and drawing on RUSI data puts the share of Russian equipment destroyed by drones at around two-thirds, a different metric that shouldn't be confused with the previous one.

Did Ukraine really sink Russian ships without a navy?

Yes. The Magura V5 and Sea Baby naval drones allowed Ukraine to claim the destruction or damage of several Russian vessels in the Black Sea, including the missile carrier Ivanovets and the landing ship Tsezar Kunikov, without Kyiv possessing a surface fleet comparable to Moscow's.