US shouldn't learn the wrong lessons about Ukraine’s drones, expert says

Updated on July 23 at 3:03 p.m.

Ukraine’s innovative use of technology is playing a vital role in the war—but not necessarily in the ways shown on social media, said one analyst who travels frequently to the region. 

The plentiful social-media videos of Ukrainian drones destroying tanks, for example, give viewers the impression that the units flying the drones are more successful than they actually are, said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

“The problem is that you get into huge issues with sample bias,” said Kofman, speaking at Army Application Laboratory's VERTEX event. “The least successful units are going to show you probably their most successful strikes." 

Meanwhile, Ukraine is increasingly using drones to sow mines and haul supplies, which draws less attention than the flashier strike missions, he said. 

“Defensive mining missions have become one of their primary tasks, very commonly employed with magnetic influence mines,” Kofman said. Units record the mines’ locations, allowing them to disrupt enemy logistics without affecting their own operations. 

Loitering munitions have not rendered armored vehicles obsolete, Kofman added.

“Even the vehicles with good defenses on them can withstand a lot of hits and are still in action a year into the war, and some crews have stopped counting how many [first-person-view] or Lancet hits they even take,” he said. 

Kofman said he had heard from one Bradley crew that their vehicle had sustained more than 20 hits from armed Russian FPV drones.

Other units Kofman has talked to say that up to half of resupply missions are done by small logistics drones no larger than a few feet across. Such drones are necessary because the Russians regularly hit vehicles traveling within five to six kilometers of the front. 

Small drones cannot carry large quantities of supplies, but larger drones would be easier targets, both in the air and when soldiers cluster around them when they land, Kofman said. Most of the resupply at Ukraine’s months-long river bridgehead at Krinky was done by drones, he added.  

Kofman also said that if you compare the damage done to the number of drones lost, large drone bombers are among the most effective attack drones Ukraine has. 

Still, Ukraine’s use of drones also comes with trade-offs, Kofman said. For one, drones require more people to operate them than other weapons with similar effects. A team that flies FPV drones might include several soldiers, including an operator, a co-pilot who helps with navigation, a weapons specialist, and a technician.

An overreliance on drones could also lead to commanders micromanaging troops, he said, likening the process to playing a real-time strategy computer game.

Drones and other surveillance mechanisms can also be tricked, he added, but only if decoys are sufficiently realistic. Effective decoys must emit thermal and electronic signals, be mobile, and look like the real thing, Kofman said.

Those Ukrainian decoys attract many strikes by Russian attack drones and short-range missiles, he said. But Ukraine’s lack of air defenses compared to Russia’s huge number of drones means that Russian drones can still pick out targets as deep as 60 miles behind Ukraine’s frontline, he added. 

“If you shoot down a [Russian observation drone], they’ll put up another one in 10, 15 minutes,” he said. Shooting them down also leaves fewer missiles to shoot down more dangerous attack helicopters, and exposes the position of the air defenses, he said. 

Despite the challenges of using drones for strike missions, Kofman said the United States should learn from Ukraine’s use of drones to achieve mass precision strikes at close range. Drones have “democratized precision” in close-range fights, he said.

By contrast, the United States currently overemphasizes the use of precision weapons to take out command posts and other targets deep behind the frontline. Striking these targets is “an important enabler, but it's not a substitute for success in the close battle,” he said. 

Kofman also warned U.S. commanders about assuming that they could do better than Ukraine at smashing through Russian lines. 

There is an “overemphasis on maneuver warfare,” in the U.S. military, Kofman said, referring to a military strategy consisting of disorienting the enemy through fast, unexpected strikes that result in fewer casualties. But with a conflict like the war in Ukraine, “you really have to make peace with a high level of attrition.”