15 Soldiers Per Kilometer: Kofman on the Robotic Front Line of Europe's Longest War

The war in Ukraine has entered a phase defined not by infantry charges but by competing drone ecosystems, grey zones instead of front lines, and a geopolitical landscape reshaped by the US-Iran conflict. In a new War on the Rocks episode, Michael Kofman - fresh from a trip to the front - lays out why Ukraine is performing better than expected despite losing its drone edge, how both sides now throw thousands of FPVs per day into a kill zone that decides who holds ground, and why the real vulnerability lies not on the front but in the skies above Ukrainian cities. With Russian oil revenues surging thanks to the Iran war, American interceptor stocks draining in the Gulf, and NATO tensions rising, Kofman argues that Ukraine's smartest play is expanding its middle strike capability to hit Russian logistics in depth - while racing to turn its battlefield expertise into defense deals with Gulf states before the window closes.

Ryan Evans: You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense and foreign affairs. My name is Ryan Evans. I founded War on the Rocks and I am sitting here with Mike Kofman of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And we are here to talk about the war in Ukraine. Even though there is a war in Iran, this war between Ukraine and Russia certainly hasn't stopped or even slowed down much. So Mike, you were in Ukraine what, two months ago now? A month ago?

Michael Kofman: About a month ago. A little less than a month ago actually. I came back mid-March.

The front line: Ukraine doing better than expected

Ryan Evans: And what were some of the big takeaways in terms of top level strategic issues of how the war is going?

Michael Kofman: So for me the big takeaways were first, Ukraine is actually doing quite better than expected. The front stabilized around the winter as usual, but coming out of the winter into early spring, Russian forces began mechanized assaults again, but they haven't been doing that well.

Ryan Evans: Why is that?

Michael Kofman: First, I think that the Russian military has just not been able to generate substantial reserves or expand the force given the losses they have been taking over the course of 2025. I think they can sustain the fight maybe at this intensity or a bit less, but it is increasingly clear that they can't do significantly more or better, at least right now, than the way we saw them perform last year. Second, Ukraine is getting better and better at drone employment, even though they have to some extent lost their advantages in this space over the course of 2025.

The drone kill zone and infiltration tactics

Ryan Evans: Well let's dig into that. What were those advantages and how did they lose them?

Michael Kofman: The thrust of the fight at the tactical level last year was really a tug of war over this kill zone, which is the drone engagement zone that's sometimes 15 kilometers or up to 25 from the front line. Last year started out with Ukraine having big advantages and Russia eventually got better at both how they were employing drones, trying to put out their own version of a line of drones to the Ukrainian initiative, and also just in sheer numbers, clawing back some of those advantages. And so the year ended with relative parity between the two sides. But even though that was a negative trend, you just didn't see the Russian military be able to capitalize on it or be able to leverage infiltration tactics for any real significant advances. And a big reason for that is just the way they have been fighting. Either infiltration through individual soldiers or small infantry groups or motorized attacks - they are just not conducive to getting any kind of breakthroughs.

Ryan Evans: I would like to dig into that because this reminds me - and correct me if I am wrong on any of this because I very well might be - but a lot of these infiltration tactics were pioneered by the Wagner Group earlier in the war, especially around the Battle of Bakhmut where they would send these smaller units in to try to get behind enemy lines and create vulnerabilities. And then when Wagner became absorbed by the Russian Armed Forces, would you say it's fair that these infiltration tactics became more widespread in terms of how Russia tried to launch these?

Michael Kofman: I would agree part way, which is to say Wagner pioneered assault groups, small assault groups, 6 to 8 men, and the use of convicts in particular, and the use of assault companies that would break down into these assault groups and assault detachments.

Ryan Evans: So smaller units trying to sort of sneak through the front.

Michael Kofman: Yes. And Wagner pioneered this sort of grinding approach. They developed a system for employing people that had very little training, and very harsh draconian tactics. And then after 2023 you saw a kind of Wagnerization of the Russian military, where the regular Russian units then all have assault companies of convicts, and then they have assault companies and assault detachments of newly contracted personnel. They only have something like two weeks of training.

Ryan Evans: Two weeks, that's it.

Michael Kofman: Yeah. They have a clear set up system for how they are going to employ them. And they go from small assault groups of 6 to 8 men to then in 2025 you begin to see maybe a whole platoon but advancing as individual soldiers or pairs, or individual soldiers being guided by a drone, by a Mavic, through lines - because Ukraine doesn't have cohesive lines at this point. And them just trying to figure out where are Ukrainian forward positions. And then when they see anybody be able to walk through them, then sending more people along that path until they accumulate in the rear.

No front line - just a grey zone

Michael Kofman: And so what happened by the time we get to this point in the war is that most of the fight is not between infantry or soldiers at all on the ground. It is about the drone units of one side, their fire support, their artillery, but particularly their drone units, being able to displace the drone units of the other side. And once they are able to suppress them and push out that support, then the line shifts because there is no line. There is just a grey zone between the two sides. There isn't this sort of cohesive defensive lines between Russian and Ukrainian forces.

And so this trend kind of further progressed into 2026. So now when you talk to colleagues on who took how much territory last month in March, the answer varies considerably. DeepState, the Ukrainian site, shows Russians taking maybe 160 square kilometers because they basically rated the Russian advance in a certain way and they had most of the advances previously be a grey zone. And Finnish colleagues who also do the mapping rated the Russian advance as 25 square kilometers as the net total advance because they mapped it differently. Because there's such a large grey zone that three different mapping organizations can look at it and give you very different numbers at this point.

Ryan Evans: And you'll remember in the first year of the war we did this episode with a few colleagues - it was Chris Dougherty, I think Dara was there, John Gentile - and we were talking about this same piece of land, this same part of eastern Ukraine was being fought over between the German army and the Red Army in World War Two. And these were multi-million size forces. There was no front that you could just sort of sneak through quite so easily because there were just so many people. And now you have a couple hundred thousand on each side and this robotization. It's just an interesting snapshot of how in the same piece of territory warfare has evolved and changed so much in the last 80 years.

Michael Kofman: Yeah. If you look at the amount of infantry on the line, Russia may have a lot more force than Ukraine. Ukraine maybe has something like 15 plus men on average per kilometer. Most of the units, a lot of them now are drone unit support and logistics. And a lot of what shapes the fight at this point are various types of drone units and those that you consider to be more in fire support roles.

Ryan Evans: Just as a comparison, on the Eastern Front in World War Two it was a thousand troops per kilometer.

Michael Kofman: Yeah.

Ryan Evans: And now we're talking 15 troops per kilometer.

Michael Kofman: Something like that. Obviously it varies, maybe more in an urban environment, but in general yes. And there are many times where I have seen nine men in three defensive positions and they are separated by 250 meters or something like that. And the thing is that we're now getting out of the winter when infiltration tactics don't work because there's nowhere to hide, particularly on thermal imaging. But in April the terrain cover returns, things become green, it gets a lot denser. And then what we typically see is Russian forces try to do big mechanized assaults, which has been taking place now for a couple weeks. Then they run out of equipment in the assault units and then they go back to infiltration tactics after April as we get into May. That's probably how this is going to progress.

Filling the "donut hole" - Ukraine's middle strike capability

Michael Kofman: Where I see big changes in dynamics is first, Ukraine really is getting focused on this kind of middle strike option which is getting after operational depth. And they have been running an interesting campaign really decimating Russian air defense further in the rear.

Ryan Evans: And you flagged this last year. You called this the donut hole in Ukraine's drone strategy. Where you had a lot of FPV drones between 1 and 30 kilometers. And then you had these long range systems. But that middle part was missing. Between a thousand kilometers or 800 kilometers and 40 kilometers. And that's where you think they are making some major progress in filling that donut hole.

Michael Kofman: Yes. The 30 to 300 kilometer gap.

Ryan Evans: Now it's more like a bear claw I guess.

Michael Kofman: Yeah, I guess, if we're sticking with pastry. What I used to talk about is the fact that if you wanted to hit something at 30 kilometers Ukraine had an incredible number of means. And if you wanted to hit something at a thousand kilometers that didn't move, Ukraine had the capabilities to do that too. But if you wanted to hit anything in between, that's where the problems were. And that's where a lot of Russian advantages were too.

And you see Ukraine steadily solving this problem. They still have a lot of coordination issues to resolve - who controls operational depth. This is very common, these are growing pains in the military. You build out drone units but they don't answer to the corps. The corps are focused on the front line, the drone units are incentivized to maximize attrition, and so there's a lot of issues to solve. But in general they have been on the right path and you can see the results of it.

And the reason this is so important is you don't just want to be able to range troops at and near the front. But you want to be able to hit their logistics nodes, where their reserves are gathering, camps in the rear area. And that's what filling that donut hole allows them to do.

How many drones does it really take?

Ryan Evans: Right.

Michael Kofman: The big challenge that Ukraine had is that Russian forces disperse at the front line. So the amount of capabilities you expend to get at anything at the front line is very substantial. A lot of people I think have the wrong impression. They believe, because they see on videos posted of drone strikes, one FPV drone hits a soldier and kills that soldier.

Look, I will tell you this from both general statistics but also just my own numerous anecdotal experiences. That's not how it plays out. There are many times where it takes multiple FPVs, multiple bomber drones to even kill one individual person. Yes, it may seem like they are easily killed by a piloted drone. But in actuality in many situations you have to account for a number of drones that didn't make it, a number of drones that missed, and it could be quite a few. And the same thing with vehicles. It maybe takes 15 plus drones to stop a well protected armored fighting vehicle, for a tank it's often 30 or more.

So it's important to understand that yes, mobility was very effectively denied by a combination of mines, prepared defenses, artillery and drones. But also how many drones it takes. And how this really evolved where both sides have the force structure, the organizational capacity, the command and control systems that enable them to employ drones on such a massive scale. Ukraine is probably using thousands of first person view drones just per day. I could give a number range - it's typically less in the winter, it increases towards the summer - but I think anywhere 6 to 8,000 is almost reasonable. And this is just one type of drone, not counting bomber drones, heavy multi-rotor bomber drones, mine laying and all this other stuff.

But the middle strike dynamic is very important to follow because I think people have always been very focused on long range strike capabilities, high end capabilities like air launched cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, which we should get to as the next part of our conversation. But this part really has begun to evolve.

Missiles: Russia's long range strike and Ukraine's vulnerability

Ryan Evans: So let's do that. I want to talk about these missiles and how those are evolving on both sides.

Michael Kofman: The two interesting developments were first, the winter showed that the biggest challenge Ukraine faces probably is not the front line. It is with Russian long range strike because the Russian military is now primarily focused on either using large numbers of one way attack drones - Geran 2 and the like, which people who are following the Iran war are familiar with the more primitive version of this, the Shahed 136 that it's based on. And you see something like 500 to 600 of these drones being used per month now, at least in recent months, paired together with cruise missiles.

But the biggest issue is ballistic missiles. At the end of the day you can't get away from high end capabilities. Russia is increasingly using ballistic missiles, it's getting more out of them. And here Ukraine is very limited because it really depends on US provided PAC-3 air defense, missile defense.

Ryan Evans: Not likely to be getting more of any time soon.

Michael Kofman: Yeah, it's been an issue for them to get interceptors and they are in short supply.

Ryan Evans: I mean, unless they come from NATO allies, but not from the US given especially what's happening in the Middle East.

Michael Kofman: Look, I have seen NATO allies put interceptors together and it's literally by handfuls. It's Germany when I was there promised five, if the other people would put together something like 30. And this is just to give you a sense of how these things tend to go. It's really small numbers. And you saw US and US allies in the Gulf and countries there probably in a month plus shoot out more Patriot interceptors than maybe even Ukrainian forces have in this war.

Ukraine's organic air defense solutions

Ryan Evans: We've seen lots of Ukrainian ingenuity and innovation. Are they developing any good organic sovereign solutions for air defense?

Michael Kofman: For air defense absolutely. For missile defense against more advanced capabilities, there it's much harder because there isn't something you're gonna put together that costs like 10 grand that you can easily make that is gonna solve the Iskander-M problem or the Zircon problem. That's where the real issue is.

For regular air defense, yes, absolutely. They got very good at deploying their own cheap drone based interceptors with tactical radars. They got very good at building an ecosystem of sensors that fuses data, that allows all these air defense teams to coordinate. So you start from mobile gun based air defense to drone based interceptors to various types of short range air defense capabilities to flying helicopters and aircraft that are also doing zonal defense. But when it comes to cruise and ballistic missiles...

The real threat: cheap drones plus ballistic missiles

Ryan Evans: So here's my view. Cruise missiles, at least Russian ones, are not that hard to shoot down. And the numbers that they fire are not fired in such great quantities. It's the complexity of the strike, right? Russian military got a lot better at routing, simultaneous arrival of different capabilities, attempts at saturation of air defense. Yes, most drones get intercepted, that's true. But it's one thing if Iran is firing 60 drones at you, and a lot of them don't hit anything, and maybe a couple get through. It's another thing if you're getting 600, 800 plus one way attack drones per night, you've intercepted over 80 percent, but you've still missed a fairly sizable number of drones that may have made it to the target. Russians are allocating 50 plus Geran type drones per one target at this point.

So cruise missiles to me are not the biggest issue at the end of the day. It's really this combination of much cheaper one way attack drones with high end ballistic missile capabilities.

The thing that's worth mentioning though is that Ukraine has also gotten a lot better at its long range strike with one way attack drones. And if you've kind of watched the strikes of the last two weeks, Ukrainian military is clearly focused on making sure that Russia doesn't capitalize on the significant spike in oil prices. The Iran war has very negative effects for Ukraine's negotiating position because it doesn't solve Russia's structural economic problems, but it does solve Russia's budgetary problems to some extent for this year if they are able to capitalize on it.

Ukraine's strikes on Russian oil exports

Ryan Evans: Yes, the most optimistic predictions that Russia's economy might collapse, which were maybe too optimistic to begin with, are definitely much less likely now that we have all this extra money flowing into Russian coffers due to the lifting of sanctions and rising prices in oil.

Michael Kofman: Yeah. Look, I am still of the mind that looking at the overall course of the war, time is definitely not necessarily on Russia's side, but the Iran war is doing no favors for that calculus and it is definitely buying time for Russia.

Now, Ukraine's been striking different Russian export facilities, particularly ports. Primorsk...

Ryan Evans: Yeah in the Baltic. Ust-Luga, yes.

Michael Kofman: And most recently Novorossiysk. And I think that is due to a combination of first, much better organization and sophistication of the strikes, they are qualitatively different. And again, you see a qualitative shift change in how they are doing them. I don't want to get into the details, but I will say that these strikes are being executed visibly differently than some of the other one way attack strikes into Russia.

And then also they have put a lot of pressure on Russian air defense. Now, I don't like the lazy thinking that there's like a general giant bucket of air defense, and if you are destroying short range Russian air defense in the south in Zaporizhzhia, then this is somehow affecting air defense all the way in the Baltic region. But Russian short range air defense has a munitions problem. They are having a lot of issues that Ukraine actually had a couple years ago in this war. And the amount of air defenses that they are losing is simply going to create coverage problems for them over time.

So I see that for Ukraine, the more advantageous approach for sure is to stabilize the front line, expand middle strike - that is to widen the kill zone over the Russian forces if parity has been lost at the tactical level or basically they are just at parity at the tactical level - and then expand long range strike to affect the Russian economy to the best they can and try to prevent Russia from capitalizing on current energy prices.

How the Iran war affects Ukraine

Ryan Evans: We've touched on this already, but let's dig more into the specific linkages of beyond the economic one we just discussed, and a paucity of US manufactured interceptors. How will the war in Iran affect the Russo-Ukrainian war? How is it already happening? How do you expect that to continue to develop if the war with Iran drags on longer?

Michael Kofman: First obvious linkage is it draws all the attention and US focus obviously to Iran and to the Gulf region from Ukraine. Energy prices is one big factor.

Fertilizer prices is another one that people may not be tracking, which is that folks will use force majeure, tear up contracts of things they expected to get from that region and instead turn to Russia, one of the biggest exporters of fertilizer in the world, and that'll materialize later in the year, will have a big knock-on effect. But certainly, us having to lift sanctions on Russia this month and allowing them to sell a lot of their floating stock doesn't do anything to help the situation.

Then on top of that we have Russia providing intelligence and certain things to Iran. We don't know how relevant they have been to improve Iranian targeting, but we can I think assume that it's had some positive impact in enabling their strikes.

Then Ukraine's gotten into it as well because they were initially visible losers from this conflict breaking out, but are trying to do their best to use this as an opportunity. Send their teams to different Gulf countries and then try to provide air defense for them and use that as an opportunity to lock in a bunch of deals. Zelensky was recently there, clearly making some deals with Gulf states either for capital or to get follow-on capabilities once the war is over, that maybe Ukraine can count on later on in this year.

I think the biggest challenge is we don't know how long the war is going to go on. We don't know how much long term damage will be done to export capacity of Gulf states, which is a big question mark. Because that's another factor. You might open the Strait of Hormuz tomorrow, but...

NATO tensions and the risk of US disengagement

Michael Kofman: And then lastly, what I want to highlight and I've been more concerned over the past week watching the situation develop is the US is publicly at least very unhappy with NATO. That has been the statement coming out from Trump, from Rubio. I don't think that the United States is gonna suddenly abandon NATO or exit the alliance, but it could have real implications for US force posture. It could have follow-on implications. And that's a great Ukrainian concern.

Ryan Evans: Well, it's become such a political emotional issue. But the fact remains Ramstein air base in Germany remains a major hub for and a landing pad for us in terms of US military operations in Iran. Most European countries have not denied overflight rights. Those that have were countries like - we didn't need overflight rights over Spain.

Michael Kofman: Yeah. You just fly over the strait.

Ryan Evans: So this has become an emotional issue and such a silly distraction that very much makes me think of 2003 for those of us who are old enough to remember the outrage that the Bush administration stoked at European allies who wisely did not want - some of them did, but like those who didn't, like Germany and France - wisely did not follow us into a disastrous war. And the ultimate irony is I think it was less than a year ago that Vice President JD Vance said that Europe should have done more to stop the US from going to war in Iraq. And it's like, well, you're so close.

The 80/20 rule of US support to Ukraine

Michael Kofman: Here's what I think the more practical concern is: that after this war, the US might say, you know what, we spent way too much ammunition here, we expended way too many interceptors, and now new production is just going to have to go to replenish our stocks. Sorry Ukraine and Europeans, you didn't do much for us in terms of help in this war. Ukraine is your problem. I think that's a reasonable Ukrainian concern.

Ryan Evans: I mean functionally in many ways that's already happened. The US government still provides important targeting, intelligence support and other forms of material support. But Europe is providing more material support to Ukraine than the United States is at this point.

Michael Kofman: So okay, I hate to disagree with you.

Ryan Evans: You can disagree with me.

Michael Kofman: We're friends. As I say, we've been friends for a very long time. Our friendship will survive...

Ryan Evans: Cut the episode. He disagreed with me.

Michael Kofman: Look, in terms of general material yes, but the 80/20 rule - that other 20 percent might be really important. It might be only 20 percent of the effort or whatever you allocate to it. But if you were to eliminate interceptors for PAC-3 missile defense... If you were to eliminate GMLRS for HIMARS systems... If you were to eliminate all this, and all US parts and maintenance, and the thousands of artillery shells we still send per month and other capabilities we provide. And also US intel, which if you were to eliminate I think would be most of the intel support Ukraine receives. Yeah, that last 20 percent might actually be pretty critical six months from now.

So I don't want to knock anything European allies provide, I just want to say they might provide more in general, but we provide some of that stuff you really need.

And then the second part of it is, it is true that they don't pay, but they have agreed to pay for all of it through either PDA process or FMS. That's all true. So most of this outside of intelligence is not technically being provided as assistance anymore.

But what I really worry about is that after this war the US will say, you know what, now it's not a money question. It's simply we are not going to provide you these capabilities.

Drone technology transfer: Russia to Iran and back

Ryan Evans: Before we go, because we need to end the episode shortly, two issues. One is, as you mentioned and as we all know, Shaheds were an Iranian design, manufactured by Iran, provided to Russia. Russia licensed the design and now functionally produces their own which are much more advanced than the Iranian versions. Now we're seeing it go the other way where Russia is sharing the technology that developed from an originally Iranian platform and informing Iran how it can fight against the United States and Israel.

What are you seeing there in terms of the technological adaptation, what are the features on the Russian design that could make their way into the new Iranian design or might already be making their way into the new Iranian design? Whether Russia is providing it directly or teaching Iran how to manufacture it differently.

Michael Kofman: So here the publicly available information is a bit vague. But we know that Russia had been providing components back to Iran before this war began. I think some of the public stories painted this as wartime assistance, which it can be. But also there was cooperation before the war. Russia is likely providing lessons learned from how they organize strikes to Iran as well. And they've learned a tremendous amount. They really started out doing them in a rudimentary fashion in 2022 and it's night and day compared to how they execute them in 2026.

And I think we're likely to see Russian components and potentially finished Russian drones emerge in this war on the Iranian side if it keeps going. A big question has also been just the function of time. There have been reports of Russia exporting entire drone systems back to Iran from the Europeans at least.

The question is, is it right now just light winged ISR? Is it maybe FPV drones? Because another question is are they going to provide fiber optic cable FPV drones for them? We saw Iranian militias in Iraq flying around with them, maybe they have a few. But Russia usually has the ability to deliver these.

Ryan Evans: Geran 2, large drones.

Michael Kofman: I have seen some mixed evidence in the background, but I've not seen anything concrete to suggest that Iran is now operating the Russian versions of them. And it will be very obvious going through the components that these are the Russian drones because they're quite different at this point from the Iranian ones. But maybe that will emerge before long.

If that's the case it will be problematic for a couple reasons. First, Russia has very significant production capacity and big increases year on year.

Ryan Evans: Although they consume a lot of it themselves of course.

Michael Kofman: They do, but they can spare them for Iran. They have more than enough to spare for Iran's needs. And so if you look at Iran's current daily launch rate, it's not much. Here's the problem. Iranian drones in terms of what they have - four channel CRPA antenna - are easy to jam, fairly rudimentary. Compared to these drones the Russian variants are very evolved, and will be much harder to jam. Will be much more accurate and could offer a lot of opportunities to Iran that Iran currently doesn't have in terms of employment.

Ukraine helping Gulf states with air defense

Ryan Evans: Now on the other side of the war we've seen Ukraine getting engaged with America's Gulf partners to help with their air defense particularly against drones. What do you make of that?

Michael Kofman: I think they are doing the right thing. They are basically seizing on this to try to get capital. They have more production capacity than they have capital available in their industry for drones. They have a good cheap solution. More importantly they can teach Gulf states how to organize defense.

The biggest gap I saw in terms of how we do air defense against drones wasn't that we're not intercepting enough drones or even that...

Ryan Evans: Although I don't think we were jamming enough of them, but that's a conversation for another time.

Michael Kofman: Sure. It's the fact that we lacked a structured approach and a real ecosystem of capabilities to have cost effective solutions of dealing with this problem. And that involves sensors. That involves organizational capacity, a clear approach to data fusion. It involves also having EW. It involves having cheap capabilities for air defense, distributed, and a bunch of other things.

No culture of decoys

Michael Kofman: One thing - this is a total non sequitur - but I'll tell you one thing I saw just looking at THAAD radars. We really don't have a culture of decoys, do we? It's the most visible thing on satellite and I don't know this for a fact, I just know it to be true, Ryan, that all the radars...

Ryan Evans: You don't know it for a fact but you know it to be true, all right.

Michael Kofman: Yeah. I just believe that all those radars that were lost likely had zero decoys anywhere around them. And I just strongly... we just don't have a strong culture of this at this point.

Ryan Evans: Ukrainians have a lot to teach, I guess, our Gulf partners and us about this if we're willing to learn.

Anyway, great episode, we gotta call it here. Thank you for listening to the War on the Rocks podcast. Do not forget to check out our membership program where you can listen to many members-only podcasts and newsletters and the app. Among those members-only podcasts of course is Mike's The Russia Contingency which I highly recommend. And if you like this episode you will very much like that podcast. For members only at warontherocks.com/membership. Stay safe and stay healthy.