If President Trump orders ground operations against Iran, American troops will walk into a battlefield dominated by cheap attack drones — and they will do so without the defenses that Ukrainian soldiers have spent years developing through hard combat experience.
Senior analysts and military experts have warned that the U.S. military remains in the early stages of adapting to the drone revolution that has reshaped warfare in Ukraine, "Hvylya" reports, citing The Wall Street Journal.
"We are still in the early phases writ large in the U.S. military units trying to understand the FPV technology, how it impacts the force, and its implications for current tactics, techniques and procedures," said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "If you look at the defensive capabilities that are available, we have a long way to go to catch up with Ukraine."
The U.S. Marine Corps has only recently begun experimenting with first-person-view drones, training its first FPV teams in recent months. In Ukraine, both sides have been flying thousands of such unmanned systems daily for over two years.
Senior American and NATO commanders long dismissed the relevance of drone warfare in Ukraine, arguing that Western militaries would fight differently because of their superiority in air power and precision strikes. "There is still this wall of arrogance, including at the top of NATO, because we have much more advanced systems," said Fabrice Pothier, NATO's former director of policy planning. "But what you want to do is become much more Ukrainian in your approach."
In the current war between Russia and Ukraine, drones account for most battlefield casualties, with a kill zone extending more than 20 miles on each side of the front line. Many of these systems are now guided by fiber-optic wire, making them immune to electronic countermeasures.
"Hvylya" earlier reported on how Ukraine's unmanned ground vehicle revolution changed the frontline dynamics in ways NATO is only beginning to grasp.