We’ve fallen in love with drones, but they’re not the sole answer

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Her new book, “The Undersea War,” is out later this year. Credit where credit is due: Ukraine is slowly changing the course of the war following Russia’s 2022 invasion. It’s doing this in many ways, but what has generated the most excitement is its clever and extensive use of drones. In fact, it has created so much admiration for its approach that in some quarters, drones are now being touted as Wunderwaffen for Europe’s NATO nations — the kind of weapon that can single-handedly transform a country’s defense. They are not. But nor are they mere bit players. The enthusiasm for drones is understandable. According to the Kyiv Post, on July 9 alone “Ukraine said it struck 14 Russian vessels overnight in the Sea of Azov, including 12 tankers allegedly belonging to Moscow’s sanctioned ‘shadow fleet.’ Ukraine’s drone commander said a total of 35 ships had been hit over the previous 96 hours, while Ukrainian forces also targeted 45 military sites in occupied Crimea and southern Ukraine.” It’s as if Ukrainian drones are everywhere. And not only is Ukraine using them to hit Russian targets without causing devastating losses to human life the way, say, missiles would; it’s also able to do so at enormous distances. Drones hit Russian shadow vessels in the Black Sea. They hit Russian shadow vessels in the Mediterranean. They hit Russia’s oil refineries. They hit Russia’s Baltic Sea oil terminals. They’re causing constant problems for the Russian military, and have hit Russia itself. Earlier this month they even struck an oil refinery in Siberia. In fact, Ukraine’s drones have become such a success that they’re triggering increasingly loud demands for NATO’s European members to shift their focus to these mostly small and cheap weapons. Look at how drones have helped Ukraine shift the course of the war! Look at how much you can achieve at relatively small expense! Drones are the future! Our governments are behind the curve! That’s how the argument goes. But while drones are indisputably part of the future of warfare, they’re also still experimental and lack clear rules of engagement. What’s more, Russia also uses drones, which sometimes violate NATO airspace. Russian forces regularly sabotage the flight of Ukrainian drones, causing them to stray into NATO territory. Of course, NATO members have drones too — and they plan to buy more. “Ukraine has really accelerated our technological development,” Vice Admiral Ewa Skoog Haslum, Sweden’s chief of joint operations, told me. “It has also made the public at large aware of drones. The Swedish armed forces, like armed forces elsewhere in NATO, are constantly exercising with and against drones. But sometimes a large or urgent situation has to occur for things to happen and develop rapidly. That’s what we’re seeing now.” But these humble-yet-fierce weapons are not a Wunderwaffe. “We should remember that what Ukraine has succeeded in doing … [is] to push the Russian Black Sea Fleet away from the western part of the Black Sea, which means that the Ukrainians can maintain their civilian maritime traffic,” noted Hans Granlund, a just-retired Swedish naval officer who served as defense attaché in Ukraine during the war’s early stages. “However, the Ukrainians have not managed to take control of the Black Sea themselves because they don’t have their own fleet.” Most airborne drones resemble mosquitoes: They are small, they sting, they are disposable and easily replaceable, and they move in swarms. But stinging and crippling the other side is not the only duty of the armed forces. Drones certainly don’t remove the need for ships, for example. In the Baltic Sea, NATO countries must be able to do more than just inflict damage on Russian vessels — they also have to transport troops and supplies to the Baltic countries and Finland. And that’s just