Drones really do “rule the battlefield” in Ukraine, says The New York Times. They inflict about 70% of casualties, killing more soldiers and destroying more armoured vehicles “than all traditional weapons of war combined” – sniper rifles, tanks, howitzers, everything. There are off-the-shelf commercial drones modified to drop grenades, mortar rounds and mines into enemy positions; drones armed with shotguns to take out enemy drones; “Dragon drones” that pour out molten metal at 2,400 degrees Celsius. Larger drones are even being developed to serve as “motherships” for swarms of smaller ones, “increasing the distance they can fly and kill”.

These new weapons are rendering a lot of traditional military kit redundant. Of the 31 “highly sophisticated” American Abrams tanks provided to Kyiv in 2023, 19 have been destroyed, disabled or captured, and nearly all the others removed from the front lines. Battlefields are littered with tens of thousands of drone-disabling electromagnetic jammers. To get around these defences, engineers have developed “frequency hoppers” that automatically switch from one radio signal to another; surveillance drones guided by AI rather than radio; and even drones tethered to their controller with thin fibre-optic cables that can stretch for more than 10 miles. For the troops themselves, the constant threat from above – like “a thousand snipers in the sky” – has changed the way they operate. Rather than speeding around in vehicles to avoid getting caught by incoming shells, soldiers now “hike for miles”, ducking into cover when they spot a glint in the sky. “You can hide from artillery,” says Bohdan, a deputy commander with Ukraine’s National Police Brigade. Drones are “a different kind of nightmare”.

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