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When the Russian Army invaded Ukraine in 2022, columns of massed armored vehicles lumbered over highways and fields in an attempted blitzkrieg that would not have seemed out of place in World War II. What a difference four years of war have made. Ukrainian military leaders understood that they could not win a traditional war of attrition against the larger and more populous Russian state. Faced with superior Russian numbers, the Ukrainians innovated with the massive use of drones to target Russian forces, logistics, and command and control nodes. Today the Ukrainians expend 9,000 drones every day—a staggering number that includes tactical and strategic strike assets as well as recently introduced air-to-air drone fighters. Ukraine produces 10 million drones annually, a figure that will soon double. Drones have now replaced all the functions of manned aviation, apart from tactical airlift—and that capability will soon arrive. The audit of combat has eliminated the massed use of armor, which is vulnerable to clouds of drones that now dominate the angry skies over Ukrainian battlefields.
The function of armor, first introduced on the Somme battlefield in 1916, is to allow soldiers to cross the deadly killing ground swept by machine gun fire, interdicted by barbed wire and other obstacles, and hammered by artillery barrages. By 1940 the German Army discovered that combined arms formations featuring tanks and armored infantry carriers along with artillery, engineers, and air defense assets could penetrate static defenses and exploit into the rear of opposing armies, surrounding troop formations, disrupting command and control, interfering with logistics, and interdicting lines of communication. Eventually the Allied forces adopted the same types of formations, which have since that time dominated the conventional battlefields in much of the world. Until now.
A drone kill zone 20-50 kilometers deep dominates the battlefield in Ukraine today, making the use of massed armored formations suicidal. Front lines are now held by small, highly dispersed groups of soldiers, supported by aerial and ground drones. To hide is to survive. Ukrainian forces have covered supply routes with anti-drone netting. On the active front lines, a single square kilometer is typically held by a highly dispersed force of fewer than 200 soldiers, with only 10 to 30 active infantry troops on the line at any given moment.
But the need for armor still exists. Machine guns and artillery still prevent unprotected infantry from crossing the killing zone. Drones have made it easier to target exposed vehicles and personnel but have proven less useful in taking and holding ground. For armor to regain its ability to fill this function, military forces must once again learn how to gain and maintain air superiority, and armored vehicles must be protected against drone strikes. Ukraine has systematically pioneered air-to-air drone warfare by introducing a dedicated arsenal of uncrewed fighter wings specifically designed to hunt and destroy Russian drones. This mirrors the evolution of manned aviation during World War I, which began with reconnaissance before proceeding to bombers, fighters, and transports. As for vehicle defenses, armored vehicles are now fitted with custom-built steel mesh screens, explosive reactive armor, active drone protection systems, and localized, vehicle-mounted electronic warfare devices.
Another alternative is the introduction of robotic armored forces onto the battlefield, which can be smaller and therefore less expensive than manned systems. Unlike manned systems, robotic ground systems do not tire, do not require food, and do not need an expensive medical evacuation system if they are hit by enemy fire. Ukraine has already started down this path. Ground robots have evolved rapidly from basic supply mules into fully integrated combatants. In mid-2026, Ukrainian ground platforms are conducting thousands of battlefield missions every month. A typical Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle costs roughly $24,000. According to Ukraine’s association of ground robot manufacturers, a brigade can purchase 77 expendable ground robots for the cost of a single conventional armored infantry vehicle. As a result, combat ground drones are increasingly being used not just to defend but to take and hold ground.
It is not inconceivable that at some point in the near future a layered air defense system and improved vehicle defenses will once again make possible the movement of combined arms armored formations through the killing zone—and thus restore operational maneuver to the battlefield. It is even more likely that robotic ground forces will pair with manned armored forces to take and hold ground. The key will be to win the battle of industrial attrition, ensuring that active defenses cost less than the drones they are destroying. It is ironic that drones, once touted as precision weapons that could dominate the battlefield at a fraction of the cost of conventional weapons, are themselves becoming instruments of attrition warfare.
