- Military
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- Revitalizing History
Innovation on the battlefield is a constant in history. It comes in many forms: new platforms challenge old ones, novel uses of existing technologies lengthen their lifespan, and men adapt as fast as they can to increase their lethality while diminishing their vulnerability. The stirrup and heavy cavalry crushed the infantry line, gunpowder weakened castles, ironclads replaced the wooden ship, machine guns made massed charges suicidal, and so on. Now, the rapid advent of various drones and missiles—from naval drones (“uncrewed naval systems”) and FPV (first-person-view) drones to long-range ones (e.g., Iranian Shaheds or Ukrainian Firepoint FP-1s) and ballistic and cruise missiles—seems to have made large and expensive weapons platforms extremely vulnerable, putting in question their tactical value. Cheap and simple appears to trump expensive and exquisite.
But the excitement about the technological novelty often leads to an overestimation of its capabilities and its effects. While it certainly represents a disruption, technological innovation often does not lead to an immediate replacement of legacy systems. Artillery may have broken the walls of medieval castles, but it also pushed engineers to build the trace italienne; machine guns may have been cruelly sweeping a large field, but infantry learned to disperse and advance; airpower could penetrate behind the frontline and target places until then safe from the ravages of the war, but anti-air artillery and then anti-air missiles could degrade the air offensive while deeply fortified positions could protect valuable targets from bombs. In brief, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Undoubtedly, the advent of cheap and increasingly widely available drones and missiles presents a serious threat to the existing technological regime. Not only they can destroy expensive platforms ranging from planes to ships, but the systems used to counter them are not yet cost-effective when a $50,000 drone has to be shot down with a $4 million missile. The ongoing wars in Ukraine and Iran are the testing grounds of this technological disruption. Cheap, relatively easy to build, and mass-produced drones are scoring enormous tactical successes that were unthinkable even a few years ago.
A few examples. In 2022 Russia lost its first flagship (the Moskva) since the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, sunk after it was hit by two Ukrainian anti-ship missiles. Since then, Ukraine has destroyed the Russian Black Sea Fleet while possessing no navy of its own. In the last few years, a Ukrainian company, Firepoint, has developed and fielded a cruise missile, Flamingo, with a range of about 1,900 miles and is using it now to target fortified targets deep inside Russia. In several operations (e.g., the 2025 “Operation Spiderweb”) cheap drones were used to destroy several expensive and valuable Russian strategic bombers (Tu-95s and Tu-22 M3s) and probably a rare early-warning A-50 plane. Moreover, inexpensive and mass-produced FPV small drones target with great precision vehicles and individual soldiers at a rate of about 10,000 Ukrainian drones per day (Russia probably uses a roughly similar number), turning video gamers into the most lethal snipers in history. Low-cost innovation is wrecking high-end platforms and imposing serious casualties in this war.
Similarly, in the recent conflict in the Middle East, cheap Iranian drones have damaged a $1.1 billion early warning radar system in Qatar. In March 2026, Iranian missiles and drones hit an expensive and irreplaceable USAF E-3 Sentry plane, an early-warning and battle-management platform, while five U.S. refueling aircraft, parked in a Saudi airfield, were damaged in one strike. Clearly, the Iranian strategy was to target the most vulnerable, most expensive, and most difficult to replace American platforms with the cheapest tools possible. And the cost ratio is wildly in favor of the attacker at this point.
Nonetheless, it is too early to announce the death of expensive legacy systems, from the tank to the aircraft carrier, from the exquisite cruise missile to the strategic bomber. Most likely the future will see these new cheap technologies working alongside the old ones in a layered system, favoring those states that can innovate rapidly and use the new platforms together with the existing ones.
Four variables are worth keeping in mind when thinking of this dynamic between old and new.
First, it appears that the cost advantage of drones will diminish over time, and probably very quickly. Several countermeasures have already been deployed, tested in battle, and adapted. The Ukrainian battlefield is again an example and a leading source of innovation. Tanks and vehicles are protected by cheap cages; roads are sheltered with nets; a lot of operations moved underground. On top of these passive countermeasures, Ukraine has rapidly developed active ways of shooting down drones in a cost-effective way. A network of acoustic sensors warns and tracks drones while cheap, 3D printed drones (the “Sting”), developed by a volunteer group that crowdsourced its research and production, shoot down incoming Russian platforms. The cost of the “Sting” is about $3,000 while the price of an Iranian “Shahed” or a Russian “Geran” drone is above $50,000. Cheap attack drones are now meeting even cheaper defensive drones. Several Middle Eastern countries are already trying to acquire these Ukrainian counter drones to protect their oil infrastructure from Iranian strikes, and Ukraine allegedly had deployed some teams in the region to help against Teheran’s attacks.
Second, the ability to deliver large payloads at a distance and with regular frequency remains in the hands of old-fashioned platforms. Aircraft carriers, airbases, and planes are still necessary for a sustained campaign that can diminish the enemy’s military capability and industrial production in a meaningful way. The ongoing 2026 Iran war is a case in point. Iran can cause damages, some spectacular and costly, but in the end, it is the United States with its airpower that has significantly degraded the arsenal, and the capacity to regenerate it, of the Islamic Republic. Similarly, Russia continues to have a serious advantage in the sheer quantity of tonnage launched against Ukraine. Ballistic and cruise missiles, artillery, and airplane-launched bombs bring a devastation on and beyond the battlefield that drones alone cannot deliver.
Third, drones are essentially a targeting effort. They can destroy with great precision and at a low cost a lot of things, but they can’t conquer or hold territory. They can impose serious costs on an assaulting force, as the Ukrainians are doing causing a staggering number of Russian casualties. But on their own, they cannot retake and hold the lost territory. For that, manpower combined with armored forces (and certainly integrated with the drones and counter drones) is necessary. In fact, such a combination of platforms allows also rapid projection of forces, as the Ukrainians had demonstrated with a spectacular attack on Russian territory (the first ground invasion of Russia since World War II) near Kursk in mid-2024. Similarly, drones can sink ships and deny passage through straits and in littoral waters. Iran is demonstrating that in the Strait of Hormuz, while Ukraine is hitting dozens of Russian ships trying to bring fuel to Crimea. But drones alone cannot establish and preserve maritime control, allowing safe navigation. They are analogous to what airpower can do: it can target precisely but it cannot control territory. Drones are a tool of denial, not of control; a tool of cost-imposition, not conquest.
Fourth, the most successful power will be the one that is capable of integrating the new technologies into the existing layer of weapons and platforms. To achieve that, the most suited states will be those that can function in a decentralized fashion while also mobilizing the nation. Decentralization is necessary to adapt rapidly to the constant innovation on the battlefield that cheap and simple drones are generating. A military force, for instance, that depends entirely on top-down decision-making and initiative will find it difficult to adapt and innovate the frontline technologies. The time between the innovation and deployment is very short (measured in weeks and months, not years) favoring a military structure and political system that allows the lowest echelons to take not just targeting decisions but also to place procurement orders for the most suitable type of weapon (drone). Such trust in the lowest command levels is often missing in authoritarian regimes, fearful of the autonomy of armed forces that could potentially turn against the central authorities.
Technological changes go hand in hand with organizational and political systems. The great historian William McNeill in his classic The Pursuit of Power noted that decentralized, market competition is much more efficient in innovating than a centralized, command-driven system. In competitive societies, the cycle of design, production, battlefield implementation, feedback, and adaptation is shorter because numerous actors—private firms, engineers, military units, and entrepreneurs—experiment simultaneously. Failures are discarded quickly, while successful innovations spread rapidly. By contrast, centralized systems often struggle with bureaucratic inertia, political interference, and a reluctance to admit failure, slowing the process of adaptation. Ukraine, for instance, may have a distinct advantage than Russia: it’s the Kyiv garage vs. the Kremlin-driven innovation.
There are, therefore, solid grounds for optimism. The West more broadly may be better positioned that its authoritarian rivals in this innovation race. And the necessity to integrate the new technologies with the old, high-end platforms preserves the military advantages that the United States has developed over the last half a century.
