How Drones Are Rewiring Modern Warfare — An in-depth explainer

By Ephraim Agbo 

Most of us call them drones. The military calls them unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Whatever you call them, the word barely hints at what they now do on battlefields around the world: deliver near-real-time intelligence, act as precision-strike platforms, crimp supply lines, harass and demoralize, and — increasingly — change the calculus of who can project force and where. This is not incremental change. It’s a tectonic shift.

Below I take you through the story: where the idea came from, how the technology exploded on the battlefield (especially in Ukraine), the new tactics and counters you need to know, and the ethical and legal questions that are now urgent. I’ve drawn on recent battlefield reporting, defence analysis and UN commentary so you get both the technical detail and the geopolitical picture.

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1) Roots: a century of “removing the human from the line of fire”

Drones feel modern, but the impulse to replace humans on dangerous missions goes back to the earliest days of powered flight. The timeline in numbers:

1. 1903 – Wright brothers’ first powered flight.
2. Late 1910s – Experiments with gyroscope-guided aerial torpedoes (e.g., the Kettering “Bug”).
3. Inter-war years – Radio-controlled target aircraft (used to train gunners) and early remote control experiments.
4. 1960s–70s – Reconnaissance UAVs are used at scale in Vietnam.
5. 2001–present – Weaponization surges after 9/11 as persistent video feeds are linked to precision munitions.

Two developments made the modern model practical and pervasive: (1) rapid miniaturization and falling costs of sensors, radios and motors, and (2) the arrival of high-bandwidth, persistent video links tied to precision munitions. The result is a continuum of systems — from ~$300 consumer quadcopters adapted as loitering munitions to sophisticated medium-altitude, long-endurance armed UAVs.

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2) Why Ukraine proved to be a drone crucible

The Russia–Ukraine war accelerated drone innovation and normalization in ways few predicted. Cheap, expendable drones — including commercially available quadcopters modified to carry explosives — have been used for tactical strikes, artillery spotting, logistics interdiction and anti-ship attacks. First-person-view (FPV) kamikaze drones, flown through goggles for high speed and agility, became a battlefield game-changer.

Key numeric takeaways:

• Lethality share: Multiple recent analyses estimate that small attack drones now account for roughly 60–80% of some categories of battlefield losses and damage in the Russia–Ukraine war — making them the dominant cause of hardware attrition on many fronts.
• Scale of production: Ukrainian officials and analysts report an industrial surge: by 2025 Ukraine and its partners were discussing domestic production measured in millions of UAVs yearly — with public claims and reporting noting targets or capacities in the low-millions (figures such as ~4 million drones in a year have been cited in contemporary reporting). Russia likewise ramped small-UAV production with external component help. The upshot: attrition models (losing hundreds or thousands per week) became operationally viable.

Two operational trends matter:

1. Mass manufacturing at scale. Low unit cost + rapid assembly = numbers. When a force can build thousands or millions of cheap UAVs, expendability becomes a tactic.
2. Bottom-up innovation. Volunteers, local workshops and frontline adaptors often invent tactics (arming consumer kits, launching from vehicles or boats, using simple swarm logic) faster than formal procurement can respond.

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3) New tactics and counter-tactics: electronic, kinetic — and physical links

Drones complicate the classic defence sequence: detect → identify → disrupt/neutralize.

Detection. Small multirotors have tiny radar cross-sections. You add acoustic sensors, optical cameras, and purpose-tuned radars to find them, but environmental clutter and range limit coverage.

Disruption / non-kinetic defeat. Jamming GPS and data links is common and relatively cheap. But adversaries adapt:

• Tethered fibre-optic control. Teams have begun using spools of fibre-optic cable that unspool behind a drone to create a near-unchallengeable, high-bandwidth link and even supply power. Practical field reports note tethered/fibre systems with operational ranges measured in tens of kilometres (operational examples and technical literature cite tested systems and ranges, with front-line reporting citing links of up to dozens of kilometres in practice). This approach reduces the drone’s electronic signature and counters radio jamming.

Kinetic options. Shooting drones down with small arms, autocannon, short-range missiles or other interceptors is used widely. But there’s an asymmetric cost problem: using a $1–3 million interceptor to stop a $500–$2,000 expendable drone is often unsustainable.

Directed energy & HPM. Lasers and high-power microwave systems can disable electronics at speed-of-light rates and are being fielded for point defence, though range, power requirements and weather still limit their broad applicability.

Swarms and autonomy. Coordinated swarms that overwhelm defences — and autonomous platforms that don’t rely on continuous radio links — would blunt jamming and make “see-and-shoot” counters harder. That potential moves the problem from mainly a technical defence challenge to one with deep policy implications.

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4) Beyond Ukraine: how drones are reshaping other conflicts and the global map

Drones are not just a European story. In the Middle East and the Red Sea region, state and non-state actors use UAVs to conduct long-range raids, maritime interdictions and asymmetric operations. From late 2023 through 2024 the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen launched numerous attacks on commercial shipping and naval assets using drones, cruise missiles and unmanned surface vessels — forcing reroutes, international naval escorts and serious disruption to trade. Reporting and intel briefs documented scores to over 100 incidents and periods when ~60% of commercial traffic rerouted to avoid the Red Sea at the campaign’s height.

At the same time, a rapid diffusion of capacity is visible: dozens to more than 100 states now operate military drones, and multiple dozen non-state actors have fielded them — a distribution that makes universal regulation and containment difficult.

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5) Legal, ethical and strategic accelerants: autonomy, algorithms and the lowered threshold for force

A few linked problems demand urgent attention:

• Algorithmic targeting and responsibility. As sensors feed machine-learning systems, and algorithms play a greater role in classification and targeting, defining responsibility when errors occur becomes critical. Small algorithmic error rates — even 1% — can translate into large numbers of wrongful strikes once systems operate at scale. UN forums and disarmament bodies are actively debating how to treat lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).

• Lowered political threshold for force. Cheap drones reduce political and financial barriers to using force repeatedly; persistent ISR makes remote interventions easier to justify and sustain, risking the normalization of cross-border strikes and targeted killings.

• Accountability gaps. Proliferation into proxy and non-state hands blurs attribution, complicates law enforcement and creates legal grey zones for enforcement and prosecution.

• Escalation and attribution dynamics. Drones enable deniable attacks and rapid retaliation. Small, hard-to-attribute strikes risk disproportionate responses and unstable escalation ladders.

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6) What this means for policymakers, militaries and readers

1. Invest in layered, affordable defences. Mix distributed sensors, low-cost interceptors (so you’re not always firing million-dollar missiles), directed energy for point defence, and cyber/EW resilience.
2. Build resilient industrial bases. High-attrition models require local production and diversified supply chains — Ukraine’s pivot to domestic drone production is the live example.
3. Pursue arms-control and export norms for autonomy. Global governance must catch up to the speed of technological change.
4. Protect civilian lifelines. Ports, shipping lanes, energy infrastructure and insurance markets need contingency planning and internationally coordinated protection.
5. Set legal standards for “meaningful human control.” Clear rules about how and when algorithms may make or recommend lethal decisions are urgently needed.

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Conclusion — a new normal that still needs hard choices

Drones have done more than add a new weapon to the arsenal. They’ve changed how wars are fought, how states arm and supply conflicts, and how power is projected beyond borders. They democratize lethality — and they democratize risk. With hundreds of thousands to millions of UAVs being produced and deployed, with small attack drones inflicting a majority share (estimates often cited in the 60–80% range) of some battlefield losses, and with 100+ states plus dozens of non-state actors operating UAVs, the strategic landscape has shifted numerically and morally. The hardware and software we have built cannot be uninvented, but the international community still has choices about norms, law and oversight that can mitigate the worst outcomes.