Ukraine’s drone attack exposes Achilles’ heel of military superpowers

Inexpensive drones such as those Kyiv used to attack dozens of Russian warplanes parked at airfields far from Ukraine on Sunday have become a cornerstone of what strategists call asymmetric warfare, where two sides square off with mismatched military power, resources or approaches. For years, the U.S. and its partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization prevailed in that imbalance thanks to their wealth and advanced technologies.

Now, a combination of technological advances and innovation-spawning armed conflicts has flipped the equation, leaving Washington and its allies behind on developments. For military commanders, the pace of change has meant an upheaval on a scale unseen since World War II.

“We’re going to have to be more agile. Drones are going to constantly change," U.S. Army chief of staff Gen. Randy George told a conference on Monday. Ukraine’s attack was “a really good example of just how quickly technology is changing the battlefield," he said.

Thanks to cheap commercial drones and other digital devices, rebels, terrorist organizations and threadbare militaries like Ukraine’s can achieve returns on military investments of a scale almost unimaginable a few years ago.

Ukraine said it launched 117 small drones in Sunday’s attacks on four Russian bases. The drones it employed sell for about $2,000 apiece. Even including the operation’s other expenses, Kyiv still probably spent well under $1 million to destroy aircraft that would cost well over $1 billion to replace—something Russia has little ability to do in the near future.

Kyiv amplified the impact through propaganda, releasing video images of the attack hours after it was carried out. The ease with which information spreads online now gives covert operations a potentially destabilizing element of psychological warfare previously impossible on a global scale.

Widespread deployment of dual-use technologies—including commercial drones and networking software similar to that used by ride-sharing services—has played a big role in allowing Ukraine to thwart Russia’s initial large-scale invasion in 2022 and hold on against a much larger military power.

Some of what the Ukrainians have learned was on display in the recent attack. Kyiv’s spy agency was able to execute the covert operation largely thanks to their grasp of the latest developments in military uses of civilian technologies, such as apparently using public cellphone networks to guide drones.

During the war, both Russia and Ukraine have made leaps in drone design, defenses against them and electronic warfare. That face-off has presented other countries with a case study in the intensity—technological and military—of future conflicts.

“We are trying to learn every single lesson that can possibly be learned about modern warfighting and how quickly it can evolve and how we must innovate and be technologically nimble to address those threats that evolve over time," said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker on Wednesday.

The Army plans a massive increase in its use of drones, part of a broader shift in the Pentagon from large, expensive systems. The U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan deployed with great effect sophisticated uncrewed aircraft including the RQ-4 Global Hawk—which has a wingspan similar to a Boeing 737 passenger jet—and the MQ-9 Reaper, which can launch rockets designed for use by jet fighters. Both cost millions of dollars per aircraft. Now the U.S. is rolling out a fast-changing array of smaller, expendable units and applying lessons from attacks like Ukraine’s.

Ukraine has made leaps in drone design during the war.

“It’s another example of how warfighting technology continues to advance and evolve, allowing armies to reach deeper with offensive capabilities, reducing an adversary’s critical assets, and reducing the cost curve of deterrence," said Army Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, who is helping lead the change.

Similar efforts are under way across NATO countries, including Germany, Europe’s largest economy but long home to one of the alliance’s slowest-changing armed forces. German Chief of Defense Carsten Breuer, the country’s highest-ranking military officer, said that a pivotal lesson of the war in Ukraine is the need to speed up and shorten the innovation cycle.

“In Ukraine they have a direct link between industry and the front line," he said in an interview. “We have to do this without having a front line." He said that in late March the German military decided to acquire a type of drone, and that the so-called loitering munitions should be deployed with troops by year-end, marking a dramatic acceleration.

But procurement and distribution are only a start. Ukraine’s attack also showed advances in operations and military tactics.

Iraq was one of the first places where commercial drones were turned into weapons.

Irregular warfare is hardly new. Though the Ukraine war is highlighting how armies can use technological advances and covert operations to get a leg up on more powerful opponents, terrorists and other rebel groups have for years employed such tactics against their enemies.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the most extreme example of irregular, asymmetric warfare: They had historic repercussions at minimal financial cost for the organizers. Even so, they required suicidal assailants. Drones and other new technologies allow potentially massive impact for attackers who remain anonymous and out of danger.

“What it comes down to is, how can we remove the human and let a piece of technology do it instead?" said Mike Monnik, chief executive of DroneSec, a threat-intelligence company tracking drone attacks worldwide. Ukraine’s strikes are part of a worldwide trend, said Monnik.

Among the first fighters to turn commercial drones into weapons were Islamic State forces in Iraq, roughly a decade ago. Early in its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas sent slow, inexpensive drones to neutralize Israel’s sophisticated automated guard towers along its border with Gaza. Houthi rebels in Yemen have used relatively simple uncrewed systems to inflict costly damage on world shipping and Western navies.

Many more drone attacks go unnoticed. In Myanmar, rebels modified a $600 agricultural drone bought on Alibaba with unguided rockets, making it “almost a miniature attack helicopter," and a criminal gang in Israel exploded a drone packed with explosives outside the 13th-floor window of a rival gang leader in an assassination attempt, Monnik said.

Ukraine used comparable innovation with the added twist of quickly posting videos as evidence of success for maximum international impact.

“It really is that psychological element," said Monnik of the videos. The goal is to rally support for Ukraine’s cause and to scare Russia into thinking, “now we need to search every truck or protect every air base" because no target is out of the small systems’ reach, he said.

Advanced wireless technology doesn’t only benefit underdogs. Israel last year carried out hugely sophisticated covert attacks on Hezbollah militants in Lebanon by detonating explosives hidden in their walkie-talkies and pagers. It triggered the explosions remotely.

A funeral in Lebanon last year after Israel staged an attack on Hezbollah by detonating explosives hidden in pagers and walkie-talkies.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com