Executive Summary:
- Ukraine’s most important battlefield lessons have much to teach the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Ukraine’s experience has shown how cheap drones can destroy high-value assets, highlighting urgent gaps in NATO preparedness.
- Battlefield experience in Ukraine shows that innovation, speed, and adaptability matter more than expensive legacy systems in modern warfare. Its forces update software in weeks, use decentralized procurement, and integrate civilians and industry into defense.
- Ukraine has become a leader in modern warfare—producing thousands of drones daily, pioneering sea-drone combat, and achieving high air-defense interception rates. Its tactical creativity underscores that future wars require whole-of-society mobilization, flexible doctrines, and scalable, low-cost technologies.
Russia’s war against Ukraine has yielded key lessons for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to prepare for future wars with Russia. Kyiv’s message about the long-term role that Ukraine could play in European security, however, is only partly getting through. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Poland are presented as “Europe’s new defense core.” Only Poland, however, spends the NATO-recommended percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense (Foreign Affairs, April 10). Despite these countries making steps to improve their militaries, they still have a long way to go, and Ukraine’s experience can serve as a model for these developments.
Ukraine’s June 2025 Operation Spider Web serves as an example of how these countries can adapt their approach to warfare through unorthodox attacks. In June 2025, Ukraine covertly transported drones by truck into Russia and launched them from hidden containers, destroying 12 Russian TU 95 and TU 22M3 strategic cruise bombers and damaging 28 strategic cruise bombers (Armiya Inform, June 11, 2025). This method of attack, which combines civilian and military elements, could serve as a lesson for NATO militaries. Each Ukrainian drone in Operation Spiders Web cost $1,000 but caused $7 billion in damage to Russia’s strategic bomber fleet. One month later, the head of Ukraine’s unmanned forces, Robert “Madyar” Brovdi, recalled NATO inviting him to their base and asking if he thought they were ready for war. Brovdi replied that four drone teams located seven miles from the bases’ perimeter “would take 15 minutes to make another Pearl Harbor” (Informator.ua, July 22, 2025; see EDM, January 25).
Militaries are notoriously slow to change, especially when their business model has been based on decades of large-value purchases of military equipment. Germany’s largest military producer, Rheinmetall, relies on the sale of tanks that are still produced without anti-drone protection, armored personnel carriers (APCs), infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), and other expensive military equipment. Rheinmetall Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Armin Papperger generated a social media storm when he said military equipment in Ukraine was being produced by “Ukrainian housewives” with 3D printers in kitchens, which he claimed does not constitute “innovation” (Ukrayinska Pravda, March 29).
NATO militaries often rely on expensive equipment that is unable to adapt quickly. Software on Ukraine’s battlefield equipment is updated roughly every two weeks (NATO, September 5, 2024). NATO member-state militaries have typically taken years to update software. In November 2025, the Swedish and Ukrainian defense ministers signed a letter of intent to “combine Sweden’s industrial and technological strengths with Ukraine’s battlefield experience” and, based on Ukraine having the “world’s greatest experience of quickly developing new military technology,” reduce the length of Sweden’s innovation cycle (Government of Sweden, November 6, 2025).
Before its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia claimed it had the second-best army in the world and would defeat Ukraine in three days (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 23, 2022). Russia has failed to secure any of its 2022 objectives in Ukraine (Evropeyska Pravda, March 13). Russia continues to have a Soviet-style, state-controlled military industrial sector, unlike Ukraine, where the defense sector is dominated by private companies. More innovative companies will likely replace large, older military-industrial companies in the near future, as evidenced by Ukraine’s booming defense industry over the past four years.
Russia’s war against Ukraine and the ongoing conflict in Iran are demonstrating the importance of cheap drones and drone interceptors costing between $1,000 and $3,000 each. The United States and its partners fired 1,802 patriot interceptors costing $3 million each in 16 days, twice as many as Ukraine received in four years of war (Politico, April 14). The expensive U.S.-manufactured Switchblade 300 was sent to Ukraine in 2022, where it produced limited damage in strikes and was brought down by Russian electronic warfare (EW). Similarly costly U.S. Skydio drones failed in combat and were glitchy, hard to repair, brought down by Russian EW, and sometimes could not take off or complete missions (Kyiv Independent, April 10, 2024).
The United States has not responded to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s offer to assist in unblocking the Strait of Hormuz. Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine had already carried out a similar mission when Russia tried to blockade the Black Sea, stating, “Our country has experience with escorting commercial vessels, demining, protection from air attacks, and overall coordination of such operations” (President of Ukraine, April 17).
Ukraine’s defense sector is valued at nearly $7 billion and is rapidly growing in high-tech areas such as air, ground, and sea drones, EW, radars, and software. Ukraine produces 2,000 drone interceptors a day, 1,000 of which can be exported (Ukrinform, March 26). Ukraine has signed defense contracts with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, and is negotiating with Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman (see EDM, April 1). On March 17, Zelenskyy confirmed Ukrainian interceptors had downed Iranian drones during the ongoing Iran conflict (Kyiv Independent, March 17). According to Kyiv, Ukraine will produce air defense systems, drone interceptors, and anti-ballistic missiles domestically, without foreign components, by 2027 (Euromaidan Press, March 31).
An army officer from the United Kingdom said in April that Ukrainian soldiers have “much greater tactical imagination than we do.” They are more willing to take risks, are flexible outside written doctrine, and think outside the box (Business Insider, April 1). Other examples of Ukrainian ingenuity include rigging heated insoles in boots supplied to Russian soldiers with 1.5 grams of TNT, resulting in serious wounds to their feet and chaos in the supply chain (TVP World, March 25).
As of March 2, Ukraine is pioneering the idea of allowing local businesses to invest in and operate air defense systems integrated with the Ukrainian armed forces to protect their cities. The first such organization is operating in Kharkiv with 30 proposals from other businesses in the pipeline (Kyiv Post, March 2; Euromaidan Press, March 30).
In early 2025, Ukraine used drones to destroy a Russian-controlled bridge over the Dnipro River. Over two months, 30 missions using the Malloy Aeronautics T-150 heavy lift drone destroyed a key bridge for Russian military supplies in Kherson (The Telegraph, April 7). According to the Ukrainian military, this is the first time in military history that a drone-led operation downed a bridge.
At the Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping using Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS) Dynamic Messenger 2025 exercise in Portugal, the Ukrainian “red team” played the “enemy.” In all five scenarios, they defeated the NATO “blue team.” Ukrainians used the MAGURA 17 sea drone against a NATO frigate whose sailors “did not even see [them] coming” (Odessa Journal, March 17). In a March speech to the Ukrainian parliament, Zelenskyy noted Ukraine’s success in destroying a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and forcing the remainder to flee from Sevastopol to Novorossiisk, where they continue to have no effective way of countering Ukrainian drones (Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, April 17). Zelenskyy recalled that Ukraine:
Started with simple kamikaze sea drones. Then we built drones with turrets that can shoot down helicopters. Now we have drones that can shoot down Russian fighter jets from the sea. We have developed boats that carry other drones. We also have boats that strike targets on land from the sea. And we are developing more stable drones that can operate longer and more effectively at sea. Soon—and not in the distant future—we will have systems that can operate even in ocean conditions. We are also actively working on underwater systems (President of Ukraine, March 17).
In the early part of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia was unable to capture Odesa and Mykolaiv because Ukrainian missiles and partisans destroyed its Black Sea Fleet landing ships. Ukraine destroyed Russia’s Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol using British Storm Shadow missiles, which killed numerous Russian commanders attending a meeting. Sea drones broke Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian trade from the ports of Odesa and Mykolaiv (Defence24, February 24).
Ukrainian Sea drones, which cost around $250,000, are destroying Russian helicopters valued at over $10 million, jets valued at $60 million, oil rigs, sea vessels, and coastal defense systems (Kyiv Independent, July 29, 2025). The MAGURA V6P was the first self-destructing sea drone to operate remotely via fiber-optic cables. The MAGURA V7 sea drone was the first to be able to fire air-to-air missiles. The KATRAN sea drone can fire torpedoes and is fitted with a minigun for side targets and a machine gun on its roof for aerial targets.
Following NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation Admiral Pierre Vandier’s March visit to Kyiv, he outlined two important lessons learned for NATO (Ukrinform, April 13). First, NATO needs rapid adaptation and implementation of the lessons it can learn from Ukraine. Second, a reactive, customer-centric industrial base based on “frugal lethality” for NATO needs to be developed. NATO could also learn from two Ukrainian instruments, military procurement sites and a communication system, that none of its armies possess. The first is the creation of an online, on-demand service for ordering and delivering weapons. Ukrainian commanders leading 130 brigades at the frontline can order military equipment from two websites—Brave 1 and DotChain—which host 150 drone models produced by Ukrainian manufacturers. This decentralized procurement is faster than the traditional, centralized supply chains used by NATO-member militaries. The Zbroya.Investments platform was launched by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to assist weapons manufacturers secure funding to scale and accelerate development, establishing a transparent connection between those who innovate new technologies and those ready to invest in them (Zbroya.Investments, accessed April 20).
In Ukraine, the budgets of military units grow as their kill rate increases, allowing them to order more equipment. Ukraine’s Delta communications system provides a unified mission control for reconnaissance, strike operations, mining, demining, logistics, and evacuation (Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, August 6, 2025). The Ukrainian military operates the process of detecting and engaging targets through a single interface, allowing them to be struck in minutes. An officer from Ukraine’s 8th Corps pioneered a ride-share-like system for military strikes, which works “as simply as an online taxi service: we see a ‘client’—we assign the nearest available ‘car’—we get the enemy a ride to the afterlife” (Euromaidan Press, March 31).
Ukraine has also emphasized the importance of unity between society and the military in fighting a full-scale war. Layered air defense is crucial to stopping Russian drones and missiles, and Ukraine’s interception rate is high. Ukrainian cities faced with the greatest Russian threat, such as Kharkiv, which is only 30 miles from the Russian–Ukrainian border, have built underground schools for children. While metro stations can double as air-raid shelters, among NATO members, only Finland has a large number of metro station shelters. Ukraine’s layered air defense has increased its interception rate to 90 percent of the 6,600 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles launched by Russia in March (Euromaidan Press, April 1). A Ukrainian operator with the pseudonym “Miguel” shot down 24 Russian drones in just one night.
As seen in Ukraine, utilities, railways, and public and private postal services are key institutions during wartime. Russian drones and missiles have attacked these. NATO members lack sufficient air defense to protect their critical infrastructure and utilities. Ukraine has accumulated extensive expertise in protecting and repairing utilities and is advising Germany, Poland, and Lithuania on this issue. In January, Ukraine repaired its utilities after a Russian attack more quickly than Romania could repair a Bucharest boiler failure that led to the loss of heating in homes. Ukraine has become Europe’s energy defense instructor (Kyiv Independent, December 13, 2025).
Ukraine has one million mobilized in its armed forces, national guard, and intelligence services. This number would be reduced to between 300,000 and 350,000 during peacetime. The militaries of NATO members will need to be expanded during both peace and war. Some NATO members are considering the unpopular step of reinstating conscription (Euronews, March 11, 2025; EU News, July 15, 2025; BBC, December 5, 2025). In preparation for a potential future war in Europe, NATO countries have much to consider based on what Ukraine has learned in the past four years.
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