Former CIA director David Petraeus has visited Ukraine 10 times since Russia’s invasion in 2022. During his latest trip last week, he told CBS News that Russia no longer holds the upper hand. In an interview in Kyiv after visiting units near the frontlines, Petraeus said the Ukrainians have made greater incremental gains than Russians.
Despite Russia’s advantages in manpower, firepower, and economic scale, Petraeus argues that Ukraine has offset these disadvantages through innovation in unmanned systems. The key to Ukraine’s success lies not just in the drones themselves but also in a system built around them, according to Petraeus.
This system integrates surveillance, targeting, and strike capabilities, with an “overall command and control ecosystem” at its center – Ukraine’s Delta battle management platform. This platform acts like military Google maps, displaying digital maps of positions, targets, and relevant information.
The integration allows Ukrainian forces to have nearly absolute surveillance and strike capabilities within roughly 20 miles of the frontline. Petraeus described watching a frontline engagement where a Russian soldier was tracked continuously by rotating surveillance drones before attack drones were deployed.
Once observed on this battlefield, it’s unlikely to end well, he said. Ukraine is also scaling up production of low-cost first-person-view drones at a pace far beyond Western militaries. One Ukrainian manufacturer told Petraeus that they plan to make 3 million drones this year alone, compared to about 300,000 produced by the United States last year.
Artificial intelligence will accelerate these innovations, according to Petraeus. Currently, drone warfare is limited by electronic warfare in a roughly 20-mile radius around the frontlines saturated with remotely piloted first-person-view drones. Combatants jam connections between drones and operators, decreasing their effectiveness. One solution has been fiber-optic drones that connect to their operators through long cables spooling out of their tails.
However, these have limitations on how far they can fly and how much cable is available. Using algorithms, rather than GPS connections, to fly drones will ease these constraints. These systems will be able to operate even in heavily contested electronic warfare environments by reducing reliance on GPS, he added. The technology will also allow human operators to control more than one drone at a time.
Fully autonomous systems where humans still define the missions but machines execute them may emerge soon, according to Petraeus. He noted that advances in technologies like object identification and facial recognition are already enabling greater autonomy.
For Petraeus, the lessons for the U.S. extend far beyond buying more drones or better incorporating them into military structures. In some Western countries, there’s a belief that innovativeness is giving 50 drones to an armored battalion. However, what should be done is scrap the armored battalions and replace them with drone battalions.
This shift requires more than procurement reform; it demands a whole new concept of warfare, including changes in doctrine, training, and force structure. Ukraine has created this standard by forming an Unmanned Systems Force rather than simply integrating drones into different forces.
The risks of failing to adapt, particularly in counterdrone capabilities, go beyond the battlefield. Advances in drone technology could pose a heightened risk of terrorism as ‘drone swarms’ allow operators to control more drones at one time and commercial drone use expands. A real swarm will be enabled when you have autonomous systems, which are very worrisome.
At the same time, companies like Amazon and Walmart are beginning delivery by drone, increasing the number of aerial systems in civilian airspace. Together, these trends could make it harder to detect and defend against coordinated drone attacks. We don’t currently have systems that can effectively defend against drone swarms; we need to learn a lot more, much more rapidly than we are.