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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is former CEO of Google, chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project and an investor in drone technology
As we approach the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a brutal winter has taken hold. I recently visited the country as it faced the worst weather in five years, with temperatures plunging below minus 24C. Ukrainian soldiers spend up to 40 days in frontline positions without heat, while hundreds of thousands of citizens have had to manage without power.
Ubiquitous drone coverage — in which almost anything moving on the battlefield, whether soldier or vehicle, is detected and destroyed — means that Russia’s advances remain minimal. It seized less than 1 per cent of Ukrainian territory in 2025. Their slow, grinding assault is carried out in large part by small infiltration units walking or riding motorbikes through forests. The odds of being killed by drones for those who try to advance are about one in three.
Yet Russian forces continue pushing, straining Ukrainian manpower, resources and will, even as Ukrainian officials estimate they are killing or seriously wounding 30,000 to 35,000 Russian soldiers each month. The Russian state’s tolerance for such casualties undermines Ukraine’s reliance on attrition as a viable strategy. There is seemingly no clear breaking point, no threshold at which Russia will finally admit defeat.
The Russians are also adapting to a new era of warfare. Tactics pioneered by the country’s elite Rubicon drone unit are filtering down to the front, particularly the use of fibre-optic drones immune to jamming that can strike soldiers in trenches or tunnels even through forests and rough weather. Russia has begun development of jet-powered Shahed drones that are much faster and harder to intercept, and it intends to increase its use of Shaheds to upwards of 1,000 a day in 2026 to pummel Ukraine into submission.
To counter this, Ukraine is building the necessary systems to stay at the cutting edge, through intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) drones, an expansive radar network and AI-enabled systems to collect, integrate and analyse data about battlefield events and incoming threats. I have been a longtime investor in defence technology companies, including in Ukraine.
This infrastructure means Ukraine is ready for the next stage of warfare, with swarms of drones operated remotely and increasingly automated with AI targeting. No man’s land has expanded as each side pulls its most valuable personnel back from the front while new generations of drones achieve longer ranges and increased lethality through better batteries, sensors and aerodynamics. Automating operations so personnel can operate safely behind the lines has become an urgent Ukrainian priority, with plans to move drone pilots even farther from the front in 2026.
Future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons. The combination of unblockable satellite communications, cheap spectrum networks and accurate GPS targeting means the only way to fight will be through drone vs drone combat. Drones share data in real time, meaning that many inexpensive platforms can act as a single weapon. They will carry air-to-air missiles to defeat attackers, just like a fighter jet does, but will be cheaper and more abundant.
The winner of those drone battles will then be able to advance with unmanned ground and maritime vehicles, which move slowly but can carry heavier payloads. These air, land and sea formations will absorb the initial fire and expand what is becoming an increasingly robotic kill zone. Only after the first waves of machines have gone in will human soldiers follow.
When the war in Ukraine is eventually settled, the result may be a tense peace that offers as many lessons for western nations as the conflict itself. In the future, a “drone wall” could be established along the division between Russia and Ukraine, where omnipresent automated drones monitor the border like an intelligent electric fence. Because these drones are valuable enemy targets, they will need to be armed to repel attackers, creating a hard border that is miles high and miles wide.
Meanwhile, ballistic and cruise missiles — capable of extreme accuracy at much higher speeds than drones and incredibly difficult to shoot down — will probably be deployed in the thousands on each side, maintaining a stalemate.
As western leaders gather at the Munich Security Conference to discuss the defence of Europe and the wider world, they should recognise they are not yet prepared for this new era of warfare. Ukraine demonstrates that a conflict marked by ubiquitous autonomous weapons will rapidly exhaust current stocks of drones and munitions. Yet the west’s current capacity to surge production in wartime remains amateurish at best.
Mastery of autonomous systems and the ability to build those weapons in abundance will determine the outcome of future wars. The west must learn from what is happening on the frontline in Ukraine, accelerate innovation, and build the industrial base required to produce at the scale and speed the next conflict will demand.
