Ukraine’s Drone Strikes Against Russia Could Become the Global Norm

The drone factory in Kyiv had an enviable problem. It could make more combat drones than the Ukrainian military needs. The heavy ones, known as Vampires, can be assembled at a rate of 4,000 per month, the factory’s founder told me on a tour of the facility in March. The smaller ones, similar to the drones Ukraine used this weekend to devastate Russia’s bomber fleet, could be made many times faster, he said: roughly 4,000 per day.

All around us, the noise of the production line made it difficult to hear, as did the speaker system playing ‘80s music (“I just died in your arms tonight…”). So I asked the founder to repeat himself: Did he just say 4,000 drones… per day? “Yeah, that’s at full capacity,” he said. “Right now we’re only making around half that.”

Sunday’s attack, which targeted Russian air bases as far away as Irkutsk, in eastern Siberia, employed a total of 117 kamikaze drones, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Each of them costs around $400 to produce, and they destroyed Russian aircraft worth billions. By Ukraine’s count, that would make this operation one of the most efficient, dollar for dollar, in the history of warfare. No doubt the operatives behind the strike deserve to take a bow. But once the Russian targets stop smoldering at their bases, it may be worth considering how such weapons will be used in the future, not only in Russia but around the world. 

For the moment, the drones Ukraine produces remain inside the country, because the government has banned the export of weapons during the war. Once the war ends, those restrictions are likely to be lifted, and Ukrainian drones could appear on the global market in abundant supply. Last year, Ukraine produced more than two million combat drones of various types. This year, it’s on the way to making twice that many. 

For the government in Kyiv, the foreign market for these weapons is a critical part of the plan to rebuild and rearm after the war. One lawmaker estimated last year that selling drones to other countries could earn Ukrainian manufacturers some $20 billion, which could be reinvested into the domestic arms industry. 

The founder of the factory I visited in March told me that he has already received purchase requests from several European countries, as well as Egypt, India and Pakistan. “They all know our drones work, because they’ve been tested in actual combat,” he says, asking not to be named for security reasons. 

Once these drones become widely available, governments around the world may need to rethink their military doctrines, as well as their protocols for guarding high officials. 

Last fall, an officer for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency showed me a prototype for a new type of drone that had been used in numerous strikes inside Russia. It looked like a model airplane with an explosive shell attached to its belly, and the officer said it had a range of at least a thousand miles. He was clearly proud of the ingenuity that had gone into the drone’s development. 

But as an expert in security, he also wondered what would happen if these weapons end up in the wrong hands. “Protecting military objects is going to get a lot harder,” he told me. “The usual strategies won’t work.”