Attack of the Drones: How UAVs Are Reshaping Warfare

In warfare both ancient and modern, the only constant is change. In antiquity, battles and even entire wars could be decided when one side learned to shoot arrows from horseback, made their spears two meters longer, or stuffed a cannonball and a charge of powder into a metal pipe and hoped for the best. But in the modern era, changes to warfare have a tendency to challenge the fundamental nature of war itself. Are wars fought with guns and explosives?

Not always—the world has nuclear weapons now. Are wars fought on land and sea? Not always—a nation that controls the skies generally controls the battlefield beneath them.

And are wars fought between combatants trading flesh and blood for victory? Not always. The rise and rapid evolution of drone-based warfare has meant that a growing number of the world’s militaries can now wage war without ever putting their own troops in harm’s way. The America-dominated Reaper and Predator strikes of the 2010s were only the prologue.

What has emerged since is something grittier, cheaper, and far more effective: a set of strategies and tactics built around expendable machines that have rewritten the rules of the modern battlefield.

This is a close look at how drone warfare is changing—not the multimillion-dollar hunter-killers of a decade ago, but the swarms of off-the-shelf quadcopters, the affordable military strike drones flooding out of Turkey and Iran, the suicide boats prowling the Black Sea, and the robot tanks edging toward production lines. The thesis is simple and unsettling: the defining drone of this revolution is not the most advanced one, but the cheapest one, and that economic fact may already be changing the very nature of war.

Drones Are Not New

To grasp how quickly modern drone warfare is evolving, one fact has to come first: drones themselves are not new. Non-piloted aircraft have existed nearly as long as piloted ones. The British Aerial Target and the American Kettering Bug aerial torpedo both took their first flights before the end of World War I.

After limited use as training tools in World War II, reconnaissance drones were flying missions as early as Vietnam, where they also began launching missiles at ground targets. Several nations have manufactured drones since the Cold War, and through the 2000s and 2010s they matured into well-tested weapons in the arsenals of the United States and NATO.

It is precisely that long, quiet history that makes the upheaval of the past few years so striking. The difference-maker behind the revolution was not an advance in technology or the invention of a new tactic. It was cost and miniaturization.

Drones first became available for commercial use in the United States in 2006, when federal regulations permitted unmanned aerial vehicles for non-military purposes. Public and private organizations spent those early years trying to use them for disaster relief and property monitoring, while other companies worked to bring drones to ordinary consumers—a slow process requiring both technological and regulatory progress across many countries. By the late 2010s, early quadcopters—drones with four helicopter-like propellers—were on the market for just a couple thousand dollars.

Since then, consumer drones have grown both cheaper and far more capable as critical components have been miniaturized and mass-produced. According to Statista, roughly five million consumer drones shipped worldwide in 2020, with shipments expected to exceed seven million per year by 2025. Today a quick Amazon search turns up drones that fly for over an hour and transmit video across ten kilometers or more for under five hundred dollars, with simpler camera-equipped models available for less than fifty dollars each.

The Hobbyist’s Toolkit Turned Weapon

Those consumer drones can be heavily modified, and there is no shortage of expertise to draw on. Legions of knowledgeable enthusiasts on Reddit, YouTube, and other open platforms freely share the technical know-how. That same insight that would let someone bolt a speaker to a drone to blast music outside an irritating neighbor’s window, rig a device to spray seeds across a vegetable garden, or mount a confetti cannon for a gender-reveal party can just as easily be turned to violent ends—and to wartime use.

The core issue is cost. Consider the F-16 Viper, an internationally available and genuinely dangerous multirole fighter in the arsenals of well over a dozen militaries. It can win air-to-air battles, fly reconnaissance, attack ground targets, and much more.

It also costs around $30 million to acquire a single recently built unit, runs roughly $27,000 per flight hour, and carries maintenance demands that require dedicated personnel and frequent parts replacement. And on the spectrum of modern jets, the F-16 is the affordable option—the KAI T-50, the Sukhoi Su-27, the Saab Gripen, and the Chengdu J-10 all run at similar or higher cost.

Many missions genuinely require a fighter like that, and no guerrilla force should take a quadcopter into a dogfight with a Raptor. But some jobs handled by advanced aircraft—particularly strikes against targets near the front lines, or in asymmetrical and guerrilla conflicts—can be done by consumer drones. And the savings are not marginal.

For the price of one new F-16, a force could buy sixty thousand high-quality quadcopters or more, each with a range of several kilometers, a camera, and a payload capacity reaching a couple of kilograms. Strap a cheap detonator and a standard half-kilo block of C4 to a quadcopter, and it becomes a bomb capable of blasting through reinforced doors or killing several combatants. And there is not just one—there are sixty thousand, each more maneuverable at low speed, harder to detect, and completely expendable.

The New Battlefield Workhorse

On battlefields from Ukraine to Gaza to Myanmar, Sudan, and beyond, drones have been a game-changer for smaller, underfunded, or cost-conscious militaries, as well as for insurgencies, resistance movements, and even terror organizations. During large battles, drones can be deployed one by one, in small groups, or in massive wave attacks, descending to explode at enemy positions or force a retreat. They can be flown by cell phone or handheld remote in the field, transported easily, and used to launch ambushes or harassing strikes against enemy units in outposts, fortified positions, urban areas, or open ground.

They can overwhelm, outwit, or bypass anti-air defenses built to catch guided missiles, and they can be used improvisationally in the moment, with no need for the remote-operator control bases the United States is known for. Small squads with minimal training can operate them, and depending on configuration, they can even be reused—dropping grenades or other payloads before making a quick escape.

They are also far more than improvised missiles. In recent years they have proven invaluable for front-line reconnaissance, especially in wars defined by frequent small skirmishes rather than rare large battles. In that environment, a unit that can spot an approaching enemy from two kilometers away rather than five hundred meters holds an enormous advantage—able to set ambushes, plan attacks, or slip away before being found.

Consumer drones have flown sabotage missions, blowing themselves up beside ammunition depots, power infrastructure, and supply stores. They have been used for assassination, creeping toward a target in the dead of night even when that means navigating a hostile city or slipping into an enemy encampment. And perhaps best of all, they can be crowdfunded, meaning any nation or organization with popular support somewhere in the world can procure them in large numbers without going through a foreign military.

Ukraine, Gaza, and the Spread of the Quadcopter

These consumer drones have been absolutely critical on the battlefields of Ukraine, where they are routinely handed out to units as small as three to five troops as well as to much larger forces. Ukrainian drone operators are among that military’s most valuable assets, and more are trained by the day. Drones now live-stream a real-time view of the battlefield for both Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, helping them understand and operate within their immediate combat radius.

That information feeds back to command centers, enabling more effective real-time battlefield analysis and faster response than the world has ever seen. Ukrainian drones guide artillery onto the right targets, launch swarm attacks, and harass Russian troops deep in the rear—and they have been arriving at a rate of five to ten thousand every month.

The pattern repeats elsewhere. In the attacks of October 7, 2023, Hamas used a large wave of drones in a combined assault alongside rockets and ground forces, with the drones serving as the primary instrument against Israeli watchtowers, gun emplacements, and surveillance equipment. In Myanmar, rebel organizations have begun mounting their own bombing attacks with drones.

In Yemen, where the Houthi rebels’ drone technology can become fairly advanced, the group has also used consumer drones to supplement its offensives. Even the Islamic State was an early adopter of quadcopters, employing them to great effect during the 2017 Siege of Mosul.

Responding to this new wartime demand, a wide range of companies have begun producing drones better optimized for warfighting. In Ukraine alone, more than 200 startups now build expendable, cheap drones they update constantly, relying on software and limited production runs to stay versatile and evolve rapidly. Private firms worldwide have entered the field, while major militaries weigh whether to do the work in-house.

But any military that wants to field its own small drones successfully will have to abandon the years-long development cycles most weapons go through and pivot to low-cost, high-output production built around highly adaptable, easily modified platforms. Whether the world’s militaries can manage that shift, or simply leave it to the private sector, remains to be seen.

The Military Drone Market: Israel, China, and America

The growing world of drone warfare reaches far beyond what sits on the shelves at a big-box store. Over thirty nations were known or believed to field armed drones in late 2024—not just powerhouses like the United States and China, but countries from Kazakhstan to Poland, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, and more. Many acquired their drones from other militaries; others built robust arsenals with parts sourced abroad or produced entirely at home. More than ten of these nations have actually conducted drone strikes, including Azerbaijan, the UAE, and Iraq—countries a casual observer of world news might never have associated with drone warfare.

When assessing what a country has in its arsenal, three basic factors matter: the drone’s intended altitude, its endurance, and whether it is armed. A high-altitude, high-endurance, unarmed drone is likely built for strategic reconnaissance—India scoping out Pakistan, or China patrolling above the South China Sea. Low-altitude, low-endurance drones tend to run short, often armed missions into active crisis zones, and may be cheaper and more expendable. Low-altitude, high-endurance drones show up in the arsenals of nations that need to project power over long distances—the United States, for instance, launching drones from the Indian Ocean to strike Afghanistan.

Among global exporters, Israel deserves special mention: between 2001 and 2011 it was responsible for nearly half of all military drone sales, and it remains among the largest exporters by proportion today, having supplied the EU, Australia, and nations across Africa and Asia. China is gaining ground with its domestically produced CH-series, serving buyers from Ethiopia to Serbia to Zambia and the Congo. Different CH variants fill different roles, but some, like the widely used CH-4, can stay aloft for over a day and a half and fire air-to-ground missiles at altitudes beyond the reach of most surface-to-air missiles. The United States, for its part, has exported drones to 55 countries, including nearly every NATO member along with a range of allies and frenemies around the world.

Turkey’s Bayraktar: The Drone That Tilted Wars

When it comes to drones that have actually changed the battlefield—now meaning proper military drones rather than commercial hardware—the difference-making factor is, once again, not superior performance or new capabilities. It is cost. And on the metric of low cost paired with high effectiveness, two countries lead the pack: Turkey and Iran.

Turkey’s Bayraktar line has made a major difference for beleaguered countries in war zones around the world. Its flagship, the Bayraktar TB-2, is a six-and-a-half-meter-long drone with a twelve-meter wingspan, a top speed of just 222 kilometers per hour, and an endurance of about a day at altitudes above five thousand meters. Those figures place it neatly in the medium-altitude, long-endurance, or MALE, category, and it can carry smart bombs, anti-tank missiles, laser-guided rockets, and more across its four hardpoints.

An exact price is hard to pin down, but a single unit appears to cost around five million dollars—an excellent deal given its capabilities. The drone’s low speed yields a low radar cross-section, and with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of flight hours logged across its operators, it has proven highly dependable and effective in combat.

The Bayraktar drones do not just perform well; they proliferate. With at least six hundred TB-2 models in operation globally, they have reached a remarkable range of operators. They played a major role in the Second Libyan Civil War on behalf of the internationally recognized Libyan government, shooting down large cargo planes, destroying bases and troop columns under the warlord Khalifa Haftar, and helping turn Haftar’s major 2019 offensive into a stalemate.

In Azerbaijan, they destroyed artillery and tanks during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. In Ethiopia, the government has used them, including in attacks that killed dozens of civilians. Across Africa’s Sahel, they are widely used against Islamist militants, where governments appreciate working with a more lenient Turkey rather than meeting the geopolitical and humanitarian conditions attached to US or EU providers.

They also played a critical role in the early months of Ukraine’s defense against Russia in 2022, where the TB-2 quickly became a morale-boosting symbol of resistance. TB-2s streamed in from international benefactors, and though Russia’s improving air defenses have blunted their effectiveness, there is hope that the arrival of F-16s and other vital air equipment will get Ukraine’s remaining TB-2s back into the skies.

Iran’s Shahed and the Rise of the Suicide Drone

Then there is Iran, where the Shahed series has seen wide international use and gained international notoriety. Several members of the family warrant attention. The Shahed 129 is essentially a knockoff of the American MQ-1 Predator, capable of a full day’s flight and generally regarded as a potent weapon.

It has seen action in the Syrian Civil War, been provided to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and supplied in several dozen units to Russia for strikes over Ukraine. Within Iran it is viewed as the backbone of future large-scale drone operations, though its current fleet size is unknown. The Saegheh, or Thunderbolt, subseries is a flying-wing design believed to be used for reconnaissance, which has drawn Russian attention and appeared in the skies over Israel.

The Shahed 238 is a newer, turbojet-powered drone whose full capabilities are not yet known, meant to drop munitions on targets below.

But it is the Shahed 136 that has drawn the most attention. With a low build cost somewhere between ten and fifty-five thousand dollars per unit—and an unknown total produced—it is a suicide drone using a pusher-prop engine and a narrow delta wing to drive forward at a minimum speed of 185 kilometers per hour. It weighs roughly 200 kilograms, can fly as far as 2,500 kilometers, and carries a 50-kilogram warhead capable of immense destruction on the ground. Its low cost and ease of production have made it a favorite of the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Iran’s proxy forces in Syria, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan.

Most significant of all is the Shahed 136’s use by Russia—first the Iranian-made version, then a Russian-built model called the Geran-2. The Geran-2 is made of fiberglass and carbon fiber and uses Russian internal systems and munitions. Russia has launched hundreds of these drones against Ukraine, including wave attacks of dozens at a time against the Ukrainian power grid and the capital, Kyiv.

Their slow speed, low flying altitude, and small size make them very hard to catch on the radar carried aboard Ukrainian aircraft, and Ukraine has gone to great lengths to find interceptor systems that can handle them. So far, the best solution seems to be shooting them down with Soviet-era machine guns.

The Loyal Wingman and the High-Tech Path

Though cheap drones have been the real game-changer in modern battles, one advance belongs firmly to the technological frontier: the so-called Loyal Wingman. It is an integral part of the United States’ plans to introduce a sixth-generation fighter jet, upgrade its bomber fleet to the B-21 Raider, and further modernize its current fleet of F-35 Lightning aircraft. The concept is that when next-generation fighters take to the sky, they will not fly alone. Each will be accompanied by two autonomous wingman drones able to fly just as fast, just as far, and just as stealthily as the piloted aircraft they escort.

With these Loyal Wingmen, the US military hopes to more than triple the firepower of its current fighters, using the drones’ internal bays alongside the aircraft’s own to carry missiles, bombs, and other munitions while staying stealthy. As of now, the plan calls for acquiring one thousand drones, pairing two each to 200 next-generation fighters and 300 F-35s. The drones are unlikely to keep up in a dogfight for the time being—that is probably a goal for far down the road—but in the meantime they open tactics unthinkable with human pilots, running highly dangerous missions or even throwing themselves in front of incoming enemy missiles as a last resort.

Drone Warfare at Sea

For all the advances in consumer drones, affordable military drones, and Loyal Wingmen, the story is not finished—because it has not yet touched the drones that were never meant to fly. Begin with the sea drone, which before 2022 was a concept mostly reserved for remotely operated exploration or maintenance craft—surveying the sea floor, inspecting undersea pipelines—or for military tasks like mine-clearing well away from active combat. That changed with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when sea drones took on a far more aggressive role in and around the Black Sea.

These craft typically consist of a low-lying hull, a top-mounted camera, an enclosed compartment packed with explosives, and a detonator. They are not vessels anyone would want to ride, which is just as well, since their entire purpose is to get as close as possible to the hull of an enemy ship and explode. They beam images back to handlers on land, putter slowly toward a target on their own, then hand off to remote operators for a final mad dash.

Sitting so low they are practically underwater, too small to leave much of a wake, and painted black to vanish into the night, these naval drones were both a massive surprise to Russian forces and very difficult to counter even after they became a constant presence. They are relatively cheap—roughly $250,000 apiece—and easily crowdfunded and built from off-the-shelf parts, minus the high explosives. They are especially dangerous in swarm attacks, overwhelming the limited anti-boarding guns carried on most Russian ships, and they have figured in several major strikes on Russian naval targets.

They have effectively deterred Russia from parts of the Black Sea and forced operational changes in how the Russian navy conducts itself. Russia has tried to build its own sea drones with some success, but for now these weapons remain a decisively Ukrainian phenomenon.

They may not stay that way for long. International experts broadly agree that sea drone technology is still mostly experimental, but its clear effectiveness has caught the attention of global militaries and opened the door to an arms race nobody anticipated. It is one of those blind spots that looks unmissable in hindsight, yet low-tech, unsophisticated sea drones were the last thing on most navies’ minds—including when they designed new and very expensive vessels. Major navies like those of the United States, the United Kingdom, and China will now have to think differently, because a warship that can be sunk by the grown-up version of a remote-controlled bathtub speedboat presents a serious problem.

Assuming Ukraine remains a sovereign nation in some form by the end of its war with Russia, it is likely to emerge as a global leader in maritime drone technology. Its first-generation attack drones remain in heavy use alongside an arsenal that appears to grow by the day: weaponized jet-skis, suicide boats built for greater maneuverability or to dodge anti-drone fire, and craft carrying heavier munitions able to punch through seriously reinforced hulls. Ukraine is also developing submersible explosive drones—some fast with small charges, some slow with very large ones. And Ukrainian veterans will be in demand, since they are currently the only people on Earth with experience using naval attack drones at large scale, expertise that will matter greatly to other countries entering the game.

Robots on the Ground

Alongside drones of the air and sea come UGVs—unmanned ground vehicles, defined loosely as anything with wheels that can blow up. They take many forms, from heavily armored tank-like machines to fast, quickly deployed drones to small devices that scurry like mice. They are already well developed outside the military sphere, used in search and rescue, firefighting, nuclear response, mining, manufacturing, agriculture, and more. As offensive military tools, though, they have been largely overlooked, developed instead for explosives disposal, search-and-rescue, and defensive or limited-offensive guard duty.

That is beginning to change. Offensive UGVs have captured growing attention from militaries and arms manufacturers. The Type-X, revealed in 2020 by the Estonian robotics firm Milrem, looks like a tank because it essentially is one—able to mount high-caliber autocannons, mortars, surface-to-air missiles, and more, placing it well above most infantry fighting vehicles if not quite at the level of a manned heavy tank.

There is also the Ripsaw series from the American firm Howe & Howe Technologies, which spent decades struggling to land a US military order but has produced an impressive latest iteration. Fully autonomous, all-electric, and armed with a Bushmaster II chain-gun and two anti-tank guided missiles, the Ripsaw M5 is undergoing experimental testing with the US Army. It is being designed so it can be controlled from modified manned Army vehicles—an on-the-ground version of the Loyal Wingman concept.

The Type-X, the Ripsaw, and other experimental tank-like UGVs are inching toward production, pointing to a future in which mechanized armies can send heavy armor into harm’s way without risking their crews.

Once again, though, it is not just bigger and better robots that may make the difference on land. A few nations have begun at least tentatively exploring technologies to convert older tanks, trucks, Humvees, and even smaller vehicles into autonomous or remotely operated drones, turning large stockpiles of outdated surplus into kamikaze weapons like those already seen in the air and at sea. Consider the fifth-generation Toyota Hilux, the stuff of legend for insurgencies, militias, and land-holding terror organizations for nearly five decades.

Several million fifth-generation Hiluxes are spread across the world, not counting the older models that defined the very real Toyota War fought between Chad and Libya in the 1980s. Nobody is eager to drive the ones still running, but they can be packed full of explosives and driven remotely into a reinforced target with serious battlefield effect. Replicate that with other abundant but outdated vehicles—military jeeps, trucks, even old tanks due to be scrapped—and the result is a weapon that nearly every nation with a military could eventually field.

Two Diverging Futures

Evolutions in drone-based warfighting appear to be heading down two simultaneous but diverging paths. One is about technological advancement: making bigger, more sophisticated, more capable, and more heavily armed drones that can augment or replace the cutting-edge manned hardware already in the field. The other is far more utilitarian: building the highest possible number of autonomous vehicles for the least possible money, machines that can deliver battlefield success while sacrificing as few troops as possible.

On the utilitarian side, miniaturization, assembly-line readiness, and indigenous production appear to be what matter most. A drone need not be big, clunky, or sophisticated to be transformative. One just a meter across that can fly fast, low, and quiet for a hundred kilometers before striking a target would be a major advance in its own right.

So would a flying-wing drone light enough to toss into the air by hand yet able to stay aloft for weeks, beaming images back to its handlers. A cheap, small drone that can deliver a chemical or nuclear weapon suddenly has the potential to do the work of a B-2 bomber or a Dreadnought-class submarine at a tiny fraction of the cost. And drones built from parts, expertise, and infrastructure sourced at home rather than abroad give both nations and non-state actors the ability to choose their own destiny and gain air power without relying on more powerful backers.

On the side of technological advancement, the coming decades will be about discovering just what AI, machine learning, and other emerging technologies can do when fully unleashed. Beyond the difficult ethical questions of allowing killer robots to take human lives lies the open question of how advanced this technology can really become. Could future warfare see autonomous tanks roll across grassy battlefields, or entire drone battleships coordinating every weapon and system in perfect synchronicity? And what does it mean for the world when one or a few nations can field such weapons, fully insulating their troops from harm, while everyone else cannot?

Whatever humanity’s eventual course, one thing is certain. Drone technology is not merely here to stay—it is here to take over, and as it does it will fundamentally change the way war works. What we now call modern warfare is modern only until the next technological revolution arrives, sweeping away the weapons and war machines bequeathed by the last one. The cycle will continue, as it always has, and where it takes us will not be known until we arrive.

Frequently Asked Questions

What sparked the recent drone warfare revolution if drones themselves are not new?

Not a new technology or tactic, but cost and miniaturization. Drones have existed since before the end of World War I, but only in the late 2010s did mass production and miniaturized components make capable quadcopters available for a couple thousand dollars. That economic shift, not any single breakthrough, made expendable drone warfare possible.

Why is cost considered the decisive factor over capability?

A single new F-16 costs around $30 million, plus roughly $27,000 per flight hour and heavy maintenance demands. For that same price, a force could buy sixty thousand or more high-quality quadcopters, each with a several-kilometer range, a camera, and a payload of up to a couple kilograms. Even fitted with a half-kilo of C4, these drones are more maneuverable, harder to detect, and fully expendable.

Which countries lead in affordable, effective military drones?

Turkey and Iran. Turkey’s Bayraktar TB-2 costs around five million dollars and has tilted conflicts in Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Sahel, and early-war Ukraine. Iran’s Shahed line, especially the Shahed 136 suicide drone at ten to fifty-five thousand dollars per unit, has been used heavily by Russia — reproduced domestically as the Geran-2 — in wave attacks against Kyiv and the Ukrainian power grid.

How have naval drones changed warfare in the Black Sea?

Ukrainian sea drones — low-lying explosive boats costing about $250,000 each, painted black and built from off-the-shelf parts — surprised Russian forces and proved hard to counter. Especially dangerous in swarms, they have struck several Russian naval targets, deterred Russia from parts of the Black Sea, and forced changes in how the Russian navy operates.

What is the Loyal Wingman concept?

It is the United States’ plan to pair next-generation fighters with autonomous drone escorts able to match their speed, range, and stealth. The aim is to acquire one thousand drones, pairing two each to 200 next-generation fighters and 300 F-35s, more than tripling firepower and enabling high-risk tactics — including using the drones to absorb incoming missiles — that human pilots could not perform.

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48. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/21/1164977056/a-chinese-drone-for-hobbyists-plays-a-crucial-role-in-the-russia-ukraine-war
49. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2023/05/08/how-ukrainians-modify-civilian-drones-for-military-use
50. https://www.forbes.com/sites/pauliddon/2023/02/12/tailor-made-shaheds-iranian-drones-are-being-modified-to-russian-specifications/