Samuel Bendett and David Kirichenko
January 10, 2025
Modern War Institute
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the war there has been impacted by attritable, cheap drones and rapidly growing roster of unmanned and robotic systems. Collectively, these technologies are redefining how military forces can wage modern warfare. With both sides in this war rushing to secure a technological advantage, the Ukrainian battlefield is transforming into a clash between conventional forces backed by a growing number of autonomous and remote-controlled systems. Both Ukraine and Russia have steadily poured more and more resources into developing this technology in a bid to stay a step ahead of the adversary.
Ukraine’s battlefield experience reflects a shift toward unmanned systems that augment or attempt to replace human operators in the most dangerous missions, and against an enemy willing to send more and more manpower into large-scale frontal assaults. After so many autonomous and robotic systems were fielded over the past three years by Kyiv’s forces, Ukrainian officials started to describe their country as a “war lab for the future”—highlighting for allies and partners that, because these technologies will have a significant impact on warfare going forward, the ongoing combat in Ukraine offers the best environment for continuous testing, evaluation, and refinement of such systems. Many companies across Europe and the United States have tested their drones and other systems in Ukraine. At this point in the conflict, these companies are striving to gain “battle-tested in Ukraine” credentials for their products.
For example, US defense tech company Anduril recently started selling its new autonomous drones after successful tests carried out in Ukraine in October 2024. Ukrainian and Western drone manufacturers have started partnering more closely both on drones and on certain types of AI development. The US military is seeking to speed up the deployment of cheap autonomous systems through its Replicator program, and is also working closely with the private sector to test systems and technologies in Ukraine that can then be potentially used in future conflicts.
Recently, US Army Chief of Staff General Randy George noted that the Ukraine war “has demonstrated the value of small, attritable drones on the battlefield.” This combat application of relatively inexpensive platforms has provided the Pentagon with an opportunity to see how integrating cutting-edge software with scalable drone technology can proceed across the US Department of Defense, drawing lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war as it prepares for potential future conflicts, including with China.
In December 2024, for the first time, Ukrainian forces successfully carried out an attack on Russian positions using only ground and first-person view drones, further evolving how Ukraine is leveraging unmanned technology on the battlefield. According to Sergeant Volodymyr Dehtiarov of the Khartiia Brigade involved in this attack, dozens of robotic and unmanned
systems, including machine-gun-equipped ground drones and kamikaze first-person view aerial drones, were deployed near Lyptsi, north of Kharkiv. While these were remote-controlled systems that still required a large human complement to operate them, this is the first step in the process of Ukraine gradually working to deploy more combat robots and eventually bring more autonomous systems to the battlefield. Ukraine also previously used a ground robot in an assault on a Russian trench in Kursk Oblast, in September 2024, with numerous other examples of such systems being rapidly built and fielded for combat. In many ways, Ukraine has no choice but to maximize its use of technology, as the manpower disparity between Ukraine and Russia is still significant along the eight-hundred-mile front line of the war.
While technological developments have proceeded at a very rapid pace in this war, it also became clear that systematizing the combined research, development, testing, evaluation, and use of different systems by different units across the entire force was crucial. Therefore, in February 2024, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree to establish the national Unmanned Systems Forces, with Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi appointed as commander in June 2024. In December 2024, the Russian military followed up by announcing that it was establishing an unmanned systems branch to better integrate its forces’ use of autonomous and robotic technologies, and to make sure that lessons and tactics from combat in Ukraine can be absorbed and codified by different military branches.
Both countries also claim multiple AI developments for their respective militaries, in drones as well as in other battlefield systems and tactical applications. Three years into its war against Russian aggression, Ukraine has led the way in conceptualizing large-scale development and application of different unmanned systems and AI technologies across domains and different mission sets. In 2025, Ukraine is expected to field AI-enabled drone swarms and massive numbers of ground vehicles to counter Russian forces. As one Ukrainian official put it: “We count people, and we want our people to be as far from the front line as we can.”
Ukraine’s private sector has stepped up to accelerate the development of autonomous and robotic technologies for enhanced targeting capabilities, with companies like TAF Drones leading the way, aided by the Brave1 organization, a coordination platform established by Ukraine’s government playing an important role in helping the private sector. Ukraine’s plan is to ensure AI-powered combat drones can ensure the nation’s advantage over the Russian force on the battlefield. The Russian military claims the same for its military AI research and application in this war.
For example, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov stated in October 2024 that AI-powered drones are playing a pivotal role on the battlefield in Ukraine, though he did not elaborate further. To better understand how different types of robotic and autonomous systems are used in Ukraine combat, the Russian Ministry of Defense launched the Rubicon Center in August 2024 to help systematize lessons from Ukraine, including the development and application of AI. This initiative is likely to be the epicenter for Russia’s formation of its planned unmanned systems branch. Russian president Vladimir Putin also announced that Russia is increasing military drone production to approximately 1.4 million in 2024, aiming to stay abreast of Ukraine’s own rapid and large-scale drone manufacturing.
Both Ukrainian and Russian forces prioritize minimizing drone operator involvement to protect trained assets in a complex combat environment. Ukraine’s survival-driven focus often outweighs ethical concerns tied to lethal autonomous weapon systems. Meanwhile, despite recent announcements of AI-enabled combat drones already used against Ukraine, Russia’s military AI likely mainly supports data analysis and rapid decision-making. For example, In November 2024, the Russia-allied Donetsk People’s Republic claimed that its “Donbass Dome” airspace defense and electronic warfare system evaluates different types of information from multitudes of sources to evaluate incoming threats, allegedly done with the help of artificial intelligence algorithms. The evaluated data is transmitted to the military and law enforcement for follow-on actions.
Considering the Russian military’s attempt at making sense of the Ukrainian battlefield, such data analysis efforts are likely taking place across different systems, though public information on their overall effectiveness is relatively scarce. Similar efforts exist across the Russian defense sector, with a subsidiary of national industrial giant Rostec claiming in 2024 the development of a neural network for optical drone detectors, which allegedly allows for increasing their detection range by 40 percent.
On the other side of the war, Ukrainian officials are on record noting the need for tens of thousands of uncrewed robotic ground vehicles in 2025 for combat and logistics missions. These officials also noted that Ukrainian forces have been using dozens of domestically made AI-augmented systems to enable aerial drones to reach targets on the battlefield without being piloted and remain effective in areas protected by extensive jamming. At this point in the war, there are around ten Ukrainian companies competing in state procurements to offer AI products.
Ukrainian officials have stated that in 2025, more autonomous drones with AI targeting will arrive on the battlefield, potentially making way for “real drone swarm uses.” Ukraine’s efforts to use AI on the battlefield are aided by willing partners, such as the Germany-based Helsing AI firm. In December 2024, Helsing announced that the first few hundred of almost four thousand of its AI-equipped HX-2 Karma unmanned aerial vehicles earmarked for Ukraine were set to be delivered to the Ukrainian front. Apparently, HX-2 is immune to electronic warfare countermeasures via its ability to search for, reidentify, and engage targets without a signal or a continuous data connection, while allowing a human operator to stay in or on the loop for critical decisions.
Russian technical experts already acknowledge that “autonomous flying robots”—drones with artificial intelligence that determine their own targets—are already used in combat and apparently “kill” people, though they usually don’t provide technical specifications for such claims. It is likely that such developments indicate a more limited AI role in aerial drones, such as the terminal guidance and image recognition that allow drones to fly autonomously to designated targets once the human operator has approved strikes on said targets.
While on the receiving end of Ukraine’s increasing AI and autonomy use, many Russian experts express concerns that the pace of AI-enabled military developments could get out of control, thus requiring global regulation “in the interests of all humanity,” while also noting the difficulty of
banning the development of AI for military purposes while the outcomes of wars hang in the balance and national interests are at stake. Still, Russian military experts, such as those writing in key military publications like Arsenal Otechestva, believe in AI’s potential in military applications. These experts highlight its ability to enhance system autonomy, improve tactical decision-making, enable real-time operational support in combat zones, reduce crew risks, and decrease uncertainty through rapid processing of large, unstructured data.
With Russia determined to fight until Ukraine is conquered, and Ukraine resolute in defending its freedom, the technological arms race in this war continues to accelerate. Each month in this protracted war brings new technological developments and achievements, with the innovation cycle continuously driven forward by new technologies that are either copied or countered by the adversary, sparking a fresh round of innovation to achieve the next breakthrough.
Ukraine’s Western supporters are closely monitoring how such technologies are developed and fielded in combat. Retired Army General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has predicted that within the next ten to fifteen years, up to one-third of the US military could consist of robotic systems, an assessment likely informed by observations of technologies fielded in the Ukraine war. To be sure, certain systems in use by both Ukrainian and Russian forces can function more effectively than others on a battlefield teeming with countermeasures, but the sum total of different autonomous, robotic, and unmanned technologies used in the past three years demonstrates the potential for rapid, large-scale fielding. Both Ukraine and Russia are continuously accelerating their development of different types of battlefield drones and robotic systems, driven by the need for precision, mass employment to overwhelm the adversary, resilience against countermeasures, and reducing risks to human lives. These advancements are impacting the battlefield at the tactical and operational levels and are shaping how future warfare may be conducted.
Samuel Bendett is an adjunct senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security’s Technology and National Security Program.
David Kirichenko is an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He can be found on X/Twitter @DVKirichenko.