Drones Are Giving Ukraine a Wartime Edge
Re-purposed commercial drones used for military purposes by Ukrainian forces are playing an outsized role in the war. While much commentary focuses on tanks and jets, these cheap drones carrying small payloads are giving Ukraine an ‘edge.’
Drones are also being used significantly to improve the precision of artillery strikes by Ukrainian forces. Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project notes that drones ‘let poor countries do stuff that otherwise only rich countries used to be able to do.’ Even psychological warfare has been explored by using drones to surveil enemy soldiers hiding in a single location, and then attacking only when they try to move. The Ukrainian government, naturally, wants more and better versions of these uncrewed aerial systems (UAS).