Emulating underdogs: Tactical drones in the Russia-Ukraine war

ABSTRACTEarly studies on state drone proliferation argued that it would be temperate, constrained by high financial, technical, and infrastructural requisites and fielded according to the logic of scarce, exquisite airpower. While this rationale has held for limited conflicts, the high attrition and massive demand of a total war compelled strong standing armies to follow a different model of adoption: emulating weaker violent nonstate actors leveraging low-cost commercial platforms. The Russia-Ukraine war has captured this trend. Despite earlier expectations of armies maintaining advanced airpower for strategic ends, underdog Ukraine, followed by Russia have developed heavy reliance on commercial drone technologies for tactical aims. Framing this in military and battlefield innovation literature and drawing on studies on commercial drone use among violent nonstate actors, we argue that this constitutes a new trajectory involving mixed military arsenals enhanced with dual-use commercial platforms.KEYWORDS: Dronesunmanned aerial vehiclesinterstate conflictmilitary innovationmodern warfare Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Islamic State is a prime example, but certainly not the only one. Many VNSAs from Houthi rebels, Burmese resistors, Syrian fighters, African insurgents, and Mexican cartels use commercial drones in one, some, or all the ways listed to advance their agendas.