On a blustery day in western Ukraine, hundreds of arms developers, military personnel, diplomats, and investors gathered at the Lviv Defence Tech Valley forum to witness battle-tested drones in action. Ukraine’s deputy prime minister for innovation, Mykhailo Fedorov, described the country as “a testing ground for the whole world to discover what modern warfare looks like,” speaking to Times UK before the inaugural event.
Outnumbered and outgunned by Russian forces, Ukraine has leaned heavily on unmanned systems for land, sea, and air combat, pushing rapid technological innovation that is now influencing NATO and European arms industries. Among the most striking successes are naval drones like the Magura series. The Magura V5, a kamikaze drone costing less than $300,000, has sunk at least 14 Russian warships, including vessels valued at tens of millions of dollars, forcing Moscow to move much of its Black Sea Fleet to port and opening vital trade routes for Ukraine. Newer models, such as the Magura V7, are equipped with AI-enabled autonomous targeting and adapted air-to-air missiles, enabling Ukraine to engage aerial threats from the sea for the first time.
BAE Systems, the British defence giant, has taken note, developing its own autonomous naval drones capable of coordinating multiple uncrewed vessels under AI control. This system could allow the Royal Navy to operate warships with minimal crews, addressing recruitment shortfalls while keeping personnel out of harm’s way.
On land, unmanned combat vehicles such as the Ironclad and Shablya AI-assisted machinegun turrets are entering service, although electronic jamming in high-intensity zones limits remote control. Western equivalents like Rheinmetall’s Mission Master CXT promise to supplement human forces in conflicts where soldiers cannot be deployed directly.
Unmanned aerial vehicles have seen particularly transformative use in Ukraine. Low-cost drones, sometimes adapted from hobbyist models, have been converted into weapons, flown along fibre-optic cables to prevent jamming, or deployed in swarms to overwhelm enemy defences. By contrast, NATO jets costing $100 million each were deployed to intercept relatively inexpensive Iranian-made Shahed drones, highlighting the strategic and economic challenges posed by swarm warfare.
Western companies are now racing to adapt. Estonia’s Frankenburg Technologies has developed a compact missile for mobile air defence groups, while UK-Portuguese firm Tekever provides drones for target designation and reconnaissance, working directly alongside Ukrainian forces. The AR3 Evo model, for example, has undergone more than 150 hardware and software upgrades since the start of the conflict, according to Tekever executives speaking to Times UK.
The battlefield innovations in Ukraine are prompting NATO to reconsider traditional concepts of air, sea, and land superiority. Expensive fighter jets and long-range systems may be increasingly supplemented—or even replaced—by swarms of inexpensive, AI-driven drones capable of autonomous operations. As Hervé Damman, executive vice-president at Thales, told Times UK, the next-generation Samp/T air defence system is being developed to counter diverse threats from fighters to ballistic missiles, incorporating lessons learned from Ukraine’s ongoing war.
Ukraine’s use of drones and unmanned vehicles demonstrates a decisive shift: modern warfare is moving away from large human formations toward autonomous systems that can act faster, cheaper, and with reduced risk to personnel, offering NATO and European armies a glimpse of the future of combat.
