Military strategists will be studying the reasons behind Russia’s confounding failure to rapidly defeat Ukraine for years to come. But there is one point upon which they seem to have quickly reached agreement: low-cost, easy-to-use drone technologies are playing a pivotal role in repulsing Russia’s advances. Drones have transformed what were once “dumb” artillery rounds into precision weapons to attack Russian armor and personnel with devastating effect. Ukraine was first to adopt low-flying quadcopters as artillery spotters, but Russia quickly caught on after losing so many of its Soviet-era drones to Ukrainian air defenses early in the war. Commercial quadcopters made by DJI, a Chinese military company, have now become so ubiquitous on the battlefield that sometimes neither side is sure of their provenance. Russian leaders now hail DJI drones as a “symbol of modern warfare.”
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