Washington Stand: Ukrainian Drone Attack Shows U.S. Needs ‘Low-Cost Solutions to our Enemies’ High-Cost Problems’

Contact: Lexi Kranich (814) 380-4408

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Military history advanced before our eyes on Saturday, when Ukrainian drones crippled or destroyed dozens of Russian warplanes, amounting to a third of Russia’s long-range air force, at bases as far away as the Mongolian border. Nothing like this attack had ever been executed before. But as military history advances, militaries that fail to advance with it become history. The innovative tactics exposed glaring vulnerabilities in conventional military defenses — not only for Russia but for the U.S. as well.

For thousands of years, military expedients have driven technological advancement, and technological innovation has proven decisive on the battlefield. Sometimes, the innovation has been chemical: bronze, iron, steel, gunpowder, coal, oil, uranium. Sometimes, the innovation has been scientific: metallurgy, ballistics, meteorology, radar. Sometimes, the innovation has been physical: bows, chariots, stirrups, tanks, rockets. Each innovation has swelled military annals with decisive victories, enabling conquering empires to dominate and weaker powers to survive.

In the Russia-Ukraine war, a new generation of military technology has come into its own: drones. The U.S. military had already deployed unmanned aerial vehicles throughout its various 21st century conflicts in the Middle East, but these drones were high-tech, high-cost, and consequently few in number. Ukraine’s innovation was in deploying swarms of low-cost drones — not significantly different from those hobbyists might fly in your local park — to devastating effect.

In a sense, Ukraine’s innovation was not strictly an addition to military technology, but a tactical innovation that borrowed from civilian technology. This places it in the category of the Lord’s victory over Midian through Gideon, in which 300 men with torches and jars routed an innumerable army (Judges 7:19-22). Such asymmetrical tactics allow a weaker force to counter a much larger one.

“It doesn’t look like Ukraine is out of this when they’re able to pull off what they did, using the new technologies to go deep into Russian territory and eliminate a good chunk of their air capacity,” analyzed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “I don’t think any country is out of it when they resort to unconventional warfare,” responded Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-N.C.). “I was a Green Beret. We are experts in unconventional warfare. And that is, by definition, exactly what this attack was. It was very unconventional. It was novel.”

Perkins suggested this innovation was “in part because they had to rely on their own ingenuity … knowing that America was withdrawing,” and Harrigan agreed. “They’ve been more creative since we have signaled uncertainty towards them,” he granted. “They’ve got to worry about their strategic interests.”

Harrigan praised Ukraine’s “unconventional warfare” because such tactics are “usually how you actually win the economics of conflict.”

“Ukraine sent 117 fully AI-driven autonomous drones into Russia at a total expense of about $110,000, and they inflicted over $7 billion worth of damage on Russia, taking out over 30% of its nuclear delivery fleet, long-range strategic bombers,” he explained. “This is absolutely unprecedented and certainly is the type of tactics that Ukraine needs to employ if they are going to stay in this fight over the long haul.”

But Harrigan and other security experts believe Ukraine’s stunning strike also holds a lesson that the U.S. military must learn — and quickly. Reflecting on aerial images of the top-dollar aircraft destroyed where they sat by cheaper drones, military analyst Fred Kagan reflected, “Could those have been [American] B-2s at the hands of Iranian drones flying out of containers, let alone Chinese?”

“Ukraine did the U.S. a favor by destroying bombers of a U.S. adversary — and sending America a wake-up call about its own complacency,” wrote The Wall Street Journal editors. “One lesson is that President Trump’s planned Golden Dome missile-defense shield isn’t the boondoggle it’s portrayed to be in the press.”

Harrigan urged American military planners to consider not only the effectiveness of our defenses but also their cost. “I have said for my entire time up here that what we’re doing, fundamentally, supporting Ukraine by shooting million-dollar missiles at $50,000 Russian drones is … not allowing us to win the war in Ukraine, because we’re losing the economics of it,” he said. “It’s also just adding to our national debt.”

“We have got to figure out how we get our defense industrial base to make the low-cost solutions to our enemies’ high-cost problems,” he insisted, “not the other way around, as it has been for the last 30 years. … We have to change that paradigm if we’re going to properly deter or defeat China in the future.” For instance, the WSJ editors pointed to “Israel’s recent success shooting down drones with lasers.”

Developing low-cost solutions is easier said than done, said Perkins, because of the “military-industrial complex” that profits from America’s expensive armaments.

In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower coined the term “military-industrial complex” to describe “a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions” that the U.S. was forced to create in response to the Soviet threat. Although this industry was necessary, he argued, it also had “grave implications.” Eisenhower urged future elected officials to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.”

Harrigan offered his own corollary. “We’ve all got to understand and heed the warning of President Eisenhower. There is a military-industrial [complex], and there is also a congressional complex,” he said. “We have parochial concerns that affect every single congressional district across the United States. And when that particular congressman or congresswoman fights for what is being produced inside of their district, oftentimes the wrong decisions are ultimately made.”

Although difficult, Harrigan believes that “winning the economics of our conflicts again” is worth the effort. If successful, he said, “we actually won’t fight our next conflict because our enemy knows that we can win the economics of it.”

Regardless of economics, he said, “we have to invest in new technologies that are relevant to the future fight because, as we’ve seen just over the last couple of days in Ukraine, war is fundamentally changing.”