EUROPE'S GREATEST OPEN WAR SECRET ⟩ AI-Powered Military Applications Are Giving Russia and China a Technological Edge That Only Ukraine Can Handle

Photo: Erik Prozes

10th March 2025, 07:20

It is time for European armies to wake up to the new AI-driven war being waged—even the slightest cognitive advantage in AI warfare can trigger a chain reaction with game-changing consequences. And it's not only about drones.

Last week, Vadym Sukharevskyi, the head of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, disclosed to Reuters what may be the most significant open war secret in Europe. No military force on the continent is adequately prepared to withstand a large-scale Russian drone assault—nor, just as crucially, to launch an equally formidable counteroffensive.

Sukharevskyi is not the first high-ranking Ukrainian official to acknowledge the "elephant in Europe's airspace"—the mounting threat posed by Russian drone warfare.

On October 18, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, former Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, now Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, stated that warfare has undergone a profound transformation, and NATO has dangerously fallen behind. In his assessment, traditional maneuver warfare has become a relic of the past.

Zaluzhnyi recalled the skepticism he faced when his early warnings about the technological evolution of warfare were dismissed outright.

Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK Valerii Zaluzhnyi speaking at the Royal United Services Institute Land Warfare Conference in 2024. Photo: Jordan Pettitt/AP

"When we introduced robots to the battlefield, Western media and generals laughed," he remarked. "But by 2024, new technology—especially artificial intelligence—had become a defining factor in modern warfare."

A similar warning was echoed in the latest annual report from Estonia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, which emphasized that despite suffering substantial losses in Ukraine, Russia’s military continues to expand, learning valuable lessons from the war and rapidly advancing drone technology, among other innovations.

"NATO must take this reality into serious consideration when assessing future threats," wrote Kaupo Rosin, Estonia’s intelligence chief, in the report’s foreword.

The scale of Ukraine’s drone production is staggering. In 2024 alone, Ukraine manufactured 2.2 million small FPV drones and 100,000 larger, long-range drones. Meanwhile, Russia projected an output of 1.4 million FPV drones. Intelligence agencies are urging global defense planners to treat these developments with the gravity they deserve.

"Kamikaze drones have progressively taken the lead, now comprising up to 70% of all strikes, inflicting devastating damage to enemy personnel and supply lines in tactical depth," states a new Estonian Defense League manual on countering enemy FPV drones.

But Ukraine's embrace of drone warfare is not merely driven by technological advancements or cost-effectiveness. It represents a paradigm shift in military strategy, leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate and amplify battlefield effectiveness. Ukraine has rapidly integrated AI-powered drones, autonomous weapon systems, and battlefield management technologies, extending its reach across land, sea, and air domains.

One of the most groundbreaking developments is OCHI, an AI-driven surveillance and targeting system that aggregates real-time video feeds from over 15,000 frontline drone operators. Since 2022, this system has compiled an astonishing two million hours of combat footage, training machine-learning algorithms to enhance enemy target identification and battlefield tactics.

Estonian start-up Frankenburg Technologies is aiming to release a "Shahed-killer" small missile in 2025 that would be much cheaper to produce than other currently available and overly costly products. Photo: Mihkel Maripuu

According to Oleksandr Dmitriev, one of OCHI's lead developers, the system processes a colossal volume of combat data, equivalent to 228 years of continuous battlefield footage.

"This vast intelligence database fuels our AI systems," Dmitriev explained to nationalsecurity.com. "It allows our algorithms to identify enemy soldiers, vehicles, and ambush positions far more rapidly and accurately than human operators."

The implications are profound. AI integration is enabling the next phase of military evolution—autonomous surveillance and attack systems.

A recent Politico report highlighted a successful demonstration by a Ukrainian tech startup, showcasing a swarm of AI-powered drones that autonomously identified and engaged enemy targets. These drones coordinated their movements and executed attacks independently, while the human operator’s role was limited to approving the final strike.

The impact on combat efficiency has been dramatic. In 2023, Ukraine’s attack drone accuracy stood below 50%. After integrating advanced AI-powered targeting software, this figure surged to nearly 80% by 2024.

One of the major contributors to this success is Palantir, the American AI firm whose cutting-edge intelligence tools Ukraine relies on to analyze drone and satellite imagery, identifying enemy targets with remarkable precision. Palantir’s machine-learning systems can recognize Russian military assets based on unique movement patterns and equipment signatures, drawing from an immense archive of combat footage.

Throughout history, technological revolutions have fundamentally reshaped the nature of warfare. AI, however, represents a shift unlike any before.

The introduction of gunpowder forced European rulers to consolidate power and develop sophisticated fiscal systems, laying the foundation for modern nation-states.

The 19th-century Industrial Revolution provided mass armies with unprecedented mobility via railroads, enabling sustained wars of attrition by facilitating mass production of munitions and military supplies.

Baltic airspace is primarily protected by NATO Air Policing fighter planes, such as the F-35. However, using such high-end technology against inexpensive Shahed drones launched by Russia is wasteful and ineffective, particularly in the case of large drone swarms. Photo: V-srs Siim Verner Teder / Estonian Defense Forces

The advent of nuclear weapons in the 20th century created a deterrence model so profound that it reshaped the geopolitical balance of power.

But artificial intelligence is different. It is cognitive doping—a force multiplier that enhances intelligence gathering, strategic analysis, predictive warfare, and target identification. AI enables faster learning and real-time tactical adaptation, providing an unparalleled advantage in battlefield decision-making.

In Ukraine’s hyper-evolving war theater, the innovation cycle has accelerated to an extraordinary degree. English longbowmen dominated medieval battlefields for three decades; in the drone war between Ukraine and Russia, military tactics and technologies become obsolete within mere months.

To survive in this relentlessly accelerating environment, militaries must integrate vast computational intelligence into their operations—or risk being left behind. This, in turn, demands a completely new level of civil-military cooperation, as Western industries are not integrated into the European defense innovation cycle as seamlessly as they are in Ukraine.

Since 2017, China has made AI the cornerstone of its future military doctrine, embracing a strategy known as "swarm attrition"—the concept of overwhelming America’s expensive military assets with massive fleets of cheap, AI-driven drones.

One potential Taiwan invasion scenario envisions China deploying vast waves of autonomous drones, systematically exhausting Taiwan’s air defense systems while AI-driven attack drones eliminate key targets, such as radar installations and electronic warfare hubs.

In such a conflict, the victor would be determined by the superiority of their algorithms.

However, the United States and Taiwan were not defenseless in this imaginary scenario. AI-powered laser weapon systems, capable of neutralizing drone swarms faster than human operators, are already in development. Meanwhile, battlefield commanders will rely on real-time AI-generated strategic recommendations, allowing them to adapt their tactics instantaneously.

China’s AI-driven military revolution hinges on access to advanced semiconductors smaller than 7 nanometers. However, since 2022, U.S.-led sanctions have dramatically restricted China’s ability to procure these cutting-edge chips, delaying its AI-driven warfare ambitions by five to ten years.

Key semiconductor-producing nations—the U.S., Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Germany—are actively working to curb China’s access to next-generation chipmaking technology, thereby limiting its ability to develop highly advanced AI-driven military systems.

While China can still mass-produce older-generation chips, experts warn that these will not be sufficient to sustain the AI-powered robotic warfare strategy Beijing envisions.

Turkey’s AI-enhanced Bayraktar drones played a decisive role in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In Ukraine, AI-powered warfare has expanded exponentially, reaching a scale never before seen.

As Britain’s RUSI think tank notes, Russia’s integration of AI-powered weaponry remains inconsistent and significantly lags behind Ukraine’s advancements. However, Moscow has been actively testing AI-enabled battlefield systems, showing incremental progress.

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper remarked in 2021 that throughout history, the first nation to adopt breakthrough technology secures a decisive battlefield advantage.

In peace time, Baltic airspace is primarily protected by NATO Air Policing fighter planes, such as the F-35. However, using such high-end technology against inexpensive Shahed drones launched by Russia is wasteful and ineffective, particularly in the case of large drone swarms.

If Russia were to launch several attack waves—let's say each armed with 300 Shahed drones—against targets in the Baltic States, the defenses would quickly become saturated, and most of the targets would be hit. Recent advantages of Russian forces against Ukrainians in the Kursk region have been attributed to Russia upping its drone war.

The new war reality that has emerged in Ukraine is that you do not expect to maintain the technological edge you entered war with, because the enemy will adapt, modify its approach, and there is a constant fluctuation you have to be ready to keep pace with if you want to stay in the nasty game of AI-enhanced military conflict.

It is time for European armies to wake up to the new kind of war being waged—even the slightest cognitive advantage in AI warfare can trigger a chain reaction with game-changing consequences.