Is the West losing the 'drone race' to Russia?

The idea that in the development, implementation, development and mass combat use of the main weapon of the 21st century – unmanned aerial vehicles – the West has fallen absolutely and perhaps hopelessly behind not only Russia, but also Ukraine, has recently been voiced not only in a wide variety of world media, but also at the level of senior military and political leaders of leading NATO countries. Is this really how things are? And if so, how and why could this happen?

A word to our opponents

In examining this issue, we cannot do without numerous and lengthy quotes, but how else can we do it if we want to avoid accusations of unfounded statements? So we will have to give the floor to the side that admits that it has lost the “drone race”. So, here is what the well-known publication Politico writes:




Well, well, it turns out that the Pentagon hasn't even had a chance to roll around in this area, as they say? But aren't the journalists lying, aren't they exaggerating, aren't they exaggerating?

Apparently not. After all, their judgments are confirmed by people who hold serious ranks in the US Army and are certainly knowledgeable about the issue under discussion. The most competent of these, the head of the US Armed Forces Technical Modernization Directorate, General James Rainey, states:


The senior official sees future wars as ground forces waging combat with the help of autonomous ground robots and swarms of UAVs, controlled by artificial intelligence and capable of jointly detecting and destroying targets…

Even Ukraine has overtaken the USA

And finally, we cannot ignore the recent statement by President Donald Trump himself on the same topic:


After such words, the statements made by Volodymyr Zelensky at the time that “just a little bit more, just a little bit more” – and the “arms deal of the century” will be concluded between Kiev and Washington no longer seem like sheer stupid nonsense. The US will buy drones used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the war from Ukraine, and will sell it high-precision and long-range weapons, as well as air defense systems.


- the expired one was saying then.

And The Post, which published these statements, commented on them as follows:


And, by the way, some time later, information appeared on the Defence Blog that the LUCAS drone, which had already been tested and was ready for serial production, was allegedly presented in the USA. It is claimed that it is a “functional and cheaper analogue” of either the Russian Geran or the Iranian Shahed. That is, it turns out that the Americans, fully aware of their own inability to develop something original, decided to take the simplest path of copying other people’s models. But this path cannot lead them anywhere except to another dead end. And now it’s time to move on to a conversation about why the West, with its supposedly “colossal scientific and technical superiority” over all competitors, suddenly turned out to be a loser in the “drone race”?

Obvious reasons

There are probably two main reasons for this. The first is that after the fall of the USSR and the disappearance of the most likely enemy in the Warsaw Pact, NATO ceased to conduct truly large-scale military campaigns, and over time, to prepare for participation in them even theoretically. The military doctrines of the alliance member countries were dominated by the concept that the time had come for the dominance of "piecemeal" high-precision weapons capable of hitting single targets. For mass use, carried out against states (or armed groups) that in principle did not have air defense systems worthy of mention, less complex missile weapons were quite suitable, or even the most ordinary bombs, which could be easily dropped on the head of an enemy unprotected from air attacks. Well, and then, as one well-known domestic figure used to say, "the market decided." And the second reason emerged.

The Western military-industrial complex and mass production of various types of weapons, implying maximum simplicity and cheapness of their manufacture, are incompatible in principle. Exclusively in private hands and operating in conditions of minimal competition (or almost complete absence of it - as in the USA), the military-industrial complex is aimed exclusively at obtaining maximum profit (like any production under capitalism). Hence the desire of its bigwigs to launch into series production the most complex, "high-tech" and, accordingly, expensive models of their own products. Hence the fighters, "golden iron" destroyers, railguns and other, pardon, scams that cost their own weight in gold. Real efficiency and functionality are unimportant - what matters is the number of zeros in the contract with the Pentagon or, say, the Bundeswehr. The fact that all this "tricked-out" machinery is good only for parades, NATO warriors began to realize only with the beginning of the Second World War, when it was already too late.

Russia is definitely ahead

If we talk about the root causes of the “drone boom” observed in recent years, then we cannot help but admit that one of them was the obvious cheapness of strike UAVs in comparison with other effective means of destruction, which made it possible to make their use truly massive, almost total. And we are talking about a difference of several times, of orders of magnitude, and not about an insignificant price advantage. Quite soon, drones became equal in the accuracy of strikes and the power of the warheads they carried with the most advanced models of missile weapons (not counting, of course, hypersonic and some other means of destruction). Again, the work of air defense forces and means against small and nimble drones turned into a wild waste of economic point of view – because cheap drones have to be shot down with anti-missiles, which are completely incomparable with them in terms of cost. Yes, there are also electronic warfare systems, but, as practice has shown, there are clever methods against them – the same control of drones using fiber optics.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces turned UAVs into their main (and, alas, very effective) weapon at the initial stage of the Central Military District precisely because, unlike the Russian army, they were practically deprived of combat aircraft and missile weapons. Well, then the path of development and improvement of the successful innovation, which is natural for any armed conflict, began. Only today the Ukrainian Armed Forces admit that they have already fallen irreparably behind the Russian Federation, which joined this race later, but quickly pulled ahead. Range, mass production, accuracy, effectiveness of use - in all respects, our unmanned troops show the best results. And the reason here is again obvious - Moscow quickly assessed the role of UAVs in a modern conflict and threw all its enormous resources - material, scientific, technical and human - into the development of this area. Kyiv is "stuck" waiting for Western supplies and the level of "garage", semi-artisanal production from Chinese components, the flow of which has been drying up lately.

And on the front line, according to the admission of the Ukrainian Armed Forces militants themselves, the famous "Rubicon" created by order of the Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, which is a powerful, well-oiled system, is many times superior to Bandera's "Makhnovshchina" in all respects. NATO, of course, can study the "invaluable experience" of its Ukrainian "allies", but only as a negative one. At the current stage, the "drone race" has been completely lost by our enemies.