The war in Ukraine has entered a new phase: following the start of the drone war in 2024 when First Person View (FPV) UMV took over as the main weapon on the battlefield, both sides have scaled up production to the point where they are fully armed and drones have increasingly become an offensive, not defensive, weapon. A drone arms race is now in full swing.

A new phase of drone and missile bombardment has started, and Ukraine in particular has switched from using drones to hold Russian infantry advances at bay to using them offensively deeper and deeper inside Russian territory. The escalation was clearly visible this weekend as both Russia and Ukraine hit targets all across each other’s territory as the new stage in the fighting got under way.

As reported by bne IntelliNews, drones have changed the face of modern warfare. Russia has long had the artillery advantage, traditionally the workhorse of a set piece war of attrition, and Ukrainian drones have effectively created a stalemate on the front line in Donbas. Russia has been firing five to ten shells for every one shell the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) could get off, but it has been unable to follow through with infantry advances to capture key positions after softening defences with a barrage because as soon as its soldiers step into no-man’s land they are targeted and killed by hunter-killer drone pairs. That has slowed the Russian advance to crawl and is costing them 1,000-1,500 dead and wounded a day, according to reports.

In this scenario, Ukraine’s drones play a largely defensive role, preventing the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) from taking important targets such as Pokrovsk or Sumy, both of which Russia has been trying to capture for months.

What has changed is that heavy investment by both sides into drone production has reached the point where both sides are producing more drones than they need for day-to-day operations. Ukraine’s drone production went up by 500% last year, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to hit the 1mn a year mark and Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) said last month it is on track to manufacture 2.5mn drones this year. It could produce 10mn a year if more funding was available and export restrictions were lifted. Likewise, Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that Russia plans to make 2mn drones this year and the Russian drones currently have the technological advantage, experts say.

Drone’s arms race

In addition to the mere output of numbers, both sides are frantically innovating and the advantage is swinging back and forth between them.

Ukraine had the early lead by weaponising cheap commercially available drones by doing things like hanging WWII-era grenades from their underbelly.

Russia soon countered and took the lead in electronic warfare (EW) efforts to effectively jam the controlling radio signals. Ukraine countered by producing ever more sophisticated drones with things like frequency swapping radio signals. Russia was the one to introduce fibre-optic control lines that could not be jammed, that were initially ridiculed by Kyiv before it imitated them.

In the latest development, the drones used in Operation Spiderweb on June 1 (video) were “AI assisted” so that they lock in on a pre-selected target and complete the mission on their own, if the signal to their remote controller is broken. Equally radical was they were delivered by truck, which means that range is no longer a limitation, and Ukraine’s drones can now reach any target in Russia.

While subsequent reports by US intelligence officers say that the number of planes destroyed was closer to ten than the 41 initially claimed by the Ukrainian security services, the attack has caused chaos as the authorities have been forced to introduce spot checks on all trucks in military areas, including Siberia and the Crimea, slowing logistics to a crawl. (video)

Since the attack, recent images from Anadyr airbase show two Tu-160 bombers stationed there. Following Ukrainian strikes on Russian air bases, Russia is diversifying its strategic aviation by dispersing Tu-160 bombers across multiple bases. Anadyr Airbase is located on the Yakutia Peninsula, 6,750 km from Ukraine’s border and 660 km from the US border.

Missile race

In addition to investment in drones, there is a race in the development and production of missiles, but here Russia has the clear lead.

Ukraine has been scrambling to catch up. Ukraine largely gave up its missile arsenal after the collapse of the USSR, but since then has been rapidly developing new ones. Its shore-to-sea Neptune missiles successfully sank Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship and it has developed long-range drone missiles that can hit Moscow and beyond, for example the Palyanytsia, which is designed to target Russian airfields.

Zelenskiy just announced another new, but unnamed, Ukrainian ballistic missile that has successfully passed tests in May that is going into production now. It can cover nearly 300 km and destroy a Russian command post, says military expert Valentin Badrak, featuring a warhead weighing over 400 kg – significantly more powerful than comparable systems.

 

Ukraine has a new ballistic missile in development that they say has now gone into serial production.

Partners play a key role

It was the US air force under Barack Obama that first adopted drones as a weapon of assassination, and the US is a key Ukrainian partner in developing drones. Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drones took things to the next level after Azerbaijan showed they could be used as an offensive weapon in its short war with Armenia in 2020. Pre-war Ankara promised to set up a Bayraktar factory in Ukraine, but the technology has since progressed far ahead of the Turkish drones that cost some $10,000 per unit or more.

The modern low-cost, low-tech revolutionary design is an Iranian innovation, which turned modern warfare on its head making affordability more important than sophistication in the Bazarification of weapons production.

In the early stages of the war Russia was ordering thousands of Iranian Shahed “kamikaze” drones that were weaponised by simply packing them with explosives and crashing them into targets. Since then, Russia has set up its own factories based on Iranian technology and has continued to innovate, but Iran remains a major supplier, although Tehran still denies selling drones or missiles to Russia.

Iran is also producing sophisticated missiles to bolster Russia’s arsenal. It has just ordered thousands of tonnes of ammonium perchlorate from China, a vital ingredient in solid fuel ballistic missiles, which could enable production of up to 800 missiles, the Wall Street Journal reported this week.

China is also playing a key role in supporting Russia’s drone production and helped Russia retake the lead, according to the Ukraine Defence Ministry, supplying dual-use technology, parts and advanced electronics.

And North Korea has become a major contributor of ammunition, more than doubling Russia’s supply of the crucial 152mm artillery shells and now providing it with more sophisticated weapons thanks to a technology trade with Russia.

North Korea has supplied Russia with 140mm towed mortars, following earlier deliveries of 60mm Nato-calibre mortars, according to military expert Joost Oliemans. Photos shared by Russian military bloggers mark the first evidence of these North Korean weapons being used in the Russia-Ukraine war. The 140mm mortar, developed in the 1980s and first displayed publicly in 1992, has a firing rate of 10-12 rounds per minute and a range of up to 8km. While its effectiveness remains uncertain, the weapon is designed to target enemy personnel, artillery and tactical positions from concealed locations. In addition, North Korea sent over 10,000 troops to participate in the recapture of the Kursk Oblast earlier this year.

Western military supplies on the wane

Ukraine currently leads in drone production, but it remains heavily dependent on Western supplies of more powerful and sophisticated missiles and technology. Kyiv has been focused on boosting its domestic defence sector since a conference in October 2023, where Zelenskiy called for creating a military production hub in Ukraine and partners have been pouring money into domestic production under the Danish model. However, in the short term, Western supplies remain key and with the US withdrawal a question mark now hangs over if Ukraine will receive sufficient supplies.

On June 4 at the 28th Ramstein meeting of military applications, Ukraine was promised some €1.3bn in fresh military supplies. Defence Minister Rustem Umerov emphasized that Ukraine has achieved significant results. According to him, in 2025, security assistance will surpass the figures of all previous years of the full-scale war.

"Following the meeting, our partners announced new aid packages and important steps in support," he added.

Notably, for the first time, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth did not attend; instead, Pentagon representative Kingsley Wilson took part. More importantly, the US pledged zero help for Ukraine, cutting off military aid completely.

Ramstein partners allocations to Ukraine:

UK – GBP350mn

Germany - €5bn

Netherlands - €400mn

Belgium - €1bn

Norway - $700mn

Canada - $45mn

Sweden - €440mn

USA - $0

The first tranche of €428mn from Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Norway and Iceland will soon be allocated to the production of Ukrainian weapons: artillery, strike drones, missiles and anti-tank weapons.

Ruslan Umerov also announced: "new strategic decisions – both for investments by Ukrainian companies in Ramstein countries and for the deployment of European defence companies' production facilities in Ukraine."

But as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her recent ReArm Europe speech, currently Russia is outproducing all of the US, EU and Ukraine taken together. The €150bn the EU has dedicated to developing its defence industry has yet to be deployed and will take at least a year before the first weapons roll off the production lines.