The Drone War: Produce, Saturate, Survive
From Ukraine to Israel, from the United States to Europe: Warfare Is Changing Scale
The drone war has entered a new phase.
The question is no longer simply who possesses the most advanced drone. It is now who can produce enough of them, modify them most rapidly, secure the necessary components and, at the same time, destroy the adversary’s drones at a sustainable cost.
In just a few years, the drone has evolved from a specialized piece of equipment into a mass-produced military commodity.
Ukraine demonstrates this every day. Russia has understood the change and is continually adapting its systems. The United States is now seeking to rebuild an industry capable of producing on a comparable scale. Israel is working on the other half of the equation: how to conduct mass interceptions without financially exhausting the defender.
Europe, finally, is beginning to understand that it cannot remain a spectator.
Ukraine: War by the Million
The first upheaval concerns scale.
Ukraine now manufactures its small FPV drones by the million. The front is no longer supplied only by a handful of major defense companies, but by an entire ecosystem of technology firms, start-ups, workshops and specialized manufacturers.
This industrial organization has one essential characteristic: it evolves almost as rapidly as the war itself.
A system that is effective today may be neutralized tomorrow by electronic jamming, a new defensive measure or a change in enemy tactics. The software must then be modified, the frequency changed, a component replaced, fiber-optic guidance adopted, a new navigation system developed or the aircraft entirely redesigned.
Quantity alone is therefore no longer sufficient.
The challenge is to mass-produce something that must itself remain capable of constant change.
This marks a profound break with traditional major weapons programs, whose development cycles were often measured in years and sometimes in decades.
Russia Is Learning Too
It would be misleading to present this revolution as an exclusively Ukrainian phenomenon.
Russia is rapidly transforming its own drone industry.
The original Iranian Shahed has gradually given rise to the Russian Geran family. Navigation, communications, warheads, propulsion and tactics are continually evolving.
The principle is now clear: test in combat, retain what works, discard what fails, modify and then reproduce.
A new rupture has appeared with jet-powered variants.
For a long time, the relative slowness of propeller-driven Shaheds was one of their vulnerabilities. The newer versions exceed 250 miles per hour and can operate at altitudes that make the task of mobile air-defense teams considerably more difficult.
By September 2026, Russia had already launched approximately 2,100 jet-powered drones. Ukraine’s interception rate against this new threat had fallen to around 60 percent, compared with roughly 90 percent previously for slower models.
The race begins again.
Yesterday’s solution provokes today’s countermeasure, which in turn calls for tomorrow’s weapon.
Drone Against Drone
Ukraine is therefore increasingly seeking to counter drones with other drones.
The objective is straightforward: to deploy interceptors fast enough to destroy Russian aircraft without systematically using vastly more expensive surface-to-air missiles.
But the arrival of jet-powered drones is already complicating this strategy. Interceptors developed against conventional Shaheds must be replaced or extensively modified.
This brings us back to the central equation of this new war:
How much does the attack cost, and how much does it cost to neutralize it?
Destroying a drone worth tens of thousands of dollars with a missile costing several hundred thousand dollars—or more—may amount to a tactical victory but an economic defeat.
The attacker does not necessarily even need to penetrate the defense.
It may simply seek to exhaust it.
Israel: Surviving Saturation
Israel faces a different geography, but part of the problem is identical.
Drones, rockets, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles can arrive from different directions and over different distances.
Israel’s response therefore relies on a multilayered defense: Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow, the air force, electronic warfare and now laser systems.
One of the principal objectives is to reserve expensive interceptors, as far as possible, for the threats that genuinely justify their use.
This is what makes Iron Beam so important.
The first operational high-power laser system was delivered to the Israeli forces in late 2025. Its significance does not lie solely in its technology.
It lies in its economics.
The laser has limitations—weather, visibility, range and the need to keep the beam focused on the target. But once the system has been installed, the marginal cost of firing it bears no comparison with the cost of a missile.
Israel is therefore attempting to solve an equation that every Western military will eventually face:
How can a defense confronted with mass attacks remain economically sustainable?
The United States Discovers the Problem of Quantity
The American doctrinal shift is equally striking.
Washington possesses some of the most sophisticated military systems in the world. But this technological superiority does not mean that it already possesses the industrial machinery required to manufacture small attack drones at Ukrainian production rates.
The Pentagon is therefore seeking to change its methods.
Companies are increasingly placed in competition over short development cycles. Service members test the aircraft. The best are ordered. A few months later, a new generation may replace them.
The cycle becomes:
test, order, produce, fight, modify and begin again.
In a sense, this is the American industrialization of what Ukraine has learned under the pressure of the battlefield.
But the first attempts to increase production have also revealed a deeper problem: producing a drone does not simply mean assembling an airframe.
It requires the necessary motors, batteries, sensors, cameras, electronics, software, materials and communications systems.
The Chinese Achilles’ Heel
This is where one of the most troubling contradictions in Western strategy appears.
A significant portion of the global drone ecosystem still depends on Chinese components, materials or industrial capacity.
The West therefore wants to develop drones on a massive scale in order to gain greater military autonomy while remaining dependent, for certain essential elements, on supply chains located in the very country that constitutes one of its principal strategic competitors.
A military capability that ceases to function when a potential adversary closes its export channels is not a genuinely sovereign capability.
The drone war is therefore also becoming a war over supply chains.
Europe Enters the Race
Europe is beginning to draw the consequences of this transformation.
On September 11, 2026, the European Commission convened the board of the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance for the first time. Eighteen founding members from European and Ukrainian industry are expected to work on the development and production of drones and counter-drone systems.
The language used by European Commissioner Andrius Kubilius sums up the change: Europe must now think in terms of design cycles measured in weeks rather than months.
The issue extends beyond assistance to Ukraine.
It involves gradually integrating into Europe’s industrial base the manufacturing experience Kyiv has acquired under the pressure of war.
Europe brings capital and a considerable industrial base.
Ukraine brings something that money cannot instantly buy: several years of daily learning on the battlefield.
Producing Ukrainian Systems in Europe
The logical consequence is the emergence on European soil of Ukrainian production or manufacturing based on Ukrainian technologies.
This trend reflects a broader transformation of the defense industry.
The technology, the factory and the country using the equipment are no longer necessarily located in the same place.
It is here that the Israeli experience becomes particularly interesting.
Israel: Producing Outside Israel
The defense industry has traditionally been one of those industries that states guard most jealously within their own borders.
The objective is to protect technologies, military secrets and strategic jobs—and, above all, to preserve the ability to manufacture one’s own weapons when a crisis occurs.
Israel is obviously no exception to this principle.
But the wars fought since October 7 have exposed another vulnerability: concentrating a large part of the country’s industrial capacity in a small territory that is directly exposed also represents a strategic risk.
An Israeli factory can be threatened by missiles. Its employees can be mobilized. Its supplies can be disrupted. And when demand surges simultaneously in Israel and abroad, national production capacity inevitably encounters physical limits.
Israel is therefore not seeking to replace its domestic production with foreign manufacturing.
It is seeking to supplement its territorial sovereignty with external industrial depth.
The entire difficulty lies in obtaining the second without weakening the first.
Rafael in Germany, Elbit in Serbia
Two recent developments illustrate this evolution.
In Germany, Rafael is participating in the proposed conversion of Volkswagen’s Osnabrück site to defense-related activities, particularly in the field of air defense.
The logic is remarkable: Israeli technology, German industrial capacity, a workforce drawn from the automotive sector and growing European military requirements.
In Serbia, the development is even more directly connected to drones.
On September 17, 2026, Belgrade inaugurated a factory intended to assemble Israeli military drones as part of its cooperation with Elbit Systems. The aircraft are expected to serve the Serbian military but may also be offered for export.
We are therefore no longer dealing with a single German example.
Rafael in Germany and Elbit in Serbia are beginning to outline a new industrial geography.
Israel is no longer seeking only to sell its systems from Israel.
It is beginning to establish, in certain partner countries, part of the capacity required to manufacture them.
External Industrial Depth
The logic is understandable.
Germany possesses factories, engineers, technicians and an industrial power that Israel cannot maintain in the same proportions within its own territory.
Serbia provides additional production capacity and another manufacturing location.
For Israel, this geographic dispersion makes it possible to increase volumes, move closer to European markets and, above all, reduce the risk that an attack on its territory might simultaneously interrupt several essential production chains.
But the solution immediately creates its own vulnerability.
By moving the factory farther away from the missile, one brings it closer to the political veto.
A factory located in Germany remains subject to German sovereignty.
A factory located in Serbia remains subject to Serbian sovereignty.
A factory located in France tomorrow would depend on French decisions.
Who Controls the Weapon?
This is where the central question of sovereignty arises.
Suppose that, in the future, French-Israeli cooperation made it possible to convert a major French automotive facility to produce drones or components for an Israeli defense system.
France would provide the factory, the workforce, the suppliers and the capacity for large-scale production.
Israel would provide the technology and the operational experience.
Then war breaks out.
Israel requests the immediate delivery of the equipment produced in France.
The French government, by contrast, concludes that the equipment must not be used in that conflict or against a particular adversary and suspends its export.
Who decides?
The owner of the technology?
The owner of the factory?
The state on whose territory the factory is located?
The party that financed the program?
Or the country that believes its survival is at stake?
The law provides part of the answer: a state retains significant authority over military exports originating from its territory.
But the strategic problem remains.
The geographic depth gained by Israel may become a form of political dependence.
Can a Weapon Be Given a Moral Purpose?
Behind this question of sovereignty lies an older issue: the morality of weapons.
A state may decide to manufacture a weapon to ensure its defense. It may regulate its export, select its customers, impose end-user certificates and attempt to prohibit certain re-exports.
But can it permanently determine what will become of that weapon once it has left its control?
A weapon has no morality of its own.
It has a function and capabilities. Its moral and legal classification depends on how it is used, what is targeted, the surrounding circumstances and who gives the order.
The country hosting the factory may consider that it retains political responsibility for what is produced on its territory.
The owner of the technology may argue, on the contrary, that a weapon designed to ensure its defense must remain available precisely when that defense becomes necessary.
Both lines of reasoning can coexist in peacetime.
They may become incompatible on the day war begins.
The question then becomes formidable:
Can a weapon be permanently bound to the moral intention that governed its manufacture?
The Lesson of Deindustrialization
This issue echoes an experience Europe already knows from civilian sectors.
For decades, industrial globalization rested on a simple idea: there was no need to manufacture at home what could be purchased elsewhere.
This logic works remarkably well as long as borders remain open, transportation continues to function and the supplier remains willing to sell.
Then crises occur.
France discovered this with certain medicines and their active ingredients. Europe discovered it with energy, semiconductors and various critical raw materials.
It learned that having access to a product is not the same as knowing how to manufacture it.
And once an industrial capability has disappeared, a check is not enough to recreate it.
The factory must be rebuilt, suppliers found, personnel retrained and production processes qualified.
That takes years.
With weapons, the difficulty becomes infinitely more serious.
A country cannot discover at the beginning of a war that the equipment on which its national defense depends can no longer be delivered.
Dispersing Production Without Becoming Dependent
Israel must therefore solve a new equation.
Producing everything in Israel maximizes political control but concentrates the military risk.
Producing everything abroad disperses the military risk but increases political dependence.
An intermediate solution is emerging: never depend on a single territory for a critical capability.
This requires Israel to retain the technological core and a national production capacity at home; duplicate certain production lines in several countries; preserve control over the most sensitive software and technologies; and diversify suppliers of critical components.
Sovereignty would then become partially distributed.
It would no longer consist of a single factory protected behind a national border, but of a network sufficiently dispersed that no single missile could destroy it and no single foreign government could stop it.
Sovereignty Also Means Being Able to Reverse Course
One essential criterion remains: reversibility.
Dispersing strategic production abroad is genuinely compatible with sovereignty only if that production can be replaced elsewhere in the event of a political crisis.
A German or Serbian production line may become unavailable not because it has been destroyed, but because a government decides to suspend its exports.
How long would it then take to transfer that production to Israel or to a third country?
Sovereignty therefore no longer necessarily consists of manufacturing everything at home.
It consists of never finding oneself in a situation in which a single supplier, a single factory or a single foreign government has the power to interrupt an indispensable capability.
True strategic depth therefore requires three capabilities:
to produce at home;
to be able to produce elsewhere;
and to be able to relocate rapidly what is being produced elsewhere.
This may be where the fundamental difference lies between internationalizing an industry and becoming dependent on it.
The Drone War Is Becoming a War of Countermeasures
An essential qualification must nevertheless be introduced.
Everything discussed above remains true only for as long as the drone retains the advantages provided by its low cost, availability, precision and ability to saturate defenses.
But no military superiority lasts forever.
The history of weaponry is one of an almost constant succession between a weapon and the countermeasure eventually developed against it.
The drone will not escape this rule.
Ukraine is already demonstrating this.
Electronic warfare disrupted the first radio-controlled drones. The response was to improve communications and autonomous navigation, followed by the mass introduction of fiber-optic-guided drones, which are virtually immune to radio jamming.
Something else then had to be found.
Kinetic interception systems, automated turrets, drone-hunting drones and systems using artificial intelligence to detect, pursue and destroy enemy aircraft are now appearing on the battlefield.
Russia then introduces jet-powered Shaheds exceeding 250 miles per hour.
Some of the systems designed against the previous generation immediately become less effective.
The process begins again.
Weapon, countermeasure, counter-countermeasure: this is probably the true law of drone warfare.
And this may be where Ukraine and Israel currently possess a particular advantage.
Not because they have discovered a definitive solution—there probably is no such solution—but because they unfortunately possess something military engineers cannot fully reproduce in a laboratory: a real and permanent testing ground.
In Ukraine, an innovation can be sent to the front, tested against Russian defenses, modified on the basis of soldiers’ observations and returned to production within extremely short time frames.
In Israel, defensive systems are likewise being continually tested against real threats: rockets, drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and saturation attacks.
Operational lessons are relayed directly to Rafael, Elbit, IAI and the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s research organizations.
Iron Dome has continued to evolve during the war. Iron Beam is now adding the laser to this defensive architecture, precisely in order to counter certain threats at a far lower interception cost.
But it would be dangerous to conclude that an absolute defense against drones is close at hand.
The sheer diversity of these aircraft probably makes the existence of a universal countermeasure illusory, at least in the short term.
A small FPV drone flying a few yards above the ground does not present the same problem as a jet-powered Shahed.
A radio-guided drone does not call for the same response as a fiber-optic-guided drone.
A swarm is not handled in the same way as a single aircraft.
An autonomous drone using image recognition may continue its mission after losing contact with its operator.
And an aircraft costing a few thousand dollars cannot sustainably be destroyed by an interceptor costing a hundred times more.
Defense will therefore probably also have to remain multilayered: electronic warfare, jamming, kinetic weapons, interceptor drones, missiles, lasers and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.
The true competition is therefore no longer about the drone alone.
It is about the speed at which the entire military and industrial system can adapt.
Produce, Destroy, Learn, Begin Again
The decisive question is therefore not which country will design the definitive drone.
Such a drone will probably never exist.
The question is which country will be able to manufacture enough aircraft, modify them quickly enough, secure their components and simultaneously invent countermeasures against the adversary’s systems before that adversary devises the next countermeasure.
Ukraine demonstrates that an industry can learn almost in real time under the pressure of the battlefield.
Russia demonstrates that it too can rapidly modify its systems when the adversary learns how to neutralize them.
Israel has a different but comparable experience: that of a country compelled to transform the lessons of real attacks continually into new layers of defense.
The United States is now seeking to reproduce this speed of learning on an industrial scale.
And Europe is beginning to understand that the war taking place on its borders is not merely a war to be financed.
It is also a laboratory whose lessons may become obsolete within a matter of months.
This may ultimately be the most important characteristic of drone warfare.
Mass matters.
Cost matters.
Technology matters.
Industrial sovereignty matters.
But the speed at which a country learns may matter even more.
A country that discovers an effective countermeasure can suddenly deprive thousands of enemy aircraft of their value.
Until the adversary, in turn, finds a way around it.
The drone war therefore represents less the advent of a new weapon than the emergence of a new cycle:
produce, fight, observe, counter, modify and reproduce.
Then begin again.
In this war, the lasting advantage may belong neither to the country that possesses the greatest number of drones nor even to the one that currently possesses the best.
It will belong to the country that learns faster than the other.