NATO armed forces are not ready for modern warfare using unmanned systems. This was stated by the commander of the UAV Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi in an interview with Reuters, reports UNN.
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According to Sukharevskyi, Ukraine aims to outpace the enemy by using artificial intelligence, deploying more ground drones, and testing lasers to shoot down Russian unmanned aerial vehicles.
From what I see and hear, no NATO army is ready to counter a cascade of drones
He stated that NATO should recognize the economic advantage of drones, the production of which often costs much less than the conventional weapons needed to destroy them.
It's basic math. How much does a missile cost that shoots down a (Russian) Shahed (drone)? And how much does it cost to deploy a ship, an aircraft, and an air defense system to shoot at it?
Long-range drones can cost just a few thousand dollars for the simplest decoy models, while strike drones like the Shahed are valued in the tens of thousands. At the same time, interceptor missiles for air defense usually have a six-figure or seven-figure price in US dollars, and many countries maintain only limited stocks, making their use extremely uneconomical. After Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the use of drones has significantly expanded.
Now even the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine says that over 60% of targets are destroyed by drones. The question is only how the tactics of their use will develop, and along with it the technological aspect