In Ukraine, infantrymen often act as observers, calling in drone strikes rather than engaging in firefights. Engaging with small arms can reveal their concealed positions to enemy drones, making them vulnerable. This marks a fundamental shift in the infantry's primary role on a drone-dominated battlefield.
Drones establish a lethal "kill zone" that restricts ground movement and forces soldiers into hiding. Paradoxically, large logistics drones are also the primary means of survival, delivering all essential supplies like food, water, and ammunition to these otherwise inaccessible frontline positions, enabling the fight to continue.
Starlink is considered the single most critical technology in the war, providing a resilient communication backbone that circumvents Russian electronic warfare. It enables command, control, and data streaming for nearly all of Ukraine's unmanned systems, from small reconnaissance drones to large ground and naval vehicles.
Ukraine has scaled production of new, powerful kamikaze drones capable of striking targets deep behind Russian lines. This closes a critical capability gap, allowing Ukraine to hit command posts, air defense, and logistics hubs that were previously only vulnerable to scarce, high-end munitions.
The ubiquitous threat of FPV drones in open terrain has made mid-range (e.g., 400-meter) engagements obsolete. Infantry tactics now polarize between very long-range engagements and immediate close-quarters battle (CQB) inside trenches or buildings, as any time spent exposed in the open is potentially fatal.
The concept of a rapid "golden hour" evacuation is irrelevant in Ukraine, where drone threats mean casualty evacuations can take over 12 hours or are impossible. This forces a shift towards making every soldier medically self-sufficient, capable of providing prolonged care for themselves and their team on the spot.
Assault units use heavy "vampire" drones to deliver their heavy gear—rucksacks, armor, ammo—directly to an objective. This allows soldiers to run across exposed terrain "slick" with just a rifle, drastically increasing speed and mobility while reducing physical load and exposure time to enemy fire.
In Ukraine, less than 5% of casualties are from small arms; the vast majority are from drone and artillery fragmentation. This suggests a need to rethink body armor, moving away from heavy SAPI plates designed to stop bullets toward lighter, more extensive soft armor (Kevlar) for better protection against shrapnel.
A powerful partnership has formed between elite US tech talent (e.g., from Google X) and experienced Ukrainian drone units on the front line. This creates a rapid, iterative feedback loop for innovation that Russia’s slow, centralized defense industry is unable to compete with, accelerating technological superiority.
The concept of a clear "front line" is gone. The battlefield is a porous zone where infiltration is constant. Control is better understood not by infantry positions, but by the operational reach and coverage of each side's UAV teams, which dictates who can see and strike within an area.
Ukraine is reforming its command structure by implementing corps that oversee about five brigades each. This is a significant improvement over previous temporary groupings that managed up to 20 brigades, leading to better coordination, staff work, and allocation of specialized assets like UAV regiments.
Drones like the Hornet (sub-$5k) use AI to automatically identify targets. This allows Ukraine to send swarms of cheap drones for operational-level strikes, achieving results that previously required expensive missiles. This fundamentally changes the cost-benefit analysis of deep attacks and attritional warfare.