Ukraine’s Drone Ecosystem and the Defence of Europe: summary of the report
This is a summary of the research report published by LSE in April, 2025
In April 2025, the London School of Economics and Political Science published a research report on the drone ecosystem in Ukraine and the need for NATO to learn from Ukraine’s lessons.
The authors (Jon-Wyatt Matlack; Sebastian Schwartz; Oliver Gill) emphasize the human component of the “unmanned” ecosystem. The importance of drones is not only in the vehicles themselves, but also in the human capital—which must be adequately prepared for modern warfare conditions.
For this research, the authors interviewed key stakeholders in senior military positions, enlisted soldiers, and civilian volunteers, to encompass the battlefield perspective.
The report is public, and you can read it here. Below, I present the key bullet points from this analytical piece.
If you did not receive my latest edition of the Drone Warfare in Ukraine newsletter last Wednesday, it was unfortunately due to a Substack outage. You can read it here.
Ukraine’s Drone Ecosystem and the Defence of Europe: Lessons Lost Can’t be Learnt (report)
Within the context of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), the terms ‘unmanned’ or ‘uncrewed’ are determined by the battlespaces of land or sea warfare, respectively.
Drones as weapons systems do not inherently manifest a drone ecosystem. It is the ecosystem comprising the military, volunteers, NGOs, drone schools—in short, ‘the crew’—that produces positive results.
The authors consolidate their analysis of Ukraine’s drone warfare ecosystem on three themes: speed, scale, and urgency.
SPEED
Owing to the simplicity of manufacturing UAVs as a weapons system, the course of the war privileges the side that best masters mass output and an ability to adapt to Electronic Warfare (EW) and DW countermeasures. In this war of attrition, mass has its own quality in quantity
Cheap drones have proven effective in penetrating expensive air defence systems, and thereby signal a shift in balance towards weaker opponents in asymmetric warfare
According to press reports, FPV drones can be produced for 500 USD, and fixed-wing reconnaissance drones for 1,500 to 3,000 USD. The variance of these prices, however, fails to encompass the cost of labour. Ukrainian individual drone makers, often working from their basements and garages, typically carry out this work on an unpaid basis.
Because large factories prove to be tempting targets for Russian drone and missile attacks, ad hoc, civilian-staffed garage drone factories can be safer, but have the drawback of being slower from manual labour.
Homegrown experts won’t produce drones for foreign countries out of altruism. For Ukraine, they proactively refrain from multiplying production costs by not factoring in their labour costs.
Such basement-level pricing is hardly reproducible in a Western context.
The existence of interpersonal networks between soldiers and civilians accompanied the drones’ first combat uses. Once it became clear that FPV’s evidenced combat utility, the commanders supported further experimentation.
The realities of war punish centralised committees and reward decentralised meetings between localised groups.
The drones designed to respond to dozens of pressure points result in non-standardised products.
One major advantage of non-standardisation is that normal soldiers can adjust FPV drone schematics in real time as per their battlefield needs. In terms of cons, a standout issue is the reluctant reliance on drone components manufactured in China.
As a tool to coordinate defence tech investment matched with government needs, BRAVE1 serves as a platform to align domestic and international stakeholders. Establishing joint ventures with Ukrainian defence tech companies of all sizes is beneficial for all sides.
Ukraine’s government still prevents exports of defence technologies like drones. Since the primary buyer of UA-made drones is the state itself, profit margins for Ukrainian defence companies are capped at 25% of production costs.
In anticipation of future conflict, by establishing joint ventures with Ukrainian companies, NATO would be securing its own supply chain vulnerabilities as it pertains to drone production and procurement. Zelenskyy has further indicated his willingness to allow drone exports to preferred partners
According to the figures by BRAVE1, the drone ecosystem as of today produces drones at 10x lower prices than EU or US firms, and projects north of $100 million in investment for 2025.
SCALE
An indispensable quality of Ukraine’s drone ecosystem is a systematic education of actors across the spectrum at scale.
NATO countries must expedite efforts to ramp up the necessary degree of aggregate human capital for their own drone ecosystems.
As of 16 September 2024, the Unmanned Systems Forces became a separate branch of the AFU, co-equal with the Special Operations Forces and the Territorial Defence Forces.
The success of Ukraine’s drone ecosystem is owed as much to amassing human capital as material in absolute terms.
In terms of scale, one nucleus of this connection is drone schools. Just like on the battlefield, the drone school landscape is populated by a rich array of civilians, soldiers, and the intelligence services. As of 21 November 2024, the Ukrainian MoD whitelisted over 30 schools for drone operators supporting the Defence Forces.
According to reports, six weeks is sufficient for the basics only, thereafter the student requires specialisation training in line with their future role.
After several months in a drone school, six weeks to three months of in-field combat experience was necessary to produce a ‘good’ pilot.
UAV units needed to be systematically attached to all brigades, not just the AFU, but all armies of the future.
A core challenge of Ukraine’s drone ecosystem is the multiple points of entry owing to the complex array of actors. This report’s second policy recommendation aims to supply NATO countries with an informational exchange framework. The authors propose sending official liaisons on a bilateral basis to all nodal points of this drone ecosystem. A state-directed liaison structure would formulate the information tip of the spear to interface with the Ukrainian government and companies.
URGENCY
Integration and not replication of Ukraine’s drone ecosystem is in the strategic interest of NATO countries.
It’s clear that many NATO countries fully grasp the imperative of drones in future war.
Systematic recognition of the deficiencies in the human investment needed for fostering a domestic drone ecosystem is less obvious.
The utility of operational lessons from this war will have a limited shelf-life. But by investing in and preserving the lives of those engaged in the drone ecosystem, their expertise can accompany security debates into the wider future.
In practice, this investment demands binding weapons orders. Followed logically, if joint ventures with Ukrainian defence tech companies (R1) are formed—and fed data and expert input—by bilateral liaisons (R2), this proposed system will only take physical form if NATO governments and private industry immediately inject capital on a predictable basis.
The decentralised character of Ukraine’s drone ecosystem presents more data points than Ukraine’s government is able to single-handedly market. Its ultimate strength is the mass human capital itself.
To meet the future challenges of the European security space, the authors of this report offer three policy recommendations.
1. Surging support of bilateral joint ventures between NATO member states and Ukrainian defence tech companies and start-ups.
2. Negotiating bilateral civil-military liaisons to interface with the full spectrum of Ukraine’s drone ecosystem
3. Committing to binding defence tech orders to vest capital and political trust into NATO-Ukrainian joint ventures.
NATO countries cannot allow themselves to build an equivalent drone ecosystem ad hoc in wartime against a prepared adversary.
Supporting Ukraine’s drone ecosystem today is in everyone’s best interest—except Russia’s.
most informative substack out there!! :) thank you for all your work!
Most informative! Makes sense, but then it’s an objective seen and implemented by Ukraine, not the money hungry armament companies of the country that only thinks of its own profit.