When it comes to both defensive and offensive aerial operations, Ukraine’s experience with drones is invaluable for the United States.
Just days after Ukraine celebrated Independence Day, Russia escalated its aerial assault, unleashing the second-largest coordinated drone and missile attacks of the war. Ukrainian air defenses downed most of the 598 drones and 31 missiles, yet the latest bombardment killed at least 18 people, including four children, and wounded dozens more.
While still hoping for the implementation of the SkyShield initiative, Ukraine is already offering hard-earned lessons in 21st-century air combat on a strategic, operational and tactical level. As the United States prepares for a resurgence of great-power conflict, these are lessons that it cannot afford to ignore.
Defense: Ukraine’s Lessons for the “Golden Dome”
The Golden Dome for America, a so-called “Manhattan Project”-scale mission, is shaping up to be the most ambitious US homeland missile defense plan in decades. Announced by President Donald Trump in early 2025, it envisions a multilayered shield combining land-, sea-, and space-based systems to intercept threats from air and space. The proposal includes a constellation of satellites, kinetic interceptors, lasers, and AI-powered sensors working in concert to detect and neutralize threats at every phase of flight.
The US air defense doctrine has long focused on countering long-range threats from adversaries like China, North Korea, or Russia. Ukraine’s battlefield experience demonstrates a critical gap: short-range drones. While the Golden Dome concept focuses on ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles fired from thousands of miles away, it largely overlooks cheap and readily available drone threats that can bypass traditional defenses.
The Dome must expand to counter these asymmetric, low-cost attacks, which have proven devastating in Ukraine. China and Russia, America’s two likeliest great-power adversaries, already lead in drone development and production, with Russia gaining vital combat experience in Ukraine.
Another key innovation is a distributed defense system. Instead of relying on a few large, centralized batteries to guard specific objects, Ukraine has shifted to a territorial model built around many small, mobile units. This approach is particularly relevant for a country as vast as the United States. Ukraine’s integrated air defense combines different types of detection systems—high-end radar for missiles, low-cost passive radars for small drones—and ties them together through AI-driven command software. The result is faster, automated detection and engagement of threats, without the delays of human decision-making.
Cost is another crucial lesson. Critics have already questioned the price tag of the Golden Dome. Ukraine shows that smart, layered defense can be both effective and affordable. While expensive interceptor missiles—such as the $4 million Patriot missile—are sometimes necessary, these can be reserved for major strategic threats, while cheaper anti-air systems ($10,000–30,000) can handle mass drone attacks. This tiered approach avoids waste, maintains readiness, and ensures sustainability under sustained pressure.
In short, Ukraine’s battle-tested model offers the United States both a financial and strategic shortcut. By integrating Ukrainian experience now, Washington can avoid years of trial and error and save taxpayers billions—all while ensuring that America’s air defenses are prepared for the threats of tomorrow.
Offense: The End of the Airborne Era?
Airborne and airmobile forces have long been regarded as one of the key instruments of operational maneuver, capable of striking deep into enemy rear areas to sever communications and disrupt logistics. NATO exercises in Eastern Europe after 2020 were built around aerial offensives of this type: deploying airborne units to seize road junctions, bridges, and airfields, cutting supply lines, and quickly encircling enemy groupings before they could organize an effective defense.
However, the experience of the war in Ukraine—especially the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ operation in Russia’s Kursk region in 2024 and 2025—has cast doubt on whether this approach is still viable. At the outset, Ukraine’s incursion looked successful; within days, dozens of settlements and nearly 1,000 square kilometers of territory had been captured. Yet the decisive factor turned out to be Russia’s new “Rubicon” unit—a center for advanced drone warfare.
At first, the Ukrainian grouping in Kursk was shielded by echeloned defenses: Buk-M1, NASAMS, IRIS-T, numerous MANPADS at the battalion level, and swarms of FPV drones. For Russian air assault brigades, a helicopter insertion would likely have resulted in 70–80 percent losses before reaching the landing zone. Even if some Russian troops had made it through, the lack of heavy equipment and artillery would have left them easy prey for mortars, anti-tank missiles, and drones.
Accordingly, the Russian Rubicon operators changed tactics, systematically employing FPV drones to strike supply routes, convoys, and medical evacuation columns. They maintained continuous fire control over key roads, turning any movement into a “road of death.” As a result, Ukrainian units faced disrupted resupply, fuel and ammunition shortages, and increasingly dangerous troop rotations.
In effect, Rubicon’s drones achieved what NATO doctrine traditionally assigns to airborne forces: isolating the battlespace, denying the enemy freedom of maneuver, and crippling logistics. But it did so without helicopters, and without exposing troops to high-risk assaults. In an environment of layered air defenses and pervasive drones, a classic air assault in the style of Grenada or Afghanistan would have been catastrophic.
Against this backdrop, it is striking that NATO continues to rehearse large-scale airborne scenarios. A string of recent NATO exercises—Trident Juncture in Norway, Defender Europe in Poland and the Baltics, Cold Response in the Arctic—have all included the deployment of airborne and airmobile units into the enemy’s rear to cut supply lines. These scenarios mirror the logic of Desert Storm or Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan. Yet they ignore the lessons from the Ukraine conflict, where even limited numbers of MANPADS and FPVs make such operations suicidal.
The lesson of Kursk is clear: the era of large-scale airborne operations is over, and these tasks should no longer be assigned to paratroopers but to drone swarms, able to disrupt enemy’s supply lines without massive raids or heavy casualties. It is time to revise doctrine and restructure around unmanned technologies—otherwise, military exercises will remain rituals divorced from reality, training troops for a war that no longer exists.
When it comes to both defensive and offensive operations, Ukraine’s experience is invaluable for the United States. Russia, North Korea, Iran, and indirectly China are already actively absorbing these lessons. For the United States to be able to compete with these countries and to be prepared for the challenges of the coming years and future wars, closer integration with Ukraine is not an act of charity, but a strategic necessity. This is precisely where America’s strategic interest lies in ensuring that Ukraine does not lose—because if Russia swallows Ukraine, such experience will only multiply on the other side.
About the Authors: Lesia Ogryzko, Yevhen Malik, and Elena Davlikanova
Lesia Ogryzko leads a Ukrainian think-tank on security and defense, the Sahaidachnyi Security Center, and is board member of Ukraine’s biggest expert coalition on the country’s reconstruction, RISE Ukraine. Previously, Ogryzko served as international civil servant across the UN system, dealing with human rights and the coordination of UN agencies in Ukraine. She also worked for the Ukrainian government on the implementation of reforms, including in public administration for the cabinet of ministers’ reforms delivery office. She is also the co-founder of several civic initiatives, as well as the Ukrainian office of the humanitarian international NGO Save the Children. In addition, Ogryzko is a visiting fellow with the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Yevhen Malik is a former Marine Infantry sergeant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and a veteran of the Ukraine War. He has extensive frontline experience, having fought in Mariupol and across the Joint Forces Operation zone, where he led combat missions, amphibious operations, and coordinated tactical planning under extreme conditions. From April 2022 to September 2024, he endured captivity in Russia, which further strengthened his resilience and leadership. Malik holds degrees in law (Ukraine University) and public administration (Kharkiv Regional Institute of Public Administration, NAPA under the President of Ukraine), as well as a reserve officer qualification from the Ivan Kozhedub Air Force University. He is also a certified firearms and tactical training instructor. He is recognized for his expertise in military leadership, crisis management, and strategic and tactical planning. He actively engages in communication and advocacy on behalf of Ukraine’s armed forces and veterans.
Dr. Elena Davlikanova is a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis (DC) and Sahaidachnyi Security Center (Kyiv). Davlikanova is an expert in strategic forecasting and the domestic processes of Ukraine and Russia, as well as defense and security, specializing in new forms of warfare, particularly given the enduring nature of Russia’s threat to Ukraine. She is co-author of the CEPA report “Containing Russia, Securing Europe,” as well as other strategic forecasting studies, including “Scenarios: Ukraine 2032” and “Scenarios: Russia 2032”. In 2022, Davlikanova led a research team in producing the book 100 Stories of Women and Girls from Russia’s War against Ukraine and the publication Understanding Ukraine: The Battle of Narratives.
Image: Shutterstock / Anelo.
