Opinion: US Blind Spot in the Drone War: Why Ukraine Holds the Key to America’s AI Supremacy (2025)

To use a great American sport as an analogy, baseball, the United States is playing tee-ball when it comes to drones, while Ukraine and Russia are the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees battling it out in the World Series of drone warfare.

Washington is sleepwalking through the most significant military transformation of our generation. Ukraine is not just defending its territory; it is rewriting the rules of combat in real time. This is not theory. It is raw, adaptive, high-stakes drone innovation playing out daily over Sumy, Kherson, and Kharkiv. Over the past two and a half years, I have been on the ground in Ukraine, cutting my teeth by studying and understanding battlefield technology firsthand and forming close relationships with those serving at the front. These experiences have fundamentally reshaped my understanding of modern warfare and the pivotal role drones now play.

After returning from key meetings on Capitol Hill earlier this month, where I presented the Peace Through Strength Plan: Win for Ukraine, Defend America at Home, I launched the Peace Through Strength Institute to help fill the policy vacuum in Washington. One of our most urgent findings is this: drone warfare is not a footnote, it is the main event, and the United States is dangerously unprepared to compete unless we begin learning directly from the Ukrainian front.

This week, that reality became even more stark. It is now official that China has been supplying weapons to Russia, and all signs point to drone technology being central to that transfer. Chinese military officers were captured inside Ukraine last week, where they were apparently studying battlefield drone tactics firsthand. This is no longer just Russia’s war. China is in the fight – arming Putin, gathering battlefield intelligence, and shaping tactics for its own planned assault on Taiwan. Ukraine is not just defending Europe; it is the front line in the coming war with China, and Beijing knows it.

Let me be clear: if we allow Russia to prevail in Ukraine with Chinese backing, we will be fighting a war against China ourselves – in Taiwan, in the Pacific, and eventually, face-to-face. And unlike Ukraine’s volunteers, that war will put American troops in body bags. Every conservative I speak with, from grassroots voters to MAGA-aligned leaders, agrees on one thing – China is our greatest enemy. If that’s true, and it is, then failing to stop this Chinese-Russian military partnership now is an act of betrayal to our own national security.

This is not theoretical. It is already triggering alarms at the highest levels of American leadership. Vice President JD Vance recently warned that any future attack from the Arctic region would likely come in ways we are not prepared to counter, and his remarks clearly implied a drone-based assault as the most probable threat vector. Senator Lisa Murkowski has issued similar warnings about Alaska’s vulnerability. China and Russia are testing Western weakness together – probing where they can strike next. The next war will not be tanks crossing borders; it will be swarms of autonomous systems launched from unexpected fronts.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is moving at the speed of war. Out of its 900,000-strong military, approximately 200,000 are drone specialists. Their development cycle, from concept to deployment, takes just two to three months. In contrast, traditional US and allied aerospace timelines often stretch into years. This agility gap is no longer a theoretical disadvantage. It is an immediate threat to our strategic edge.

Ukraine is not just deploying drones. It is reinventing drone warfare across every dimension. The scale and sophistication of their ecosystem is staggering. From FPV (first-person view) kamikaze drones that strike with pinpoint accuracy, to fiber-optic tethered drones that remain electronically invisible to Russian jamming systems, to various multi-use bomber drones, loitering munitions with extended range and payload, Ukraine is fielding platforms faster than the Pentagon can review a memo.

Distances are expanding, payloads are evolving, and real-time adaptation is accelerating. Ukrainian operators are not only innovating under fire, they are mastering velocity, acceleration, maneuverability, and accuracy in ways that rival any formal Western drone program. These battlefield engineers are taking $400 drones and outmatching multi-million-dollar systems with sheer creativity and tactical brilliance.

If America had the strategic clarity to help Ukraine fully expel Russian forces, not pause, not freeze, but win, we would gain far more than a moral or geopolitical victory. We would secure the future of military technology and global deterrence. Here is what is at stake:

• Shut down Russia’s drone innovation engine.

Every inch of occupied territory is a live testbed for Russian drone development, AI targeting, and electronic warfare adaptation. If Russia is allowed to dig in, it will export these learnings to its partners and proxies, from Iran to North Korea. Helping Ukraine win decisively is not just right, it is smart containment.

• Train with the best in the world.

No US military program comes close to what Ukraine’s drone operators are doing daily under fire. They are innovating, adapting, and iterating in ways that outpace any Western war game or simulation. These are the warfighters we should be partnering with, not observing from afar.

• Build the world’s most important drone-tech alliance.

A robust US-Ukraine economic partnership would unlock supply chain innovation, joint manufacturing, and scalable drone development, outside of China’s influence. Ukraine is a battlefield-tested R&D lab, and America should be its primary partner.

Just last week, the United States and Ukraine signed a Memorandum of Intent (MOI) to finalize a formal agreement on an economic partnership and reconstruction investment fund. While the signing is an important step forward, what is deeply concerning is how little clarity there is on the inclusion of drone technology in this agreement. For a war defined by UAV innovation, and for a postwar economy poised to lead in drone manufacturing, this silence is glaring. If drones remain an afterthought in these negotiations, we risk repeating the very mistake this op-ed is warning against: letting the most transformative military technology of our generation fall outside our strategic planning.

• Access the crown jewel: petabytes of real-world flight data.

Ukraine has amassed the largest and most valuable dataset in the history of drone warfare. Every takeoff, every maneuver, every loss and success has been logged, analyzed, and refined. But access to this crown jewel is not something the United States can simply write into a bilateral agreement. This battlefield wisdom is not held solely by the Ukrainian government – it lives in the hands of frontline warriors, private drone firms, volunteers, and battlefield engineers. Any true partnership must reflect that. If Ukrainians see America as a loyal ally, not a transactional opportunist, they will share what no contract can compel. And if they do not, that knowledge stays locked – or worse, falls into the hands of our enemies.

Because here is the risk: if Russia is allowed to remain in Ukrainian territory under any ceasefire or “frozen conflict,” they and their partners in China, Iran, and North Korea will inevitably gain access to this trove of battlefield data. They will learn from it, adapt it, and turn it against us. A ceasefire that leaves Russia in place is not peace. It is an open pipeline of warfighting innovation flowing straight to America’s enemies.

And if we continue to underestimate this threat, we may soon find ourselves living in the same conditions Ukrainians endure every day. Europeans and Americans could very well be downloading phone apps that alert them to air raid sirens, watching skies overhead instead of ball games, and asking if their cities are next. The line between distant warzones and our own neighborhoods is getting thinner by the day.

Just days ago, Russia launched a brutal missile attack on civilians in Sumy, on Palm Sunday. Over 30 were killed, and dozens more were wounded. This is not a regime interested in peace. It is a regime exploiting every hour of war to upgrade its military machine. And the longer we hesitate, the more dangerous that machine becomes.

The United States has the platforms, the capital, and the ambition. What we lack is the battlefield wisdom Ukraine has earned with blood. If we do not act now, the drone war will evolve without us. In the next war, we will find ourselves outpaced by adversaries who learned from Ukraine while we watched from the stands.

It is time to step up to the plate – not just for Ukraine’s freedom, but for America’s survival in the age of autonomous warfare. Because make no mistake, the coalition of enemies we face is real: Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. The longer we delay, the stronger they grow.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.