EXPERT OPINION / PERSPECTIVE — Eighty-five years ago, as the United States cautiously explored an expanded alliance with Great Britain, our own population was divided. London was already fighting for its very survival, standing alone after the fall of France; Washington was not yet fighting at all. Public opinion tilted toward isolationism, and President Roosevelt had to proceed slowly to avoid losing the support of both Congress and the U.S. public. Yet a year later, the Atlantic Charter was signed with Churchill, publicly declaring a shared stand against tyranny and an alliance that would stand for the rest of the century. But behind the scenes, the two leaders negotiated a deeper exchange: American weapons for British technology.
Through Lend-Lease, the United States sent destroyers and vital equipment to keep Britain in the fight against Nazi aggression. Less understood was what the U.S. quietly received in return: cutting-edge capabilities that would shape its own success once it entered the war. That historical moment holds lessons for today, with America again questioning its commitments abroad, and for the value of learning from a Ukrainian ally engaged in a war we are not fighting ourselves.
One of Britain’s most consequential contributions in 1940 was the technology behind “Chain Home,” an early, revolutionary radar network. A constellation of radio stations sent out beams whose returns revealed the direction, altitude, and approximate numbers of incoming Luftwaffe aircraft during the Battle of Britain. Integrated with human observers and command-and-control stations, the system allowed RAF leaders to deploy their limited squadrons with precision, conserving fuel, protecting pilots, and preserving the nation’s survival. As Churchill famously said of the RAF, “never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
That success was not only a triumph of courage but a triumph of rapid wartime innovation and operational learning. And it is exactly the kind of learning the United States must pursue now as Ukraine pioneers new modes of drone warfare against a technologically sophisticated adversary.
Drone warfare in Ukraine today is the chain home radar of our time. Today in Ukraine, that country “owes so much to so few”: drone warrior heroes fighting not only for their country, but for all of Europe and democracy. The drone operators and their innovation are helping Ukraine to stay in the war against overwhelming Russian numbers. The U.S. and other NATO allies have provided large weapons systems like HIMARS, ATACMS, Abrams tanks, and F-16s. All of these systems at one time were supposedly ruled out for Ukraine, only to be provided later. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s own drone industry and innovations have helped it to turn the tide of countless battles.
There has been frustration in the U.S., however, with the support. Many are asking: for all the weapons and funding we have provided to Ukraine, what are we getting back? Defending freedom and fighting Russian aggression for Europe and our allies should be enough for our arsenal of democracy. But it’s a fair question. It is understandable after 20 years of war that the American people want to know what else we are getting if the U.S. is to be so heavily engaged financially and militarily.
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One of the things we are learning, and can learn even more ahead, are incredible lessons about the battlefield for our future force. The Army War College has led a multi-year effort to help in a project called “Call to Action: Lessons for the Future Force”. Others in various military training and testing commands across all our services, and our allies, are doing the same.
There are many more lessons to be learned, and not enough resources are being put into the fight. For years, the U.S. embassy and government were limiting the number of official Americans and contractors allowed into the war zone to work with and learn from the Ukrainians. That should end for good, and we should be flooding our ally with experts ready to help, but also to learn. One of the areas we should be drawing a lot more lessons from is drone warfare.
The Russian military and its intelligence services have learned a lot about drone warfare in Ukraine. They have stood up an entire new service of their troops devoted to drone warfare, as well as a drone center called Rubikon, which is changing the battlefield. The Russians are also using drones in gray warfare against NATO countries, to probe their borders, weaknesses at airports, and other facilities across the continent in what has grown in recent months into a wave of drone incursions. This is hybrid warfare practiced by a country and its intelligence services that have a long history of doing so: testing reactions, looking for weak points, antagonizing the alliance to find soft spots, or partners willing to acquiesce to Russian aggression.
In turn, we in the NATO alliance and in the U.S. are slow to adapt. The United States needs to deploy more personnel, more resources, more engineers, and experts into Ukraine to learn all the desperately valuable lessons about the world’s first truly all-encompassing drone war. It is monumental both in scale and evolution. Just as the United States learned valuable lessons about radar, which saved countless American pilots and other lives throughout World War II, we need to learn these important lessons from the Ukrainians about drone warfare before we may find ourselves engaged in a conflict we are not prepared for.
There are three salient lessons for those who are studying the war and how it has evolved just in the past four years. These are areas the U.S. should focus more resources on. The first lesson that we need to study from the Ukrainians involves the electromagnetic space on the battlefield and electronic warfare (EW). American soldiers have never operated in a battle space so encumbered by all manner of electromagnetic jamming, as is taking place every day across the battlefields of Ukraine. Cyber operations, both enabling and disabling various systems, command and control, and what is called “PNT” or the precision navigational systems of all manner of weapons— all are being jammed and interfered with on an unprecedented scale in the EW space.
The second lesson we need to understand and learn from are the ingenious innovations and adaptations that the Ukrainians, in particular, have carried out with their drones. Ukraine stood up an entire industry to build millions of the very smallest type of drones designed to target an individual Russian soldier in a trench, to much larger mother drones to carry other drones, deliver supplies, and even carry out strategic strikes like those against Russian bombers at airfields, taking off from “conex” shipping containers. These are remarkable operations and feats that we can mine for lessons from our Ukrainian allies. We are well behind their innovation and acquisition curve.
Third and finally, the most important lesson we need to learn from the Ukrainians is how to fight a war where we might be out-manned and out-gunned. That is not something the American people could have imagined for nearly a century. But Russia’s aggression is stark and unprecedented. Add to it the prospect of a potential war with China over the Taiwan Strait looming, which the Chinese are preparing and training for, also at an unprecedented level. They and the North Koreans are sharing weapons’ components and helping Russia evade sanctions. And in the case of the latter, North Korean soldiers are dying for Russia on the battlefield. They are getting the know-how and learning the lessons from Russia.
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We are at a point where all of China’s conventional forces, with very few exceptions - on the land, sea, and air (save for nuclear forces)- outnumber the United States. China has a larger land army, a larger navy now by volume of surface vessels, and a Chinese Air Force that rivals our own and NATO’s airpower. Many will argue correctly that the Chinese do not have the experience of decades of combat, as our pilots do, nor the expertise of our sailors and soldiers on the ground. But as many famous generals have noted in history, “quantity has its own quality.” This is also a lesson from Ukraine, as overwhelming numbers of Russian troops are wearing down the front lines of Ukraine in the east. Overwhelming numbers of drones and artillery, as well as missile strikes combining in multi-vector attacks—all these are also making a significant impact on the battlefield.
We would be wise to engage with and learn more from our Ukrainian partners, just like the United States did 85 years ago from our British allies, before we were forced into war. It forged a “special relationship” that has stood for a century. We can hope for the same with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters fighting now against aggression in no less of a challenge to all of democracy than the Nazis were to Europe. Putin and his Chinese allies are out for world domination; make no mistake, we have to learn the lessons to prepare to fight and support our allies fighting again.
While we, supporters of Ukraine, hope this war will end soon, we also need to prepare for the next war. As Churchill said then, we should: “gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true; kindly upon all who suffer for the cause; gloriously upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.”
The dawn will come, but so will night again. We should learn from the Ukrainian heroes who have suffered through all the nights of this war, not doubt their commitment to freedom, nor our own obligation to support them.
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