Clearing the skies: scaling Europe’s drone and counter-drone innovation

Friends of Europe’s debate on drone and counter-drone innovation brought together frontline practitioners, policymakers and strategic thinkers to explore how drones are reshaping modern warfare, and what Europe must urgently do to keep pace.

We hosted Timothy Ash, Associate Fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House; Valeriya Ionan, Advisor to the Minister of Defence of Ukraine and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, former Deputy Minister, Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation, and2024 European Young Leader (EYL40); and Paola Sartori, Policy Expert at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DG DEFIS).

Moderated by Dharmendra Kanani, Director of Policy & Programmes and Chief Spokesperson at Friends of Europe, the discussion centred on three interlocking challenges: the European Union’s evolving role in reshaping its defence industrial and capability landscape, the transformative lessons from Ukraine’s wartime experience, and the broader geopolitical imperative for a new framework of European security that fully integrates Ukraine.

Drone warfare as an ecosystem, not a product

A defining thread throughout the debate was the insistence that technological advantage in drone warfare cannot be reduced to hardware procurement. True capability requires an entire ecosystem of doctrine, data, feedback and continuous adaptation.

Drawing on Ukraine’s experience, Valeriya Ionan argued that armed forces that simply acquire platforms without building the surrounding system – encompassing doctrine and command structures, battlefield feedback loops, procurement rules, training and testing environments, and mechanisms for continuous learning, are not acquiring genuine capability. Research & Development (R&D) must be connected to frontline units because new technology reshapes the battlefield every six months. The lesson from Ukraine is that war in the drone age is fundamentally about speed: the side that evolves faster is the side that wins.

Ukraine’s own trajectory since Russia’s full-scale invasion illustrates this vividly. The Army of Drones initiative began modestly, with fundraising to procure roughly 5,000 drones, but it quickly revealed that imports alone were structurally insufficient. Through sweeping reform, including easing procurement and deployment rules, creating dedicated test zones, training pilots and increasing profit margins for manufacturers, Ukraine opened and grew its defence tech market.

The results have been striking: from seven domestic drone producers in 2022, Ukraine grew to around 100 in 2023 and to over 550 today. The same explosive growth is visible in electronic warfare, unmanned ground vehicles and missiles. At the centre of this ecosystem is Brave1, a defence tech cluster connecting government, military units and startups, providing grants and accelerating solutions to frontline needs.

Crucially, Ukraine has developed data-driven procurement mechanisms that make battlefield performance the direct driver of purchasing decisions. A gamified system of points allows military units to earn credits for successful operations and spend them via a Brave1 marketplace – the so-called ‘Amazon for war’ – empowering units to choose what works for them while generating genuine competition among suppliers.

Ionan’s message to Europe was direct: almost everything Ukraine has built is transferable, because the key to success is system design and innovation speed, not specific products.

Timothy Ash reinforced this from the strategic level. He argued that the real challenge facing Europe is not producing individual drone models but out-manufacturing Russia in drones and counter-drone systems at scale, and doing so without replicating the slow, traditional procurement models that have historically constrained European defence.

Closing the gap between innovation speed and institutional processes

A shared concern from all speakers was the dangerous mismatch between the pace at which drone technology evolves and the pace at which European institutions, regulatory frameworks and procurement systems can respond.

Paola Sartori outlined the EU’s three-strand approach to this challenge. On the demand side, the EU is working to accelerate capability delivery by incentivising joint procurement to reduce the costly fragmentation of national buying. Programmes such as ReArm Europe and the SAFE instrument provide loans and financial flexibility for defence acquisitions. On the supply side, the European Defence Fund (EDF) has allocated around €1bn to drone and counter-drone technologies, while the forthcoming European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) aims to de-risk investments and help scale up production. A third strand targets SMEs, startups and scale-ups, using business accelerators, defence innovation challenges and the new AGILE pilot mechanism, designed explicitly to shorten funding disbursement timelines to a matter of months.

Speaking on behalf of Atul Khare, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Operational Support, Ovais Ahmed illustrated the human cost of adaptation lags. He called for regulatory frameworks that keep pace with innovation and for deeper EU-UN-Ukraine cooperation, so that the kind of agile, battlefield-driven innovation pioneered by Ukraine can be deployed to protect UN personnel and civilians in conflict zones around the world.

Ash built on this point by noting that events in Ukraine and in the wider Middle East region have exposed an uncomfortable reality: US and European interests are no longer fully aligned, and Europe cannot assume the US security backstop will always be available in the same form. This makes the speed and decisiveness of European defence reform not just desirable but strategically urgent.

Ukraine is an indispensable partner, not a beneficiary

Rather than positioning Ukraine as a recipient of European support, speakers consistently argued that Ukraine is now Europe’s most battle-hardened and technologically advanced military partner and must be treated as such.

Ionan articulated this in terms of a shared ambition: the European Union, together with Ukraine, should set the goal of becoming a world defence tech champion. To achieve this, she argued, Europe needs three things:

• Vision, in the form of a clear common strategic goal;
• Action, through concrete reforms and investments;
• Speed, with innovation cycles measured in weeks, not years.

The EU is already taking steps in this direction. Sartori outlined plans for an EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance intended to link innovators, manufacturers and end users across the EU and Ukraine into a more coherent ecosystem. The Commission is progressively working to integrate Ukraine’s defence industrial base, including by associating Ukrainian entities with the European Defence Fund and the AGILE programme.

The logic is straightforward given the existing complementarity of strengths. As Ash underlined: Ukraine has frontline innovation capacity and battlefield-tested systems; Europe and Turkey have manufacturing scale. Connecting these two assets is the key to rapidly out-producing Russia in the drone domain.

Former Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė argued that what is currently missing is a political umbrella: a clear structural framework integrating Ukraine into Europe’s defence and security architecture, whether within NATO or through enhanced European cooperation alongside it. Today, Ukraine is assembling its security guarantees through fragmented bilateral arrangements which are insufficient given its central role in European defence.

Baltic, Nordic and frontline states are ready to move faster, Grybauskaitė observed. The question is whether the wider EU and NATO membership have the political courage to match institutional innovation to the reality on the battlefield.

Key Takeaways

Capability is an ecosystem, not a procurement line. Buying drones without building the surrounding system of doctrine, data, feedback loops and continuous adaptation does not produce genuine military capability. Ukraine’s model offers a replicable blueprint for Europe.

Speed is the strategic variable. In drone warfare, the actor that innovates and iterates fastest wins. Europe’s institutional and regulatory frameworks must be radically accelerated. AGILE and the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance are important steps but the ambition must go further and faster.

Ukraine is a partner, not a recipient. Europe should pursue a shared goal of becoming a world defence tech champion together with Ukraine. The complementarity is clear: Ukraine brings battlefield-tested innovation; Europe – and Turkey – bring manufacturing scale. Connecting these assets is the strategic priority.

A political umbrella is urgently needed. Fragmented bilateral arrangements between EU/NATO countries and Ukraine are insufficient. Europe needs the political courage to build a structural framework that integrates Ukraine into its defence and security architecture.

Regulation must keep pace with technology. Regulatory lags bear important direct human costs. Frameworks governing drone deployment, testing, certification and procurement must be designed to match, not constrain, the speed of technological change.

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PHOTO CREDIT: Shutterstock| Es sarawuth