OPINION:
Deborah Fairlamb, a drone expert living in Ukraine, has been watching the mysterious drone flights in New Jersey with the same fascination gripping everyone else. Yet her half-serious solution differs from typical speculation: “Why doesn’t the State of New Jersey just call Ukraine to find out what’s going on? Here in Ukraine, we’re drone experts, and we know how to do drone monitoring.”
Her comment — equal parts tongue-in-cheek and earnest — stems from a deeper worry: The United States is slipping behind in drone warfare capabilities. Speculation online holds that these nighttime flights might be part of U.S. training exercises. To Ms. Fairlamb, that idea is unsettling.
“If that is what the U.S. is doing in training new pilots,” she says, “none of it would be applicable in a real war.”
Her concern seems justified when comparing the U.S. with Ukraine in drone technology. A recent Department of Defense procurement document outlines plans to build 4,500 drones over the next five years. Meanwhile, Ukraine is on track to produce 3 million drones in 2025. U.S. drones can cost over $1 million each, making them so prohibitively expensive that Ukrainian soldiers are reluctant to use them. By contrast, Ukrainian-made drones costing only $500 each regularly destroy $4 million Russian T-90 tanks — a staggering testament to Ukrainian cost-effectiveness and innovation.
Another concern for her is that too many American drones are ill-suited for battlefield conditions. According to front-line Ukrainian troops, U.S. drones — never tested in contested airspace or GPS-denied environments — can be taken down in seconds. Ms. Fairlamb recalls stories of front-line troops making wagers on how quickly an American drone would be destroyed. Ninety seconds is often the winning bet.
Seasoned Marine Corps veterans who visited the front lines east of Kharkiv were shaken by their experience seeing the trenches. They believe American troops wouldn’t make it under the same conditions: Ukrainian forces are equipped with electronic drone detection and mitigation devices. Americans, they observed, don’t have these, making them highly vulnerable.
The Marines also noted that if a drone chases down a Ukrainian soldier (without detection equipment), that Marine typically has precious few seconds to try to shoot it down with a shotgun. If he fails, he dies.
Drone warfare has become the leading cause of casualties in the Russia-Ukraine war. Ms. Fairlamb states that about 60% of Ukrainian casualties and 80% of Russian casualties result directly from drones. These figures highlight how pivotal drone technology has become.
Ukraine’s rapid innovation stems from its robust tech ecosystem, which thrived between 2014 and 2022. During this period, startups grew at an average annual rate of 30%, producing six companies worth $1 billion, including Grammarly.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, these tech entrepreneurs collaborated directly with front-line troops to tailor drones to ever-shifting combat needs. From thermal optics to onboard navigation that compensates for blocked GPS signals, Ukrainian developers adapt at remarkable speed. Drones can have new software updates overnight, which are immediately tested in real combat scenarios.
Ms. Fairlamb warns that the West isn’t focusing enough on the long-term aftermath of this drone race. Russian President Vladimir Putin has used his advantage as a top-down authoritarian to mobilize massive drone research and production.
“Whatever the Kremlin learns will probably be sold to hostile nations or terrorist groups,” Ms. Fairlamb predicts. “Nobody has figured out how to neutralize swarms of drones, and the Kremlin is well aware of this.”
The mysterious drone flights over New Jersey might seem unrelated to larger geopolitical events. But as Ms. Fairlamb reminds us, America’s lag in drone warfare capabilities is real, and what appears as a curiosity in the Garden State can serve as a sobering wake-up call for the future.
Whether it’s Russia, China or any emerging power, the proliferation of cost-effective, combat-ready drones is reshaping warfare. The U.S. needs to learn from Ukraine’s rapid innovation and front-line testing — or risk falling even further behind in a battle that increasingly depends on unmanned machines in the skies.
• Mitzi Perdue is a businesswoman, author and activist. With degrees from Harvard University and George Washington University, her experience in advocacy includes serving as president of American Agri-Women, attending the U.N. Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya, as a U.S. delegate.
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