Europe's drone push exposes gaps in defense readiness

Business Insider

8 hours ago

As the prospect of a renewed Russian threat looms over Europe's eastern flank, EU leaders are accepting that the continent is ill-prepared when it comes to the risk of future conflict.
Last week, Andrius Kubilius, the European commissioner for defence and space, called for a sweeping ramp-up of drone production, urging EU nations to produce millions of drones a year by 2030.
Ukraine delivered over 1.3 million drones to its military in 2024, highlighting the gap in Europe's preparedness.
"The fact that European nations need to urgently rearm, and to do so in a way that is relevant to the threat from Russia, is not a new discovery," Keir Giles, senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, told Business Insider.
"What's alarming is that it's being presented as news," he said, adding that this suggests the realization that rearmament is vital "still hasn't sunk in evenly across Europe."
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated the transformative nature of drones in modern combat.
From cheap first-person view drones to advanced loitering munitions and AI-guided strike systems, the war has pioneered new forms of drone warfare, with Ukraine often outmatching Russian capabilities in speed and creativity.
Katja Bego, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, said that "Ukraine's remarkable success with drones has shown it is possible to rapidly ramp up production if the urgency is there. Europe is now learning these lessons."
Currently, however, the EU is still far behind. Both Russia and Ukraine reportedly outproduce the entire EU bloc "by orders of magnitude," Bego warned.
But it's clear that there is increasing interest from EU states to work with and import Ukrainian expertise and systems.
"If European countries are serious about acquiring drones at the pace and scale that is being described, they must do so in and with Ukraine," Giles said.
The latest push for mass drone manufacturing in Europe isn't just about meeting current threats. It's about leapfrogging into the technologies that will define future conflict.
"Europe sees an opportunity to leapfrog," Bego said. "Smaller drones are much cheaper than a lot of traditional weapons and can be produced much more quickly."
However, making the most of this moment requires more than just factories.
"Getting to the scale of relevance for deterrence and defense is more than an issue of defense production," Skip Davis, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, told Business Insider.
"It's about the ability to field prototypes, train operators, revise operational concepts, and integrate drones into logistics and manoeuvre formations," he said. "All of that requires a new mindset."
That would involve deeper collaboration between militaries and agile, often non-traditional tech firms.
Davis said that in the current environment, "many of the companies leading innovation are small startups or commercial companies not used to working with militaries."
For Europe to succeed, he said it must grow more comfortable with experimentation and iteration.
Compounding the urgency is the decreasing estimate of when Russia could be ready to attack a NATO country.
The estimate of five years was what we were hearing this time last year, Giles said. "Since then, the timescale has continued to shrink — and the reduction in US support to Ukraine brings the time closer."
This shortening horizon makes the EU's slow progress all the more dangerous.
"Crash rearmament is feasible, if there is sufficient political will," Giles added.
At the same time, experts warn that ramping up drone output is not a silver bullet.
"Policymakers are at risk of seeing small agile drones as a panacea which will solve both their financial and manpower woes," Bego said. But "there is still a need for large platforms like jet fighters, too," she added.
Meanwhile, Europe's vision of "strategic autonomy" in defense risks being undermined by its reliance on foreign tech.
"A lot of critical components in drone manufacturing are still produced in China," Bego said. "Europe must diversify these supply chains or reproduce them within its own borders."
With the clock ticking and Russian production accelerating, the EU's ambitious drone target looks ever more necessary, and could mark a pivotal moment in European defense.