When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Europe awoke from a strategic slumber. After decades of entrusting its security to the NATO umbrella and American protection, Europe discovered that peace—like democracy—is not guaranteed. Likewise, the conflict revealed a radical shift from the kind of warfare our parents and grandparents had known. Weapons are increasingly out of reach of the human who fires them, and death is ever closer to civilians far from the front lines. Drones—small, cheap, lethal, and dehumanized—have replaced artillery as the primary instruments of death and surveillance. Today, death has the sound of a drone and pursues soldiers who clasp their hands, imploring the machine not to shoot them before it explodes. This is not fiction; these are the images of war propaganda that we have seen while preparing this report and that are coldly reproduced on social media.
Military experts agree that the warfare of the future will be highly automated, but not entirely dehumanized. Drones and robots can perform surveillance or attack tasks, but humans will remain indispensable. However, this technological dependence creates new vulnerabilities: if the connection is blocked or the electronics are disrupted, an army can be left blind and defenseless. Ukrainian commanders, immersed in this reality, admit that fatigue and fear have become part of combat. Drone pilots, many of them young and accustomed to video games, are playing a real game in which the moral distance from the killer is guaranteed.
Death seen from the sky
In Ukraine, between 70% and 80% of deaths are caused by these unmanned devices. The result is a frozen front, because any movement is detected and neutralized in a matter of seconds. Armies have been forced to reinvent themselves with micro-infiltration tactics, small groups, nighttime movements, and the use of motorcycles and electric scooters to evade enemy radar. Large armored vehicles, symbols of power in past wars, are now easy targets, like the heavy, slow columns that once tried unsuccessfully to reach Kyiv.
Ukraine, which previously manufactured around 5,000 drones annually, now produces between two and four million each year. They are affordable and quick to build, and their massive deployment has turned the country into a laboratory for technological warfare—as Gaza has also been—where modern combat is tested.
The invisible war reaches Brussels
Thousands of kilometers from the trenches, Europe watches and takes note. The European Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, sums up the new times in classic terms: if you want peace, prepare for war.
Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister, defends NATO's spending targets, urging the European Union to reduce its dependence on the United States. In an interview with our Brussels correspondent, Gerard Fageda, the commissioner urges Spain to meet its spending targets and warns that failing to do so weakens the entire Union. "Collective defense depends on the individual commitment of each state," he asserts. And he adds a disturbing warning: "European intelligence services believe that Russia could test NATO's Article 5."
The war in Ukraine has spurred an unprecedented strategic transformation. Brussels wants to turn Europe's fragmented defense industry into a coordinated and efficient system. Kubilius advocates for joint arms purchases, which could reduce costs by up to 30%, and for shared projects such as the "drone wall" in the Baltic states, designed to monitor the border with Russia. The goal is to build a common defense that is not dependent on external factors and that serves both to deter and to protect.
The war in Ukraine has redefined not only how to fight, but also how to think about peace. Drones have turned the sky into a battlefield, but they have also forced governments to acknowledge their fragility.
For the European Union, rearmament is not just a military issue, but an act of sovereignty. Defense cooperation, technological investment, and political unity are now the three pillars of a new European paradigm. The dream of a Europe that could do without force has died in the Ukrainian trenches. Instead, a Union is born that understands that defense is not contrary to European values, but rather a component of their protection. This transformation will not be easy. It will require colossal investments, political consensus, and a cultural shift: understanding that sovereignty is not measured solely by GDP, but by the capacity to guarantee the security of citizens in free and democratic societies.
