Yevhen Titov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
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Last December, north of Kharkiv, Ukraine's 13th National Guard Brigade sent roughly 50 aerial drones and a fleet of unmanned ground vehicles toward a Russian position. No infantry. No soldiers within miles of the fighting. When it was over, Ukrainian troops moved in to find Russian corpses.
It was the latest in a series of signals to every defense ministry, venture capital fund, and logistics company on the planet that drones had become something different. Not a gadget. Not a supplement to conventional warfare. A primary instrument of power.
The money has followed. The Pentagon's proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 includes $53.6 billion specifically for drone and autonomous warfare technologies, more than the entire defense budgets of Ukraine, South Korea, or Israel.
