Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has become one of the main drivers transforming modern warfare. The mass use of drones, artificial intelligence, satellite technologies, and digital battle-management systems is changing not only battlefield tactics but the very logic of warfare. Ukraine’s experience demonstrates that technology can partially offset an adversary’s advantages in manpower and material resources, while adaptive velocity and the ability to turn combat data into actionable battlefield solutions are becoming increasingly important sources of military advantage.
In an interview with Ukrinform, Can Kasapoğlu, a senior fellow and defense analyst at Hudson Institute, discussed how Ukraine’s experience is reshaping our understanding of modern warfare; why technology can compress military arithmetic but cannot abolish it; what lessons NATO should draw from the Russia-Ukraine war; and how Ukraine can preserve its technological edge after the war. The conversation also covered Ukrainian-Turkish defense cooperation, the tactical and strategic effects of Ukraine’s long-range strikes against Russia, the war’s implications for the international security order, and Ukraine’s future role in European security.
Ukrainians Are Fighting Not Only for Their Homeland but for the Right to Determine Its Future — And Osint Cannot Show That
- Dr. Kasapoğlu, you have visited Ukraine on multiple occasions since the start of the full-scale war, including areas close to the front line. What have you come to understand about Russia’s war against Ukraine from being on the ground that cannot be fully grasped from Washington or Brussels through maps, satellite imagery, and OSINT analysis alone?
- Military scientists and defense intelligence analysts, like myself, predominantly analyze quantifiable variables: weapon systems, mathematical and computational combat modeling, commercial satellite imagery, maritime data flow such as tanker movements, and battlefield drone footage clusters. Yet, thorough defense intelligence assessments include unquantifiable variables too: morale, social cohesion, civil-military relations, support for warfighters, and willingness to sacrifice. Fieldwork reveals what datasets cannot. My visits to Ukraine have fundamentally shaped my perception about the war. Ukrainians fight not only for their homeland but also for the right to determine its future. They demand transparent elections, a free press, freedom of speech. The Ukrainians do not want to be governed by some form of politburo, oligarchs, or foreign tutelage. They reject the future prescribed by the last generation of Soviet security-service elites: life behind a new Iron Curtain. The Ukrainian men and women in uniform defend territory and a free way of life at the same time. This explains their resilience and the societal backing behind the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Ukrainian soldiers are not merely dying for soil; they are dying to give their future generations a life that is characterized by freedom and the ability to pursue opportunities and compete at a global scale. One cannot see these realities via OSINT assessments or commercially available satellite imagery. You have to be on the ground to grasp them. You have to stand before Bucha and Irpin, the mass grave, and understand why they died – which is often more important than how and when they died.
Satellite Imagery Has Become a Near-Real-Time Tactical Utility
- A recent article in The New York Times describes the Ukrainian military’s successful use of satellite imagery as a “revolution in military technology.” Looking at the Russia-Ukraine war from a strategic perspective, how has it fundamentally changed the way modern warfare is conducted? Which of these changes do you believe are truly revolutionary and irreversible?
- Satellite imagery itself is not revolutionary – it has been around since the last century. The revolution is its migration from a scarce and highly-classified product to a near-real-time tactical utility available at military-grade and commercial scale at the same time. When frontline combat formations can receive and exploit imagery within hours—or minutes—the boundary between strategic intelligence and tactical engagements begins to disappear. More importantly, in many cases, they receive the imagery from private companies, not intelligence services. Two changes are irreversible. First, public-private space cooperation has built a distributed battlefield nervous system: commercial low-Earth-orbit satellites, military sensors, drones, and acoustic networks now feed the same operational picture. Private firms have become participants in national defense architectures, making redundancy, oversight, and sovereign access strategic requirements. Second, compute is becoming combat power. The decisive contest is over which side can keep sensing, deciding, striking, and adapting under electronic and kinetic attack. Cloud systems provide scale; hardened centers, forward nodes, and edge computing provide survival. A force unable to process data when connectivity deteriorates is operationally done.
Drones Account for over 80 Percent of Battlefield Target Kills, but Humans Must Still Man and Hold Trenches
- Russia has significantly greater manpower and material resources. Can technology realistically offset this asymmetry for Ukraine? Which technological or operational solutions have the greatest potential to shift the balance in Ukraine’s favor?
- There is the good old military mathematics: force-on-force ratio, force-to-terrain ratio, battlefield geometry, Lanchester attrition models, and generating sustainable mass. Russia has absorbed the heaviest losses since the Second World War without unrest at home or within its ranks – except for the Wagner mutiny. Political geography matters: the burden has fallen disproportionately on Russia’s poorer, and non-ethnic Russian peripheral regions rather than constituencies in Moscow and St Petersburg. The geopolitical core cities of the federation actually saw the war when Ukrainian deep strikes disrupted fuel storage and gasoline supplies. Then there is the fast-rising defense technology. Ukraine uses FPV drones, unmanned ground vehicles, and AI-augmented battle networks to economize manpower, deepen the battlefield, and reduce soldiers’ exposure. Drones do the killing for over 80 percent of the battlefield targets, while Kyiv is shifting frontline logistics to ground robots. Yet this is an adaptation contest, not a Ukrainian monopoly: Russia has learned and institutionalized drone warfare through formations such as Rubicon. The strongest proof that technology can offset mass is in the maritime domain. Without a navy, Ukraine has damaged or eliminated a share of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and denied it freedom of action. Unmanned surface vessels, USVs, and anti-ship missiles helped prevent an amphibious threat to Odesa. But make no mistake: technology compresses military arithmetic; it does not abolish it. The war in Ukraine has resurrected First World War trenches—and humans must still man and hold them.
The Revolution Is Not the Drone or the Satellite, but the Connected, Data-Driven Kill Chain
- In your recent report, Ukraine’s Drone War: The Rise of Machine-Speed Adaptive Hyperwar, you describe a transition toward “machine-speed adaptive hyperwar.” We have already seen an evolution from Bayraktar TB2s and Mavic drones to FPVs, long-range strike drones, unmanned maritime systems, and interceptor drones. What do you think the next major technological leap in this war will be? Could Ukraine become the first country to develop a genuinely drone-centric military?
- Every rodeo is sui generis. Ukraine cannot be mapped onto Taiwan or a US-Iran conflict. Yet several changes are irreversible. Foremost is the compression of the OODA cycle—observe, orient, decide, act—through drones, AI-augmented battle networks, and unprecedented amount of combat data. Robotics increasingly performs both killing and ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance—reducing human exposure while accelerating sensor-to-shooter chains. Besides, drone warfare favors offense: cheap, expendable systems can saturate, probe, and regenerate faster than conventional defenses. But this architecture rests on connectivity, especially satellite internet and low-Earth-orbit constellations. The revolution is therefore not the drone or satellite, but the connected, data-driven kill chain.
Ukraine’s Deep Strikes Bring the War Home to Russia and Puncture the Kremlin’s Narrative of Normality
- Ukraine is increasingly conducting systematic strikes against Russian military, logistical, and energy infrastructure far beyond the front line. How significantly is this campaign already affecting Russia’s ability to wage war? Under what conditions could Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign become a strategic, rather than merely tactical, problem for Russia?
- Ukraine’s burgeoning long-range strike regime should not be understood solely as missile and drone warfare; it is also psychological warfare. Russia’s closed information system and disproportionate combat recruitment from peripheral regions insulate the regime’s metropolitan social base from an imperial occupation brutalizing Ukrainian civilians. The average Russian does not begin each morning reading the Washington Post. Striking military, logistical, and energy targets while generating a gasoline crisis brings the war home and punctures the Kremlin’s narrative of normality. The Ukrainian campaign becomes strategic when repeated strikes hit hard-to-repair sites, turn Russia’s size into an air-defense liability, cumulatively disrupt energy, logistics, and production, and force defensive dispersal—while integrating sanctions and sustained Western support. It exposes NATO’s missing middle: affordable, survivable strike systems covering several hundred to one thousand kilometers, paired with industrially sustainable, layered drone, cruise-missile, and ballistic-missile defenses. Yet drones and missiles alone cannot compel strategic concessions. Russia retains greater capacity to strike strategic targets in Ukraine than Ukraine possesses against the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. This edge has been firmly boosted by Iranian and North Korean assistance. Russia exploits Ukraine’s severe shortage of ballistic-missile interceptors—a NATO-wide inventory problem that grants Russia leverage and enables sustained ballistic missile salvos. Ukraine’s Fire Point-led ballistic program may mature by late 2026, but it still remains to be seen to be judged as a deterrent to strike counter-value targets.
National Resilience-Building Is as Important as Weapons Procurement
- Ukraine is often described as a laboratory for the future of warfare. Which Ukrainian technologies, tactics, and organizational innovations should NATO militaries be studying most closely? Is there a paradox here: the West possesses far more expensive and technologically sophisticated weapons systems, while Ukraine has accumulated unique real-world experience of 21st-century warfare?
- Ukraine offers invaluable lessons to NATO. The first one is pennies versus dollars. Affordable, scalable, sustainable mass can outperform exquisite systems in combat. By comparing drone costs with the Russian equipment destroyed, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and Unmanned Systems Forces showed how defense-economics asymmetry can systematically impose attrition. Second, red lines must be assessed, not mythologized. Ukraine sank the Moskva, struck Moscow, attacked Crimea and Alabuga, damaged energy infrastructure, and hit strategic-bomber bases through Operation Spiderweb. Before the war, Western analyses portrayed such actions as possible thresholds for Russian tactical nuclear use. That escalation did not occur. The risk remains, but deterrence requires empirical judgment, not paralysis. Third is resilience. Few expected Ukraine to withstand a war of this scale, making national resilience-building as important as weapons procurement. Fourth, NATO must prepare for protracted interstate war. Artillery shortages revealed that industrial depth, ammunition reserves, and replacement capacity remain decisive. Fifth, the offense-dominant missile and drone environment demands industrial planning for layered air, missile, and ballistic-missile defense. There is no paradox. NATO militaries prepared for short wars won through technological superiority. Ukraine confronted the bitter alternative. Like a highly trained fighter athlete, it keeps every institutional muscle active because each new threat immediately tests it.
Ukraine’s Enduring Advantage Is Not Any Single Drone, but the Ecosystem That Learns Faster than Its Adversaries
- You have seen Ukraine’s defense-tech sector from the inside. What has impressed you most about it? What should Ukraine do to preserve this expertise after the war and turn it into a long-term strategic advantage, potentially becoming one of the world’s leading hubs for unmanned and counter-drone technologies?
- Three features of Ukraine’s defense technological and industrial base have impressed me. First is adaptive velocity. At occupied Ukrainian Sevastopol, Russia reinforced Soviet-inherited marine-mammal defenses against divers yet failed to anticipate robotic naval attack. Eight months after the full-scale invasion, an early USV struck the heart of the Black Sea Fleet. Apart from its warhead, nothing was military-grade: commercial satellite communications, a jet-ski power pack that one can find and buy online, and a simply workshop-built hull. The same logic drove the FPV revolution—recombining components faster than the enemy adapts. Second is information architecture, especially Delta. Unlike many NATO programs, it grew bottom-up and under fire. Fusing commercial LEO imagery, tens of thousands of air, land, and maritime sensors, and acoustic warning networks converts data into information superiority. Russia retains advantages in manpower, industry, and authoritarian partners; Ukraine compensates through a higher-quality picture of the battlespace. Third is combat data as strategic capital. Secure data rooms and AI infrastructure turn battlefield experience into military-grade datasets and data into defense diplomacy. After the war, Kyiv should protect this corpus, preserve frontline-to-industry feedback, diversify component supplies, and build enduring joint ventures with trusted allies. Ukraine’s enduring advantage is not any single drone, but the ecosystem that learns faster than its adversaries.
Ukraine and Türkiye Could Help Shape a New Balance of Power in the Black Sea After the War
- Ukraine and Türkiye have already established a strong foundation for defense-industrial cooperation, particularly in unmanned systems and aviation technologies. How could the two countries make this partnership more effective? Could Ukrainian-Turkish defense cooperation become a key factor in shaping a new balance of power in the region?
- Türkiye and Ukraine are compatible defense partners. Both possess large, deterrence-driven, combat-experienced armed forces that serve as natural end-users and laboratories for their national industries—a rarity in Europe. Both have mature drone ecosystems extending beyond aviation into land and maritime robotics. Baykar’s Akıncı and Kızılelma programs, alongside MİLGEM corvettes rebuilding Ukraine’s Navy, show this partnership is already cross-domain. The TB2 is equally symbolic. At the full-scale invasion’s outset, when many NATO countries debated helmets and body armor, Türkiye had already provided Ukraine with an operationally consequential combat system. Ankara imposed no operational restrictions, continued supplying Ukraine throughout the war, and supplied none to Russia. Its Black Sea vision and support for Ukrainian NATO membership have been firmer than those of many European allies. Crimea anchors this strategic alignment. Türkiye will never recognize its illegal occupation and annexation, as a matter of international law and because of historic bonds with Crimea’s Turkic peoples and the Crimean Tatar community. After the war, cooperation should expand from transactions to co-production in engines, autonomy, sensors, missiles, naval robotics, shipbuilding, and sustainment. Combining Ukraine’s wartime adaptation with Türkiye’s NATO-grade manufacturing scale can make two of Europe’s most capable militaries central to a new Black Sea balance.
Peace Requires Pressure on Every Member of Russia’s Coalition — From Iran and North Korea to China and Belarus
- Looking at the broader international picture, how could the course and eventual outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war reshape the international security order? What lessons are China, Iran, and other states already drawing from this war? And how could either a Ukrainian success or, conversely, a Russian success influence their future behavior?
- Two obstacles prolong this war’s systemic effects. First, Russia has illegally annexed, not merely occupied, Ukrainian territory. The distinction may appear abstract amid warfare, but the legal gulf is enormous. Unlike Soviet Afghanistan or Russia’s Syria campaign, annexation closes the logical pathway to retreat. Any Kremlin leader leaving “Russian territory”—in fact, sovereign Ukrainian territory illegally invaded—risks constitutional offense and palace coup. Prigozhin and Wagner armed revolt showed that the greatest opposition came not from peace-seeking liberals – if there’s any –, but from nationalist hardliners dissatisfied with the war’s conduct. No Ukrainian president could win a referendum for territorial surrender either. Just imagine the opposition campaign run in the streets of Kyiv or Odessa. Second, this is coalition warfare. North Korea supplies much of Russia’s artillery ammunition; Geran-Shahed drones carry Iranian Revolutionary Guard DNA; Chinese machine tools sustain arms production; Belarus enabled the northern front, surrendered strategic autonomy, and gives Moscow leverage against NATO. Peace requires pressure on every coalition member until war produces a serious predicament and settlement offers gain. Rewarding conquest merely to obtain peace would reverse centuries of progress, suspend the UN order, and reopen wars of annexation. Ukraine’s fate will determine whether a democratic, market-based, digitally connected, technologically entrepreneurial post-Soviet state can survive—or whether autocratic imitation and escalation define the coming era.
NATO Remains Europe’s Strongest Security Architecture, and Ukraine’s Strength Must Be Anchored in the Alliance
- What role do you see Ukraine playing in European and global security once the war is over?
- After the war, Ukraine will inevitably rank among the strongest candidates to become a cornerstone of European security: a battle-tested military, an adaptive defense technological and industrial base, and a realistic, resilient society. This strength must be anchored in NATO. European autonomy conceived as an alternative will collide with realpolitik. NATO remains Europe’s strongest security architecture, preserving the transatlantic bond. If the war ends on terms Kyiv can accept, Ukrainian membership will become a serious possibility if not a natural eventuality.