Russian military debates whether it has adapted to a drone-dominated battlefield

Senior Russian commanders, analysts and military bloggers are openly debating whether drones have rendered Russia’s longstanding approach to battle obsolete, a discussion driven by battlefield developments in the war in Ukraine. A recent Ukrainian combat video released by DeepState and verified by The New York Times shows a Russian “Frankenstein tank,” cloaked in roughly welded plates, that survived about two dozen drone strikes before a final hit ignited it and forced the crew to evacuate amid shellfire.

The prominence of such drone strikes has pushed Russian forces to deploy small teams of three to five soldiers for territorial advances and to experiment with armor and other equipment changes; Defense Ministry newspapers say more than 190 weapon systems have been modernized, and analysts cite Russian figures that 70 percent of Russia’s combat deaths were attributed to drones as of early 2025.

Analysts point to broader problems of training, organization and doctrine: Russia began the war with around 10,000 tanks, which a veteran analyst said has fallen to somewhere over 3,000 and can be replenished only at about 200 a year, and observers note that massing forces on a so-called “transparent battlefield” is vulnerable to drone detection and attack.

Key Topics

World, Russian Military, Drones, Ukraine, Deepstate, Tanks