If last year was about fearing a single quadcopter, this year is about surviving a flock that thinks together. What changes on the ground is not only speed and volume; it is the logic of defense. When dozens of expendable aircraft, drone swarms and boats coordinate in real time, they stop behaving like individual “targets” and start behaving like a system. That shift forces militaries, energy operators, and policymakers to rethink how they sense, decide, and defend, often under extreme time pressure.
What a “Swarm” Actually Means
In practice, you will see two flavors. First, surrogate swarms: multiple drones launched together, coordinated by human operators with scripted roles. Second, true swarms: systems that share data, self-assign tasks, and adapt mid-mission with minimal human input. The building blocks are familiar: cheap airframes, resilient comms, onboard compute, and algorithms that let units deconflict, re-route, and mass effects at the right moment. The result is a playbook that values many, small, and smart over a few exquisite platforms. This is not science fiction; defense labs have field-tested swarm behaviors for years, and the technology has matured faster than many acquisition systems anticipated.
Pictured: Royal Marines strike teams from Alpha Company, of Taunton-based 40 Commando, were on the ground and able to call on swarms of Malloy TRV150 drones – which can lift up to 68kg in all weathers – for deliveries of ammunition, blood and other supplies.
The commandos carried a small, rugged tablet on their chest giving the ability to tap a map location and time for the delivery of their supplies, leaving the Malloys to do the rest and drop in what they need when they need it. https://www.defenceimagery.mod.uk/, OGL v1.0OGL v1.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Battlefield Lessons You Can Use
The Russo-Ukrainian war turned theory into muscle memory. On the air side, small uncrewed aircraft, both commercial and custom, scaled dramatically, changing artillery spotting, logistics interdiction, and strike economics. On the maritime side, uncrewed surface vessels forced the Black Sea Fleet to disperse, harden, or stay in port. Production numbers and operational tempo signaled a new threshold: when quantity compounds, attrition becomes a strategy, not a risk to be minimized at all costs.
A similar dynamic is playing out at sea beyond Europe. In the Red Sea, a mix of aerial drones and USVs has pressured naval defenses and shipping lanes, prompting frequent intercepts and multinational responses. Whether a platform flies or sails, the core lesson is the same: distributed, networked, and cheap systems can generate outsized effects when they arrive faster than defenders can classify and engage.
A New Scale Problem
Swarms are not just more drones. They are more decisions for defenders per minute. This is why modern air and maritime defense must think in kill-chains, not single kills. You need faster detection, automated triage, and layered effects including electronic warfare, deception, directed energy, and point-defense working in concert. Governments are treating this as a scale problem as much as a technology one. In the United States, the Department of Defense’s Replicator initiative prioritizes attritable, autonomous systems “in multiple thousands” and is now dedicating a new push specifically to counter-drone defense. NATO strategists, meanwhile, warn that deterrence requires creating a “hellscape” for hostile drones, dense, multi-layered defenses that are affordable to sustain.
Autonomy Will Not Wait for Our Comfort
Another change: who or what decides. Reports of AI-enabled swarms operating in combat have moved the autonomy debate from conference halls to the field. Even when a human remains “on the loop,” autonomy is creeping forward in navigation, target assignment, and deconfliction because the tempo demands it. That raises predictable but necessary questions about human control, accountability, and compliance with international humanitarian law. The policy community’s ask is clear: preserve meaningful human control over the use of force and codify prohibitions or restrictions where needed. Militaries and industry need to design for that control at the architecture level, not as an afterthought.
Counter-Swarm: What Actually Works
No single silver bullet exists. What works today is layering:
Electronic warfare to suppress links and navigation, forcing swarms to fragment or revert to fail-safes.
Kinetic interceptors and directed energy to handle the leakers at close range.
Deception and decoys to soak up munitions and misdirect sensors.
Hardening critical nodes, from warships to refineries and substations, because perfect interception is unrealistic under saturation.
Field exercises and tabletop studies converge on the same point: effectiveness comes from the system, not any single widget. The challenge is cost: defenders must spend less per interception than attackers spend per drone, or they lose the attrition game over time. That is why procurement is shifting toward cheap, numerous, and integrated defensive kits rather than bespoke, standalone systems.
Energy and Maritime Operators Are Now in the First Ring
Energy infrastructure, from offshore platforms to refineries and pipelines, has moved higher on threat lists as swarms lower the cost of coordinated strikes. Maritime operators face the same math: more contacts, less time. The operational response blends surveillance density, response menus such as EW, interceptors, and hard-kill, and cross-sector coordination with military forces. If you run critical infrastructure, the checklist today includes C-UAS plans, exercises with local authorities, and procurement paths for rapidly deployable defenses. Waiting for a national solution is not a viable risk posture.
Don’t Over-Correct: Swarms Don’t Replace Firepower
A caution is in order. Some analysts warn against swinging from “drones are a niche” to “drones do everything.” Swarms multiply options, but they do not replace artillery, aviation, or naval firepower. The best battlefield results have come from combined-arms integration, where drones cue fires, blind radars, or finish damaged targets, and conventional systems exploit the openings. Thinking in effects chains keeps investments balanced and reduces the risk of brittle, single-concept forces.
Where This Goes Next
Three near-term shifts look decisive.
Automated command and control: expect more AI in the loop for defenders, prioritizing tracks, recommending effects, and closing the sensor-to-shooter gap under tight timelines.
Commoditized production: as open architectures and commercial supply chains spread, both attackers and defenders will iterate faster. Policy will chase that curve.
Norms under pressure: the legal debate over autonomous weapons is moving toward concrete instruments. “Meaningful human control” will evolve from a slogan into design and training requirements backed by law.
For defense planners and critical-infrastructure leaders, the most rational posture is pragmatic and forward-leaning: test early, layer defenses, quantify costs, and build governance into the tech stack. The swarm era is already here; the question is whether our organizations can operate and decide at swarm speed.
Sources
CSIS, The Russia-Ukraine Drone War: Innovation on the Frontlines and Beyond (event transcript) and Closing the Loop analysis, 2024–2025.
RAND Corporation, Unmanned Aerial Systems Intelligent Swarm Technology, Feb. 15, 2024.
DARPA, OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program pages and final field experiment note, 2017–2021.
U.S. Department of Defense / DIU, Replicator Initiative (ADA2) overview, Aug. 2023–present.
Atlantic Council, NATO needs a “hellscape” defense at Replicator speed, Nov. 4, 2024.
Congressional Research Service, Department of Defense Counter-UAS, Mar. 31, 2025; DOD Replicator: Background and Issues, Aug. 25, 2025.
RUSI, Uncrewed platforms have been critical to Ukraine’s success in the Black Sea, Aug. 20, 2024; NATO should not replace traditional firepower with drones, Aug. 4, 2025.
