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‍JULY 2025 HIGHLIGHTS

• Israel is compounding the benefits of its rapidly advancing drone technologies by integrating them into a new, “emergent” unmanned warfare doctrine.
• Israeli drone operations over the past several weeks highlight how operational creativity, when paired with cutting-edge technology, is redefining modern warfare.
• Both Ukraine and Russia are looking for alternatives to Chinese drones.
• Ukraine is making major strides in the development of unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs.
• During Taiwan’s Han Kuang 41 military exercises, China predictably responded by challenging Taiwan’s air and sea sovereignty.
• Taiwan has unveiled two new VTOL drones.
• To ramp up its military preparedness, Taiwan is massively increasing UAV procurement, developing new EW systems, and conducting realistic combat drills.

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EDITOR'S NOTE

One idea that we repeatedly hammer home here at the Vector Report is that weaponized, small drones represent a bridge between conventional and unconventional warfare, democratizing precision strike capabilities that were once exclusive to major powers’ militaries. And it goes further than that.

Ukraine and Russia have progressed their drone warfare doctrines by layering and combining various capabilities in miniature drone warfare “stacks” that can be rapidly repositioned around the battlefield. These mobile drone complexes simulate the effects of air superiority wherever they operate. Another capability that has, until now, remained beyond the reach of all but the world’s most advanced militaries.

The lessons in drone warfare that we cover here at the Vector Report are important, and often well ahead of the herd thanks to the insights offered by our team members on the ground in Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine. That said, we’re certainly not the only ones paying attention. Far from it. In recent months and weeks, we’ve seen mounting evidence of the proliferation of drone warfare know-how among various actors that pose a threat to American interests and allies, as well as the security of our homeland.

The list of evidence is long enough for a novel, and we’ve already covered some notable examples, such as the downing of junta helicopters by an FPV-wielding rebel group in Myanmar. Yet, that sort of operational leap, as significant as it is, pales in comparison to recent open-source reporting that Mexican cartel members and Colombian FARC militants had volunteered to serve in Ukraine to acquire FPV combat training. Clearly a “train the trainers” approach by which these combat-trained operators can then return home and pass on what they’ve learned.

This revelation shows that the ongoing drone warfare revolution on Ukraine’s battlefield has far larger repercussions than just repelling a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan. In Mali, for example, the Azawad Liberation Front, a rebel group, has employed fiber-optic FPV drones of the sort that have reshaped the Ukrainian battlefield. By rendering drones effectively immune to electronic warfare defenses, such “tethered” FPV strike drones have turned the swath of territory extending about 30 km or so from the zero-line, in both directions, into a no man’s land where the threat of death from above weighs on soldiers’ shoulders 24/7.

Yet, no other example of drone warfare proliferation hits quite as close to home as the surge in Mexican cartel drone operations at the southern U.S. border; a chilling reminder that two oceans and a border wall aren’t enough to protect the U.S. homeland from this evolving threat.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s counter-drone program, Mexican cartels are flying an average of 328 drones within 500 meters of the border each day. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, Steven Willoughby, deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security’s counter-drone program, said that in the six months from December 2024 to July of this year the U.S. had detected 60,000 Mexican cartel drone flights near the border.

“Nearly every day transnational criminal organizations use drones to convey illicit narcotics and contraband across U.S. borders and to conduct hostile surveillance of law enforcement,” Willoughby said, adding that the cartels have attacked each other, as well as Mexican authorities, with drone strikes.

With thousands of U.S. troops now deployed to the southern border, there is an urgent need to ensure that those units are equipped with proper counter-drone defenses, as well as the right training — inevitably drawing on lesson from Ukraine — to defend against cartel drone strikes.

“Warring cartel factions have attacked one another using drone delivered explosives and it’s only a matter of time before Americans or law enforcement are targeted in the border region,” Willoughby told the Senate committee.

These recent trends in drone warfare proliferation offer us hard data points by which to measure the threat. They also show us something essential about the nature of drone warfare — a conceptual lesson that should guide how we prepare to meet this new era of warfare.

If we compare nuclear weapons proliferation versus the proliferation of drone warfare know-how, a clear distinction emerges. Above all, the spread of drone warfare is driven by the combat application of easily accessible and replicable technologies. It is the doctrinal element of drone warfare — the practicalities of employing these new tools in combat — which is at the heart of this metastasizing threat.

Those cartel members and FARC guerillas didn’t go to Ukraine to steal the schematics to some super-secret Ukrainian drone. They went to acquire the tactical skills to employ drones in combat.

We shouldn’t downplay the significance of technology. The introduction of fiber-optic tethered FPVs to the Ukrainian battlefield, for example, is one clear example of how a new technology can profoundly reshape the nature of a conflict. But once that technological wild card has entered the mix, tactical creativity becomes the deterministic factor in which side ultimately gains the edge.

The report from our team member in Israel this edition underscores the importance of pairing technology with doctrine. He outlines all the technological leaps Israel has recently made in drone warfare and then highlights how they all combine to form a new doctrine.

“The convergence of stealth tech, cyber integration, and battlefield AI represents not just evolution — but a doctrinal leap,” he writes, adding that recent operations in Gaza and Lebanon “served as proving grounds for emergent drone war logic: blend invisibility, adaptability, and real-time autonomy into the tactical DNA of the IDF.”

The technology at the heart of this drone warfare evolution in warfare is not always radical. In Ukraine, it’s often a case of adapting and molding pre-existing commercial technologies to meet battlefield needs. The trick is to recognize such opportunities when they exist. And that’s where the end-user’s imagination is most important, for it is often beyond the creative scope of even the most brilliant engineer to understand the hard realities of combat. We see evidence of this time and again in Ukraine, where many drone warfare advances come from the bottom up — driven by the creative ideas of soldiers in the field, or by designers who constantly solicit feedback from the end-users they serve.

To dominate in a drone war against China, we’d better revamp our military-industrial base and procurement processes to adapt at the speed of war as the Ukrainians have been able to do. That constant loop of front-line feedback driving innovation is not something the American procurement process is well-positioned to match, although recent initiatives from the Pentagon are moving us in the right direction. Even so, we shouldn’t let technological exigencies blind us to the urgency of developing smart, up to date drone warfare doctrine. And that’s why Vector’s core mission — “modern warfare as-a-service” — is essential.

We say it time and time again, but this idea bears repeating — the human element of war remains its most important part. To emphasize this point, we remind you of a gruesome video we reported on last year in which a Ukrainian soldier involved in a drone operation found himself in a knife-fight with a Russian soldier. In a heartbeat, all the technological aspects of drone warfare evaporated. And what remained? Two men fighting to the death.

Biting. Gouging eyes. Panting in absolute exhaustion when they’d spent every ounce of their life forces trying to kill the other.

In the end, the Russian prevailed. After the fatal knife thrust found its mark, the Ukrainian, exhibiting the dignity and honor of a true warrior, congratulated his enemy, his killer, calling him the “best soldier in the world.”

This is gruesome, but it’s not hyperbole. This is the day-to-day reality of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Despite the importance of drones and distance fighting, human beings are still required to kill their enemies and face the prospect of a violent death. If those bars are not met, no military campaign will succeed. That was true in the time of Achilles. And it remains so.

We must integrate this reality into the ways in which we prepare American forces for our next war — a blend of new technology, doctrine, and psychological hardening. If we fail in this, then we do a disservice to our brothers and sisters who will be on the front lines of a kind of war no American soldier, airman, sailor, or Marine has ever fought before.

Even the recent drone warfare triumphs by Ukraine in Operation Spiderweb and Israel in Operation Rising Lion came down, in the end, to the skill and tradecraft of their operators. Drone warfare is not a problem to be fixed by procurement wizardry alone. It will also depend on a force of expertly-trained drone warfare professionals who, armed with advantages in courage, creativity, and audacity, can adapt faster than their enemies.

To close, the following social media post by Aiden Aslin is worth reading in full.

Aslin is a British citizen who served as a contracted Ukrainian marine during the 2022 Battle of Mariupol. He was taken prisoner, tortured while in Russian captivity, sentenced to death, and ultimately released in September 2022 as part of a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia.

The following text is from a post on X on Aug. 2, 2025, in which Aslin wrote:

“Looking back at our time in Mariupol during the early stages of the full scale invasion, it's honestly scary to imagine how much worse it could have been if FPV drones were as widespread then as they are now. At the time, we were already dealing with brutal, nonstop artillery, tank fire, and close quarters fighting, but at least the sky wasn’t constantly filled with those FPV's Now, even a trench or a building barely offers any real cover. FPV drones can chase you indoors, follow vehicles, pick out targets inside or outside or deep behind the lines. If Mariupol had been surrounded with today's level of drone saturation, it wouldn't have been just a siege. It would've been a blood bath from every angle, all day, every day. We were already outnumbered, outgunned, and completely cut off. But at least we didn’t have to live with that constant buzzing overhead, that fear of a small, cheap kamikaze drone diving in. That kind of warfare didn’t exist back then. The only drone we had to worry about were the granade droppers. Mariupol was hell at the time, but if the war had started with the kind of drone capabilities we're seeing now, I honestly don’t think many of us would have made it out alive. And that says alot as we were lucky to make it out in the circumstances we were already in. Even now, when I monitor frontliine footage, it's clear how much the battlefield has changed. The main weapon out there isn’t a sniper rifle. It’s not mortars or artillery either. It’s FPV drones. They're being used constantly, by both sides, in almost every engagement. It’s not just another tool. It's the centerpiece of modern warfare. And the scary part is, this is probably just the start before we see how far the rabbit hole goes with this kind of warfare.”