On April 25, former Ukrainian General Valerii Zaluzhnyi delivered a significant speech at the London Defense Conference. He argued that both the world and the nature of warfare are undergoing profound changes — and unfortunately, Western countries are failing to keep pace with these developments.

The Russia-Ukraine war has entered its fourth year. What began as a classic invasion by Russian armored units has now largely transformed into drone warfare between the two sides. According to various sources, approximately 70 to 90 percent of casualties and equipment losses at the front have been caused by drone strikes or by other weapons systems aided by drones.

Farther from the front line, in the enemy's rear, troops, critical production facilities and logistical hubs are being destroyed by missiles and, typically, larger drones. A significant portion of this destruction is being carried out using inexpensive systems manufactured by Ukraine itself, further reducing the need for the extremely costly weapons produced by Western defense industries. This shift was vividly demonstrated by Ukraine's June 1 "Spider Web" operation, which inflicted serious damage on Russia's strategic air force.

'Absolute death zone' 15 kilometers either side of the front line

A combination of inexpensive Chinese and domestically produced drone components has given rise to weapons systems that render traditional offensive and defensive tactics — not only ineffective but deadly for those who use them.

Much of what both the West and the East have learned and developed since World War I is rapidly becoming obsolete. One of the most fundamental principles of warfare — the massing of troops to break through enemy defenses with the support of armored units — is no longer viable. As long as the opposing side has more explosive-laden drones than the attacker has armor, such offensives and troop concentrations are doomed well before reaching their intended targets.

Mass still matters, but it has shifted to unmanned technologies. Even now, a small drone unit assisted by artificial intelligence can, in effect, destroy an assault involving dozens of tanks, armored vehicles and a hundred infantry soldiers — without sustaining a scratch. In essence and in practice, the conventional warfare doctrine that has prevailed until now is dead.

Cheap missiles and long-range drones as strategic deterrence

Tactical defense support — and measures that in all likelihood render previous strategies obsolete — are now provided by medium- and long-range missile systems (including air defense) and drones. A particularly serious point was made by retired Ukrainian Col. Roman Svitan in an interview with Forte on May 28. He criticized Western countries, including Estonia, for spending large sums on expensive Western-made missiles. At the same time, he argued, we could collaborate with Ukraine to develop our own missile production capabilities at a fraction of the cost.

One of the key reasons is that the enemy genuinely possesses effective electronic warfare capabilities — systems that can interfere with the accuracy of precision-guided munitions. This makes weapons systems like the HIMARS launchers we recently purchased far less effective. You simply won't hit the target you're aiming at.

So why not use the same amount of money to buy or produce several times more slightly less accurate missiles and rely on them to achieve a mass effect? The goal is to send a clear message to the enemy: if you start a war, we'll fire a thousand missiles toward Moscow. Try shooting them all down. Even if their accuracy isn't perfect, the resulting chaos and damage would far outweigh what could be achieved with a handful of precision strikes.

Rapid adjustment as the key to survival

"There is nothing more difficult than getting rid of old thinking when introducing new military thought," said renowned British military theorist Basil Liddell Hart. That's not a cliche — it's a harsh truth.

Change is slow to come because it's hard in multiple ways. It demands serious effort and the abandonment of many long-standing dogmas — in other words, everything human nature instinctively resists. Deep down, there's always the hope that this transformation on the battlefield is temporary, a flicker in the system, and that things will eventually return to normal.

The harsh truth is: they won't. That chapter is closed. We must accept that many of yesterday's capability gaps have become obsolete, new gaps have emerged today and more will appear tomorrow. Defense planning is a process of constant evolution — it is never finished.

If you want to outperform your adversary, you have to rebuild your entire military thinking, doctrine, tactics and training essentially from scratch. It's grueling work, but it's unavoidable. It should have started yesterday and it must start again tomorrow — and so on.

The current shift on the battlefield is comparable to previous foundational changes that marked generational leaps in warfare. There have been several, but some of the more sweeping examples include the introduction of railroads and telegraphs in battles during the Crimean War in the 1850s or the deployment of armored vehicles in World War I. Those who failed to adapt quickly enough and revise their doctrines were the ones who lost. Horse-drawn carts couldn't compete with trains for moving supplies and troops, couriers couldn't deliver messages faster than telegraph wires, cavalry had no hope against tanks.

We're at the same kind of turning point now. New technologies are rendering our established strengths useless — and if we stubbornly continue as before, they will become our downfall. This shift already began five years ago in Nagorno-Karabakh. How far along are we now?

In short, the entire operational doctrine, tactical foundations and training of the Estonian Defense Forces (EDF) and Defense League must be rewritten from the ground up. Once that's done — or better yet, simultaneously — the entire force must be restructured according to new objectives, with no mercy shown for outdated tactics, techniques or equipment. Time is already running out.

Key principles should include: maximum dispersal of forces, pushing decision-making down to the lowest level possible (as far as half-squads or teams), a simple but unified and highly reliable communication system reaching every soldier, various drone units, individual drone detection and countermeasures for every team, full use of the Defense League's real potential and introducing defense industry education in schools. Nothing is the same as it was yesterday, and if we don't change today, we'll be the losers tomorrow.

Necessary transformations in manufacturing and tendering

We must honestly assess what works well enough and what we can afford. Decisions need to be made quickly, sometimes with the full awareness that not every risk will pay off. We need to forget NATO standards — they don't function under the new conditions. Instead, we should take a hard look at Ukrainian standards, the ones that actually work in combat. We must create our own analogs, making maximum use of domestic ingenuity and our existing production base.

We are, so to speak, landlocked by the sea, and in a wartime scenario, we cannot count on foreign resupply. That's why we must have local manufacturing capabilities for all essential weapons systems. Bureaucratic obstacles to military production and development must be seriously dismantled. With state support, we should establish numerous small factories and storage sites across the country for producing and stockpiling explosives, ammunition, drones and other necessities.

This decentralized approach is crucial because, in war, a few large industrial parks would be bombed to rubble on day one — just as happened in Ukraine — bringing production to a halt. Large-scale facilities cannot be hidden. While it's commendable that the Ministry of Defense is updating regulations on weapons factories and depots, this won't address the core issue or legalize the storage of weapons and munitions, including explosives, in dispersed caches. The dilemma remains unresolved: how to ensure production and stockpile survivability during war while maintaining control in peacetime.

In this light, the widely publicized plans to build massive defense industry parks amount to wasted money from a sustainability standpoint. We will never, during peacetime, manage to stockpile the sheer volume of combat material that would actually be needed in war. We can't even grasp the scale yet.

The only viable solution is to ramp up production during wartime. But in order to be able to do that, the government must act now — by clearly prioritizing and supporting domestic businesses. That means a complete overhaul of the procurement framework and the enforcement of a "buy Estonian" policy, which currently faces serious challenges. Yes, there have been minor improvements, but they're nowhere near enough. What's needed is a profound and principled shift. Who has the courage to make it?

Here's just one example: what would be a sufficient quantity of explosives for producing various charges that could deliver a meaningful counterstrike? It's impossible to calculate precisely, but as a starting point, if we estimated one kilogram per enemy soldier or piece of equipment, a reasonable baseline would be one million kilograms. The focus should be on producing plastic explosives that can be molded into different forms — like modeling clay — whether it's a few-hundred-gram drone mine or a half-ton missile warhead.

A million kilograms of such explosive material would take up about 40 standard shipping containers. For safety reasons, it should be stored in smaller, concealed caches. That means we may need around 400 to 500 smaller storage sites.

What's the time investment and cost? A specialized factory can produce about 100 kilograms per day, with an estimated direct cost of around €50 per kilogram. But instead of a few large factories, we need many smaller, lower-profile ones — without big signs announcing what they're making. It's smarter to run these as side operations under the cover of other types of production or services. Anything we don't conceal from prying eyes will eventually become a target — and targets get hit.

In summary

As one of my favorite military thinkers, William S. Lind, wrote so brilliantly in the "Maneuver Warfare Handbook": "God is usually on the side of the bigger battalion — unless the smaller one has the better idea."

We have no choice: we need the better idea, because Russia's "battalion" is much larger. If we hesitate or stand still, we will lose everything in the event of war. But if we come together as a nation, set aside our egos and genuinely want to remain free, then we have all the conditions and capabilities to make that happen. And we can do it largely on our own, without heavy reliance on allies.

If we don't have the numbers in manpower, then we must make up for it with technology. In the next war, victory will go to the side that uses more intelligent and more intelligently deployed unmanned systems to inflict damage on the enemy. In that context, population size is no longer a decisive limitation.

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