5.1 – Addressing the impact of Drones on modern warfare
The purpose of this document is not simply to describe the growing role of unmanned systems on the battlefield, but to support the adaptation of mountain warfare forces to an operational environment increasingly shaped by persistent observation, contested electromagnetic conditions, decentralized capabilities, and rapid technological change where unmanned and autonomous systems are no longer peripheral enablers but essential components of the modern battlespace.
For mountain warfare forces, the challenge is no longer the availability of technology, but its integration into doctrine, training, force structures, command and control, sustainment, force protection, and tactical decision-making.
This document seeks to bridge the gap between technological capability and operational employment by identifying lessons learned, highlighting emerging trends, and examining the implications of integrating unmanned and autonomous systems within mountain warfare formations.
More broadly, it contributes to the ongoing process of adaptation and institutional learning across NATO and Allied forces. Rather than providing definitive answers, it aims to inform experimentation, support doctrinal development, stimulate professional discussion, and help mountain warfare forces remain operationally relevant in an increasingly unmanned battlespace.
5.2 Why Ahead: Lessons from NATO-Ukraine Cooperation in Drone-centred Warfare
Over the last years, the war in Ukraine has generated an unprecedented volume of operational data concerning the employment of unmanned systems, electronic warfare, distributed reconnaissance-strike complexes, autonomous technologies, and counter-drone capabilities. Unlike theoretical assessments or technology forecasts, these observations derive from continuous large-scale combat operations involving both state actors and highly adaptive military organizations.
To capture and analyse these lessons, NATO and Ukraine established the Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre (JATEC), whose mission is to transform operational observations into recommendations for doctrine development, capability development, training, and force adaptation. The conclusions emerging from JATEC are particularly significant because they are not based on isolated incidents or technological demonstrations, but on thousands of operational engagements observed across multiple domains of warfare.
A central conclusion emerging from JATEC is that drone warfare has evolved from a supporting capability into a decisive factor of contemporary conflict. Unmanned systems are no longer limited to reconnaissance functions or niche applications. They are increasingly employed as integral components of intelligence collection, target acquisition, precision engagement, electronic warfare support, force protection, and operational decision-making.
This transformation has profound implications.
Historically, military organizations have often regarded new technologies as capabilities to be integrated into existing structures and procedures. The observations collected by JATEC suggest a different reality. The challenge is no longer how to integrate drones into current operational concepts. The challenge is how to adapt operational concepts, organizational structures, training systems, and force employment models to a battlefield in which unmanned systems are already ubiquitous.
Operational evidence repeatedly demonstrates that relatively inexpensive drone systems can generate effects against platforms whose acquisition and sustainment costs are several orders of magnitude higher. Commercially adapted FPV systems costing hundreds or thousands of dollars have successfully engaged armoured vehicles, artillery systems, command posts, logistics nodes, and force concentrations. This emerging cost asymmetry challenges many of the assumptions that have traditionally guided capability development and force modernization.
Equally important is the impact on operational tempo.
One of the most significant observations emerging from contemporary conflicts is the compression of the decision-action cycle. Persistent aerial surveillance, real-time target acquisition, digital information sharing, and decentralized strike capabilities have dramatically reduced the time between detection and engagement. Activities that previously required multiple command layers and extensive coordination can now be conducted by small tactical units operating organic unmanned systems.
As a consequence, survivability is increasingly determined not by physical protection alone but by the ability to avoid detection in the first place.
JATEC observations consistently highlight that concealment, dispersion, deception, camouflage, mobility, electromagnetic discipline, and signature management have become fundamental elements of force protection. Units that fail to adapt to conditions of persistent observation risk becoming vulnerable regardless of the level of protection provided by traditional defensive measures.
The lessons emerging from Ukraine also highlight another critical challenge: the growing divergence between the speed of battlefield adaptation and the speed of institutional adaptation.
Combat units continuously modify procedures, tactics, technical solutions, and organizational arrangements in response to evolving threats. New employment concepts can be developed, tested, validated, and disseminated within weeks. In contrast, doctrine development, procurement cycles, training programs, force structure adaptation, and capability planning frequently operate on timelines measured in years.
JATEC repeatedly identifies this discrepancy as one of the most important strategic challenges facing modern military organizations.
The decisive advantage is increasingly not the possession of superior technology alone, but the ability to absorb lessons, adapt rapidly, and institutionalize change before adversaries do.
The report further emphasizes that future conflicts must assume contested electromagnetic conditions as the norm rather than the exception. GNSS denial, communications disruption, datalink jamming, spoofing, cyber vulnerabilities, and electronic warfare effects are no longer isolated battlefield phenomena. They have become persistent operational realities.
Particularly noteworthy is JATEC’s recommendation that NATO should assume GNSS denial as a baseline operational and training condition. Such an assessment represents a significant conceptual shift. For decades, military systems have been developed under the assumption that satellite navigation and reliable communications would be available throughout operations. Current operational experience demonstrates that these assumptions can no longer be taken for granted.
Similarly, the saturation of the lower airspace has emerged as a defining characteristic of modern warfare. ISR drones, FPV systems, loitering munitions, relay platforms, electronic warfare assets, cargo drones, and Counter-UAS systems increasingly operate simultaneously within the same battlespace. Managing this environment has become an operational requirement directly linked to mission effectiveness, force protection, and command and control.
Mountain environments amplify many of the dynamics observed in contemporary conflicts.
The observations emerging from JATEC therefore reinforce a broader conclusion that extends beyond the employment of drones themselves.
The future battlefield will not be defined solely by technological superiority. It will be defined by the ability of military organizations to adapt faster than the operational environment changes around them.
This report should therefore be read not merely as a study on unmanned systems in mountain warfare, but as a contribution to a wider process of institutional adaptation. The purpose is not only to examine how unmanned systems can be employed more effectively, but also to support the development of organizations, procedures, training systems, and operational concepts capable of remaining relevant in an environment increasingly characterized by persistent observation, contested electromagnetic conditions, decentralized capabilities, rapid innovation cycles, and continuous adaptation.
The lessons emerging from JATEC make one conclusion unmistakably clear: adaptation is no longer a matter of competitive advantage. It is becoming a prerequisite for operational relevance.
5 – Aim of the Document
5.1 – Addressing the impact of Drones on modern warfare
The purpose of this document is not simply to describe the growing role of unmanned systems on the battlefield, but to support the adaptation of mountain warfare forces to an operational environment increasingly shaped by persistent observation, contested electromagnetic conditions, decentralized capabilities, and rapid technological change where unmanned and autonomous systems are no longer peripheral enablers but essential components of the modern battlespace.
For mountain warfare forces, the challenge is no longer the availability of technology, but its integration into doctrine, training, force structures, command and control, sustainment, force protection, and tactical decision-making.
This document seeks to bridge the gap between technological capability and operational employment by identifying lessons learned, highlighting emerging trends, and examining the implications of integrating unmanned and autonomous systems within mountain warfare formations.
More broadly, it contributes to the ongoing process of adaptation and institutional learning across NATO and Allied forces. Rather than providing definitive answers, it aims to inform experimentation, support doctrinal development, stimulate professional discussion, and help mountain warfare forces remain operationally relevant in an increasingly unmanned battlespace.
5.2 Why Ahead: Lessons from NATO-Ukraine Cooperation in Drone-centred Warfare
Over the last years, the war in Ukraine has generated an unprecedented volume of operational data concerning the employment of unmanned systems, electronic warfare, distributed reconnaissance-strike complexes, autonomous technologies, and counter-drone capabilities. Unlike theoretical assessments or technology forecasts, these observations derive from continuous large-scale combat operations involving both state actors and highly adaptive military organizations.
To capture and analyse these lessons, NATO and Ukraine established the Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre (JATEC), whose mission is to transform operational observations into recommendations for doctrine development, capability development, training, and force adaptation. The conclusions emerging from JATEC are particularly significant because they are not based on isolated incidents or technological demonstrations, but on thousands of operational engagements observed across multiple domains of warfare.
A central conclusion emerging from JATEC is that drone warfare has evolved from a supporting capability into a decisive factor of contemporary conflict. Unmanned systems are no longer limited to reconnaissance functions or niche applications. They are increasingly employed as integral components of intelligence collection, target acquisition, precision engagement, electronic warfare support, force protection, and operational decision-making.
This transformation has profound implications.
Historically, military organizations have often regarded new technologies as capabilities to be integrated into existing structures and procedures. The observations collected by JATEC suggest a different reality. The challenge is no longer how to integrate drones into current operational concepts. The challenge is how to adapt operational concepts, organizational structures, training systems, and force employment models to a battlefield in which unmanned systems are already ubiquitous.
Operational evidence repeatedly demonstrates that relatively inexpensive drone systems can generate effects against platforms whose acquisition and sustainment costs are several orders of magnitude higher. Commercially adapted FPV systems costing hundreds or thousands of dollars have successfully engaged armoured vehicles, artillery systems, command posts, logistics nodes, and force concentrations. This emerging cost asymmetry challenges many of the assumptions that have traditionally guided capability development and force modernization.
Equally important is the impact on operational tempo.
One of the most significant observations emerging from contemporary conflicts is the compression of the decision-action cycle. Persistent aerial surveillance, real-time target acquisition, digital information sharing, and decentralized strike capabilities have dramatically reduced the time between detection and engagement. Activities that previously required multiple command layers and extensive coordination can now be conducted by small tactical units operating organic unmanned systems.
As a consequence, survivability is increasingly determined not by physical protection alone but by the ability to avoid detection in the first place.
JATEC observations consistently highlight that concealment, dispersion, deception, camouflage, mobility, electromagnetic discipline, and signature management have become fundamental elements of force protection. Units that fail to adapt to conditions of persistent observation risk becoming vulnerable regardless of the level of protection provided by traditional defensive measures.
The lessons emerging from Ukraine also highlight another critical challenge: the growing divergence between the speed of battlefield adaptation and the speed of institutional adaptation.
Combat units continuously modify procedures, tactics, technical solutions, and organizational arrangements in response to evolving threats. New employment concepts can be developed, tested, validated, and disseminated within weeks. In contrast, doctrine development, procurement cycles, training programs, force structure adaptation, and capability planning frequently operate on timelines measured in years.
JATEC repeatedly identifies this discrepancy as one of the most important strategic challenges facing modern military organizations.
The decisive advantage is increasingly not the possession of superior technology alone, but the ability to absorb lessons, adapt rapidly, and institutionalize change before adversaries do.
The report further emphasizes that future conflicts must assume contested electromagnetic conditions as the norm rather than the exception. GNSS denial, communications disruption, datalink jamming, spoofing, cyber vulnerabilities, and electronic warfare effects are no longer isolated battlefield phenomena. They have become persistent operational realities.
Particularly noteworthy is JATEC’s recommendation that NATO should assume GNSS denial as a baseline operational and training condition. Such an assessment represents a significant conceptual shift. For decades, military systems have been developed under the assumption that satellite navigation and reliable communications would be available throughout operations. Current operational experience demonstrates that these assumptions can no longer be taken for granted.
Similarly, the saturation of the lower airspace has emerged as a defining characteristic of modern warfare. ISR drones, FPV systems, loitering munitions, relay platforms, electronic warfare assets, cargo drones, and Counter-UAS systems increasingly operate simultaneously within the same battlespace. Managing this environment has become an operational requirement directly linked to mission effectiveness, force protection, and command and control.
Mountain environments amplify many of the dynamics observed in contemporary conflicts.
The observations emerging from JATEC therefore reinforce a broader conclusion that extends beyond the employment of drones themselves.
The future battlefield will not be defined solely by technological superiority. It will be defined by the ability of military organizations to adapt faster than the operational environment changes around them.
This report should therefore be read not merely as a study on unmanned systems in mountain warfare, but as a contribution to a wider process of institutional adaptation. The purpose is not only to examine how unmanned systems can be employed more effectively, but also to support the development of organizations, procedures, training systems, and operational concepts capable of remaining relevant in an environment increasingly characterized by persistent observation, contested electromagnetic conditions, decentralized capabilities, rapid innovation cycles, and continuous adaptation.
The lessons emerging from JATEC make one conclusion unmistakably clear: adaptation is no longer a matter of competitive advantage. It is becoming a prerequisite for operational relevance.