At the „Aurora 26” military exercise in Sweden, Ukrainian drone operators took armoured vehicles and entire NATO units out of action in short order. The hits were simulated and nothing was actually destroyed - but the result is uncomfortable: expensive tanks and armoured vehicles were dropping out of the fight on paper, taken down by aircraft costing a fraction of their value.

The role of the notional adversary went to members of the First Corps of Ukraine's National Guard, „Azov”. Using reconnaissance and first-person-view strike drones, they repeatedly broke through Western units' defences and forced organisers to halt and restart parts of the exercise. Their effectiveness was such that their participation was limited in certain phases - so that the other units would not suffer a total simulated loss of equipment.

A tank worth millions against a drone worth a few hundred euros

The exercise ran from 27 April to 13 May across Sweden, with the main activities on the strategically important island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. More than 18,000 troops from 13 countries took part. The Ukrainian team was made up of members of the First Presidential Operational Brigade „Burevii” and the 20th Operational Brigade „Lubart”.

Their task was simple and brutal: to give Western units what Russian and Ukrainian forces face every day - uninterrupted aerial surveillance, rapid detection of movement and attacks by cheap drones. In one case an operator attacked a Leopard 2 tank while the soldier who had abandoned the vehicle tried to shoot down the drone with an infantry weapon. A scene that describes the whole asymmetry in one sentence.

The criticism wasn't about the equipment

The Ukrainians were most critical of how the manoeuvres were organised, the long pauses between operations and the strict restrictions on drone use. For units coming from a front where enemy drones constantly monitor the terrain and attack the moment they spot a target, that tempo has little to do with real war.

Their assessment was that Western armies still plan combat operations as if they had enough time to assemble, deploy and relocate large units. In real conditions, such a concentration of people and equipment would be detected and attacked immediately. One participant's conclusion: Western armed forces in their current form are not ready for modern war.

War changes faster than armies

Drones that can be bought or assembled for a few hundred or a few thousand euros now find, track and disable tanks worth millions. Above the front, reconnaissance aircraft, strike drones, electronic warfare and data-relay systems operate simultaneously, all but eliminating the possibility of moving unnoticed.

The substance of the warning from Gotland is not that NATO lacks expensive hardware. It is that the hardware is still being used by the rules of previous wars. While Western armies plan long manoeuvres and restrict drones with exercise regulations, the modern battlefield changes from week to week.

This is a story worth reading for anyone who thinks defence is measured in budgets and parade photographs. The most expensive equipment in the world got a lesson from operators flying hobby-shop aircraft - because they come from a place where a mistake is paid for immediately. Are the armies in this region reading the same lesson, or waiting for somebody else to learn it first?