In the fall of 2020, Azerbaijan went to war against Armenia. On paper, the Armenian force was stronger. They had armor, missile defense, and occupied well-defended positions. What Azerbaijan had was a drone fleet.
In the early stages of the war, Azerbaijan used 11 slow Soviet-era An-2 aircraft that had been converted into drones and sent them buzzing over Nagorno-Karabakh as bait to Armenian air defense systems—tempting them to fire and reveal their positions, after which they could be hit by drones.
Azerbaijan used surveillance drones to spot targets and sent armed drones or kamikaze drones to destroy them, analysts said.
The entire war was over in 44 days, with Armenia suing for peace. And the world’s military professionals went to work trying to understand what had happened:
During the six-week conflict, Azerbaijan deployed Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones and loitering munitions, many of them Israeli-made, to shrink the battlefield and chip away at Armenia’s armored forces as well as the logistical tail that hadn’t even reached the front lines.
The lesson was clear: Drones are a force multiplier—a way for even modestly sized militaries to pursue combined arms strategies.
And looking at the battlefield in Ukraine, it’s pretty obvious that the Ukrainians are using drones to good effect as well.
Drones come in all shapes and sizes, from smaller than a remote-control helicopter you might buy from Amazon to the size of an F-16. We won’t know exactly what drone technologies were given to Ukraine until the war is over—if ever—but we can see signs that they’re making a difference.
The most important factors for drone success are pilot availability, drone size, fuel type, reusability, take-off and landing access, maintenance, and choosing the right platform for the mission.
One drone we know the Ukrainians have deployed effectively are TB-2 drones from Turkey, which have destroyed armor and harassed convoys that weren’t already broken down or stuck in the mud.
Only Ukraine knows how many TB-2s they have: reports vary, from 20 to 50 units. And it’s unclear how long Ukraine will be able to keep these TB-2s in the air. They’re about “as stealthy as a crop duster,” as the New York Times put it, and easy to shoot down. But at least to this point, Ukraine has been able to use TB-2s to real success, as they effectively double the size of its conventional, manned air force.
If anything, the drones are probably more valuable to Ukraine than manned aircraft. They lack the ability to fight air-to-air, but they more than make up for that deficiency. Their greatest virtue: A downed drone does not also equal a downed pilot. So long as you can keep your drone pilots safely hidden away, they are a non-depleting resource, meaning that your drone capabilities are limited by munitions, fuel, and launching/landing access.
Ukraine may not be limited to TB-2s. If we wanted to really help the Ukrainians, the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy could give them some MQ-9 reaper drones. As Dave Deptula writes at Forbes:
Imagine if Ukraine had access to UAVs that had four times the payload, 12 times the range, the ability to fly across the entire country of Ukraine, and the ability to …….