Battle Tested but Institutionally Excluded: the Role of Ukraine in the EU’s Collective Drone Security

The EU Needs Institutional Urgency and Ukraine’s Involvement to Close the Technological Gap with Russia

In May 2025, NATO conducted a major military exercise called the Hedgehog, in which Ukrainian drone experts participated alongside allied forces (WSJ, 2026). Over 16,000 troops from 12 NATO countries were stationed in Estonia. Head of the Estonian Defence Forces’ unmanned systems programme Lt. Col. Arbo Probal stated the exercise’s aim was to “create friction, stress for units and cognitive overload as soon as possible”. What followed became a doctrinal exposure.

NATO forces were caught off guard, operating under outdated doctrines designed for a pre-drone battlefield, when movement and command structures assumed total aerial surveillance did not exist. They tried to hide under tree lines, park armoured vehicles in visible positions, build command stations in exposed terrain (leading to their being openly visible from kilometres away) and showed no modern adaptations that Ukrainian soldiers consider routine. On the other side of the mock battlefield were 10 Ukrainian soldiers, including personnel borrowed from the front lines, who destroyed 17 armoured vehicles and landed 30 strikes on other targets.

Aivar Hanniotti, an ex-Estonian Defence League unmanned aerial systems coordinator who led the team of adversaries during the exercise, said the results were “horrible,” and that a unit of about 100 personnel was “able to eliminate two battalions in a day.” The NATO side, Hanniotti noted, “didn’t even get our drone teams.” However, when asked about the exercise, Probal responded “mission accomplished,” suggesting the exercise had done its job. The gap is impossible to ignore.

DELTA and Rubicon: Innovation on Both Sides

DELTA is a Ukrainian battlefield management system that integrates drone reconnaissance, satellite imagery and AI analysis into a kill chain available at all times (Ukrainska Pravda, 2025). Originating as a highly efficient digital map for situational awareness deployed in August 2024, it grew into a complex ecosystem of software applications and is now utilised on all levels of military decision making (CSIS, 2024). Through advance planning DELTA has been integral in the success of many Ukrainian operations launched against Russia. Worldwide, this technology had been in the making for decades: for instance the US spent billions attempting to build something similar, although their Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control system remains undeployed at scale. Around the same time that DELTA was launched, Moscow created its elite drone force The Centre for Advanced Unmanned Technologies known as ‘Rubicon’ (CNN, 2025).

Ukraine’s drone production, 2022-2026.

Rubicon is a secretive organisation and a direct response to Ukraine’s drone dominance. First used to fight off the Kursk invasion in August 2024 and consisting of only one small drone unit, by autumn 2025 it had expanded to 12 units and approximately 5,000 personnel (Saratoga Foundation, 2026). Rubicon uses electronic warfare and signals intelligence to locate enemy drone operators, at one point eliminating up to 70% of drone pilots from one Ukrainian brigade in a single week (RFE/RL, 2025). For years both Russia and Ukraine have been adapting to this battlefield reality. NATO forces encountered this gap in progress for the first time in Estonia in May 2025.

A Window, Not a Planning Error

On 10 September 2025, Poland activated NATO’s Article 4 after multiple Russian drones violated its airspace (NATO, 2025). NATO swiftly scrambled F-35s, F-16s, AWACS aircraft and Patriot missiles worth millions to intercept drones worth not more than $20,000 each (The Washington Post, 2025). Ukraine defends off regular mass drone attacks, intercepting 70-80%, using cheap drones at a fraction of the cost to what NATO used.

The European Parliament explicitly acknowledged this fact in a January 2026 resolution, stating Europe faces “grey-zone saturation attacks” and must develop “cost-effective solutions to drone warfare” (European Parliament, 2026). The issue is not the lack of awareness from key European decision-makers, but how slowly that awareness translates into procurement doctrine. During the unveiling of the Defence Readiness Roadmap on 13 October 2025, European Commission Vice-President Kaja Kallas stated, “Russia has no capacity to launch an attack on the EU today” (The HILL, 2025).

The EU’s defence plan the Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 projects proposed aerial defence system the Drone Wall to be fully functional by the end of 2028. More generally, the Roadmap aims to close all defence gaps by 2030. However, NATO generals warn that Russia may be capable of action as early as 2027-2030. English-language Ukrainian news outlet Euromaidan Press wrote on 7 April 2026 that “The gap between threat timeline and readiness timeline is not a planning error. It is a window”. It is becoming more and more crucial for the EU to respond at the speed the threat demands, rather than the speed its institutions permit.

Integration Over Aspiration

Maria Lemberg, a military robotics executive who coordinated Ukraine’s Hedgehog participation, said she hopes the exercise “can serve as a wake-up call and basis for more knowledge-sharing between Kyiv and its partners” (WSJ, 2026). Systematic integration of Ukrainian drone warfare instructors into EU training programs should be an immediate action and stand as the foundation of new training doctrines. As stated by Kallas, “Ukraine is still Europe’s first line of defence” (The Hill, 2025). In order to achieve the minimum integration required before 2028, Europe has to tackle both doctrinal and technological gaps. The next immediate step is to fast-track DELTA as the Drone Wall’s command layer. It is NATO-compatible, battle proven and has already been formally requested by one undisclosed NATO member in 2025. Yet after five years of testing the system for interoperability at military exercises, the pace and formality of its integration is unclear.

The EU understands how a modern war on domestic soil might unfold: Hedgehog 2025 confirmed it. Europe already has the knowledge, a very skilled ally, and the evidence. The EU needs the institutional urgency to match the threat. That lack of urgency, not Russian ability, remains Europe’s most immediate security concern.

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