Ukraine is already writing the combat statutes of the future, while the West is only reading reports

Ukraine today is not just fending off a larger adversary and not just increasing drone production. Before our eyes, it is effectively forming modern war doctrines in real-time, and its combat experience is becoming critically important not only for Kyiv but also for the armies of the USA, Europe, and, especially important for the Israeli reader, for any country that has to live in an environment of constant military threat. This is the conclusion drawn by the Modern War Journal article on the role of the 1st Separate Center for Unmanned Systems of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces.

For Israel, this topic is important not out of academic interest. The Ukrainian war has long ceased to be just a regional conflict. It is now a huge testing ground where it is being tested how states will fight in the coming years: how quickly the army learns, how it connects engineers with the front, how it turns cheap platforms into constant pressure on the enemy, and how it breaks old bureaucratic models of war management. From the original text, it is clear that it is not about one-time successful strikes, but about a systemic restructuring of the very logic of combat operations.

Why the Ukrainian experience of drone warfare is important not only for Ukraine

This is no longer a ‘technological novelty,’ but a new military norm

The authors of the material — one of the most effective Ukrainian commanders, Boris ‘Fidel’ Martynenko, and a civilian specialist from the US Army Department, Curie Wright — describe the evolution of a unit that went from frontline experiments to a full-fledged combat structure influencing the entire theater of war. Their main thesis is very clear: victory no longer belongs to those with just more expensive and complex equipment, but to those who adapt faster, implement faster, and learn faster from their own strikes.

For the Israeli audience, one direct conclusion is important here. The war of the future will not wait for years of approvals, slow tenders, and overly long chains between the front, headquarters, and the factory. Ukraine shows the opposite: combat experience must almost immediately turn into changes in design, tactics, application logic, and organizational structure. And if this does not happen, the enemy moves forward.

Ukraine is creating not just drones, but an entire campaign logic

The text separately emphasizes that unmanned systems in Ukraine have gradually moved out of a subordinate role and become a separate domain of war, with their own logic of planning, striking, and assessing results. This is a fundamental point. It is no longer about a ‘flying replacement for artillery,’ but about an independent system that connects reconnaissance, strike, and subsequent analysis into a single continuous chain.

For Israel, which lives in the reality of threats from several directions at once, this thought sounds especially practical. When you can be pressured by both a proxy network and a state adversary, and a hybrid threat infrastructure, you need not only a high-precision missile or a good UAV. You need an army capable of very quickly turning information into action. This is exactly what Ukraine is currently practicing in battle.

How Ukraine turned a frontline experiment into a full-fledged war system

Initially, it was not a headquarters project, but a frontline necessity

The origins of the 1st Separate Center lie in the early Ukrainian drone ecosystem, where operators, engineers, and small military groups literally in contact with Russian forces sought working solutions for close and long-range precision strikes. In September 2022, as stated in the text, Boris Martynenko concluded that drones could provide not only a local tactical effect but also strategic results in depth. Hence the idea of a separate unit focused on drones and its own cycle of research, development, testing, and evaluation was born.

It was a very Ukrainian, military in essence, path: not to wait for someone above to approve the perfect concept, but first to prove in practice that the new model works.

The experiments of 2022 became the foundation for a new structure

The text describes a sequential approach that makes this experience particularly valuable. First, in September 2022, an experimental battalion for deep long-range strikes was created. Its task was to test whether unmanned systems could independently plan and execute strikes at depths of up to 500 kilometers without relying on traditional artillery and missile command chains. Then, already in December 2022, an experimental battalion at the tactical level appeared. And this is important: tactical application was not considered the basis for deep strikes; on the contrary, it was built later to close a vertically integrated system.

It is here that it becomes clear why the Ukrainian experience is now being studied so closely by allies. Ukraine has not just increased its fleet of drones. It has tested a new operational logic of war.

2023 and 2025: from the 14th regiment to the 1st center

In 2023, the 14th Separate Regiment of Unmanned Aerial Systems was created. Then, as the scale of tasks grew, it was expanded and renamed the 1st Separate Center for Unmanned Systems. This transformation was not cosmetic. It meant that Ukraine no longer considers drone warfare as an auxiliary element but makes it a separate, sustainable, institutionally structured system capable of simultaneously fighting, teaching, testing, and updating doctrine.

At this point, a broader politico-military meaning of the whole story arises. NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency has repeatedly written that Ukraine is gradually becoming not only a recipient of military aid but also a supplier of practical combat knowledge for partners. The story of the 1st center is one of the most illustrative examples: the front in Ukraine now produces not only heroic episodes but applied models of war that will be studied in headquarters on both sides of the Atlantic tomorrow.

What exactly Western armies should understand and why it concerns Israel

The main resource is the speed of adaptation, not the cost of the platform

One of the strongest parts of the original material is the idea that dominance on the battlefield is increasingly determined not by the complexity of the platform, but by the speed of adaptation, the quality of application, and the ability to turn relatively cheap expendable technologies into constant operational pressure. The authors directly lead to the conclusion: the success of the 1st center is determined not by a single technology, but by the ability to learn, adapt, and scale solutions.

For the Israeli reader, this sounds especially acute. Israel is accustomed to thinking in terms of qualitative technological superiority, and this is justified. But the Ukrainian experience reminds us: even the best technology loses if there is too long a distance between the battlefield, analytics, the manufacturer, and command.

Ukraine is already showing how a new type of military cycle should work

The text separately states that the 1st center acts not only as a combat unit but also as a hub for experiments, training, and doctrine refinement. Moreover, Ukraine now produces 80–90% of the drones that this center uses to strike targets at depths of up to 1000 kilometers on Russian territory. At the same time, there is a close connection with industry and academia, and changes in designs and solutions can be implemented literally in hours or days, whereas in Western systems this often takes months and years.

This is where the real dividing line between the old and new war lies. Not between ‘having drones’ and ‘not having drones,’ but between an army capable of learning at the pace of battle and an army that continues to fight by peacetime procedures.

For the US and allies, this is a chance to learn not from their own blood

The authors separately emphasize that the model of the 1st center opens up opportunities for cooperation with industry, science, and allied armies, including the US Army. Among the key lessons are mission orientation, resilience to electronic warfare, and understanding unmanned systems as a consumable but effective resource. The meaning is direct: partners can absorb these lessons now, without paying for them with the cost of future own failures in real war.

For Israel, this is also not an abstract question. The country is already living in an era when the Middle East is saturated with unmanned threats, electronic warfare means, long-range strikes, and attempts to overload defense with quantity. The Ukrainian experience here is important not as a ‘foreign story,’ but as an early, very harsh textbook on the war of the near future.

In the end, the conclusion is simple. Ukraine today is fighting not only for its territory. It is simultaneously creating a practical military school of the 21st century. And if the West truly wants to prepare for the next conflicts, it will have to study not only its old doctrines but also the Ukrainian reality — the very one where the solution is tested not at a conference, but under fire. The original material from Modern War Journal shows this very clearly: the Ukrainian experience of drone warfare has already become part of global security, not exclusively a national history of Ukraine.