• US forces started practicing conducting at-sea rescue missions with naval drones several years ago.
• These rehearsals were put to use earlier this month after Iran downed a US Apache helicopter.
• A US military official called the first-of-its-kind rescue mission a "significant step forward."

US forces began practicing using sea drones for water rescue missions years before an uncrewed vessel saved two soldiers after their Apache helicopter was shot down in the Middle East this month.

"You can rehearse medevac scenarios during exercises," a US military official told Business Insider, but to successfully execute that capability in a real emergency situation, "there's something to be said about that."

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to share insight into the unusual early June rescue mission, during which a US Navy sea drone picked up two American crew members after Iran shot down their AH-64 Apache off the coast of Oman.

The rescue mission — an operational first for the US military — involved an uncrewed surface vessel, or USV, operated by Task Force 59, a Navy unit focused on integrating drones and artificial intelligence into naval operations in the Middle East.

When the Navy launched Task Force 59 in 2021, one of its goals was to test emerging technologies — particularly USVs, with which the US had less experience compared to some other drones — "to see how they could be optimized" for everyday naval operations, the military official said.

To do that, the US military worked closely with USV manufacturers during exercises with partners in the Middle East. One such drill, held a few years ago in the Gulf of Aqaba, south of Israel, tested the concept of using naval drones for medical evacuation. The simulation involved transporting a "patient" from a ship to the shore for follow-up treatment and care.

The military official said "the concept of using drones to support personnel transport — and, in particular, support medical evacuations — is something that was thought about very early on as these systems were integrated into regional operations by the US."

A 'significant step forward'

President Donald Trump said on June 9 that Iran had shot down an Apache helicopter while it was patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz. The US military said the two American crew members were rescued off the coast of Oman within roughly two hours.

The US knew the Apache crew's location and had established contact with the soldiers while looking for an opportunity to rescue them using assets from across the military, the official said.

Among the assets available were tactical aircraft and a Corsair USV, a 24-foot-long surface drone made by Texas-based Saronic Technologies. The official said this vessel, while just one platform in a broader effort, played an "integral role" in the search-and-rescue mission.

When the vessel arrived, the Apache crew members were able to hoist themselves into the USV, which had the capability and proximity to move the crew from one location on the water to another — a necessary switch because of "operational circumstances," the official said, declining to elaborate.

Once they were moved to the second location, the soldiers could then be "feasibly" lifted by helicopter to be transferred ashore for additional treatment, the official added.

The maritime rescue mission comes amid a broader push by Washington and its allies to integrate drones into naval operations. Ukraine's use of USVs against the Russian Navy in the Black Sea has given these efforts greater urgency.

Beyond the Middle East, where US forces have primarily used uncrewed surface vessels for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, the Navy has also been expanding its naval drone training and operations in Europe in recent years.

The military official said the Apache rescue is a "clear demonstration" of the value of integrating USVs into everyday naval operations and marks a "significant step forward" for the US in expanding its surface drone mission portfolio.

While the Apache rescue mission was out of the ordinary, casualty evacuations using drones aren't a new concept. Ukraine regularly uses uncrewed ground robots, or UGVs, to rescue wounded soldiers from the battlefield.

Warfare is becoming increasingly autonomous, and there are indications that missions like these could become more common as time goes on. Western militaries are taking note. Last December, for instance, NATO hosted an event in London to source industry solutions for battlefield treatment and evacuation in drone-saturated environments.

• Ukraine's drone operators aren't necessarily more protected than other soldiers on the battlefield.
• Saying "they are doing their job in much safer conditions is completely wrong," an official said.
• They're top targets, and a soldier said pilots sometimes need to fight just like infantry.

Ukraine's drone operators aren't necessarily spared from the horrors of war because they pilot remote systems, a senior official said. Many are in the fighting, and they're often top targets for the enemy.

Taras Berezovets, head of the military cooperation department of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, a part of Ukraine's armed forces, said that with drone operators, "they do just the same job" as other soldiers. "To say that they are doing their job in much safer conditions is completely wrong."

"We should never forget that drone operators are the primary targets for Russian units," he added, speaking at a recent drone summit in Latvia. "They are trying to kill them," he said, just as Ukraine is trying to do to Russian drone pilots.

"Drone operators are first of all soldiers, and they are subject to the same psychological problems and traumas" as any other soldier, Berezovets said, explaining that he would never consider operators differently.

Dmytro "Liber" Zhluktenko, a former drone operator who is now a lessons-learned analyst with Ukraine's 413th Unmanned Systems Regiment "RAID," told Business Insider that operators don't feel they are in any less danger because they have a remote-controlled weapon. "It's not like that," he said, rejecting the idea that the role is safer. "It's very dangerous."

"In some of the cases, we have our drone operators engage in small arms combat like infantry," he said, "So it's basically infantry with the drones." It means getting close to a fight, as soldiers with other weapons do.

Drones are a crucial weapon for both Ukraine and Russia in this war, filling shortages of both weapons and manpower. Ukraine says that drones are now causing 90% of Russia's front-line losses as usage expands.

Drone operators are also force multipliers. One pilot can launch countless drones over a deployment to scout and gather intelligence on enemy movements and targets or to launch cheap attacks on soldiers and weapon systems, including expensive gear.

That makes them priority targets.

The operators that control Ukraine's spy and strike drones often have to get close to the front lines to preserve the connection with their drones and to work effectively with regular infantry. It means they have to move, hide, and survive just like other soldiers.

Soldiers and drone operators have told Business Insider that Russia treats drone pilots as high-value targets because of the damage they can do on the battlefield. They said Russian forces have intensified attacks with missiles, bombs, and other weapons to hunt those operators, while Western analysts have noted rising casualties among Ukraine's drone pilots.

One drone operator, who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military issues, said "when the enemy spots a drone operator somewhere, it uses every single thing at its disposal — every type of weaponry" — to eliminate them. And Ukraine is targeting Russian pilots, too.

Ukraine is working to develop solutions to protect its drone operators by keeping them farther from the fighting to decrease the risk. For instance, there is new remote-control technology that allows interceptor drone pilots to control their drones from hundreds of miles away from the launch point. But many drone types still require operators staying much closer.

Zhluktenko said that Ukraine wants to have fewer people at risk on the battlefield, but that's not always possible.

Sometimes they move operators farther back for their safety, "even if it comes at the expense of our capabilities, because these are our people and we value them so much." He described it as "a very tough balance."

"We want to keep them extremely safe, but at the same time, there is some work to be done," he said.

Ukraine is heavily pushing autonomy so drones and robots can operate with less human control, keeping soldiers farther from the fight. It's part of a broader effort to move troops out of the most dangerous areas, including by scaling ground robots that could eventually handle front-line logistics.

Mykyta Rozhkov, chief business development officer at Ukrainian drone and weapons maker Frontline Robotics, told Business Insider that "the general trend is to get the pilots as far as possible" from the front line, with the absolute bare minimum of soldiers used in dangerous areas when drones and robots can't handle it alone.

But, for now, drone operators and other soldiers remain at risk.

"Russians are right now prioritizing hitting not the assault troops or soldiers;" instead, they are aiming at drone and ground robot operators, he said.

Western militaries watching the war are also aware of how at-risk drone pilots can be. The US Army course designed to catch the force up on drone warfare is teaching soldiers what it feels like to be hunted.

Maj. Rachel Martin, the course director, previously told Business Insider that the instructors deliberately use drones against students to help them understand "what it's like to be hunted by another operator from an adversary force: what it sounds like, what it feels like, how often they need to displace in order to survive or not be observed."

That matters because "the minute you're observed, you need to move," she said. "What follows that is usually fires of some capacity," such as artillery.

She said that the goal is to simulate an enemy force actively searching for them and to test their reactions "so they get used to one being hunted by the enemy." The US is used to having control of the air in its conflicts, where anything in the air above them is likely friendly, but that may not be the case in future fights.

Berezovets said Western militaries should study Ukraine's experience, including how heavily Russia targets drone units and command centers. He said Ukraine has to keep moving them because "this war, especially in terms of the drone war, is like a cat-and-mouse game. The Russians are always searching for the locations of our drone units."

He said allies ought to consider building drone command centers "deeper underground," like Ukraine does when it can, even though it's expensive work. He said that "they should be as deep as possible."

• Ukraine's fast-moving fight means once-cutting-edge defense tech can quickly lose relevance.
• An official said counter-drone tech no longer ideal for Ukraine could still help allies.
• Partner nations want defenses fast as they prepare for Shahed-style drone threats.

A Ukrainian official said the country's earlier counter-drone technology, even if it's no longer sufficiently cutting-edge for its own fight, could still be useful for partner nations worried about similar threats and searching for good-enough solutions now.

Ukraine is in a constant innovation race with Russia, with both sides trying to rapidly develop drones and counter-drone defenses to beat the other side. Technology that was once key can rapidly become obsolete on the battlefield, yet still be a better option than what many allies have available now to meet the challenge.

Davyd Aloian, the deputy secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, said some Ukrainian drone technology, including some early designs for interceptor drones built to shoot down incoming attack drones, may no longer be an ideal solution for Ukraine's needs but could still work elsewhere, where the weapons race is moving more slowly.

In the event of attacks against other countries in Europe, for example, he said "it would be better to have at least the solutions that showed their efficiency months ago."

Aloian's idea aligns with a key lesson NATO nations are learning from the war in Ukraine: having a lot of good-enough weapons available today beats a limited arsenal of perfect ones that come too late.

The deputy secretary said that this dynamic was visible in the Middle East during the Iran war, when the US and its Gulf allies faced attacks by Iran's Shahed drones. Though Tehran used some newer jet-powered one-way attack drones, like Moscow is increasingly deploying, it relied heavily on propeller-driven Shahed designs — the kind that Ukraine had been battling since early in Russia's war.

During the Iran war, Ukraine sent roughly 200 military experts to the Middle East to help nations strengthen their air defenses. It also sent troops and Ukrainian anti-drone solutions, which were used in combat. The fight triggered a sharp increase in interest in interceptor drones.

Aloian said that designs that were a year old and less relevant at home still proved effective in the region.

"We are ready to share our operation, technologies, and experience, and everything that will be needed in order for our partners to achieve the same level of defense deterrence that we have in Ukraine," Aloian said.

A starting place could be gear that Ukraine no longer has use for but could still prove practical for another operator in another kind of fight.

Aloian said it would be useful for allies to have "access to those solutions that are efficient." Even if they're not used in a fight, they could hold value as training tools, he said.

Ukrainian officials have said that Kyiv is willing to send partner nations defense technology, including interceptors, when it can do so without hurting its fight. It is also planning to export some systems, including long-range drones, that are no longer useful on its battlefield but still interest partners.

Aloian said that in the war with Russia, "speed is essential," and the defense industry has to work much faster than what allies are used to. Within months, "solutions will already be outdated."

Ukrainian officials have said that interceptor drone designs can change so quickly that the advantage of a new model may be negated within months. Companies are constantly upgrading platforms while swiftly phasing out obsolete systems. There are possibilities for those systems, though, in regions like the Middle East or elsewhere in Europe.

NATO countries are increasingly concerned about drones, especially after several Russian long-range drone incursions, but they are not under the same immediate pressure as Ukraine, which faces bombardments regularly. Officials have argued that, as they prepare for future drone threats, there is real value in defenses that are available now.

Ukraine has shifted from being a country many expected to be quickly overrun by Russia and urgently seeking help from cautious partners to being a source of new battlefield technology and tactical lessons that many Western militaries now want to study.

Aloian said Ukraine has "the experience, and we have the knowledge, we have the solutions" that it's already sharing "with our, not even partners, but with friends."

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to partner with Silicon Valley.
• Zelenskyy said the tech hub's AI skills and Ukraine's wartime drone experience could be "powerful."
• Ukraine has built a drone arsenal that's captivated the world as it fights Russia's invasion.

Ukraine has experience fighting and defending itself using drones. American tech companies have AI firepower. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the combination of the two could be world-changing.

"American technological companies have a lot of different interesting AI technologies that we don't have. And we have a lot of things that they don't have because of our experience on the battlefield," Zelenskyy said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday. "I think this cooperation can be huge and the most powerful in the world."

Ukraine, out of necessity, has built an arsenal of drone tech and anti-drone tech on a shoestring budget, captivating the global defense industry as it's largely held the line — despite its underdog status — since Russia launched its full-scale invasion over four years ago.

Ukraine said three types of homegrown drones allowed it to strike in the vicinity of Moscow earlier this month, and that it had developed a fixed-wing mid-range attack drone that's helped it strike in areas Russia once deemed safe. It's learned valuable lessons in the process, like the need for drone units to always be on the move and for their command centers to be buried underground to protect them.

The AI craze in the United States, meanwhile, coupled with a Defense Department eager to develop new autonomous military technology, is fueling the growth of a Silicon Valley defense tech industry. Companies like Anduril, led by Palmer Luckey, who built the Oculus virtual reality headset that Facebook bought in 2014, have raised billions to develop new uncrewed weapons systems.

Ukraine has since become an important potential proving ground for some of that new hardware.

Through a state-backed "Test in Ukraine" program launched last year, hundreds of international companies have applied to test drones, counter-drone systems, AI, electronic warfare tools, naval drones, and ground robots in Ukraine.

Zelenskyy on Sunday said he wants to deepen this symbiotic relationship further, and soon. His message to Silicon Valley: Stop talking and start building.

"We need to negotiate already," Zelenskyy said Sunday. "Not to speak about it. Just to take steps and to do it as quick as possible."

• Russia hunts Ukrainian drone operators, units, and command centers.
• As a result, Ukraine tries to keep them on the move and concealed and underground.
• A Ukrainian defense official said the West should take heed, even though it makes things expensive.

RIGA, Latvia — The West would do well to make sure that its future drone units and command centers are mobile and ideally underground because they are such high-value targets, a Ukrainian defense official said.

The West is investing heavily in drone warfare and tactics after seeing how effective they have been in the war in Ukraine, and Ukraine has hard-earned lessons to offer.

One of the lessons Taras Berezovets, the head of the military cooperation department of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, a branch of the country's armed forces, said the West can learn from its experiences is just how high-value drone units and command centers are as targets and how much effort is required to protect them.

"This war, especially in terms of the drone war, is like a cat-and-mouse game. The Russians are always searching for the locations of our drone units," he said, so Ukraine is always relocating them, especially if there is a chance they have been exposed.

Speaking at a drone summit in Latvia attended by Business Insider, he said that Western allies also need to consider building drone command centers "deeper underground."

"This is much more expensive, but with Russians and our Ukrainian experience, you can believe that it's always better to hide these command centers and training centers deeper underground," Berezovets said.

He said, "They should be as deep as possible."

Berezovets said that the lesson may be harder to apply in the smaller NATO countries, which have less room than Ukraine to keep relocating drone units and command centers. Ukraine is nearly 10 times the size of Latvia, and in smaller countries, he said, "it would be much harder for you to find these locations."

As an alliance, NATO gains more depth by dispersing units across its members, but in a wartime situation, moving command centers, training sites, and combat drone units across borders would bring its own complications, from logistics and communications to permissions and coordination.

Many of Ukraine's drone command centers are kept concealed and operate underground when they can. Some centers have been built as mobile vehicle-based systems, with the command apparatus established inside trucks and armored vehicles.

Drone operators also regularly operate from concealed or underground positions, flying their drones as remotely as possible to stay safe.

Drone command centers, which can range from small to large operations, are high-value targets because they coordinate the work of high-impact weapons. Ukraine says drones are causing 90% of Russia's front-line losses. Ukraine has also publicly celebrated when it has hit Russian drone command centers.

And it's not just command posts that are in the crosshairs. Individual Ukrainian drone operators are also priority targets.

Ukrainian soldiers and officials have described drone pilots as Russia's top targets, and Berezovets called them "the primary targets for Russian units," saying that "they are trying to kill them." The threat extends up the chain as well. The head of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces said last year that Russia had tried to strike multiple Ukrainian drone unit leaders at once.

These warnings align with growing realizations that for future fights, Western militaries will need to be more mobile, discreet, and dispersed.

Sir John Stringer, NATO's Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told Business Insider that Ukraine demonstrates that what the West has become used to in the decades since the Cold War, the "big single air operation center, which a lot of people have grown up with over the last sort of 35 years," is no longer viable.

Force dispersal comes with complications though. "The more distributed it becomes, the more difficult and challenging it is," he said.

Some Ukrainian defense companies have said their Western counterparts should consider no longer producing in a single large site, but instead break up their efforts across multiple locations. It makes the work harder, they say, but it's safer.

Many Ukrainian companies break up their work like this to avoid being a target, and some also work underground.

Achi, the CEO of Ukrainian defense firm Ark Robotics, told Business Insider that the company makes sure to keep different parts of "manufacturing independently from the other" and is flexible about location.

"We try to avoid building a gigafactory. I would love that, to be honest, I think this is literally the best way to do it. You build a huge factory, everything is in there," he said, speaking using a pseudonym as a security precaution.

But even as the company explores manufacturing in other parts of Europe, it still wants to keep that principle, and thinks the wider defense industry there should learn that lesson.

Achi said that "as default for defense-based manufacturing going forward, you don't want to have huge factories in one place because they are these targets. " He called it "a much deeper long-term lesson" rather than something that only companies in Ukraine need to pay attention to.

Karmo Saar, the head of sales for Estonian company Krattworks, which makes drones used by Ukraine, told Business Insider that some of Ukraine's big drone makers have more than 15 production sites, even though it would be easier and cheaper to run everything in one big facility. He said the rest of Europe needs to learn from that, warning that if a war starts, "I think we're going to be punished."

• The Army's defense industry partners put a rocket launcher on a resupply drone in a recent test.
• The tech could give the drone a lethal payload and soldiers a precision-kill option at range.
• Military leaders want drones that can quickly swap payloads, including weapons.

Defense industry operators recently tested whether a resupply drone could not only carry a rocket launcher but also fire it. The test at Fort Rucker showed a potential lethal loadout for a US Army logistics drone, the service said Tuesday.

The TRV 150 drone made by Survice Engineering Company is already used by the Marine Corps and Army for logistics missions. With a three-shot rocket launcher on board — similar in some respects to what the Ukrainians have done — ground forces could use this drone to strike at range.

Last week, Survice Engineering paired the TRV 150 resupply drone with BAE Systems' Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System during an exercise at Fort Rucker in Alabama. Both defense industry partners and US military officials attended the event.

The TR150 has been described by Survice engineers as the "pickup truck" of the sky. It can carry up to 150 pounds, it has ports for various payloads, and it features autonomous calculations for flight, range, and targeting.

The TRV 150's autonomy simplifies much of the work in operating it, such as finding the target, plotting a route, and telling the pilot when it's ready to drop its payload.

This recent test looked at a different use for the drone: carrying and firing APKWS-guided 70mm rockets.

The APKWS is already used on AH-64 Apache helicopters and "other more exquisite assets," Clark Dutterner, Survice Engineering's vice president of business development, said, per an Army release. Those platforms include other helicopters and fighter aircraft.

During the exercise, the Army and its partners tested how the drone handled the rocket launcher and reacted when firing.

Putting the launcher on a tactical drone gives troops some of the striking power of a helicopter without putting aircrews at risk. These drones could switch from logistics to attack depending on the mission.

US military officials at the exercise said that the testing helped anticipate the potential future needs of soldiers. Leaders have also mandated that all uncrewed aerial systems have lethal payload options, meaning that troops will consistently have that weapon in their arsenal.

Swappable payloads have become a Pentagon priority as the services experiment with and field more drones for different missions. US military leaders have been drawing key lessons from Ukraine, where troops rely on a wide mix of drones and payloads tailored to the mission, terrain, and threat.

• US Marines tested deploying and controlling FPV drones from helicopters.
• They also passed control of a drone launched by ground forces to a helicopter miles away.
• These practices could deliver advantages in combat for Marines.

US Marines have been trying out new roles for their H-1 helicopters, exploring whether they can serve as airborne launch and control platforms for first-person-view drones.

The concepts combine crewed and uncrewed capabilities, using helicopters to extend the reach of small, low-cost drones, giving Marines another way to strike targets without pushing aircraft as deep into contested airspace.

During a recent training exercise in California, Marines tested whether their helicopters could serve as "airborne motherships" for launching and FPV drones and aerial command centers for controlling them, the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing said in a release.

For the testing, Marines from Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 169 and 3rd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion used two modern H-1 helicopters: the UH-1Y Venom utility helicopter, which entered service in 2008 as an upgrade to the UH-1N Twin Huey, and the AH-1Z Viper attack helicopter, which replaced the AH-1 SuperCobra.

At the Twentynine Palms testing event, Marines successfully deployed an FPV drone from a moving helicopter.

Marines also practiced handing off control to a distant helicopter with a line-of-sight connection. After Marine ground forces got their Neros Archer FPV drone flying, control of the uncrewed aircraft was passed to a specialized operator team inside a UH-1Y Venom helicopter miles away. That helicopter maintained the connection and flew the drone on to its target, functioning as a "flying command post" and "aerial control station."

The 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing said that these approaches offer "commanders a scalable, cost-effective option to service a wide range of threats without risking the aircraft or expending expensive munitions on every target."

The Neros Archer is the most popular first-person-view drone in the Marine Corps infantry. Necros has a $17 million contract with the Marines to build thousands of drones and has also produced systems for Ukraine.

Like many FPV drones, the Archer can carry different payloads, and how far it can fly depends partly on how much weight it is carrying. The Marines used it for the test because it is already widely used and has performed well.

Launching and controlling FPV drones from helicopters has the potential to reduce the risk to Marine aircrews, a UH-1Y crew chief said. "We are still providing our ground support, and close air support, but in a way that lets the drones close with and destroy the enemy, rather than putting our Marines in harm's way," said Sgt. Matthew Pocklington.

More drones aboard the helicopters could allow onboard operators to potentially swarm the systems in coordinated attacks.

Beyond the Marines' latest test, the US is more broadly focused on manned-unmanned teaming. The US Air Force and US Navy have several projects in the works that have advanced drones flying alongside crewed aircraft, either operating autonomously or taking direction from human pilots.

The Navy's new refueling drone completed its first test flight over the weekend. The MQ-25A Stingray is the Navy's first carrier-based unmanned aircraft. Right now, there are no unmanned refueling aircraft in service, but the Navy said the Stingray is expected to enter service in 2027.

Built by Boeing, the Stingray costs about $209 million per unit. The Navy invested about $16 billion in the system. After years of delays in the Stingray's development, this test flight gets the Navy closer to using it in military operations.

The Navy says the drone will be a valuable tool to extend the reach of crewed fighters and aircraft.

• Western militaries need to study one Ukrainian operation in particular for drone warfare lessons.
• Officials say Operation Spiderweb, which struck dozens of Russian jets, offers key lessons.
• The US Army's drone course director told Business Insider it's "the one event that I teach to the students."

Western militaries are investing heavily in drone warfare after seeing their impact in Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion. And while it isn't necessary to absorb every lesson, current and former military officials say one major operation is worth studying closely.

Maj. Rachel Martin, director of the US Army's Unmanned Advanced Lethality Course designed to accelerate training on small drone warfare, told Business Insider that the 2025 Operation Spiderweb is "the one event that I teach to the students."

Offensive potential

In the operation, Ukraine smuggled drones into Russia, drove them to positions close to Russian airfields, and launched them at strategically valuable aircraft. The Ukrainian drones hit 41 Russian warplanes and caused an estimated $7 billion in damage.

The strikes showed how arsenals of small, cheap drones can destroy high-value military assets far from the front — and how difficult they are to defend against.

The operation was complex and took roughly a year and a half of planning, but, Martin said, it showed "that a small amount of money could be spent to destroy something at the strategic level," in this case, bombers and other high-dollar aircraft.

It cost Russia billions of dollars when it "is already hurting financially from being in a prolonged war."

Seeing that kind of low-cost attack destroying assets that could take years to replace, she said, "was a big eye-opening experience for the world." It highlighted not only what was possible with attack drones on offense, but also critical vulnerabilities.

Defensive realizations

The Ukrainian operation sparked a realization in the West about the need for significantly more protection at air bases, especially those hosting essential mission tools, such as nuclear deterrence elements.

Lt. Gen. Andrew Gebara, the deputy chief of staff for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration for the US Air Force, said of the operation last year that "disruptive" technologies like the drones seen in the Ukraine war "will have big implications not just for our bomber force or our nuclear force but really any critical infrastructure."

"We have counter-drone capabilities at these bases. Do we need to continue to modernize? Do we need to accelerate?" he said. "Yeah, absolutely, all that."

The majority of the most strategic US air assets are based inside the continental US. American airpower also depends heavily on warplanes stationed at air bases around the world. Defending against drones has proven challenging at both home and abroad, as the Tower 22 disaster and a number of domestic incidents have highlighted.

European air bases have likewise grappled with the challenge of drones, making the lessons of Operation Spiderweb particularly poignant.

Retired Air Marshal Greg Bagwell, who spent 36 years in the British Royal Air Force and served as its director of joint warfare, said last month that Operation Spiderweb holds key lessons that NATO allies need to learn.

When it comes to modern drone warfare, the West has more to learn from operations like Spiderweb than from day-to-day front-line drone fighting, he said at the UK think tank Chatham House. The West doesn't necessarily need to engage in heavy quadcopter warfare at the front when it has artillery and substantial airpower.

"The lessons that we need to learn are more from Operation Spiderweb, where Ukraine employed these drones in a much more sophisticated way and really did start to take out some significant targets," Bagwell said. That operation had a high-level strategic effect on a stronger adversary for a comparatively lower cost. It's asymmetric warfare that the West can't ignore.

Picking up lessons from the war

The US is using drone warfare in ways beyond what Spiderweb demonstrated, drawing on other lessons from the war. In its war with Iran that started last month, it has used drones to attack Iranian targets, including the new one-way attack LUCAS drones.

It's also still employing traditional drone tactics, using platforms like the uncrewed strike and reconnaissance drone MQ-9 Reaper.

The Army's new drone course is just one of the many ways that it is advancing its drone warfare capabilities, along with other moves like plans to buy at least a million drones in the next two or so years. Allies across NATO are taking similar steps.

Martin said their power is undeniable, and the course itself was created because the Army could see that it was behind in small drone warfare and needed to fix that. But the US is not in the same existential fight that Ukraine is, nor is it facing the same weapons shortages.

Drones have kept Ukraine in the fight against Russia even as other weapons ran out. They haven't been decisive, though, indicating that deep stocks of traditional and advanced weaponry still matter.

The US Army course teaches soldiers that drones aren't always the right weapon.

Bagwell also cautioned against leaning too heavily on drones. He said that drones have been "hugely useful" for Ukraine, but "these have not won the war for either side."

He said that Ukraine has "had to adapt and fight the way they can only fight, and I applaud them for what they have done. But there is a question for us in the West as to whether that is the way we want to fight."