warfare

Ukraine is proving that kamikaze drones are the future of warfare. And that is why Spain is going to start manufacturing them

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Europe has been talking about defense as an abstract concept for years, but the war in Ukraine turned the threat into something physical and quantifiable: drones, missiles, loitering munitions and a logistics chain under constant fire, forcing NATO to assume that the modern battlefield is a “death zone” where those who do not mass produce are at a disadvantage. And in that equation an unexpected nation has emerged: Spain. The new shield of Europe. To that strategic pressure after the invasion of Russia and the appearance of his ghost fleet An even more uncomfortable factor has been added: the political tension with the United States and the growing sense that the Western security umbrella is no longer It is not an automationbut a negotiation. In this double impulse is born the rush for a European defensive shield (perhaps that repeated drone wall), and not only in radars or interceptors, but in industry, stocks and real response capacity, where manufacturing speed matters as much as quality and where technological sovereignty becomes a survival requirement. The unexpected actor: Spain. In this scenario of rapid rearmament and need for autonomy, Spain aims to go from being a country that buys to being one who producesand also do it with a weapon that defines contemporary war: the kamikaze droneor loitering munition, which watches, waits and strikes with precision at costs much lower than manned aviation or traditional missiles. The move is ambitious because Spain does not compete from the heavy industrial tradition of other European partners, there is no doubt, but from a commitment to the most demanded segmentscalable and urgent of the moment: cheap, numerous, quickly upgradeable platforms and capable of saturating defenses. The political and military thesis seems clear: if Europe’s immediate future is decided by who can produce and replenish drones the fastest, then a country that leads that manufacturing not only wins contracts, also influence. Comparison of UAVs in the international market The Indra-Edge alliance. The core of the movement was in the news yesterday with the agreement between Indra and Emirati giant Edge to create a joint venture focused on the development, production and full lifecycle support of loitering munitions and smart weapons, with an estimated order book of about 2 billion euros annually. There is talk of manufacturing drones and sustained capacity: design, assembly line, maintenance, replacement and scaling, something essential in a type of war where systems are consumed at an industrial rate. Indra relies on experience Edge on suicide drones to accelerate the technological leap, while underlining that the real value for Europe is in pproduce in European territoryfulfilling the logic of sovereignty and reducing dependencies and deadlines in a market that is moving due to urgency and not by comfortable calendars. Castilla y León as a military-industrial hub. The bet has taken concrete form with two plants in Castilla y León: in Villadangos del Páramo (León), a production facility dedicated to drones and loitering munitions will be built, with an investment of about 20 million euros and a forecast of up to 200 jobs at full capacity. Another plant focused on micromotors will be installed in Boecillo (Valladolid), a critical component that defines autonomy, reliability and production capacity. The combination is revealing: it is not only the “final product”, also, and very important, the control of key pieces, which allows manufacture without bottlenecks and sustain a high exit rate when the strategic environment demands constant replacement. The objective is for Spain to not only be an assembler, but also part of the industrial heart that makes war with drones possible. Defense turns it into a state program. The Ministry of Defense has presented the project as part of the Industrial and Technological Plan for Security and Defense approved in May 2025, and has stated that the León factory will produce “the most advanced drones that can operate today in Europe and NATO.” Beyond the owner, what is relevant is that the new company would already be born with valued contracts around 2 billion of euros, with a workload committed to covering the needs of the Spanish Armed Forces and also other European armies, and with a performance horizon in 2026 and 2027. The implicit message is that Spain wants to be in the industrial layer that supports the European defensive shield, not as a secondary actor, but as a real supplier of a capacity that decides tactical survival on the front. Politics gets on the drone. The announcement, furthermore, is made with a staging in the Senate and in a pre-electoral context in Castilla y León, where the local impact (those 00 jobs distributed between León and Valladolid) turns the defense industry into territorial policy tool. The narrative mixes national security and reindustrialization: Small areas such as Villadangos del Páramo appear as recipients of a project of high technological value, while it is presented as a historic turn for the Spanish industrial base. At the same time, it is linked to other military initiatives in the community, emphasizing that rearmament It is not only a strategic debate, but a map of investments, works, infrastructure and employment that reorders public priorities. The real game. Finally, the movement also gives clues about the future of Europe with Ukraine as a mirror: the defensive shield It is no longer measured only in troops and doctrine, but in the ability to produce cheap, intelligent and massive systems, with short innovation cycles and controlled supply chains. Somehow, Russia has imposed the pace of the threat, and Washington has added the political pressure of not depending eternally on an external guarantor. In this scenario, Spain tries to occupy an unexpected gap: become the protagonist of the European loitering ammunition, the tool kamikaze which not only serves to attack, but also to deny space, saturate defenses and impose costs on the adversary. In a Europe that has belatedly discovered that modern war is also won in factories, Spain wants are in their territory. Image | Khamenei.ir In Xataka | Europe faces … Read more

Drones revolutionized warfare in Ukraine, now they are going to do it all over the world with one final trick: changing shape

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If something has become clear after these years of war in Ukraine, it is that drones are no longer a mere complement from the battlefield: they have become a such transformative technology like gunpowder or the Kalashnikov, and are entering a second, even more disruptive phase, driven by artificial intelligencethe miniaturization and the accelerated production. Their next landing is planetary. The second revolution. As we said, drones have gone from being tactical support to becoming a structural factor of modern warfare. Ukraine has shown that an inferior actor in means can degrade a great power with cheap swarms air, naval and land. At the same time, insurgencies, militias and states with few resources use the same logic to compensate for conventional disadvantages. The result, as we will see below, is a global diffusion of precision capabilities at low cost that reduces own risks, complicates defense and makes conflicts more accessible and resistant to resolution. War spine. The trajectory of drones goes from radio-controlled experiments in world wars to smart cruise missiles and platforms like the predator and the reaper in the “war on terror.” The recent turning point is Nagorno-Karabakhwhere an average country combined decoys and UCAVs with artillery to neutralize anti-aircraft defenses and dominate the air without powerful traditional aviation. Since then, the central lesson is that no need be a superpower: simply integrate drones, sensors and indirect fire intelligently to alter the tactical balance. Ukraine as a laboratory. In Ukraine, the drone design, testing and tuning cycle has been compressed to weeks. kyiv has scaled from imported platforms to its own industry that produces millions of unitscombining FPV, reconnaissance, long range and fiber optic guided systems to circumvent Russian electronic warfare. The proximity between workshops and front allows for rapid iterations on sensors, frequencies and flight profiles. Russia responds with mass production and specialized units like Rubikon. The front thus becomes an environment where each innovation is copied or counteracted in a very short time. Swarm globalization. The intensive use of drones has extended to conflicts with a lower media profile. In Africa, dozens of states and non-state actors have built-in armed UAV to internal wars, with markets dominated by exporters such as Türkiye and China. In Myanmar, rebels have converted commercial drones into a substitute for artilleryforcing army withdrawals. In Gaza, Hamas used them to blind Israeli sensors before raids. This shows that technology not only balances power relations, but also increases lethality and makes subsequent stabilization difficult. AI, ammunition and fire economy. The AI integration Drones transform the economy of combat: the cost per useful impact decreases and precision increases. Now there are kits software and hardware that allow existing platforms to locate, track and attack targets with limited human supervision. The practical effect is to reduce the need for classical artillery and increase the efficiency of fire, both on land as in sea. However, this does not eliminate the value of artillery or manned platforms, but rather shifts part of the fire load to systems more fungible and scalablewith clear implications for budgets and logistics. The new unmanned spectrum. And here comes one of the big changes, possibly the least expected. The drone family is expanding and transforming, changing shape and size: from nanodevices for close reconnaissance to enormous ships and underwater vehicles autonomous. The former allow discreet exploration in urban or closed environments, and the latter expand the presence on the surface and under the sea without embarking crews or assuming their risks. Between both extremes, ukrainian naval systems, Chinese XLUUV or AUV as the Ghost Shark redefine surveillance, anti-submarine warfare and area denial operations. The common pattern is to eliminate the need to protect lives on board, making it easier to accept high-risk missions and speed up production. A new generation of contractors. Companies like AndurilAuterion or Shield AI operate with startup logic: short development cycles, strong software integration and commitment to assuming own risk before winning large contracts. Some choose to control the entire chain (hardware and software), others to offer “operating systems” applicable to multiple platforms. This puts pressure on traditional, less agile contractors, and reconfigures the industrial ecosystemwith more mid-sized players competing in specific niches (loyal squires, swarms, mission software). The result is greater speed of innovation, but also more fragmentation of solutions. China, the US and the race. China part with advantage in commercial drones and transfers that leadership to the military fieldwhile investing very heavily in countermeasures after observing the performance of cheap drones in Ukraine. The proliferation of manufacturers of anti-drone systems and directed energy weapons indicates a strategic commitment to control both attack and defense. The United States, despite the accumulated experience, appears out of date in volume and in anti-swarm systems, with dispersed programs and irregular financing, which forces to emergency measures to accelerate purchases and use dual suppliers. This anticipates a long race in which quantity, cost and active defense weigh as much as the individual sophistication of each platform. Strategic limits. This point is often not taken into account. The destructive capacity of drones can lead to overestimating their strategic impact. From there what spectacular operations against high-value infrastructure do not always translate into lasting changes in the control of territory or in the political will of the adversary. Controllers like Radakin they underline that drones and algorithms do not replace the need for a coherent strategy or forces capable of occupying and holding ground. The temptation to build campaigns based on high-visibility specific hits can generate a dangerous gap between tactical success and strategic results. The era of eternal wars. All this breeding ground leads to a final scenario: by reducing costs and risks for those who prolong the combat, drones favor conflicts. no clear outcome. Statistics show fewer decisive victories and fewer peace agreements since the 1970s, while stagnant wars increase. In this context, drones provide continuous capacity for harm to actors who would otherwise be forced to negotiate or give in. The probable result is more long wars, distributed … Read more

China’s plan to make its military ruthless if electronic warfare shuts down technology: use its brains

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In the training camps of the People’s Liberation Army, the sound of drones and electronic simulators coexists with something unexpected: the echo of an ancient tradition. Between radars, missiles and touch screens, some soldiers practice invisible operations with their fingers in the air, moving imaginary beads on an abacus that no longer exists. It is not a ritual or an eccentricity, but a new military experiment: learning in case one day the machines suffer a blackout. Calculate with your mind. China has rescued an ancient tradition to apply it to modern warfare: mental calculation with abacus. In a context of increasing dependence on artificial intelligence, the People’s Liberation Army has applied logic: train soldiers capable of becoming a kind of “human abacus”, ready to operate when digital systems fail. In fact, in a recent exerciseCaptain Xu Meiduo predicted the trajectory of three targets in seconds after a radar failure simulation, guiding artillery fire with precision. State television has turned his feat into an emblem of self-sufficiency, reminding us that the human mind remains a decisive weapon even in the age of algorithms. From the classroom to the battlefield. The program is inspired by an educational practice still common in Asia: the mental abacus, or AMC, an ancient technique that allows complex calculations by visualizing an imaginary abacus. Used in China for a long time more than eight centuriesthis discipline has shown benefits measurable cognitive– Improves concentration, memory and reasoning speed. What’s more, studies from Harvard and Stanford confirmed a few years ago the trained children with mental abacus surpass in calculation and understanding to those who learn traditional mathematics. Now, the Chinese army transfers that advantage to the military fieldconvinced that mental precision and resistance under pressure can make the difference in combat. Millennial and current. The abacus, created in China ago more than 800 years and used for centuries in trade and imperial administration, it never completely disappeared. Although calculators and computers relegated it to a cultural symbol, in schools in China, Japan or Singapore continues teaching as a method of cognitive development. His mental version, based on imaginary manipulation From accounts, it has been the subject of neurological studies that demonstrate structural changes in the brain. Hence, the Chinese army has seen this plasticity as perfect training for modern warfare, where mental quickness and calmness under stress are as valuable as marksmanship. Tradition and vulnerability. The goal of the program, it seems, it’s double: reinforce the cognitive readiness of soldiers and reduce vulnerability to electronic warfare. In a confrontation where radars, GPS and networks can be nullified, human calculation capacity becomes a strategic backup. If you like, Beijing also seeks to demonstrate that its military strength does not depend solely on of drones or hypersonic missilesbut also of soldiers capable of thinking and deciding for themselves. Facing total automationChina aims for balance: a technologically advanced, but sustained army by trained brains to calculate without machines, in the conviction that, even in the digital age, war remains a human act. Between humans and algorithms. In that sense, the contrast with the United States is revealing. While Washington boasts or promotes highly trained soldiers and trusts in the superiority of its command systems, the Pentagon warns that excessive technological dependence can be an Achilles heel. US officials have pointed out that, when communications are interrupted and artificial intelligence degrades, what decides a battle is human initiative. From that perspective, China seems to have taken note. Your bet on rescue the mind As a war tool it is not intended to replace technology, far from it, but rather to complement it. In a world where machines can fail, true superiority, according to Beijing, may once again lie in the most basic: the human brain. Image | Picryl In Xataka | China has asked Russia for an airborne battalion and training. That can only mean one thing: they are preparing a landing In Xataka | The US studied what would happen if it went to war with China: now it has begun a desperate race to duplicate missiles

Ukraine knocked a Russian Shahed drone and opened it. A hidden message has revealed Moscow’s advantage in electronic warfare

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In Ukraine, the capture of enemy artillery has become a box of surprises. In November last year, a Dron Parody revealed to what the United States this In the conflict (without being physically). A few weeks ago, the interception of a Russian cruise missile by Ukraine was shocking: they had it Made the “Allies”. The latest: the capture of a Shahed carried a surprising hidden note. The air war intensifies. Already We counted yesterday. The Russian air offensive on Ukraine has reached a new level of brutality, with a last attack that exceeds the limits previously considered exceptional. Russia launched an unprecedented mass attack that included 298 drones and 69 missiles On one night, a record figure that has put the Ukrainian anti -aircraft defenses in check. Faced with the foreseeable failure of high the fire conversations, Ukraine is forced to ration your interceptorswhich implies that more and more Russian projectiles will achieve their goal, hitting cities, industries and civilians with increasing intensity. North Korean missiles and Iranian drones. In addition, since the beginning of the year, Russia has transformed its aerial campaign, focusing its efforts into ballistic missiles (many from North Korea) and in a new generation of Shahed drones of Iranian origin. These drones, like We have been countingnow they are in their sixth version and use automatic learning to attack highly defended areas such as kyiv, which has resulted in recent impacts in shopping centers, residential areas and military training fields. Plus: The speed of ballistic missiles makes them virtually impossible to intercept without the scarce and expensive PAC-3 missiles of the patriot system, which Ukraine has in insufficient number. For its part, the manufacturing rate of Shahed drones in Russia has grown exponentially: if 300 a month before, now that same amount is generated in less than three days. Filtered documents suggest that Kremlin plans to increase production Up to 500 drones dailywhich could lead to swarms of 1,000 drones in a single operation. Projection of a shahed Telegram and drones. Economist He counted exclusively An unprecedented fact. A finding within a Shahed drone demolished in Ukraine has revealed a worrying evolution in Moscow’s technological strategy: a note, allegedly left by a supportive sympathizer engineer, said that Russia is controlling its attack drones through bots in bots in The telegram messaging application. The reason? This method allows to send flight data and live broadcasts directly to human operators, eliminating GPS dependence and making them much more resistant to Electronic interference Ukraine. The implementation of AI, added to the use of Ukrainian mobile networks and possibly connections via Starlink, marks a qualitative leap in the lethality and autonomy of Russian drones, especially those most recent models of Shahed who use automatic learning to reach precision protected targets. A threat that does not yield. The response of the West, as we explained this week, has been to eliminate the red line of the “Long -range weapons” For Ukraine to defend himself. Ukrainian crews continue to break down about 95% Of the drones launched against kyiv, but that remaining 5% is enough to inflict devastating damage. Russian tactics have evolved: drones fly to low height to avoid being detected and then They ascend sharply at altitudes that exceed the scope of short -range weapons. To counteract it, Ukraine He resorted to F-16helicopters and even interceptor drones, but the defense against ballistic missiles remains the weakest point. Only a few countries have systems capable of stopping them, and the United States, which produces the Patriots and its PAC-3 interceptors, it has own strategic priorities. Time is exhausted. As We summarized yesterdaydespite its urgent need for more patriot batteries (Zelensky estimates that at least ten additional would be necessary to cover the territory), the US administration has adopted a warm posture. Under the pressure of other conflicts and the influence of the hard wing of the Republican party, which is prioritized, Ukraine has ceased to be a strategic priority. PAC-3 production will increase to 650 units annuallybut that is still insufficient in front of 500 ballistic missiles that Russia would already have stored, according to kyiv. In addition, each Russian missile usually requires two interceptors to be shot down, which accentuates the disadvantage. New doctrine. Perhaps the latest Ukrainian movements are understood. Given the shortage of media and the growing aerial threat, kyiv contemplates a turn in its survival strategy: not to intercept, but to go to destroy complexes launch, Russian factories and deposits. This more aggressive position, defended by Analysts like Kostiantyn Kryvolappart of the conviction that without a deterrence activates the rhythm of the attacks will only increase. While Western Defense Systems They arrive with droppers And their abilities will take At least one year In expanding, Ukraine prepares to face an air war alone every time more asymmetric and lethal. In that scenario, each drone or demolished missile can offer clues to combat the disadvantage. Image | Kyiv City State Administration In Xataka | The war in Ukraine had a red line of 70 kilometers. West has just eliminated it after Russia’s last attack In Xataka | Russia has made its combat drones fly higher. Ukraine has found the solution in North Korea: balloons

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