Arguably the most far-reaching developments in military technology and tactics that we have witnessed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the contest for air superiority above the battlefield using an increasing number and variety of drones. In Ukraine, the outcome of this struggle could determine not just the trajectory of individual battles but also help decide the outcome of the entire conflict. And far beyond the current war, the new drone-centric war-fighting capabilities being developed by Ukraine and Russia have made old Western doctrines of air superiority largely obsolete.

Thousands of drones now operate in this so-called air littoral—the technical term for the airspace between ground forces and traditional aircraft flying at an altitude of several thousand meters. Unlike traditional air superiority contests fought high in the sky, where fighter jets and bombers typically operate, the air littoral represents a different domain. Here, small commercial drones, first-person view systems, and anti-drone defense—from machine-gun fire to electronic jamming and interceptor drones—wage a constant, grinding fight for supremacy.

Ukraine’s once-formidable advantage in drone warfare appears to be eroding along parts of the front line. This degradation extends far beyond the immediate front—more Russian drones now prowl for targets up to 25 kilometers (roughly 16 miles) behind the contact line, and they have been hitting their targets more effectively.

Ukraine achieved an advantage in drone warfare early in the war. But a breakthrough came in early 2024: After its forces were pushed out of the eastern town of Avdiivka amid a severe artillery munitions shortage due to delays in Western aid, Ukraine pivoted toward a new system of drone-centric warfare. Kyiv established the Unmanned Systems Forces, a new and separate military branch in order to unify what had been a heterogeneous, improvised drone force involving many privately funded, independent companies of drone operators. These were eventually reorganized into battalions, regiments, and, lately, large brigades.

Rapidly scaling up the use of various types of drones for both surveillance and attacking targets, the Ukrainian military developed a system of layered defenses extending multiple kilometers deep. On the ground, this was combined with defensive positions and fortifications involving infantry, artillery, and land mines.

In 2024, that gave Ukraine an advantage in both quality and quantity of drones, which enabled its forces to inflict high casualties on the Russians, especially during the latter’s offensive operations in southern Donetsk last fall. Ukraine’s drone supply increased nineteenfold during 2024, with drones responsible for around 80 percent of Russian front-line casualties as of November.

However, war involves constant adaptation, and Russia has not remained static. And it began to catch up earlier this year. When I spent some time with Ukrainian front-line soldiers in the southern Donbas earlier this month, a word that I often heard from them was “Rubicon”—short for Russia’s Rubicon Center of Advanced Unmanned Technologies. Established in August 2024 by order of Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, Rubicon represents the core of Russia’s newly systematic approach to drone warfare.

What makes Rubicon particularly dangerous is its methodical manner of countering Ukraine’s drone advantages one by one, including by intercepting Ukrainian drones, killing drone teams on the ground, and severing logistics lines. The Russians also introduced fiber-optic controlled drones—systems that communicate via ultra-thin, miles-long tethers rather than wireless frequencies, making them immune to the electronic jamming that Ukraine used so successfully during its invasion of Russia’s Kursk region in 2024. Fiber-optic drones, while heavier and slower than conventional drones, maintain stable control even under intense electronic warfare conditions. And Russian adaptation extends to tactics, with a heavy focus on targeting Ukrainian drones, operators, and logistics.

If Moscow’s new approach allows its forces to establish air littoral superiority across the front, then it would severely disrupt the Ukrainians’ ability to maneuver effectively on the battlefield. Additionally, the threat of Russian drones could suppress Ukrainian artillery, undermining what is now rough parity in artillery strength on parts of the front. Perhaps most critically, this air superiority could lead to higher Ukrainian casualties, exacerbating Ukraine’s already significant manpower shortage.

The significance, however, goes far beyond this war. The new capabilities that Ukraine and, belatedly, Russia are developing have accelerated a shift away from the exquisite precision strikes that have dominated Western military thinking since the 1990s toward what military analysts now term “precision mass”—the ability to deliver accurate fires at unprecedented scale through inexpensive, expendable platforms. Unlike the surgical precision of expensive missiles fired from costly platforms, modern air littoral warfare employs swarms of cheap drones that can achieve tactically significant effects through sheer volume.

This represents a cost revolution where Ukraine alone deploys thousands of drones monthly, creating what military theorists describe as “attritable mass effects” that render traditional weapons economics obsolete. The essence of this new war-fighting approach lies not in individual platform capability, but in the aggregate combat power generated by deploying hundreds—and soon thousands—of “good enough” systems simultaneously across the battlespace, with piloted aircraft operating at higher altitudes. This fundamentally alters the arithmetic of air warfare from scarce, precious assets to abundant, expendable tools of war.

Similarly far-reaching is the way that cheap precision mass has decoupled the air littoral from the domain of higher altitudes, where air superiority with manned aircraft no longer translates into control of the skies at low altitudes. Fighter jets may easily strike a traditional helicopter, but they cannot be used to hunt swarms of small drones out to attack artillery pieces and tanks. The sheer number of small, unmanned platforms in the air littoral would quickly exhaust the weapons systems of manned aircraft.