During a NATO military exercise, Ukrainian fighters, who played the role of the enemy, effectively defeated the Alliance troops with the help of drones. This was a shock to Western militaries and showed that NATO was unprepared for modern warfare.
The Wall Street Journal writes about this.
In 2025, Estonia hosted a large-scale exercise called "Hedgehog" involving over 16 000 military personnel from 12 NATO member states. Ukrainian experts in unmanned systems also joined, including soldiers seconded from the front lines.
According to one of the exercise scenarios, a NATO battle group of several thousand people, including a British brigade and an Estonian division, was to launch an offensive.
However, the units did not take into account that due to the massive use of drones, the battlefield became completely open to observation, where any movement or deployment of equipment is immediately detected and becomes a target. Equipment and tents were placed without proper camouflage.
A Ukrainian military team of about 10 people, acting as a hypothetical enemy, used the “Delta” battlefield management system during the maneuvers. The platform collects real-time intelligence, analyzes it using artificial intelligence, identifies targets, and coordinates strikes.
Thus, in half a day, the Ukrainian military simulated the destruction of 17 units of armored vehicles and launched another 30 strikes on other targets.
Estonian Aivar Hanniotti, who led a joint Estonian-Ukrainian mock enemy unit of about 100 people, said that they used more than 30 drones against NATO troops in an area of less than 10 km².
This number of drones is about half the number currently on the front lines. But even with less thorough reconnaissance than in real life, “there was no way to hide,” Hanniotti added.
“We found vehicles and mechanized units quite easily, and we managed to destroy them quite quickly with the help of strike drones,” said the Estonian military officer.
Overall, he said that the results of the exercises were “terrible” for NATO forces. The Ukrainian-Estonian enemy forces were able to destroy two battalions in a day, so “within the framework of the exercises, they could no longer actually continue the fight”.
Experts note that these exercises have shown that the Alliance needs to review tactics, speed up decision-making, and improve coordination between units.
Several WSJ sources told the story of one commander who observed the exercises and concluded: “We are f—.”
The publication adds that Estonia has already begun to adapt training and military doctrine to the realities of the "drone era", while in other NATO countries, according to the participants of the exercises, approaches are still outdated.
The exercises became a signal of the need for profound changes in the structure, training and technical equipment of the Alliance, given the experience of the war in Ukraine.
For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine, please follow us on X.