Following the recent onslaught of Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace, a former US State Department official said the defence bloc is ultimately "not prepared" to handle a new warfare tactic unleashed by Russian President Vladimir Putin — drone swarms.
A couple of weeks ago, the Polish military, with assistance from NATO forces, intercepted 19 Russian drones that broached Polish — and therefore, NATO — airspace via the country's borders with Russia and Belarus.
Expensive Sidewinder AMRAAM (Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile) interceptors were deployed to take down Shahed-style drones, which Frank Rose, former assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance under President Barack Obama, said are "relatively inexpensive" by comparison.
Poland and its NATO allies responded "quickly and effectively" to the threat, Rose said, but he noted "challenges" with NATO's — and the US's — preparedness to handle a mass incursion of drones in the form of swarms.
He said the US is ultimately on its "back foot" when it comes to developing new technologies that can deal with what he called "the future of warfare that we're seeing unfold in real-time."
"What it shows me is that NATO is not prepared to effectively deal with large swarms of drones. They just don't have the capability," said Rose, who led negotiations for a missile defence base in Poland during his tenure at the State Department. He also worked on missile defence bases in Romania and Turkey.
"This is where the United States is flailing. We are not putting enough money into this challenge, and we're not moving fast enough," he added. "These drone swarms are fundamentally reshaping warfare, and we are on our back foot in the United States — we are not developing capabilities fast enough to deal with these new challenges."
What the US and NATO ultimately need, he said, are "new technologies that can address drone swarms," including "coordinated attacks with swarms." He also called for more cruise missiles, hypersonic missiles and ballistic missiles.
America's enemies are evolving and moving to drone swarms, the former principal deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under former President Joe Biden added — and they're integrating such attacks with ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile strikes. "They are evolving, so we have to evolve to meet this threat," he said.
NATO already has 25 years of missile defence implementation and practice under its belt, Rose noted, and "established NATO procedures to counter the threat" under its Eastern Sentry plan.
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But while that plan "will be fine" when it comes to relatively limited threats or incursions into NATO airspace, there would be "challenges" for the bloc if Russia, for example, were to launch swarms of 300-400 drones.
"I think that’s the Achilles' heel of NATO," he said. And that's a problem, as drone warfare "is going to be with us for a very long time," he added, especially as AI-enabled swarms come online — something that's already been seen in Ukraine.
Rose highlighted several recent articles circulating in the defence community that highlight the need for increases in defence spending to counter the new threats posed by drone swarms and other advanced technological warfare.
Critics of such spending over the past several decades have said that missile defence "doesn't work," that it's "a waste of money." But it's working in Israel, across the rest of the Middle East and in Ukraine — all regions from which the US could learn as President Donald Trump works to launch his "Golden Dome" defence system, he said.
"What we have seen in Israel, the Middle East and Ukraine is that the missile defences have performed very well," the president of Chevalier Strategic Advisors said. "Patriot, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, [Terminal] High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) — they've hit over 90% of the targets."
The challenge, he said, is the cost curve — on average, a Shahed drone costs around $65,000 to $70,000 to construct, or up to $100,000 in some cases, according to Rose. But the average Sidewinder AMRAAM interceptor costs around $300,000 to $400,000. And Patriot missile interceptors — which the U.S. has given to Israel and other countries in recent years — cost up to $1 million to produce.
Because of the situation in Israel, Rose said the U.S. expended nearly half of its Standard Missile 3 inventory — interceptors that are not only expensive but that also take time to build.
"Our industrial base has been neglected for so long, and these things don't happen overnight," Rose said. "But even if you are able to produce larger numbers, you still have that cost curve, defence versus offense, and the offense is just so much superior."
"What that leads me to is, we need to be developing new types of technologies — microwave technology, solid state laser, something that can defeat the shape of the threat at scale and at an affordable price."
While the development of new technologies seems like a daunting task, the "silver lining," Rose said, is that Ukraine has evolved and "done a pretty good job at dealing with these drone swarms."
The country's efforts haven't been perfect, he said, but Ukraine has managed to protect its infrastructure through its defence capabilities and "thwart" Russia's war goals.
"My hope is that the United States and NATO are learning from how the Ukrainians have evolved their capabilities to defeat, or at least defend, some of these attacks," he said.
"I think the challenge for the United States and our NATO allies is to understand what is going on in Ukraine, apply the lessons to our own defence policy strategy, improvement strategy, and then produce capabilities fast that can respond and evolve to this changing threat," he added.
The U.S. system, as it stands, isn't capable of that, he said, calling it "big" and "bureaucratic," which makes progress difficult. When it comes to the development of defence technology, the U.S. government and its bureaucracy is "suffocating," he said.
"I will give the Trump administration some credit for trying to speed things up. But I think it will require sustained attention from the president to make this happen," Rose said.
"That's one of the things that the Ukrainians can teach us. There’s very little bureaucracy," he added. "The Ukrainians see a threat, they employ capability, evolve it and continue to evolve it."
He said Russia and China are also "not letting bureaucracy hold them back." Instead, "they are deploying capabilities in a massive sense," he said.
"If the United States is to be able to meet this threat, we are not going to be able to do business the way we have been doing it for the past 30 years," Rose said.
"We are our own worst enemies, to be honest with you. We are too focused on process and not focused on delivering capabilities quickly. And we are going to be left behind."
