The US military-political leadership is shaping its vision of "future warfare," with the main emphasis on asymmetric tools of confrontation, namely long-range UAVs and "mini-cruise missiles."

This approach is somewhat forced for the Americans themselves, dictated by the desire to overcome technological dependence on China in the electronics and rare earth metals segment. Additionally, the current US administration is seeking tools for military power projection that would help find a new form of military dominance in regions important to the White House.

At first glance, this looks simply like scaling up Ukraine's experience in the war against Russia. But the nuance is that even before this, the US had quite successfully "field-tested" several important UAV models. And in the near future, our country will become a kind of "testing ground" for testing promising "mini-cruise missiles" from the US.

Such convergence is mutually beneficial, since warring Ukraine is interested in any means for "drone warfare" and striking enemy military infrastructure. But it's important to draw the necessary conclusions in time, because in the modern world, technologies themselves are losing their exclusivity, and instead the leading role is beginning to be played by something else – who finds effective solutions faster and puts them into mass production.

Which US drones have already been tested in Ukraine

The use of American Switchblade 300/600 family kamikaze drones by the Ukrainian Defense Forces is widely known. Various reviews can be heard about these UAVs, especially regarding the "cost/effectiveness" ratio. But they played their important role on the battlefield against the Russian army, especially during 2022-2023.

However, there were other, even more interesting examples of US drone application in Ukraine:

  • Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drone family from private defense company AEVEX Aerospace; first type – Disruptor (visually similar to Shahed-101), with a 22-kilogram warhead and launch range up to 600 kilometers, second type – Dominator, with a 16-kilogram warhead and range up to 500 kilometers. Approximate delivery period – 2022-2023;
  • Altuis-600M kamikaze drones from Anduril – 3-kilogram warhead and range up to 440 kilometers; in November 2025, the Wall Street Journal wrote that in 2024 the SBU abandoned the use of such UAVs due to unsatisfactory reliability levels;
  • V-BAT reconnaissance UAVs from private defense company Shield AI. Several units were delivered in 2024, flight duration – up to 10 hours, range not disclosed;
  • Archer FPV drones from private defense company NEROS – combat payload up to 2 kilograms, range from 20 kilometers, approximate delivery volume – up to 6 thousand units from March 2025;
  • Bolt FPV drones from Anduril – using "machine vision" for target guidance, range up to 40 kilometers. Hints about the delivery of these drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces appeared in early 2026.

This summary based on open sources is absolutely incomplete, and there are reasons for this. Practice shows that in the Ukrainian Defense Forces, cooperation in the UAV segment proceeds along the horizontal "manufacturer – unit that directly uses." This horizontal is mutually beneficial, as it allows 1) the manufacturer to quickly obtain the full set of data on the real capabilities of their product, and 2) our military command – to quickly centralize the entire array of necessary data.

Centralization of the data array in this case is truly necessary: according to official data from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine alone, in 2025, as many as 550 new types of UAVs were approved for use in the troops; it's difficult to find an adequate adjective to describe such a magnitude of data.

At the same time, going public occurs only in two extreme cases: 1) either when the product has proven itself so well that the manufacturer wants to scale success for commercial purposes, or 2) when the UAV showed insufficient characteristics, but the manufacturing company did not provide feedback to improve development in the interests of our military.

If the product works at a satisfactory level, its combat application occurs in routine mode, remains in the non-public sphere, and at most indirectly manifests itself in daily reports of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on losses of the Russian Armed Forces.

Such patterns apply to both domestic and foreign UAV manufacturers. This explains why the press describes perhaps only isolated cases of success or failure of certain types of drones on the battlefield in Ukraine against the backdrop of the fact that our military received more than 500 new types of UAVs in the past year alone. And why the main parameter – cost/effectiveness of application – is not disclosed.

Speaking specifically about the Americans, they clearly took into account the experience of testing their UAVs on the battlefield in Ukraine, and this manifested itself in the following programs:

  • instead of developing the line of long-range Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drones, the US went the route of literally copying the Shahed-136, which resulted in the LUCAS UAV from private company SpektreWorks, first presented in July 2025, the main feature – use of Starlink for control. According to some data, LUCAS was used during the US operation in Venezuela on January 3, 2026;
  • the shortcomings of the Altuis-600M kamikaze drone were taken into account by Anduril when designing the more advanced Altius-700 model, which claims a 15-kilogram warhead and a higher level of reliability compared to its predecessor;
  • well, the Bolt FPV drones from the same Anduril with "machine vision" are a form of rethinking our experience, which dictates – it's better to have an expensive model that will immediately provide 100% accuracy, rather than rely on cheap and mass models, where 1 out of 10-15 devices will hit the target.

ERAM as the basis for US work on "mini-cruise missiles"

"Mini-cruise missiles" are essentially the same as "missile-drones" or jet UAVs, or even "jet KABs," that is, mass and compact guided jet weapons, for launch in "surface-to-surface" or "air-to-surface" mode. Since this weapons segment is only crystallizing, several possible options are used to designate it, and it's easier to highlight typical features here:

  • jet engine and subsonic flight speed;
  • aerodynamic control surfaces (wings, tail)
  • cost at the level of several hundred thousand dollars, that is, several times less than a "classic" cruise missile.

The warhead configuration is important here, but not decisive. A standard aviation bomb of any caliber can quite be used as a warhead due to its cheapness and mass availability.

Something similar to a "mini-cruise missile" or a "jet decoy UAV" was supplied by the US to Ukraine as part of military aid. We're talking about the ADM-160 MALD – a compact and high-tech jet aircraft with a takeoff weight of only 45 kilograms and a range of up to 500 kilometers, designed to "overload" Russian air defense. MALD was used as a "decoy" to "clear" the path for subsonic cruise missiles SCALP-EG and Storm Shadow to fly to Russian military facilities.

How many ADM-160 MALDs the Americans transferred to the Ukrainian Armed Forces – the figure is not disclosed. But apparently, the practice of using such aircraft in real combat conditions was recognized as successful, so the US decided to develop the direction of cheap jet means for massive breakthroughs of air defense and strikes on enemy military targets.

This ideology is the basis of the ERAM program, which now acts as the "core" for all work on "mini-cruise missiles" in the US. Ukrainian readers may have encountered the ERAM abbreviation before, since under this program the US and other partner countries plan to deliver up to 3,350 "mini-cruise missiles" over several years with a total cost of $825 million, or $246 thousand per unit.

ERAM parameters stipulate that the weapon should fly to a range of up to 400 kilometers at subsonic speed, takeoff weight – 227 kilograms (that is, equivalent to a standard JDAM). Launch platforms should be both F-16 and Soviet-era aircraft that are still in service with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Interestingly, such "mini-missiles" for Ukraine will be supplied by two private companies at once – CoAspire and Zone 5 Technologies. The second company submitted its model to the Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) competition from the US Air Force, whose conditions are identical to the ERAM program. And besides, the US military leadership is already considering a conceptual option to use ERAM developments to deploy production of cheap and mass air defense missiles costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The logic described above looks surprisingly rational: to design the most universal means of destruction, work on which will be conducted by companies with startup logic. But then it should be noted that for the Americans themselves, such a "festival of rationality" manifested itself only over the past 2 years.

The basic catalyst could have been calculations from the authoritative Washington analytical center CSIS, which were made public in January 2023 and which showed catastrophic mathematics of costs for the US in case of a war for Taiwan against China, even if hostilities have a relatively "limited" nature (that is, do not extend to the "mainland" territory of the Celestial Empire and last only weeks). Expected expenditure:

  • 5,000 air defense missiles of all types (including naval SM-6 missiles and PAC-2 and PAC-3 missiles for Patriot);
  • 4,000 air-based cruise missiles AGM-158 JASSM;
  • 450 cruise anti-ship missiles AGM-158C LRASM;
  • 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles;
  • 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles in TLAM version (for strikes on ground targets).

For comparison, the US military-industrial complex currently produces about 50 "Tomahawks" annually, up to 700 PAC-3 missiles for "Patriots" and about 700 JASSMs; serial production of "Harpoons" has been discontinued. Which also illustrates quite military logic, according to which the US did not go for the transfer of Tomahawk and AGM-158 JASSM missiles to Ukraine – the "defense industry" produces little, stocks are needed in case of war in the Pacific.

The Americans themselves found themselves in a strategic paradox regarding their missile arsenal – in order to produce missiles to defend Taiwan and wage war against China, the US "defense industry" is critically dependent precisely on Taiwanese electronics and Chinese rare earth metals. Well, this strategic paradox, in turn, determines the approximate duration of missile production – at least 20-25 months to restore what can be fired in just 3 weeks of hostilities.

Although the question remains open whether China will allow the US to accumulate sufficient missile reserves either before the "big war" in the Pacific, or to restore spent reserves after hypothetical battles.

It's also interesting that in parallel with work on promising "mini-cruise missiles," the US is planning to increase production of "classic" missile weapons. For example, a series of framework agreements concluded in February 2026 between the Pentagon and Raytheon Corporation provide for reaching annual production rates over 7 years of 1,000 Tomahawk missiles, 500 naval SM-6 air defense missiles, and another 1,900 air-to-air AIM-120 missiles. However, it must be taken into account that "over 7 years" means by 2033, that is, the American military-industrial complex risks not having time to "spin up the flywheel" by the time of a possible war against China for Taiwan.

Summary and Conclusions

If we summarize all the above, we get the following picture:

  • based on the experience of Russia's war against Ukraine, the US understood the need for its own rearmament, relying on unmanned technologies;
  • our country acted as a "testing ground" in this case, where the US was able to successfully work out its own concept for FPV drones, medium and long-range kamikaze UAVs;
  • the development and production of new UAV models in this story was undertaken by private American companies, in particular Anduril, which belongs to the orbit of the "Paypal mafia";
  • the next experimental step for the American military-industrial complex with testing in Ukraine will be the ERAM program in the "mini-cruise missiles" segment, the result of which will affect the format of US preparation for a possible war against China in the Pacific region.

The ERAM story is beneficial for Ukraine, since this way our army will receive as external aid 3,300 units of weapons with a range of up to 400 kilometers, each of which will cost only $0.2 million. However, for our country this story should solve not only operational-tactical tasks (that is, striking Russian facilities), but also determine the further strategic course, that is – what should be the optimal configuration of our "deep strike" means in the future.

Essentially, all the time of long-range strikes on Russian territory (starting from 2024) when using kamikaze UAVs, our country is trying to literally "push through by mass" Russian air defense, the level of density is impressive. At the beginning of last year, the ground component of air defense in service with the Russian Armed Forces alone included:

  • 716 launchers of S-300 and S-400 systems (1 brigade and 24 anti-aircraft missile regiments);
  • 390 launchers of Buk air defense systems of all modifications;
  • 130 launchers of Tor air defense systems of all modifications;
  • 100 Osa-AKM launchers and 50 Pantsir systems;
  • 300 Strela-10M launchers

Counting by launchers (and not, for example, by anti-aircraft missile battalions) is justified here, since the Strela-10M, Osa-AKM, Pantsir and Tor systems – all components (launchers and radar) are placed on one platform; in addition, the Russians always follow the principle of echeloning air defense from short-range to long-range means, from the line of contact and further into temporarily occupied territories and directly Russian territories.

When Russia in 2022 began a campaign of strikes using Shahed-131/136 UAVs, it imposed on Ukraine a race based on the principle "Shahed is more massive and cheaper than an anti-aircraft missile," having the appropriate resource for this.

When Ukraine in 2024 switched to regular strikes on Russian territory, using "deep strikes" with propeller power plants, it also switched to the format "UAV is more massive and cheaper than an anti-aircraft missile."

However, practice shows that with this format, a maximum of 10% of our long-range means pass through Russian air defense, and the salvo must be at least 100 units. Which in turn does not give the expected "cost/effectiveness" result in striking important targets of the aggressor.

If the ERAM program in Ukraine is successfully "field-tested," this will mean that for successful strikes on the aggressor we will need to focus precisely on "mini-cruise missiles" (or "missile-drones"). However, the cycle itself with "field-testing" the program and implementing the first conclusions from it may take up to 1-1.5 years, and this is during active hostilities.

Ivan Kyrychevsky, weapons specialist