A Random Walk Around the New Logic of Defense
In this article I share my thoughts on the new logic of defence emerging across states, start-ups, and established defence primes.
A New Asymmetry
When I attended DSEI in 2016 as a photojournalist, many of the stands were talking about asymmetrical warfare. Back then, that meant an $80,000 FGM-148 Javelin being used to take out a 60-year-old Russian-made T-55, captured from the Syrian army and used by ISIS. Asymmetrical warfare meant a technologically superior opponent facing an inferior one.
Ten years later, asymmetry in warfare works on the same principle, but looks very different. A striking example is Ukraine’s June 2025 Operation Spiderweb, in which drones concealed in trucks were used to attack multiple Russian airbases, including Olenya in Murmansk Oblast. Ukraine claimed the strikes caused around $7bn in damage. Cheap, widely available drones were being used to threaten some of a major power’s most valuable strategic aviation assets.
Units of the United States Military deployed as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (2014 - 2021) during the Syrian civil war.
Lorry used in Ukrainian drone attack on Russian bombers, June 1, 2025. (Causing $7bn in damage) Olenya Air Base, Murmansk Oblast, Russia.
Asymmetry in warfare is not new, but since the escalation of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the flood of drone ‘kill cam’ footage has made it impossible to ignore. Week after week, we have watched high-value targets - tanks, aircraft, ships - erased by swarms of cheap, one-way systems, often piloted from kilometers away. These videos are arithmetic in action, and they have had me returning again and again to this quote from Rudyard Kipling.
“A scrimmage in a Border Station -
A canter down some dark defile -
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee Jezail”
Kipling is writing about the ruthless arithmetic of warfare: however well equipped, expensively trained, or technologically superior you may be, determined resistance will always find a way - often the cheapest, simplest, and most brutal one.
An era of new archetypes
Behind this new asymmetry is the advent of autonomous and machine-led warfare. For me, one watershed moment was the formal unveiling of the BAE Systems Taranis in 2010, followed by its first flight trials in 2013. Taranis was an unmanned combat aerial vehicle technology demonstrator built by BAE Systems, with contributions from Rolls-Royce, GE Aviation Systems, Smiths Aerospace, and QinetiQ. It was named after the Celtic god of thunder.
With the widespread battlefield use of Predator drones after 2001 - the U.S. Air Force says Predator crews began flying armed missions on 7 October 2001 in Operation Enduring Freedom - it once seemed that the drone would evolve into something like a seventh-generation multi-role fighter: few in number, exquisite, and extremely expensive.
But the last four years of war in Ukraine, and more recent operations involving Iran, have shown another path: drones as one-way mass attack systems, exemplified by platforms such as the Iranian-designed Shahed-136.
BAE Systems. Taranis Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle Demonstrator. Warton, United Kingdom, 2013.
Iranian Ministry of Defence. Shahed-136 Loitering Munition Production Facility. Tehran, Iran, 2026.
Area denial
The mass use of drones on the battlefield has dramatically changed area denial. It could be argued that, from the post–World War I period until as recently as the War on Terror, local area denial relied primarily on minefields, anti-tank weapons, artillery, and close air support.
Perhaps the clearest example of area denial from this earlier period was France’s Maginot Line: an elaborate defensive barrier along France’s eastern frontier, conceived in the late 1920s and largely constructed during the 1930s, before being completed in 1938. It was designed to prevent or slow a renewed German attack by forcing an enemy into a costly, localised assault against fortified positions.
During the war in Ukraine, however, we have seen area denial — and the battlespace itself — change into something closer to persistent and layered area denial, maintained by ISR drones, FPV strike drones, precision artillery, and systems such as HIMARS. Rather than denying a narrow piece of ground, these networks can extend surveillance and strike deep across the battlefield, making movement, concentration, and resupply far more dangerous over sustained periods. HIMARS, for example, is designed to deliver precise fire from long distances while remaining mobile and elusive, and recent analysis of Ukraine has emphasized the growing role of layered air defense, long-range precision strike, and AI-enabled autonomous systems.
Photographer unknown. Maginot Line fortifications, France, c. 1939–1940. Photograph. History Today.
Sky News, “Russian Forces Creep Through Disused Gas Pipeline in Attempt to Launch Surprise Attack on Ukrainian Soldiers,” March 9, 2025.
Battlefield Survivability
When we look at the Integrated Survivability Assessment, created in 2004, through the lens of 2026, we can see that the notion of “don’t be there” has changed completely. “There” can now be almost anywhere. The sinking of the Iranian warship IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka in March 2026, and Ukraine’s 2025 drone strike on Russian strategic bombers during Operation Spiderweb, both suggest the same thing: assets once assumed to be protected by distance, scale, or prestige are now vulnerable deep inside what would previously have been considered secure space.
Capital ships such as the Moskva already looked newly exposed after 2022. What is different now is the extent to which survivability itself must be rethought across the whole battlespace. Platforms such as Queen Elizabeth, and even the wider logic of sea-based nuclear deterrence, have to be considered in an era of persistent sensing, drones, autonomous systems, and long-range precision strike. The point is not that they are obsolete, but that the meaning of survivability has changed.
If the aircraft meant that war was no longer confined to the battlefield, then the drone and AI suggest something more radical still: war is no longer confined to the traditional geography of war.
Survivability onion based on Gary L. Guzie, Integrated Survivability Assessment (2004), p. 11, and the later Steve Knott / U.S. Army TARDEC “Integrated Survivability ‘Onion’” diagram (2008).
Conclusion
The challenge for Europe now is clear: the side that can impose persistent and layered area denial to the greatest depth, and with the greatest flexibility, holds the advantage.
That requires:
Interoperable, sovereign software
Scalable, cost-effective hardware
Dense means of threat detection
Flexible autonomous effects
Industrial depth
Even though the way armies fight has changed, the fundamental logic of deterrence remains the same:
Conflict becomes feasible when the risk of failure appears low.
Europe’s task now is to keep that risk of failure as high as possible.
The stakes could not be higher.
AP News. “US and Iran Spar over Weapons Status of Iranian Warship Sunk by Submarine.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://apnews.com/article/iran-israel-us-iris-dena-warship-submarine-8789cf718b1ebf8b571cb8ef5d785150.
BAE Systems. “Taranis.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/taranis.
Britannica. “Drones.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/procon/drones-debate.
Britannica. “Maginot Line.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maginot-Line.
Creech Air Force Base. “Sun Setting the MQ-1 Predator: A History of Innovation.” By Senior Airman James Thompson. February 14, 2018. https://www.creech.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1442303/sun-setting-the-mq-1-predator-a-history-of-innovation/.
The Fiscal Times. “Here’s the Javelin Anti-Tank Missile a Top US General Wants to Send to Ukraine.” By Martin Matishak. April 22, 2016. https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2016/04/22/Here-s-Javelin-Anti-Tank-Missile-Top-US-General-Wants-Send-Ukraine.
The Guardian. “‘Bit of Treachery’: US Attack on IRIS Dena Undermines Indian Security Ties.” By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aanya Wipulasena. March 15, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/15/us-attack-iris-dena-undermines-indian-security-ties-iran.
Helsing. “Europe’s Tech Leaders Join Forces for Sovereign Control of Drone Swarms.” September 10, 2025. https://helsing.ai/newsroom/europe-s-tech-leaders-join-forces-for-sovereign-control-of-drone-swarms.
Helsing. “Helsing | Artificial Intelligence to Protect Our Democracies.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://helsing.ai/.
Helsing. “Fact Sheet.” PDF. September 25, 2025. https://helsing.ai/assets/download/a8d2690b83d7e2e6d70f949242bb4a555d63f757.pdf.
Imperial War Museums. “The V1 Flying Bomb: Hitler’s World War 2 Vengeance Weapon.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-v1-flying-bomb-hitlers-vengeance-weapon.
Jayasinghe, Uditha, Idrees Ali, and Phil Stewart. “U.S. Sub Sinks Iranian Warship off Sri Lanka, Killing 87 and Expanding War Zone.” Reuters, March 4, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lanka-rescues-30-people-board-distressed-iranian-ship-foreign-minister-says-2026-03-04/.
Missile Threat. “FGM-148 Javelin.” Center for Strategic and International Studies. Accessed March 21, 2026. https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/fgm-148-javelin/.
Mello, P. A. “Asymmetric Warfare.” In The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Wiley. Accessed March 21, 2026. https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/asymmetric-warfare/.
The Naval Review. “Warship Vulnerability: Lessons from the Moskva Sinking.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://www.naval-review.com/news-views/warship-vulnerability-lessons-from-the-moskva-sinking/.
ResearchGate. “Integrated Survivability Assessment.” By Gary L. Guzie. April 2004. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235034181_Integrated_Survivability_Assessment.
The United States Army. “HIMARS Increase Regional Multi-Domain Capabilities at Southern Fenix 24.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://www.army.mil/article/279372/himars_increase_regional_multi_domain_capabilities_at_southern_fenix_24.
Wikipedia. “Operation Spiderweb.” Accessed March 21, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb.
