The West cannot rearm on borrowed parts: Independent drone supply chains are a must

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Oleksii Kolesnyk is CEO and founder of Reactive Drone, a leading Ukrainian manufacturer behind Kazhan (“Baba Yaga”) and Shmavic drones. Since the start of the war with Russia, Reactive Drone has been supplying the Ukrainian armed forces.

In mid-March, Gulf states faced repeated waves of missile and drone attacks, with Saudi Arabia alone intercepting nearly 100 drones in a single day. To counter this attack, the country expended an estimated $300 million in interceptor missiles to defeat an attack that likely cost 10 times less to assemble. This is not a marginal imbalance – it is a structural one that exposes a fundamental shift in the economics of modern warfare.

Each interceptor missile – whether a Patriot PAC-3 or THAAD – costs between $3 million and $12 million. The Iranian Shahed-136 drone can cost approximately $50,000. The resulting cost ratio, reaching 10:1 to 20:1 in favor of the attacker, illustrates a dynamic that no traditional defense model can absorb sustainably. In Ukraine, we learned this lesson through four years of drone warfare, while the Gulf is now learning it in weeks. The rest of the world may have a short window before the next conflict reinforces it again.

What we are witnessing is not simply the emergence of a new class of weapons, but the arrival of a new economic model of conflict in which expendable systems overwhelm highly sophisticated but scarce defensive platforms. Under these conditions, even record defense spending cannot deliver security if it reinforces outdated assumptions.

The rearmament boom – record spending, wrong priorities

Global military spending reached approximately $2.7 trillion in 2024, the fastest growth since the Cold War. The United States alone has crossed the $1 trillion defense budget threshold, and NATO members are now targeting 5% of GDP by 2035. Yet beneath these headline figures lies a critical misalignment between spending priorities and the evolving character of warfare.

Much of today’s investment continues to flow into legacy systems designed for a different era. The F-35 program took roughly 25 years to reach production. Tomahawk missiles – of which the United States has reportedly used around 400 in the current Iran conflict – take years to replenish. These are high-performance, high-cost systems built for precision warfare against peer militaries. But today’s threats are defined by scale, not precision. Iran’s drone campaign in the Gulf has demonstrated that strategic effect can be achieved through volume rather than technological superiority. Relatively inexpensive drones, deployed in large numbers, can saturate even the most advanced air defense networks, while the attacking side remains confident in full protection. The result is a mismatch: governments are buying yesterday’s war at tomorrow’s prices.

Fast-track procurement – the policy revolution that’s needed

The core problem is not just what governments are buying – it is how they are buying it. Western procurement systems are misaligned with the tempo of drone warfare. At the Munich Security Conference, the contradiction was clear: defense companies hesitate to invest in new production capacity without long-term demand, while governments remain locked in short-term, crisis-driven purchasing cycles. This tension prevents scale and keeps defense reactive rather than strategic.

If governments are serious about adapting to this new reality, four reforms are essential. The first is extending wartime procurement authorities into peacetime for drone and counter-drone systems, allowing for accelerated acquisition timelines. Ukraine’s centralized, digitized procurement has demonstrated how quickly systems can be fielded when bureaucratic barriers are reduced. Similarly, the United Kingdom’s ability to complete a drone procurement cycle in just 19 days shows that speed is achievable when treated as a priority.

The second reform involves shifting from episodic batch purchases to continuous production contracts that provide manufacturers with predictable demand. Buying 100,000 drones in a single order may address an immediate need, but it does not build sustainable industrial capacity. Manufacturers need predictable demand to justify investment in production lines. Rearmament built on episodic orders will always struggle to scale effectively.

Third, governments must establish regulatory fast lanes for technologies already proven in combat. Systems perfected under real battlefield conditions – particularly in Ukraine – should not face prolonged certification processes in allied countries. Today, more than 10 European and Middle Eastern nations are seeking Ukrainian expertise in drone defense, highlighting both the urgency of the demand and the inefficiencies of current regulatory frameworks.

Finally, recent U.S. efforts to accelerate defense contracting should serve as a model for broader reform. The January 2026 Executive Order on “Prioritizing the Warfighter in Defense Contracting” acknowledges the need for speed, accountability and performance in procurement processes, and these principles should now be applied consistently across allied nations.

The independent drone supply chain imperative

Even if procurement is fixed, another problem remains: supply chains. Today, many of the critical components used in drone systems – motors, flight controllers and batteries – are dominated by Chinese manufacturers, creating a strategic vulnerability. A defense strategy that relies on adversary-controlled supply chains is inherently fragile, particularly in times of crisis when access to these components may be restricted.

Europe has begun to address this issue through measures such as the SAFE regulation, which limits non-European components in tactical drones, but the gap remains significant, with less than 30% of drones used by European Union member states produced domestically. Closing this gap will require a comprehensive restructuring of the industrial base. The issue is not simply whether systems are designed in the United States or Europe but assembled in China – it is whether allied nations are actually building out the component manufacturing base required to sustain independent production at scale.

This transformation must begin with vertical integration, ensuring that allied nations control the production process from critical components to final assembly. It must also recognize Ukraine as both a model and a partner, given its rapid development of a battle-tested drone industrial ecosystem under extreme wartime conditions. Rather than treating this expertise as temporary, it should be integrated into broader allied production networks.

Consolidation and unification of allied efforts is equally essential. The integration of Iranian, Russian and North Korean drone and missile supply chains – achieved rapidly and under sanctions pressure – should serve as a cautionary marker for what adversaries can accomplish when Western nations remain fragmented in their industrial response.

Equally important is adopting distributed manufacturing models that enhace resilience by spreading production across locations. Iran’s ability to sustain drone output despite targeted strikes on its facilities illustrates the effectiveness of this approach, reducing vulnerability and ensuring continuity. Allied nations should adopt similar strategies through licensed production and cooperative industrial frameworks.

This also means planning now – leveraging existing infrastructure while investing in new facilities. Building peacetime drone component production without accounting for the risk of destruction in conflict is not planning; it is negligence. Resilient industrial capacity must be designed to absorb disruption and continue operating under wartime conditions.

Finally, industrial policy must actively support this transition by creating favorable conditions for investment and production. Europe’s Readiness Roadmap 2030 signals a broader recognition of the need for coordinated action, but the challenge now is implementation at scale and speed.

The window to act is now

The Iran-Gulf conflict should not be viewed as an isolated event, but as a preview of the future of warfare. Early indications suggest that prolonged engagements could strain global air defense supplies, highlighting the current limits. Even the most advanced militaries cannot sustain a defense model that relies on scarce, high-cost interceptors against an abundant and inexpensive threat.

The lesson is clear. The global rearmament boom will fail to deliver security if it prioritizes complexity over scalability, if procurement systems remain slow and fragmented, and if supply chains remain dependent on external actors. Ukraine has learned these lessons – though not fully – through four years of sustained conflict, and the Gulf is confronting them now. The rest of the world still has a choice: adapt in advance or to be forced to adapt under pressure.

After years on the front line of the world’s first large-scale drone war, one conclusion stands out: it is impossible to defend against mass with scarcity. Independent drone supply chains are not just industrial policy – they are a prerequisite for survival.