De Oekraïense oorlog heeft een harde realiteit blootgelegd: goedkope drones hebben tanks en artillerie grotendeels gedateerd gemaakt. Met een paar honderd dollar kunnen drones voertuigen vernietigen die miljoenen kosten. Toch blijven westerse defensiebedrijven zoals Rheinmetall massaal investeren in tanks en “exquise” wapensystemen.
De CEO van Rheinmetall wuift de drone-revolutie grotendeels weg en noemt Oekraïense innovaties “lego-achtig”, terwijl Oekraïne juist laat zien dat massaproductie van simpele, goedkope drones extreem effectief is. In het frontgebied is een 20–30 mijl brede “kill zone” ontstaan waar vrijwel alles wat beweegt wordt opgespoord en vernietigd door drones.
Ondanks dit verschuivende slagveld blijft Europa vasthouden aan oude militaire logica: dure platforms, trage bureaucratie en lange certificeringstijden. Daardoor kan innovatie nauwelijks worden doorgevoerd. Oekraïne daarentegen produceert miljoenen drones per jaar en verschuift zijn hele oorlogsstrategie richting goedkope, schaalbare systemen.
Conclusie: de westerse defensie-industrie loopt achter de feiten aan en blijft investeren in wapens die op het moderne slagveld steeds makkelijker uitgeschakeld worden, terwijl de echte militaire revolutie al is gebeurd — en die komt niet uit de traditionele wapenfabrieken.
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Building Tanks While the Ukrainians Master Drones![original.jpg]()
The war games served as proof of Ukraine’s potential, not only as a fighting force but also as a supplier of weapons to the rest of Europe. Eric Schmidt, a former Google CEO, has invested in Ukrainian drone manufacturers and believes that the Ukrainians could one day overtake their Western peers in the arms market. “They will be the primary arms supplier to all of Europe,” Schmidt told the audience at a security conference in Germany last month. Ukrainian drones, he said, “are so inexpensive; they are so battle-tested.”
Papperger, of course, sees it differently. The rise of cheap drones poses a direct threat to his business model. To continue winning multibillion-dollar contracts for tanks and artillery, he needs to convince his clients that these weapons will remain essential to wars of the future. Ukraine has made that a much greater challenge.
When I asked him whether Ukrainian companies would one day sell their drones to NATO, he sighed and shook his head. They would not make it through the alliance’s bureaucracy, he said: “They need a NATO qualification.” Western regulators could, in other words, keep them off the European market by requiring licenses that Ukrainian firms might find hard to get.
Even adopting Ukrainian know-how seems difficult in that environment. During our tour of the factory in Unterlüss, my guide explained the complexity of changing anything about the design of a German weapons system. “Any adjustment needs to be recertified by the procurement agency,” a department within the Ministry of Defense, Weisswange said. Any change to the material used to make the barrel of a tank, he said, would take at least a year to certify. “The quality controls are very strict, and the costs are very high.”
In the end, Rheinmetall has a strong incentive to continue making the expensive weapons it has made for much of its history, even if they can be blown apart by drones that cost less than the average smartphone.